by Lloyd Jones
‘It has a wholeness – a beginning, a middle and an end,’ he said, switching his conversation immediately to the next pair of ears, which belonged to the Walrus Man.
‘Don’t you think so?’
The Walrus Man also got up, and lumbered off towards the toilets.
Mr Vogel felt isolated, so he moved up alongside a new woman, who had dog-hairs all over her clothes.
‘You may wonder if I cheated,’ he said to her, ‘but no, I was completely honest with myself. I may not have done it all in the same direction, and not all at the same time, but I walked along the whole route. I did get slightly lost in Monmouth because I’m a bear of little brain and I confused the two bridges, and a man gave me a lift in his car to the right spot, but I was still within the town so that’s not cheating, is it?’
The woman regarded Vogel for a few seconds, then clumped off to her room.
The next person along was Peter, the man who spent all day shaking hands with people.
‘Hia Peter,’ said Mr Vogel, and he shook hands with him continuously whilst he talked, so that Peter could top up his batteries.
‘Some people, the doubters, will pour cold water on my claims and ask for proof. Some people will turn their backs on me and deny they’ve ever had anything to do with me. But I have no proof. I did it for myself, you see. I don’t care if there are doubters – there always will be, people are either believers or doubters, basically. Don’t you think so?’
Peter was off to greet Dr Jackson who had appeared in the doorway. Mr Vogel waved to him and smiled.
‘Frankly,’ he said across an empty seat to a little man with a glass eye, who had a very menacing stare, ‘it would have been far easier to fake it. Car, camera, a few days in the library – easy. I could have been the next...’
He couldn’t remember a famous faker – what was the name of that man who copied old masters and nearly got away with it?
The little man with the glass eye walked off, down to the quiet room, where he stood and stared at a patient who was reading a book, The Island of Apples, another book about the Welsh, about myths.
Mr Vogel thought of the Madog myth – did he, didn’t he sail to America? But Madog was Welsh, so Mr Vogel put aside his doubts.
‘When was Wales? Wales has never been, it has always been,’ he rambled on to his next victim, Myrddin the schizophrenic, who (fortunately) was asleep. ‘I’ll tell you something for nothing,’ he said, ‘true Wales is never more than a field away, and true Wales is always a field away, like Rhiannon’s horse in the Mabinogi. Get it?’
Myrddin woke up and called for the nurse.
Mr Vogel sat alone. They had all deserted him; the party was over. It was time to pay the piper. He would linger with a few images from his mini-epic, which nestled inside him like a miniature ship in a bottle.
Seeing the Severn Estuary for the first time, shimmering through the trees, from a break in the trees on Offa’s Dyke – feeling like Cortez when he saw the far-off Pacific from a silent peak in Darien; seeing the ponies in the marshes at Llanrhidian and going back in time, to Epona, to the sparse landscape of early man; sleeping on the sands at New Quay, dreaming of dolphins.
He nodded off, and was woken by a hand shaking his arm.
‘Mr Vogel?’ It was Debbie. She was such a lovely girl.
‘Mr Vogel – Dr Jackson will see you soon. He wants to talk to you. Don’t worry. Just tell him everything. He’ll understand. If you tell him everything he’ll be able to help you.’
Mr Vogel looked round at the room. He felt a strong urge to visit the Blue Angel; he wanted to sit on the stool in the corner and talk to the barman, who would understand everything. He would be just like Gwydion, a man who could listen patiently for hours.
Mr Vogel’s stories were so interesting, said Gwydion.
Mr Vogel felt good about that. Being interesting.
‘Tell me a story about the Jews,’ he said to Mr Vogel. ‘We must put something in about the Jews and the gipsies, they’re the world’s greatest travellers, after all.’
Mr Vogel stroked his chin. ‘The Jews,’ he murmured, ‘the Jews...
I’ll tell you a story about the Jews,’ he said finally, ‘and about the gipsies, and why they’re condemned to a life of wandering.’
He settled in his chair and cast his mind back to a fine-looking wanderer, a man called Roland who wore a beret and had curly auburn hair and a van Dyke moustache and a gold earring in his ear, a man of verve and romance. This man had played his fiddle and told them stories, one of them about his own folk, the Romany people. ‘This is what he told us,’ said Mr Vogel.
‘When Christ was being crucified the Romans sent two soldiers to buy four strong nails. But they spent half the money on drink at a tavern. Incidentally, did you know that the Grapes at Maentwrog was probably a Roman tavern...’
‘Just tell it straight, for God’s sake, otherwise we’ll never get there – I’m not a young man either,’ said Gwydion.
‘Right,’ said Mr Vogel.
‘The two Roman soldiers hurried to an old Jewish blacksmith, who refused to make the nails when he was told how they would be used, so the soldiers killed him.
They went to another blacksmith, who said he could forge only four small nails with the money that was left. The soldiers tried to frighten him by setting his beard on fire, but the blacksmith heard the voice of the first murdered man and also refused to do the task. They killed him also.
Then they went to a gipsy blacksmith who made three nails, and was working on the fourth when the soldiers told him what he was making. At this point they all heard the voices of the two dead blacksmiths, and the soldiers ran away.
The gipsy finished the fourth nail and waited for it to cool, but it remained red hot no matter how much cold water he poured on it. The terrified gipsy fled, and after travelling a great distance he pitched his tent. As soon as he had done so he spied the glowing nail at his feet, and although he poured sand and water over it the nail remained hot. An Arab asked him to repair a wheel on a cart, so he drove the nail, still glowing, into the wheel, and then the gipsy fled. When he reached his next stop the gipsy pitched camp again and his first customer was a man who wanted the hilt of his sword repaired. When the gipsy took the sword, what do you think he saw glowing in the hilt?
‘The nail repeatedly visited the gypsy’s descendants, and that is why they’re condemned to a life of perpetual wandering. And that’s why Christ was crucified with three nails – the fourth nail is still wandering around the Earth, chasing gypsies.
‘Like it?’
‘Good story,’ said Gwydion. ‘Yours?’
‘Good grief no,’ answered Vogel.
‘Now let’s see if you can spot a bogus story,’ said Gwydion, who was enjoying himself. ‘Let’s play True or False.’
‘Fine with me,’ said Mr Vogel.
‘Is it true,’ asked Gwydion, ‘that India has something like 60 million people, called the Denotified Tribes, who were labelled criminal by the British because of their nomadic way of life and who were either forcibly settled or shot on sight?’
‘True,’ said Mr Vogel, without hesitation. ‘I know about them. I’ve heard this story too. Apparently, when the British went to India these tribes, who carried salt and honey between the coast and the inland forests, were a great help to them because they knew all about the geography and customs of the country. But once the British knew their way around these people were seen as a threat and were made into social outcasts.’
‘I see that I can’t fool you,’ said Gwydion approvingly. ‘Seems to me that we’re quite a match.’
Mr Vogel liked this Gwydion man, increasingly. They sat there, like Castor and Pollux, fixed in an orbit around sanity. Sylvia was hoovering around Mr Vogel’s feet. He thought about his love for Anna, who had stayed in her room for days now. I love her, he thought. I want to be with her for ever – for the eons it will take Sylvia to hoover the entire universe into her paper bag.
Gwydion looked at him like a teased dog.
‘They were Adam and Eve’s sons, right?’
Mr Vogel looked tired. ‘Tell you what, I’ll leave that with you. Have a scratch around. See what you come up with. I’ll give you a clue: Cain was a settled farmer and Abel was a nomadic shepherd. One brother killed the other. The human race gave up wandering. That’s when our problems really started.’
Mr Vogel had another vivid dream last night: he awoke in darkness, sweating, crying out; a shadow flitted from the staff station to his bedside. It was another whale dream:
That fateful day, February 29th, again: A great battle was fought out to sea between the northern and southern whaling fleets; all ships sunk. One survivor carried to the shore on the back of a giant boar, a cabin boy travelling under the name of Arthur, who upon closer examination was revealed to be a lovely young girl called Emmeline, fleeing her stupid, puny husband for a Welshman of wondrous virtue, bravery and beauty...
I have talked to Mr Vogel about the monster who sucks his toes and fills him with yellow heat and desire, who tries to pull him into the off-licence and video store.
I will ferry my friend across the Whisky Monster’s yellow river.
THE THIRD STEP
GWYDION was furious.
‘Hates pigs? What kind of man is that,’ he muttered to Mr Vogel, who said:
‘Apparently he was chased by a pig when he was a kid.’
‘Probably annoying it. Pigs are beautiful. Pigs are pretty gruntled beings on the whole.’
‘And he doesn’t believe a word of our story,’ added Mr Vogel. ‘Thinks we’re porky pie merchants, through and through.’
‘What?’ Gwydion was enraged. ‘The cheeky bastard. Professor of pig poo, I’ll make him pay for that. This is bloody war.’
He sat down in a chair alongside Mr Vogel and thought great big chunks of thoughts. Mr Vogel felt the mass of the room change dramatically, as if the floor under Gwydion was going to give way; with a roaring, rushing sound they would be sucked through a chute of mega-gravity, to join Snowdonia’s fossils, swimming forever in the cold, hard, basalt waves deep below. He felt a cloud envelop him, black and cold. He’d never seen Gwydion like this. It was terrible to see, the wrath of a doubted Welshman.
‘Right,’ said Gwydion after a few minutes.
He straightened, smiled, and the sun came out again.
‘I’ve got it. The perfect plan. The sow-bellied, mud-brained pill-pusher. He’s pulled the wrong pig by the ear now, hasn’t he?’
‘I think we’ve got the point,’ said Mr Vogel, ‘but what of it?’
‘Revenge!’ said Gwydion vengefully. ‘He’s going to pay! We can’t have our honour impugned and fine Welsh pigs maligned by a jumped-up little medicine man with the wrong blood inside him and a head full of scats, or whatever pig droppings are called. When are you seeing him again?’
‘Some time this morning, apparently.’
‘Excellent. I’ll be back before then. And we’ll need a man with a van. Know anyone like that?’
‘Well there’s Waldo, I’m sure Waldo will help out...’
‘Fine. And we’ll need a pig. And a Polaroid camera. Got that?
After jotting Waldo’s phone number on the back of his hand he was off, trotting down the corridor, leaving a mystified Mr Vogel sitting in his room, wondering what on earth was going on. Gwydion was back before Mr Vogel had finished his breakfast. He shoved a small bottle in his hand.
‘There, that’ll do the trick.’
Mr Vogel looked at it, turning it round in his hand.
‘Well, what is it?’
‘It’s a drug.’
‘A drug,’ said Mr Vogel, feeling as if he’d already taken a swig from it.
‘Can you be a bit more specific, and when do I take it?’
‘You don’t – he does.’
‘Eh?’
‘Dr Jackson – you’ve got to slip it in his tea when he’s not looking. Good dollop. Get him to leave the room or something. Then whop it into his tea. Got it?’
‘What the hell is it?’
‘It’s a date rape drug, actually, and he should be out for some time. I want him to lose twenty-four hours. Non compos. Out of it, completely.’
‘A what? Date rape drug? Are you out of your mind? Where the hell did you get hold of this stuff, anyway? You really are a sex maniac, aren’t you?
‘No. I am not a sex maniac. And you know this town – you can get hold of anything. It’s that sort of place, isn’t it?’
Mr Vogel knew exactly what he meant. It was a transit port, with all the associated seediness and grubbiness of busy ports; they seemed to attract runaways and derelicts. Alcohol, drugs... Gwydion was right, they were as accessible as bread and milk.
‘Whoa,’ he said, trying to slow everything down. ‘Just you wait a minute whilst I get hold of what’s happening here. You’re telling me that I am going to go into the interview room with Dr Jackson and I am going to slip him a date rape drug. Is that right?’
‘Right.’
‘And then we’re going to do something with a man in a van, a pig and a camera?’
‘Correct.’
‘Go on,’ said Mr Vogel, ‘for God’s sake put me out of my misery.’
‘Fine,’ said Gwydion patiently.
‘You’re going to spike professor pig poo’s drink, he’s going to lose a day in his feeble little life, you’re going to escape and get into a van with me and a man and a pig and a camera, and we’re going to go round Wales in a day. Got it?’
‘Oh, is that all,’ said Mr Vogel. ‘Fine, I feel better now I know I’m going to go round Wales with a pig and a camera. Sounds perfect.’
Gwydion headed for the toilet.
‘See you in an hour. Oh, and don’t fluff it. We want to make that jumped-up know-all, Mr Medical Bloody Marvel, to look so big [he held his finger and thumb half an inch apart]. Don’t lose the plot – you’re in charge of the storyline from now on. See ya.’
‘You’ve used the word trauma – can you tell me a bit more?’
Dr Jackson was looking out of the window, at the hospital chimney, which loomed over this side of the complex; a plume of white smoke was pouring into the air, and he wondered what they were burning. The psychiatric unit was set aside from the rest of the wards; it was a little enclave, like lepers’ huts outside a medieval church. He noticed that a group of children had climbed through a hedge surrounding the water tower, away to his right, and were playing around its legs. He phoned reception to warn them.
Each ward had a little square garden, with paths and benches and flowerpots around a central patch of lawn. There were neat, sane little borders, logical little shrubs and completely rational flower-beds. It was a place where a few of the patients went no matter what the weather. They somehow made it clear that they wanted to be left alone. An angry Pole often sat there in the rain in his shirt.
As he looked at the patients today, huddled in various isolations, sunning themselves, Mr Vogel was reminded of his own retreat into no-man’s land. Philip Roth had talked of men standing in the wilderness because they were angry; this was how they wore away their anger, by standing with fishing rods in remote places far from anywhere or anyone.
‘Trauma?’ he echoed Dr Jackson’s word, whilst wondering if Gwydion’s philtre was working yet. Fortune had smiled on him; Dr Jackson had brought in a glass of orange juice with him, and although he had remarked on its sweetness afterwards, he hadn’t noticed Mr Vogel’s sleight of hand as the doctor stood with his back to the room, looking out on the water tower. Today, for some reason, it reminded him of a pagoda.
Mr Vogel went along with the catechism.
Trauma... his mind tried to focus.
Mr Vogel thought of an evening, some time ago, when he’d been in a pub in Laugharne, the New Three Mariners, and a dog, a little Labrador-cross called Penny, had
come over to him and sat on his lap. It was young, maybe six months old, and sweet. He noticed that it had a disfigured forepaw, but forgot to ask how it came by it. The dog was very well looked after and seemed comfortable with its disability; it must have been born like that. He had seen dogs with a missing leg, but he had never seen a disfigured dog before. As their friendship grew, Gwydion had told him a story from his own childhood. He had been sent, literally, to the doghouse by his father and ordered to beat the dogs ‘to show them who was master’. It was a very cruel thing to do; he had thrashed them – there must have been four or five – until blood streaked their flanks. He had felt a terrible power quivering in his body, and a strange release from guilt because he was doing it under orders; later in life he realised what drew the Nazis to human cruelty. He hadn’t felt remorse as such; he had been a child, and if he hadn’t beaten the dogs he would have been beaten himself. He’d also had to shoot dogs, and he could remember their eyes spurting out of their sockets and lying on their cheeks after the shot. He could remember the pungent, acrid smell of the cartridge, the limpness of the dog’s still-warm hindpaw as he dragged it to a place where it couldn’t be seen.
This early, enforced brutality had turned Gwydion into a gentle man; others, he knew, went the other way, became sadists and murderers because they had been taught an advanced lesson in depravity early on in their lives, and would re-enact the scene over and over again. That was the nature of trauma. One cruelty begat another. Cruelty propagated itself like an organism, each succeeding act bearing the code, the stigmata of the last.
The garden was busy now: a nurse had involved some of the patients in a gardening exercise; the little man with a glass eye was hacking at the privet, and others were weeding and raking. One of the newer patients, the little white-haired woman with dog hairs still clinging to her clothes, returned the doctor’s stare and he looked away.
Mr Vogel went back to his own childhood; cripples had been much more common in public then. Callipers, platform shoes, crutches, sticks – all these had been everyday sights. Now it was less common to see physically handicapped people other than wheelchair-users. Mr Vogel felt very glad about this, but he also felt, secretly, that western society had an unhealthy infatuation with physical perfection, with beauty and slimming; he kept thinking of the Nazis’ preoccupation with calisthenics and eugenics which presaged, somehow, a sickening society.
