The Uncommon Life of Alfred Warner in Six Days

by Juliet Conlin

  Day Six

  It was very quiet in the room, apart from the hissing and beeping of the machines – but I’d got used to them by now. It was early evening by my watch, although it was impossible to tell the time of day in the dull light of the cubicle. Alfred was sitting in his usual spot, on a plastic-covered armchair at Brynja’s bedside, while I sat on the chair opposite. He had finished telling his story an hour before we left for the hospital. Then, after lunch, I helped him pack his suitcase. He insisted on taking it to the hospital with him, and now the small brown case was sitting on the floor at the foot of Brynja’s bed.

  For a long time, I watched Alfred watch Brynja. He believed – he truly believed – he was close to death. How could he possibly be so composed? It was almost unbearable. My dad died kicking and screaming, fighting all the way. He died with an expression of surprise and outrage on his face. He took it personally.

  Alfred caught me looking at him and smiled. ‘I’m fine,’ he said, reading my thoughts. ‘And you’ll be fine too.’

  ‘Alfred – ’ I said quietly.

  He raised his hand to stop me. His tremor had vanished. ‘I think it was when I was lying in the bathtub, frightened and in pain, that I finally understood. I couldn’t believe it had taken me so long. All those years, I thought it had been Brynja, my Brynja – and I never really gave John a proper chance. I spent my life listening to voices, yet I didn’t think to listen to him. Not really. But by then it was too late to tell him that he was the special one.’

  He blinked a few times and I could see that he was crying. He pulled a handkerchief from his sleeve and blew his nose. ‘I’ve had a better life than I deserve. But perhaps, at least, I can save Brynja.’

  He closed his eyes, and after a while, began emitting soft, low snores. It was a soothing sound, and before long I drifted off myself.

  It was a short nap. Some disruption to the monotony of the machines must have roused me. I checked my watch and saw that I’d dozed for twenty minutes. Then I turned to Brynja and nearly exclaimed out loud. She had her eyes open and was looking directly at me.

  ‘Hello Julia,’ she whispered.

  I felt a sudden sinking sensation in my gut, like when an aeroplane loses altitude rapidly, and I immediately turned to look at Alfred. He was still sitting in the armchair, his head leaning against the backrest, his mouth slightly open. But he was no longer snoring. I remember thinking I should have felt panicked, but instead, I felt remarkably calm. When I turned back to Brynja, her eyes were shut again, and I wasn’t sure if I’d just imagined her looking at me, whispering to me. Oddly, I didn’t stop to wonder how she would know my name.

  I got up slowly and walked over to Alfred. His skin was warm to the touch as I smoothed down a few unruly wisps of his hair, but he was completely, utterly still. Then I went to fetch the nurse.

  Day Three Hundred and Seventy

  It is exactly one year since Alfred passed away. The official verdict was heart failure, but I dislike that term. His heart didn’t actually fail; it had merely come to the end of close to eighty years of service, and I rather like to think of it bowing out gracefully and compassionately (causing, as it did, no apparent pain to its owner when it ceased pumping). But this could hardly be entered as the cause of death on the attending physician’s certificate.

  As per his wishes, Alfred was buried at the cemetery on Stubenrauchstraße, with only myself and the funeral director in attendance. I chose the garden section of the cemetery – which means there is no gravestone – because I thought Alfred would have liked the idea of his remains providing fertile soil for the ancient trees and wildflowers that grow there. In summer, the site where he’s buried becomes a meadow, sporting poppies and cornflowers and garden phlox – plants that attract an abundance of bees and butterflies. The cemetery is a twenty-minute walk from my flat, and takes me through the Volkspark. I like to think this is why Alfred chose it.

  It took me several weeks to write down Alfred’s story, and when I had, I took it to the hospital. Brynja’s condition was still stable, although her doctors warned me that with each day she remained in the coma, the chances of a full recovery were diminishing. But I chose to believe differently. She had woken once. She had whispered my name. I was quite sure of that now. And that is why, for many evenings, I sat at her bedside and read Alfred’s story to her until my throat grew unpleasantly dry and I was speaking in little more than a hoarse whisper. When I came to the end of the story, I sat watching her for a long time. I had come to the end and didn’t know what next to do. The machines continued to bleep and hiss. At one point the nurse popped her head around the door.

  ‘Everything all right in here?’

  ‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘No change.’

  She gave me a reassuring smile and left.

  I felt like crying. What had I been expecting? Sleeping Beauty wakes from a kiss and they all live happily ever after? The pages of the manuscript I’d spent hours and hours typing, and then reading aloud, slid off my lap.

  ‘I’m sorry, Brynja,’ I said quietly. ‘Alfred didn’t tell me what to do from here. I suppose I hoped . . . I don’t know. It would’ve been incredible, anyway. I mean, it was a nice story. But – ’ I stood up and reached out to stroke her face. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said again in a thick voice. ‘I tried.’

  And then it happened. Her face twitched slightly, her eyes opened, and again I found her staring at me.

  ‘That’s all right, Julia,’ she whispered. ‘I – ’ Her eyes left my face and darted suddenly to the left. For a moment, she looked terrified, but her features softened almost immediately as she smiled and let out a long, soft, ‘Ohhh.’ And then her very pale lips began to move, and although I couldn’t make out what she was saying, it was clear that she was in conversation.

  I waited for a minute or two to make sure she was safe, and then gathered the papers off the floor and left.

  She moved back to New York recently, eight months after the accident, following a long, hard rehabilitation process. Although she recalls her accident only vaguely, she told me that she no longer felt comfortable living in her flat. Contrary to the doctors’ prognosis, she made a full recovery with no damage to her brain functions, and other than a very slight droop to her left eye, nobody would guess how close she came to dying.

  We spent many hours talking over the period it took her to recover, during which she picked my brain for details about Alfred that I may have omitted from the story I’d written down, and also told me about her life.

  ‘And now?’ I asked one afternoon, as we sat in the hospital gardens, enjoying the first fresh days of spring.

  She was silent for a long time, her eyes closed and her face tilted up towards the sun. ‘It’s difficult to explain,’ she said finally. ‘They’re always there, like before. Even when they’re not speaking. But – ’ She paused. ‘These ones are nice, and funny. Kinda familiar. Like I’ve heard them before, in a dream or something. I don’t know how to explain it.’ Then her hand shot up to her head as if she were in pain.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I asked. Her bandage had long since been removed, and I could see a glimpse of the dark red scar tissue beneath her fair hair.

  She nodded slowly. ‘Yeah, I’m fine. It just, I don’t like to think too hard about . . . before. I never want to go back there. Even though the voice-women tell me not to be scared that the others might come back.’ She turned to look at me. ‘Which is easier said than done, sometimes. But then I try to think about Alfred, how he just accepted them, without questioning who they are or where they’re from. I just wish . . . ’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I just wish my dad had known. It might have saved his life, too.’

  Behind us, a nurse rolled out a trolley with tea and cake.

  ‘And you’re sure you want to go back to New York?’ I asked, as we got up to join the other patients and visitors who began crowding around the trolley.

  She nodded. ‘It’s home, you know?’
/>   ‘But if you ever feel you want to come back – ’ I began.

  Brynja put her hand on my arm and smiled. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘It turns out I’m not crazy after all.’

  Before she turned away, her expression changed and – for the briefest moment – her eyes flashed with the life force of the generations that had gone before her. And I knew she was going to be fine.

  Two Thousand and Fifteen

  The pain rips through your body. Stealing your breath, your thoughts, your ability to move. It intensifies, reaches its crescendo, and then recedes into a raw lazy throbbing. Your legs shake uncontrollably. You throw up into the cardboard pulp kidney dish.

  The woman – Aubrey – kneads the small of your back. Strong fingers. Experienced. She says, You should have arranged for a birthing partner. She sounds disappointed. It’s not easy to do on your own, she says.

  But you’re not on your own, are you, Brynja?

  We’re right here.

  Aubrey wipes your mouth with a wet cloth, feeds you some ice chips. She moves to the end of the bed. If you want an epidural, just say the word.

  You nod, grunt, then shake your head. You don’t want to smother this pain. You don’t even want to take the edges off. No, I . . .

  You feel her hand right up inside you. Probing. Eight centimetres! She peers up at you between your knees. Smiles. But it’s now or never with the epidural. You’re getting close. Peels off her latex glove.

  The pain returns, sooner than expected. Oooohhhh.

  Focus, Brynja. Keep your eyes on the machine. The waves, see? Up up up

  Aaaaaaaaghhh!

  Here, see?

  You turn your head. You try to concentrate on the paper coming out of the machine in small jerks. Two needles scratching quickly, furiously.

  It’s reached its peak. Now it’s going down again.

  The left needle scratches out your contractions, your pain. On the right, the scribbles of his heartbeat.

  Beating strong and steady. Now try to relax before the next one. Breathe.

  Aubrey says, I’d like you to take a few deep breaths, Brynja. Can you do that for me?

  The pauses between the waves of pain are delicious. You breathe in as far as your squashed lungs will allow. But now, another contraction, a flare of crimson. It makes you want to vomit again. You wait for it to subside; you need a moment to recover. But this one doesn’t stop.

  I can’t wait to see him! Kssss, I’m so excited!

  You’re doing really well, Brynja. Nearly there. Oh!

  A sudden gush of liquid escapes your body. Honey scented.

  The midwife smiles. Here. She takes your hand, guides it down between your legs. Feel that?

  You touch. Feel something warm, pulsing. Hair. Is that hair?

  Black as a raven!

  Just like you, Brynja. When you were born. Oh, isn’t this wonderful?!

  Okay, Aubrey says. You’re gonna feel like you have to push, but I need you to pant. Quickly, like this: huh huh huh huh.

  You try – huh huh huh – but it’s impossible not to push. Your muscles contract wildly, you have no control over them. You feel your bowels opening. Can’t prevent it. You let out a sob.

  Hush, Brynja. That’s quite normal.

  Brynja! Aubrey’s tone is urgent now. Impatient. You need to pant! Or I won’t be able to stop you from tearing.

  Listen to us. Listen and keep your breaths quick and shallow.

  They start to sing.

  Sofðu unga ástin mín,

  Úti regnið grætur.

  Mamma geymir gullin þín . . .

  Their song fills your head, fills the room. Floats above and around you, sweet and beautiful. You manage a few thin breaths.

  You’re doing great, Brynja, says Aubrey. Now, when the next one comes, push as hard as you can. Okay?

  A tidal wave. It rises and roars and crashes. It howls. A dark, primitive animal sound escapes your throat. Your voice-women are wailing, ululating. Then a different pain – stinging, burning, searing. He opens you wide. He slithers out.

  He is here.

  Author's Note

  I do not hear voices; I never have. But when a friend of mine once admitted to having heard voices during adolescence, I was instantly intrigued: both by the fact that he had framed it in terms of an admission, thus implying it was somehow ‘wrong’, and also by the very notion of hearing voices that no one else can hear.

  Voice-hearing, or auditory hallucination, is an ancient phenomenon that has been reported and described in almost all known cultures. Famous voice-hearers include Socrates, Sigmund Freud, Mahatma Gandhi, Joan of Arc and Hildegard of Bingen. It is a universal phenomenon, by any standards. But with the emergence of modern psychiatry in the late nineteenth century, voice-hearing became a mental illness, something ‘wrong’ inside the brain, a symptom of insanity. Before that, and in other cultures across the world, the phenomenon is and has been constructed in entirely different ways: saints have been canonised because they heard (divine) voices; in Africa and India, many voice-hearers associate positive experiences with their voices, as guides or like elders advising the young. Socrates relied on an inner voice that warned him when he was about to make a mistake. Many artists have stated that their voices are an integral part of the creative process.

  Tragically, some instances of voice-hearing (especially threatening and abusive voices) can be the result of traumatic experience, such as sexualised violence in childhood, and may well require clinical and/or pharmaceutical therapy. Certainly, modern psychiatry can help to save lives. But not all voice-hearers can be lumped into this category. In recent years, voice-hearers in Western cultures have begun to challenge the assumption of psychiatric illness. The Hearing Voices Movement, for example, attempts to raise awareness of the diversity of experience among voice-hearers, putting forward the notion that voice-hearing is a multifaceted, meaningful experience to be explored beyond pathology.

  In The Uncommon Life of Alfred Warner in Six Days, I chose to contrast the experience of the same phenomenon – hearing voices – in two very different ways: Alfred, for whom voice-hearing is a gift, and who could not possibly imagine life without his voice-women; and Brynja, who experiences voice-hearing as highly distressing and humiliating, driving her to the brink of insanity. And while these characters are entirely fictitious, I wanted to question the dominance of any single interpretation of this phenomenon. My aim was to defend the validity of complex human experiences that do not fit into a very narrow understanding of what it is to be ‘normal’.

  The sources I consulted for research purposes are too numerous to mention in full and include interviews and first-hand experiences of voice-hearers as well as academic papers. Among the books I found particularly useful are: Daniel B. Smith’s Muses, Madmen, and Prophets: Hearing Voices and the Borders of Sanity (Penguin, 2007); John Watkin’s Hearing Voices: A Common Human Experience (Hill of Content, 1998); and Julian Jaynes’ The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (First Mariner Books, 2000 ed.). Finally, for anyone who has concerns or questions, there are many resources available for more information, including online resources from the Hearing Voices Movement, such as hearing-voices.org and intervoiceonline.org.

  Writing a novel is a highly collaborative process, and I would like to thank everyone who supported me, directly and indirectly, in particular: David Conlin; Lilo Conlin; Jake and Fay Walsh; Michael Walsh; Super-Agent Jenny Brown; Simon Burke, Chris Kydd and the entire team at Black & White; Henry Steadman; the lovely people of Mauchline village; my Stammtisch-Tanten Gela, Barbara, Marion, Anita and Karin; the Verein der Förderer und Freunde des ehemaligen Jüdischen Waisenhauses in Pankow e.V.; and, of course, my love Chrissi (ohne e).

 

 

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