The Universe versus Alex Woods

by Extence, Gavin

  I spent a very long time wondering about Petra and how she’d come to this job – whether there were newspaper adverts and interviews, just like any other normal job. Eventually, I got tired of wondering and just asked her.

  Alex likes to know how things work, Mr Peterson apologized.

  ‘She did say we should ask questions,’ I pointed out.

  ‘I did,’ Petra agreed. She spent some time looking at Mr Peterson’s blind-written note – she still found this trick an interesting novelty – and then told us that she’d trained as a nurse before joining Herr Schäfer’s clinic seven years ago; she’d made a ‘speculative application’ having read about his work in a national newspaper. ‘I thought it was important work and something I could do well,’ Petra concluded.

  All of Petra’s utterances were like this. She was direct and plainspoken, yet, with her featherlight voice, she managed to project compassion in the simplest, shortest sentences. I suppose this was one of the reasons she was suited to her job.

  She had to go through most of the questions that Mr Peterson had already been asked two or three times before, but these questions were now raw and immediate. ‘Do you want to die today?’ Petra asked. ‘Is your mind clear? Is this your own decision?’ After that, there came the repeated insistence that there was no pressure to continue – the decision could be reversed at any point, right up until the poison had been taken. Petra didn’t refer to the sodium pentobarbital as a medicine or medicament. At this late stage, there was no room for ambiguity.

  Mr Peterson had to write his answers to all these questions and then sign about half a dozen different documents, reconfirming his intentions and giving the escorts the legal right to deal with the Swiss authorities after his death. After that, I helped him to the bathroom (I don’t want my last thought to be that I need to pee, Mr Peterson wrote), and when we got back, he told Petra that he was ready to take his anti-emetic. This was a standard precaution to ensure that the sodium pentobarbital – which had an extremely unpleasant taste – stayed down. On this point, Petra was typically forthcoming. ‘The pentobarbital tastes poisonous,’ she told us. ‘The stomach’s natural response is to throw it up.’ Anti-sickness medication was always taken first, and it had to be taken at least half an hour before the poison – to allow its full effects to manifest.

  And then we had to wait.

  And there were a million things I thought I should say, but I couldn’t get any of them straight in my head. I didn’t know where to begin. I suppose I must have looked agitated, because after a while, Mr Peterson passed me a note.

  I understand. You don’t have to say anything at all. Just being here is enough.

  I nodded. I thought he was right. Sometimes words aren’t needed.

  You should put on some music, Mr Peterson wrote.

  ‘What would you like to hear?’

  Mr Peterson gave a kind of crooked half-smile. Lots of things. I think the decision’s too big for me right now. You choose.

  I thought about this for a minute. ‘I suppose you could do worse than Mozart,’ I said.

  Mr Peterson nodded. Agreed.

  So I put on Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major. Mr Peterson closed his eyes and listened. I sat and watched a couple of sparrows through the patio doors as they darted back and forth between the slender saplings of the back garden, their shadows flittering below them like dark puppets. The double-glazing cut out all the noise from the roads and factories. There was no whisper of the outside world, no sound in the room but the shimmering layers of Mozart and the slow rise and fall of my breath.

  When the music had finished, Mr Peterson gestured for me to call back Petra from the corner chair to which she’d retired.

  I’m ready to die now, he wrote. I want you to prepare the poison for me.

  I helped him across to the small leather sofa that looked out onto the garden.

  ‘Do you want me to put some more music on?’ I asked.

  Play the Mozart again, Mr Peterson wrote. It’s perfect.

  Within a few minutes Petra had returned with the small glass of dissolved sodium pentobarbital. It was clear and colourless, like normal tap water. She placed it carefully on the table next to Mr Peterson, along with the drinking straw that his medical notes had said to provide.

  ‘Between two and five minutes after drinking this, you will lose consciousness,’ Petra said. ‘And after that, you will die. Do you understand?’

  Mr Peterson nodded.

  ‘I need you to write it,’ Petra said.

  I understand, Mr Peterson wrote. Then, after he’d torn out the page, he wrote a second note, to me. You going to read for me? it said.

  ‘Yes,’ I confirmed. I already had Slaughterhouse-Five prepared. I was going to start reading it after he’d taken the poison, and he’d told me to keep reading until he was fast asleep. I think he’d thought of this for me as much as for him. He knew I needed something to do, to keep my mind focussed.

  Thank you, Alex, Mr Peterson wrote.

  ‘I love you,’ I said. ‘I love you and I’m going to miss you.’

  I know. Me too. You’re going to be OK.

  ‘Yes.’

  You take good care of yourself. Make sure you drive home safely.

  ‘I always drive safely,’ I said.

  Mr Peterson nodded, barely more than a tiny dip of his head. I guess I’ll see you on the other side, he wrote. And that was the last thing he wrote. It was a lousy joke, but I was glad he’d made it all the same.

  ‘See you on the other side,’ I said.

  I held the glass steady while Mr Peterson drank the sodium pentobarbital through the straw. I made sure that all the liquid had disappeared before I returned the glass to the table, and then I started reading.

  Listen, I read.

  Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.

  Billy has gone to sleep a senile widower and awakened on his wedding day . . .

  Mr Peterson listened. Mozart continued to play. I kept reading for three more pages.

  The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It’s just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it’s gone forever . . .

  By the time I paused in my reading, the Piano Concerto No. 21 had reached its second movement. Mr Peterson’s eyes had closed and his breathing had slowed to the rhythm of deep sleep. After that, it didn’t take long for him to die.

  I picked up the ashes the following morning. It doesn’t take much time to cremate a body – about two hours from start to finish – and in prearranged assisted suicides, those which have been properly documented, there’s no delay in getting the death certified and a cremation permit issued. The medical examiner just has to confirm the death and check that all the paperwork is in order – and, in Mr Peterson’s case, it was. All the evidence was there in black and white: the declaration of intent, the passport to confirm his identity, the signed testimonies of Linus and Petra and Dr Reinhardt. The death and cause of death were certified in a matter of minutes. If I hadn’t felt so drained, I might have been able to collect the ashes that same afternoon.

  Instead, I returned to the hotel and slept for twelve hours straight. When I awoke, it was dark outside. I guess it was around three in the morning. My sleep routine was shot to pieces; though, at that time, I hadn’t noticed any signs that a seizure was imminent. I was still in a bubble. Either nothing felt strange or everything did. I couldn’t decide which.

  I still hadn’t cried, even though Petra had insisted that I should. She s
aid that I should ‘let it all out’, that there wasn’t any need to be strong any more. I told her the truth: I wasn’t trying to be strong. I just didn’t feel like crying right then.

  I went for my morning meditation in the same spot as the day before, where nothing had changed. There were the same swans on the lake, the same lilacs perfuming the promenade. The only difference was that the meditation didn’t really work. The idea is to clear your mind of clutter, but my mind was already blank to begin with. There was nothing to clear.

  So, after about half an hour, I went back to the hotel and packed my bags. There weren’t so many this time. Mr Peterson’s clothes and suitcase had been left to the Red Cross.

  I went to check out just before eight and found the same desk clerk working – the one who’d checked us in three days earlier and refused to speak German with me.

  ‘Where is Mr Peterson?’ he asked me. I thought it was an odd question to ask; I assumed he’d already seen that my room was booked for an extra night.

  ‘Herr Peterson hat gestern ausgecheckt,’ I told him. Mr Peterson checked out yesterday.

  I turned up at the crematorium at nine, when it opened. Everything had been paid for in advance, so it didn’t take long to get the remains handed over. There was just one release form to sign. I was back on the road ten minutes later.

  I didn’t really have a plan about when or where I’d stop. I thought I’d just keep driving until I was tired or needed to stretch my legs – assuming I made it across the border. I knew that wasn’t a given, although I thought the bigger problem would be trying to buy a ferry ticket in Calais.

  As it happened, I’d been driving for less than an hour when I was forced to pull off the Autobahn. It hit me without warning as I was driving through the Bözberg Tunnel. Suddenly, I was smelling lilacs again. I got off at the next junction and parked up a mile or so from the motorway, just on the edge of a quiet, seemingly deserted village. I stood in the fresh air with my hands on the bonnet and tried to count my breaths, but somewhere around five or six, I found that I was shaking and I couldn’t stop.

  And then I cried. I don’t know how long for. Maybe a minute, maybe ten. I sat in the gravelly road with my back against the bumper and I cried for as long as I needed to, until the shaking had stopped and my head was clear again. Then I got back in the car, placed Mr Peterson on the passenger seat beside me and drove north to meet my fate.

  WILL

  My mother arrived at Dover Police Station around four in the morning, looking very much like she’d been shot from a cannon. By that time, I’d been talking in circles with Chief Inspector Hearse and Deputy Inspector Cunningham for at least two and a half hours. They let her into Interview Room C, where she wasted no time on pleasantries. She rushed straight over to where I was sitting and crushed my head into her stomach. And she kept on holding me for at least three minutes. I don’t know which of us felt most awkward about this – me or Chief Inspector Hearse or Deputy Inspector Cunningham – but after a while, I stopped trying to twist my neck back into a sensible position and just kind of accepted the arrangement. Despite the contortion, I decided that being mauled by my mother was preferable to being mauled by the police.

  ‘Mrs Woods,’ Chief Inspector Hearse began, ‘if you’d like to take a seat, then we can bring you up to speed with th—’

  But my mother didn’t want to be brought up to speed. And she didn’t want a seat either. ‘I’d like to take Alex home now,’ she said.

  The policemen exchanged a glance before Chief Inspector Hearse continued: ‘I appreciate that this must be a difficult situation for you, Mrs Woods, but there are still questions that we need to ask. You can sit in, of course, but I’m afraid that the interview is not finished yet.’

  ‘I see.’ My mother released my head and planted her fists on her hips. ‘And what exactly has he been charged with?’

  ‘He hasn’t been charged with anything yet,’ Chief Inspector Hearse stated. ‘At this point, we’re just asking some questions, and with your co-operation we’d—’

  ‘You don’t have my co-operation,’ my mother interjected. ‘If you haven’t charged him, I’m taking him home.’

  Deputy Inspector Cunningham stepped in: ‘Mrs Woods, you should be aware that we can hold your son for up to forty-eight hours without bringing charges against him. But this process will be—’

  ‘This is appalling!’ my mother snapped. ‘Can you even begin to imagine how hard this past week must have been for him? It’s the middle of the night. He’s seventeen. Have some compassion! At this rate, you’re going to end up giving him a seizure!’

  ‘Actually, I’ve already had a seizure,’ I said.

  ‘He’s already had a seizure!’

  ‘It was only a partial seizure,’ I clarified. ‘It passed after a couple of minutes. I don’t think I should drive home, though – just to be safe.’

  ‘Of course you’re not going to drive home! I’m going to drive you home.’

  ‘Mrs Woods—’ Chief Inspector Hearse began.

  ‘This is appalling!’ my mother reiterated. ‘What kind of operation are you running here? It’s tantamount to torture! Look at him: he’s ill; he’s sleep-deprived. I don’t suppose you’ve offered him the chance to see a doctor, let alone a lawyer?’

  Chief Inspector Hearse tried to wrestle the situation back under control. ‘Mrs Woods, I assure you: your son has not shown any signs of illness while we’ve been dealing with him. If he does, then of course we’ll make a doctor available to him. And the reason he hasn’t been offered a lawyer is that he hasn’t yet been charged, as I’ve said.’

  ‘He had a seizure!’

  ‘Neither of us was present when the seizure is alleged to have taken place. And—’ This time, Chief Inspector Hearse raised a stern finger to forestall my mother. ‘And there are also certain circumstances that you are not yet aware of.’ He gestured to Deputy Inspector Cunningham, who, for a second time, retrieved the bag of cannabis and dropped it in the centre of the table.

  ‘It’s marijuana,’ Chief Inspector Hearse pointed out, very solemnly.

  ‘I know what it is, Inspector,’ my mother said. ‘I’m not an imbecile.’

  ‘We found it in your son’s car. We think it may go some way to explaining his “seizure”.’ (We could all hear the quote marks.)

  ‘That’s absurd,’ my mother spat. ‘Alex does not use drugs.’

  ‘It was Mr Peterson’s,’ I explained.

  ‘Yes, that makes a whole lot more sense,’ my mother agreed.

  ‘With respect, Mrs Woods . . .’ Chief Inspector Hearse began, rather ominously. ‘With respect, parents are often ignorant of what their children get up to. They don’t want to think—’

  ‘Let me stop you there, Inspector,’ my mother said (and it was the kind of tone that forced you to stop, a tone with which I was very familiar). ‘Firstly, it’s cannabis. It’s rather trivial given the circumstances, and its presence here does not make my son a miscreant, as you seem very keen to imply. If you’re telling me that it’s only miscreants who have ever used narcotics, and not thousands of politicians and judges – and policemen too – then I’m calling you a liar and a hypocrite.’ There was a chilly silence. My mother didn’t like liars, and she especially didn’t like hypocrites. ‘Secondly,’ she continued, ‘if you’re telling me that after the few hours you’ve known him, you have a better understanding of my son than I do – enough to tell me that I’m ignorant of his character – well then, frankly, you need your head examined.’

  Chief Inspector Hearse had gone very red. His mole was throbbing. ‘Mrs Woods! What I’m telling you is that your son is not the angel you seem—’

  ‘I’m not saying he’s an angel. I’m saying he’s a puritan. The idea that he’d take drugs – that he’d take any substance that hadn’t been certified by someone with three PhDs – is laughable. He sees drinking alcohol as a major character defect!’

  There was a small, uncertain silence. I think that Ch
ief Inspector Hearse and Deputy Inspector Cunningham were surprised at my mother’s outburst, but I was gobsmacked. Contrary to everything I’d always assumed, it seemed that my mother really did know me quite well.

  It was Chief Inspector Hearse who regrouped first. ‘Mrs Woods, I think we’re getting off the point here. This isn’t just about possession for personal use. Your son has already admitted that he grew and supplied the marijuana in question. And this has been going on for quite some time.’

  ‘I only supplied it to Mr Peterson,’ I clarified. ‘And he’d been smoking marijuana since 1965. It’s not like I pushed it on him. Also, I wasn’t selling it. I was just helping him grow it when he couldn’t get up to the loft any more.’

  ‘There you go!’ my mother said. ‘It wasn’t for profit or personal gain. I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me here, Inspector, but this whole situation is ridiculous. I’m taking my son home. If you need him for further questioning, I will bring him in personally. But right now we’re leaving. If you want to stop us, you’ll have to arrest us both – and rest assured that when I get out, I’ll be writing a letter of complaint the likes of which you’ve never seen. You’ll be lucky to have jobs at the end of it. The way you’ve conducted yourselves tonight is appalling! You should be ashamed. Come on, Lex, we’re leaving!’

  And I got up and I followed my mother out the door. Neither of the police officers tried to stop us. Chief Inspector Hearse started to say something but we were gone before anything much had registered. It was that simple.

  In the car, as we drove west, with the sky gradually brightening behind us, I told my mother everything. I tried to explain to her why I’d done what I’d done, but she seemed to know that already. She just wanted to understand exactly how things had happened. And when I’d finished, she only criticized me once. She said that I should have told her all this much earlier.