The Inner City (11 page)

She lay in bed that night, listening to the guns and the shouts and the drawn out animal screams. She had an awful feeling that she’d done the wrong thing, that Gilgamesh was a mistake, but how could that be? And if he was, what could she do?

In the morning she went out again and searched for him, back up in the woods, hoping she’d find him and that she would somehow know what the right thing to do would be. There was a sweet smell in the air, but it wasn’t a nice smell. It made her slow down a little, but it didn’t stop her entirely. Perhaps he was dead already; that would be the easiest thing.

A dog walked with her, a little bit away, its tail held high, its mouth open eagerly. She followed the dog and found Gilgamesh leaning against a large tree. His head was sloping downwards and to the side, and she could see that a piece of his back leg had fallen off. Some dogs were fighting over something in the bushes.

Gilgamesh lifted his injured leg when she approached him. He tried to straighten up. The dog walked over and began to lick at Gilgamesh’s feet. “Stop it!” she cried and threw a stick at the dog, who went away and sat down, watching.

She didn’t want him to die. He had a right to live—she had, she thought, given him the right to live. She’d brought water and thread and some more plastic wrap, but his meat came apart easily and it was impossible to get it all to stay together. She thought she might be able to go and find more meat, fresher packages, a later sell-by date, maybe she could still fix him. But it struck her that it was wrong to use the meat of other animals to keep him alive. It was contrary to what she had wanted, wasn’t it? Every time she remembered this it sent a little shock of despair right through her.

His skin was too soft, and parts of it were dried at the edges. “Wait,” she said, and she ran back to the store, looking for beef stock, chicken stock, even vegetable stock. “My, my,” the cashier said. “Soup? Looks like a lot of soup.” And the cashier smiled happily, a soup-lover herself.

She dribbled the broth over him slowly; she rubbed it in around his head, massaging his neck and his forehead. When he was stronger, she tugged him gently deeper into the woods, away from the people who wanted to catch him. She threw stones at the dogs, scattering them. Then she rushed home, telling her mother she’d been right next door, out of harm’s way. Her mother frowned and looked at her sharply, but let it go.

Doreen rose before dawn and found Gilgamesh and led him to the garbage cans on the street, opening up the plastic wraps and the brown paper bags, searching for discarded meats—old chops, dry slices of turkey, oozing packages of bacon. Gilgamesh bent over them, tilting his head so that his fish eye could see. His hand with the thumb reached out and took a slice of meat and folded it into his lower leg, pressing it in. A bag of dented cans burst open and he picked up soups and gravies, scooping out the remnants and applying them to the slice of meat around the edges, making sure it was firmly in place.

She put the garbage back in the bin and they continued. She could see that Gilgamesh was intent on exploring each trash can and by the third or fourth he was selective and much quieter. She took out a plastic bag that was in good shape and put some things in it and he did so as well, picking out tuna salad, hamburgers, the gristle off steaks, chicken bones and shrimp tails. He loped along, an odd shambling walk, evidence of her lack of skill. With the bulging plastic bag he seemed an odd, unbalanced imitation cow or horse, or even a bear. Not well-defined, certainly. But alive, most definitely.

She led him back to the spot in the woods she had chosen. Then she hurried home and crept into bed.

She found him again the next day at dawn and he was greedier at the garbage cans, faster, ripping through bags impatiently, finding lard and chicken fat and drippings in plastic containers, congealed stews and overcooked fish. She followed him, trying to pick up the garbage he discarded, but she couldn’t get it all done by dawn, he worked so furiously. She had worn sneakers and running clothes in case her mother got up before she got home, but she crept inside unobserved.

She took out their own garbage that night, keeping herself from sorting it only by an enormous effort.

“Make sure the lid is on tight,” her mother warned. “It’s raccoons. All that fuss. Raccoons. They went through every garbage can on Kessel Street,” she said. “
Monsters
, ha! Some people have active imaginations. Just make sure the lid’s on tight.”

She worked harder at cleaning up behind Gilgamesh, but there was never enough time; he went from can to can recklessly, gathering meats and liquids. He didn’t always wait for her, and she had to come earlier, hours before dawn, to catch him.

And then he moved. She stood at his usual spot, shining her flashlight around, afraid that something terrible had happened. She saw a trail of flattened ferns and followed it, her heart pounding, looking at shapes quickly and then away and then back at them again.

Finally her light flashed on him. His back was turned from her. She called out and he stiffened, then moved to look at her, his thick arms dragging. His body was heavy and loose. She could see bits of garbage around him, foam plates, plastic wrap. She wondered if he had a need to repair himself in privacy. Some animal instinct to conceal his weakness, maybe? She turned slightly away from him, to protect his feelings.

When he was ready, she took him to a mini-mall with a specialty shop, and Gilgamesh found dented cans of consommé, dirty cans of oxtail soup in addition to dried-out ends of deli meats. She had brought a cloth bag to make it easier for Gilgamesh to carry his finds. She made him close the lid on the dumpster and had him repeat the action until she was sure he understood. It was light; she began to hear cars on the avenue, so she hurried him back into the woods. Gilgamesh was even clumsier than usual, pushing roughly through the bushes and undergrowth, moving hastily to his new area, where two small bush trees, their lower branches broken, formed a kind of cave. Gilgamesh headed to it directly, his back to Doreen, filling the space quickly so that all she glimpsed was a mound of leaves. His hand must have brushed the leaves because for a second she thought she saw a movement. She was tired and it was just before dawn; no doubt she had imagined it.

Her mother asked her if she was sick when she overslept, and Doreen was careful for the next few days to keep to a normal schedule. That weekend she snuck out again, worried how Gilgamesh was doing. The blue pre-dawn made Kessel St., normally so orderly and self-conscious, seem gloomy. The only oddity on the street was a flyer on a lamppost, advertising a lost dog. On the next street she saw one for a lost cat, and Doreen began to feel a sense of alarm. But there could hardly be a connection, she told herself. The memory, though, of Gilgamesh hunkering down over something that was now, in her mind, most definitely moving—it horrified her. Why hadn’t she looked?

She found Gilgamesh in his green cave, his back resting against the tree trunk behind him, his right arm flung out, his left arm hugging something to his side, and Doreen felt her dread increase as she crept closer. She wanted it not to be a small dead animal he clutched; she wanted to believe that her fears were unfounded; she wanted to believe he was still innocent.

He lifted his head and saw her just as she saw what he held.

Gilgamesh’s arm surrounded a smaller version of himself, even more awkwardly constructed and held together with tape and the small coated ties that held sandwich bags together. Gilgamesh rolled his great fish eye to her and then back to his makeshift child and then, in a gesture of trust that tore at Doreen’s heart, he put the child on the ground, where it wobbled tentatively before taking a step towards her.

She could see that the lips and arms were stubs, and would need new attachments, new meats to stabilize it. But the face, she noticed, was quite good, much better than she had done, skillful.

It blinked at her and then she realized that the eyes were mammal eyes, not fish eyes. She stiffened in concentration, dreading to notice more details, but helpless against her own desire to know.
Cat’s eyes.

“Gilgamesh,” she said finally. “No. You cannot kill things. No killing,” she said feebly as Gilgamesh turned his head from her to the stubby creature on the ground. “Let’s go,” she said uncertainly. But Gilgamesh sat, his gaze on his child, and Doreen thought it would be best after all, if she gathered scraps of food for him. For them.

She went farther away so as not to empty out the sources nearest to Gilgamesh’s cave; she wanted him to find food easily, not be tempted to go after any other pets. She wondered how he caught them, though, how he killed them. Pets on chains; pets in dog houses; cats asleep in the sun?

She brought back bags and bags of discarded foods, dripping pink spots along the street until she noticed and tried to restrict her steps to lawns and dirt. She ran home, later than usual, reeking of garbage, and met her mother at the door.

“Have you been out all night?” Her mother stood there, coffee in hand, judgemental, her nose sniffing. “And what’s that smell? Are you drunk?”

Hastily, Doreen said she’d gone out for a run and slipped on some spilled garbage. Her mother weighed her words and scanned the stains on her arms. “That’s blood,” she said, surprised. “What’s that blood from?”

Doreen felt an impulse to tell her mother everything—it was lonely having so much knowledge—but she pulled herself back. Who would look at Gilgamesh and let him live? Her mother’s world was orderly, and Gilgamesh was not. “It must have been in the garbage,” Doreen said wearily, and went to shower.

Her mother’s eye was always on her then, checking her comings and goings, studying her clothes. When Doreen went to find Gilgamesh, he had moved, and she couldn’t find a new trail to him.

More pets went missing; more flyers appeared. And then finally someone managed to take a picture of forms moving through the woods. There were three of them now, and their movements were smoother; she could imagine them sneaking up on pets and reaching out with a quick, meaty grab.

The notices were everywhere, for disappearing cats and dogs and once for a picnic cooler; suddenly people were posting all the things they suspected they’d lost. A few took guns and went into the woods; the only one who didn’t make it back was thought to have deserted his family—the neighbourhood had been watching him for years and knew he was just the type to take advantage of any excuse to disappear. He was not a casualty but an opportunist.

Doreen walked home from school and saw toddlers in yards, saw babies in prams snoozing on front porches. She saw open windows in the evening, with stuffed toys lined up on the sill. She couldn’t find Gilgamesh and she didn’t know how to stop him.

She thought of Gilgamesh out there, somewhere, and the community he was creating. It was a difficult thing, feeling responsible for a creature so dangerous; at least that’s what she usually thought. But sometimes she felt bigger, stronger, for having done it, for knowing she’d done it.

At night she slipped out now, through the darkness, putting up posters of her own. “Watch your children,” the posters said. “He’s coming.”

She was a child herself. Maybe he would find her.

There are twelve beds in the hospital ward today; tomorrow there will be eleven.

My right-hand bedmate is instantly conciliatory to the hospital staff: “Of course you are overburdened,” she says, her voice dripping with compassion, “and there is at least one person here who is creating his own disease, just for attention. At least one,” she says, and shuts up, her hands placed saintly on the top bed sheet.

“Is that me? Is that who you mean?” This comes from the end of the row against the wall, at the end of the line. “I have been dragged about by life—do you think you can be dragged all over the place without being wounded? That life doesn’t wound you? That life doesn’t kill you? There’s no worse thing than that. I ask you,” he said, pointing to the nurse with her cart of medications. “Do you have a cure for life?”

“Oh, we all get cured of
that
eventually,” the nurse said, largely ignoring him and moving on. “I want to watch you take that, now,” she said severely to the skinny man past the conciliatory woman, who took it glumly and popped it in but didn’t swallow. “It could be you on that bed tomorrow, dearie. Is that what you want?”

He swallowed hastily and she put a tick on the chart on her clipboard.

“Where’s the bed going?” I asked. They all had such narrow concerns; their fear overruled their curiosity. One bed less, one patient less; what did it matter? I was feverish and wobbly; they would let me stay. Surely. Neither the healthiest nor the sickest. Safe.

She handed me three pills and a pink liquid, and never looked to see if I took any of it. Was that a good sign?

“This one over here,” the bed opposite me said. She was younger than most of us, and she often had cheery people tromping in and out. “With the annoying voice. Get rid of that one.” I gloated over her spitefulness. Young and spiteful! Let her be the one.

“Don’t you think I know about my voice?” the accused woman said. “Isn’t that why I’m here? I will do anything, suffer anything to fix it, this curse of mine. I know how irritating my voice is, I hear about it over and over; I see how people turn away. I cringe when I speak,” she said, closing her eyes and bringing her hand up to her throat. “How I detest it. Imagine—hating it and unable to stop it. It is a terrible fate. Terrible, terrible.”

“The least you can do is stop talking about it so much,” her tormentor said. “Like some electronic screech, you should really start using a pen and a pad. Give us all some relief.”

“And you think I don’t suffer?” the horrible voice asked. “To see how people react, to hear how you insult me: do you think I am heartless, soulless, without feelings, cursed as I am with a voice that doesn’t suit me, doesn’t match me—”

“Oh, it matches you, all right. You are not a quiet person; try being a quiet person.”

“Oh? I’m the only one who should be silent? I suffer just to please everyone, I’m to be cut open from nose to throat, all to please you, and people like you, and never to speak?”

“That would be lovely.”

“Well, let me tell you—” she began, but the nurse with her cart handed her a raft of pills, and she began to swallow them.

In the bed to her left a businesslike man said, “And who judges which bed goes? And when will this take place? And where does the bed go? Will it be the sickest or the least sick? Or,” and here he shot a look at the woman with the awful voice, “the most annoying?”

“The doctors will decide,” the nurse said indifferently. “They have been trained for it, and as to where the bed goes—why, it goes on a truck and we never ask where. Once you leave, you know, you don’t exist for us. We are busy enough as it is, constantly reading your charts and discussing your medications and seeing who is doing well and who is not—”

“I want to do well,” the thin man said. “I concentrate every day on a healthy attitude—”

“Which I take to mean that it is your
attitude
that will cure you and not the medical profession?” the nurse asked darkly.

He realized his error and produced a sticky grin, saying, “Of course not—very much appreciated,” and flattened himself out against the sheets.

All the patients had their pills by now and they shifted, awaiting effects and peering glumly at the doorway. Evening rounds: surely there would be evening rounds? And would it be decided then?

“My brother-in-law knows the head of the hospital,” my neighbour whispered. “It won’t be me, I can tell you. I hate the man, but he has his uses.”

And I thought: I know no one. It felt electrical at first and then the stab of it broke off in a kind of dreadful flutter of the gut. I threw my eyes around the room, and I began to see their criteria in different terms: not the sickest or the healthiest, but the one most likely to leave no ripple behind, their disappearance unremarked, even satisfying, acknowledging an utter uselessness. There is one like that in every room, in every plot, in every family—the one who won’t be missed, who stands at the back in photographs, or perhaps only a hand is seen, thrust from the outside of the group, or who is turned away, always turned away, when everyone else is gazing forward.

I was torn from my reveries, hearing my own name called, and indeed it was the lead doctor, head of the ward, standing at the foot of my bed, radiating certitude. She smiled at me, assertive in her white coat, her white bright hands, the preparation of her words jostling toward her tongue.

“Enough!” I cried before she could speak my name again, and I sat up and then stood, panting until the room steadied and the multitude of faces settled back to the eleven others, and I saw the nurse departing, and the doctor watching me with a bored clinical eye. “It is enough!” I cried again and I took the cloth jacket neatly folded out of my bedside table, and the shoes from their plastic case. “Don’t speak my name,” I shouted to the doctor and I turned to the beds and said, “I know you think it should be me—I know in the back of your heads you said, of course it must be that one, and I’ll throw it back at you, then: Of course it’s me! But I shall walk away from you, not be rowed away to Lethe on a bed. Cowards! You force me to it because I can see how vile are your fears, your contempt, yet they only give me vigour! I’ll go, then, I’ll set you free, you worthless dregs, you broken toys!” And I began feebly to make my way to the corridor.

“Now hold on,” said the doctor. “I merely meant to compliment you on how well you’re doing. Quiet, uncomplaining—though we’ll have to make a note now, won’t we?” She turned to face the centre of the room as, with a sigh of relief mixed with disappointment, I removed my coat, my shoes, and inserted myself back into bed. The doctor went to stand at the foot of the bed of the thinnest man, the man who had to be watched to swallow his pills.

The doctor lowered her voice, though we all heard it still and it thrilled us. “You, Hanley, it is your bed that we have chosen.”

“Ah no!” he cried, pulling the sheets up to his chin, his eyes wide and unreflecting.

A cheerful buzz rose from the other patients. “I apologize,” I said, “it was the fever that did it to me, for I have loved you all as brothers, sisters, hating you sometimes, it’s true, but only as one hates within a family, intimately—all save Hanley, who doesn’t provoke me at all.”

“All save Hanley!” responded the other beds, as the orderlies came and pushed him away. He clutched the hem of his sheet, his lips quivering, his thin head with its pointed bones swivelling to gaze at each of us in turn. He may have said something—in fact, I’m sure he said something—but it was feeble and lost in the murmurs that rose up once his bed rounded the doorway and faded into the corridor.

“How odd,” said my neighbour to the left, “but I feel—suddenly—finer. I can think clearly, I’m sure of it.”

“That pounding in my chest is gone,” another declared.

“Do you know—I think I’m hungry.”

And we all had grins on our faces at the prospect of returning health. Was it coincidence that it had to do with Hanley’s removal? Was it an accident that once he left we all felt better?

Hanley was the cause of all our distress, and without him, we agreed, our lives were sure to be long and safe. “We will live,” we murmured to each other, “we are whole; it was Hanley all along!” And we blessed our doctors and our nurses and the orderlies who took Hanley from us, the creature who would blacken our hearts.