Last Respects

by Jerome Weidman

  Herman came in under my pause for breath with “Did they tell you to go today?”

  I stared at him. Herman is one of those men who weigh in at about a hundred and forty-five pounds, yet look fat. It’s the shape of his face. It is round and plump and sags down into a tiny button chin. He always looks as though he is trying to remember all the words of the Hippocratic Oath in Greek.

  “What are you talking about?” I said.

  “What they told you at the Battenberg Funeral Home,” Herman said. “Did they tell you to go to the morgue today?”

  “No, they told me to go tomorrow morning,” I said. “But I figured as long as I’m out here in Queens I’ll go over now. Which I did—and what happens? They tell me in the morgue my mother’s body has disappeared.”

  Sharply, Herman said, “Did they use that word?”

  “What word?”

  “Disappeared,” Herman said.

  “For Christ’s sake,” I said. “I wasn’t carrying a tape recorder. How the hell should I know what words they used? It was some guy named Bieber. Or Beybere, he wants it pronounced. He was in charge, and he said my mother’s body was not there. In the morgue. He said her body was not there.”

  “Yes,” Herman Sabinson said, “but did he say it had disappeared? Her body?”

  Through my soiled anger, which was making me feel good, came a clean thought that made me feel less good. Herman Sabinson was not a fool. Just because he wore those narrow ties with small embroidered flowers under the knot and he fastened them to his shirt front with one of those gold things called a tie tack, that did not make him a fool. Herman Sabinson was trying to help me.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Probably this Mr. Beybere didn’t use the word disappeared. Now that I think of it, I seem to remember all he said was her body was not there, in the morgue. Maybe I just assumed he meant it had disappeared. What else could it mean?”

  Herman took my arm and led me into the living room. He looked around, obviously for a place to sit.

  “Don’t,” I said. “Not until I get a cleaning woman in here. Just tell me, for God’s sake. You can do it standing up. What’s happening?”

  “Well,” Herman Sabinson said. He paused, as though to make sure he had the right words. “There’s an ordinance in this city that says no doctor can sign a death certificate for a person who dies as the result of an accident unless the body is first checked out by the medical examiner.”

  “Accident?” I said. “Do I have to tell you? You were there. You were with her. My mother died in a bed at the Peretz Memorial Hospital.”

  “As the result of an accident,” Herman said firmly.

  I had always thought accident meant being hit by a truck. Or gunned down while crossing a street on which a couple of rival mobs were shooting it out. Or passing under a paint scaffold when the ropes tear loose.

  “What accident?” I said.

  “She fell down right here in this apartment,” Herman Sabinson said. He gestured toward the foyer. I had a stab of irritation. Did he think I had forgotten? Did he have to refresh my recollection? Didn’t I know where she had fallen? Didn’t I know where I had found her? “She broke her hip,” Herman Sabinson said. “She was taken by ambulance to the Peretz Memorial Hospital. Thirty-two days later, this morning, she died. As the result of an accident. It may not make immediate sense to you, but believe me, it’s the law. In the eyes of the law your mother died as the result of an accident. The accident of her fall out there in that foyer. Therefore, I cannot sign the death certificate until the medical examiner looks at the body.”

  “What’s stopping him?” I said.

  I hadn’t really asked a question to which I expected an answer. I had merely exploded a piece of my irritation with a situation that was driving me crazy. It was the remark of a smart aleck. To my astonishment Herman Sabinson took it seriously.

  “The day,” he said. “That’s what’s stopping him.”

  “What day?” I said.

  “What day?” Herman said. “You must be a little farmisht. Don’t you know what today is?”

  “It’s the day my mother died,” I said.

  “It’s also the day before Christmas,” Herman said.

  “What’s that got to do with my mother?” I said.

  “And it also happens to be a Sunday,” Herman said.

  Through my confusion I could feel the necessity to grasp at the role of the cool, unemotional man of reason. “Why should those two facts affect the disappearance of my mother’s body?”

  “Look,” Herman said. “She was a wonderful woman, and I can understand your being affected by her passing, but you must bear in mind that she is not the only person who died today in the City of New York.”

  I must confess it was a thought that had not crossed my mind until now. “All right,” I said. “I’ll bear it in mind.”

  “Bear this in mind, too,” Herman said. “People are dying in the City of New York every day. Seven days a week. Not only on Sunday. In every borough. Not only in Queens.”

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll bear that in mind, too.”

  “To handle a situation like that, the medical examiner has to work out a system,” Herman said. “I mean, think about it. One man can’t go running around all over the city and look at all the dead people that keep piling up every day.”

  I wished Herman had not told me to think about it. Into my head suddenly came the image of a man in running pants. A stethoscope in one hand. A pad of death certificates and a ballpoint clutched in the other. I could see him running down the streets of the city. Entering the doors of Bellevue at one side. Emerging moments later at the other. Racing for St. Vincent’s. Streaking through Mt. Sinai on his way to the Peretz Memorial.

  “I assume he has assistants,” I said.

  Again Herman Sabinson gave me the precise little school-teacherly nod of approval that dug his button chin into the jowl to which, at his weight, he was not really entitled.

  “Exactly,” he said. “In each borough the medical examiner has an office and a staff. Every morning the hospitals all over the city call the medical examiner’s office and report the number of deaths that took place in their hospital during the past twenty-four hours. Then a member of the medical examiner’s staff comes over to the hospital, checks out the dead bodies, gives them the official okay, and the doctors involved in each case are in the clear to issue the death certificate.”

  “Why aren’t you in the clear?” I said.

  Again Herman looked troubled. He unbuttoned his heavy overcoat. He tapped first the knot in his tie, then the small embroidered flower under the knot, and finally the gold tack shaped like the sign of Caduceus that held the tie to his shirt. I had the wild feeling that Herman was thinking of himself as a cornet and he was tapping his keys to come up with the right musical answer to my question.

  “Because the medical examiner has not yet seen your mother’s body,” he said.

  Curiouser and curiouser, I thought, and wondered if under the circumstances a mind into which lines from Alice in Wonderland came flooding was not in danger of going off its rails.

  “As I said before,” I said, “what’s stopping him?”

  “He doesn’t know where it is,” Herman said. “Your mother’s body.”

  “Then the word I used is right,” I said. “My mother’s body has disappeared.”

  Herman Sabinson looked around the room through the sort of scowl that occasionally crosses the face of a politician’s press representative as he steps up to a battery of TV microphones and cameras to make an unpleasant but inescapable announcement.

  “We don’t know that yet,” he said.

  “Herman, for God’s sake,” I said, “what do you know?”

  “That’s better,” he said.

  “What’s better?” I said.

  “Your tone of voice,” Herman Sabinson said. “Shouting at me is understandable under the circumstances, but not helpful.”

  “When did I
ever shout at you?”

  “You’ve been shouting at me ever since I came in here,” Herman said.

  “It’s just because all the windows are closed,” I said. “The place is just a great big sound box. Every word booms.”

  “My words don’t boom,” Herman said. “And now that you’ve got yours down to a rational tone, I’ll tell you exactly what we know. This morning the clerk at the Peretz Memorial Hospital called the medical examiner’s office, as he does every morning, and reported the number of people who had died at Peretz during the past twenty-four hours. There were four, among them your mother. Ordinarily the medical examiner’s office would have replied okay, Dr. Soandso will be over sometime before noon, or between one and three, or whatever. But not today. You know what the guy at the medical examiner’s office said today?”

  “Herman,” I said, “if I did, would I be standing here in this lousy apartment up to my knees in thirty-two days of dust, listening to you drive me crazy?”

  “This happens to be a very nice apartment,” Herman Sabinson said. “The sons of very few of my patients have provided their aged mothers with comparable accommodations. As for the dust, that’s not your mother’s fault. As I need hardly remind you, she has not been here to keep it clean.”

  “Then where is she?” I said.

  “We will come to that,” Herman said. “The man at the medical examiner’s office told the clerk at the Peretz Memorial that he was alone in the office. It was the day before Christmas. It was also Sunday. And because of the lousy weather, his two assistants had called in sick. He was all alone. He could not leave the office to come over to Peretz Memorial to examine the four dead bodies. So the clerk at the hospital said what should I do with the bodies? And the man in the medical examiner’s office said all I can do is send over the ambulance to pick them up and bring them over here to the morgue. So the clerk at Peretz Memorial said okay.” Herman Sabinson’s scowl was now directed at me. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But that’s what happened.”

  “The ambulance came?” I said. “They picked up my mother’s body and the three other bodies? And they took them to the morgue?”

  “Yes,” Herman said.

  I thought about it for a couple of moments. “I see,” I said, although I wasn’t quite sure what I saw. “It must have happened, then, between the time you called me early this morning, and the time I arrived at the hospital?”

  “That’s right,” Herman Sabinson said.

  I did some more thinking. “Wait a minute,” I said. “By the time I arrived, Mrs. O’Toole knew about it, because she said it was no longer necessary to sign the paper you asked me to sign.”

  “What happened was this,” Herman Sabinson said. “After I called her and said you were coming in to sign the paper giving me permission to do the autopsy, she did a routine check to make sure they would have an operating room waiting for me. When they asked what for, she told them, and what they did was check the room in which your mother had died, just to make sure they would be able to move the body to the operating room for me. That’s how they learned the body had already been taken away to the morgue. So they called Mrs. O’Toole and told her. She was upset, naturally, and she tried to reach me on the phone, but I was out on calls. It was at this point that you arrived at the hospital. After you left, Mrs. O’Toole called the morgue. They said the ambulance had not yet come back with the four bodies, but she’d better tell the next of kin of the four dead people they’d have to come to the morgue the next day to identify the bodies. Now, I want you to understand this. She’s a very conscientious person, Mrs. O’Toole.”

  “I’ve seen her,” I said. “She looks conscientious as hell. But she left her job around noon today. With four dead bodies floating around in an ambulance somewhere in the Borough of Queens.”

  “Well, for Pete’s sake,” Herman Sabinson said. “It’s the day before Christmas.”

  “It’s the day before Christmas for everybody,” I said. “Including the next of kin of those four dead people. I assume your conscientious Mrs. O’Toole, before she left the hospital, she called the Battenberg Funeral Home and told them to give me the message about going to the morgue?”

  “Of course she did,” Herman Sabinson said. “I told you she’s very conscientious. I don’t know who she called about the other three dead people, because they were not my patients, and I’m unfamiliar with the details. But she knew you were a Battenberg customer because their name was on the papers involving the demise of your father last spring.”

  “As I understand it, then,” I said, “Mrs. O’Toole now disappears from the story?”

  “Story?” Herman Sabinson said.

  “What would you call it?” I said.

  “You’re shouting again,” he said.

  “I’ll stop when you tell me where my mother’s body is,” I said.

  Herman Sabinson blew out his breath in a tired sigh. It made the small embroidered flower on his tie buckle. The sign of Caduceus, however, stayed put. My confidence in the medical profession took a step upward.

  “We don’t know yet,” he said.

  The word “we” was a jolt. In my youth it was the word Charles Augustus Lindbergh always used when he referred to himself and The Spirit of St. Louis.

  “Who is we?” I said.

  “Well, all the people involved,” Herman said. “You see, what happened was, the two men on the ambulance, after they made their pickup at Peretz Memorial, they had three more stops.”

  Their favorite discotheques, no doubt.

  “Three more hospitals?” I said.

  “Of course,” Herman said firmly, and then all the firmness seemed to drain out of him. Herman Sabinson looked as though he was going to cry. I glanced swiftly at his tie tack. The sign of Caduceus had buckled. My confidence in the medical profession took a nose dive.

  “What’s the matter?” I said.

  “The ambulance,” Herman said. “The two guys running it. I mean the driver and his assistant. They never showed up at those three other hospitals.”

  If I had been capable of thought, I would have taken a stab at it. But I didn’t seem to be capable of anything. I was numb. My incapacity seemed to help Herman. At any rate, he didn’t cry.

  “I want you not to worry,” he said. He came close to me and put his hand on my arm. “It could be at worst maybe one of these traffic accidents. Or they got lost. That’s probably the explanation. They got lost.”

  “Two guys from the medical examiner’s office?” I said. “Who pick up dead bodies at these same hospitals every day of the year?”

  Herman nodded grudgingly. It was as though we were playing a game and he felt he had to acknowledge the fact that I had scored. What you learned at ten in the Educational Alliance on East Broadway you did not forget at fifty on 78th Avenue in Queens. Fair is fair.

  “I know it sounds crazy,” Herman said. “But a lot of things that go on every day in this city seem crazy.”

  Few things are more irritating than the incontrovertible statement that is also irrelevant.

  “Herman,” I said.

  “No, wait,” he said. “What I’m trying to say is ambulances don’t disappear into thin air. This ambulance is bound to show up. It could be located any minute. We’ve got the cops on it. What I mean is, after all, what’s the harm? Those four poor souls, nothing more can happen to them. After all, they’re dead, aren’t they?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I never saw them.”

  It was not a kind thing to say. But I was not feeling kind.

  “You mean you don’t trust me?”

  Herman Sabinson’s usually steam-heated voice was all at once as cold as a popsicle. His hand, I noticed, left my arm like a pigeon taking off.

  “Stop talking like an idiot,” I said. “Of course I trust you. I’m just confused. I don’t know what to do next.”

  “That’s why I asked you to meet me here,” Herman said. “I gave the police this number. They promised to call as
soon as they got word about the ambulance.”

  He looked at his watch. For no reason that makes sense, I found myself wishing desperately that the timepiece was not fastened to his wrist with one of those gold-plated expansion bands that has imbedded between its links a tiny calendar.

  “It could be any minute now,” Herman said. “The cops are really very reliable. People are always rapping them. They’re never around when you need them. They never show up when you call them. Maybe so. But one or two rotten apples in a barrel doesn’t mean the whole barrel is rotten. They have good people, the police. They have feelings. A man’s mother dies, her body disappears, the cops of this city will find her. Believe me, they really will. While we’re waiting for them to call, there’s a couple of things I feel I must tell you.” Again Herman sent his troubled look around the room. He reminded me of those characters in gangster movies who hesitate and check their immediate surroundings on the brink of a crucial revelation to make sure there are no eavesdroppers. Herman Sabinson said, “Maybe we should have a drink, huh?”

  I looked at my watch. The glance was not upsetting. No gold links. No imbedded calendars. Just a black leather strap that was beginning to look seedy. As a gesture toward stupid, brain-fatigued normalcy, which suddenly seemed to me the most desirable state a human being can attain, I made a crisp mental note to buy myself a new watch strap. After the funeral, of course.

  “Isn’t it a little early?” I said. “It’s only about three-thirty.”

  “I’ve been on my dogs since a quarter to six this morning,” Herman Sabinson said. “It wasn’t light yet, for Christ’s sake. That’s almost ten hours, Benny boy. My ass is dragging. A shot of the old elixir is just what the doctor has just ordered for the doctor.” Herman laughed. Well, tittered. No. What in God’s name did he do? It comes back. He giggled. And added, “As well as for the patient.”