by Howard Engel
“Hi, there!” Pa said, trying to find the right tone. “You’ve got a good room here: nice and bright. And you’re missing absolutely nothing outside.”
“Benny, it’s earthquake weather out there. A steam bath. It’s spooky. Not only is it hot enough to melt the streets, there was an eclipse of the sun earlier. It’ll be blood on the moon next. No wonder people are superstitious about eclipses. There was an eclipse in Rome the day Julius Caesar was murdered. Eclipses are the heart of everything unnatural. They bother my old bones.”
“The melting asphalt on the street doesn’t make things better.”
“You’re right, it’s frightening out there. But you’ve at least got a good view of it.” Ma looked for a place to put her purse. In the end she held on to it. She kept on talking: “An eclipse of the sun is a terrible thing, Benny.”
Pa brought out a cigar, then pocketed it again. “Moon,” Pa corrected. “It’s a lunar eclipse.”
“Well, lunar or solar, it’s making this hot weather worse. I saw people crossing themselves.”
“What do they know that we don’t know? I ask you,” Pa said.
“Manny, it doesn’t get dark during a lunar eclipse. It has to be dark before it happens.”
“The moon comes in front of the sun, right? So it’s the moon doing the eclipsing. You have to take it logically step by step.” Pa took out the cigar again.
“So then a solar eclipse is what? When the sun comes between the earth and the moon? What other nonsense are you selling today?” Ma gave me a look to see if I was on her side.
“There was a program on television about it. You have to be careful of your eyes. You have to use smoked glass.”
“Smoked glass?” Ma looked exasperated. “Who’s got time to be smoking glass in this weather? Herring I could understand.”
Ma moved closer to the bed, while Pa raked his memory about what he had heard about the exact nature of eclipses. Ma studied my face, looking for cracks.
“How is my boy, eh?” Ma asked. “Are you comfortable? I hope you’re eating. I know that hospital food is not Lindy’s in New York or even the old Diana Sweets in Grantham, but you have to keep your strength up. I only wish they’d let me bring you a bowl of decent soup.”
“I think you’re allowed to bring in food,” I said, trying to be helpful.
“Sure! I’d like to make you some of my beef and barley soup, but how can I make it this far from home? Sam’s wife won’t let me step inside her tiny, perfect kitchen. I might drop a carrot on her floor. I’m sure she thinks I’m too ethnic for her neighbours.”
“Ma, that’s just not true.”
“Just you try to make a cup of instant with her looking on.” She exhaled her hostility audibly.
Once Ma had ridden out the storm of guilt she goes through when she’s not preparing my meals, things were like old times. Pa told me who among our old neighbours in Grantham had passed on over the spring, and Ma kvetched about hearing the bad news all over again. I think it’s what we do instead of crossing ourselves. It works the same way.
“Saul Segal was a healthy man, able to lift those big bolts of factory cotton from his truck to the back of the store without flinching, and then, poof!” Pa said.
“Saul was a good provider,” Ma added. “I’ll give him that. But he made too big a thing about all those health foods. Remember, Benny, how he used to tell you not to eat so many chocolate bars?”
I tried remember Saul Segal’s face. I recalled a steel jaw and curly brown hair. It was because of him that I gave up chocolate bars and switched to Player’s Medium cigarettes. It took me ten years to get rid of that habit.
My parents stayed until I began to yawn noticeably. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy their company; it was that their company made me relax and relaxation made me sleepy. I watched the silences grow longer and longer. At last, looking at his watch rather theatrically, Pa said, “Well …” And I knew that the back of the visit was broken.
Before leaving, my parents passed on the good wishes of our friends in Grantham, and then they were off in an exchange of words about which elevator was closest to the parking lot.
A nurse came into the room without making a sound and took away the accumulated garbage from the wastebin near my bed. Then, just as silently, she emptied the bin sitting next to my still-sleeping roommate. I call her a nurse, because she looked like a nurse, even though I understood the ranks were actually more subtly subdivided. One “nurse” I greeted was called Dr. Godbehere by a passing woman in uniform. The nurse doing garbage duty was the one who brought me juice and cookies. When she saw me watching her, she said she was glad to see me looking well, called me “Mr. Cooperman,” and left the room as silently as she had come in. A few minutes later, two nurses from the Islands greeted one another in the corridor with lyrical voices that carried the sun in them.
I wondered if my nurse was from down there too. Funny, I hadn’t thought about that until just now. When I was helpless in my hard bed, I didn’t see colour, but now that I was coming to myself again, some of society’s assumptions were returning.
A man in a wheelchair passed my door, using one foot to propel his rig along the corridor. His face was ghostly pale, but he seemed happy to be making his own way.
The next time I got up, after one of my short naps, I went on a tour of the floor. The nursing station in the middle of the corridor divided the floor into unequal halves. One bank of elevators stood here and another at the south end. There were fewer than twenty rooms, most of them double. Across from the nursing station was a dining room with under a dozen tables seating four or six each. A TV set blared above—an inane quiz show, by the look of it. Only one woman in a wheelchair was watching. From time to time she addressed the tube with her sharp comments. A couple of robust-looking men, speaking in French, pushed a comrade dressed in the same familiar hospital outfit: two hospital gowns, one reversed to cover the rear, and a cotton bathrobe. When they caught up to me, they stopped and congratulated me in accented English for being out of bed at last, then continued along the passage.
Having walked from the north end of the floor to the south, I felt like an old political power broker touring the familiar ward and finding that the faces on the street still smiled back at him. While I was exploring, none of the nurses seemed to mind that I wasn’t in my room. Access to the elevators was not restricted. I thought that if I had my pants on, I might be able to skip out of the hospital without raising an eyebrow. I filed the idea for later use.
For now, with the slippers on my feet and the two hospital gowns I was wearing, the one letting the draft in through the back and the other allowing errant breezes through the front, it was impossible to contemplate. I might be able to walk up and down the hallway with the assurance of a crocodile, but I recognized that I was not quite ready to brave the out-of-doors. Even in my own clothes, I would need more time.
“So this is where you’ve got to, is it? Did you see the eclipse?” It was Rhymes With, the nurse from this morning. Or was it yesterday morning?
“I was getting a breath of air,” I tried to explain.
“That’s good! Some of us went up on the roof to watch it,” she said.
“Watch what?”
“The eclipse. That’s what everybody’s talking about.”
“I thought the sun was going down.”
“This early? Don’t I wish!” She sighed dramatically. “But right now I need some blood.”
“Blood?”
“Won’t take a minute. You’ll get used to us claiming bits and pieces of you. I’ll come by your room in five minutes. When did you have your blood pressure checked last?”
“When I had the tires rotated. I don’t know. If you don’t keep track of these things, am I supposed to?”
“Might help. You have to be your own advocate around here, Mr. Cooperman. It’s the only way to be sure. I tell everybody that, and they laugh. But I’m not joking. See you in five minutes.”
I watched her move along the hallway and around a corner. Back in my room, my roommate was sleeping. I decided to clean my teeth. All the while, I was thinking of how I might escape the confines of these walls.
My nurse returned, as she had warned me, with her needle. She was also carrying a hefty notebook, which she passed over to me. “This belonged to a patient who didn’t get a chance to really get it started. It’s a Memory Book.”
“What’s a Memory Book?”
“Something to jot down appointments and dates in. Something to give your memory a kick-start. Keep it with you and get rid of those little scraps of paper you write on. Believe me, the Memory Book is better.” It looked like most high-school notebooks: black leather cover, three rings, lined paper, unmarked section dividers.
Blankly, I thanked her.
“You’ll soon get in the habit of using it. It can even be made to tell you what day of the week it is. Let it become your memory. Let it help you.” She gave me a warm smile, which made me feel good. For the first time, I noticed that she had freckles on her cheeks under the light brown pigmentation. I felt a stab of affection for her. I couldn’t think of this place without her. Or me without her.
She took blood next. I have to admit that she jabbed a painless needle. Then I tried to read The Globe and Mail. It was no good. At some level, I kept hoping that the next thing I tried to read would be easier. It never was. I tried to sound out the words and the meanings of the headlines. “Con … Coined … Council … Ignores … Idiot … Injects … Ann … Andrew … Angry …” I took a breath and tried again. Eventually, I made out: “COUNCIL EJECTS ANGRY COUNSELLOR.” I had no difficulty with the sense of the words once I had decoded them. Language wasn’t my problem; it was breaking the alphabet code that dogged my progress.
I could feel a nap coming on. But I made time to put my name and address on the Memory Book I’d been given. I used the calendar provided to note what day of the week and month this was. The information dissolved almost at once, but it did give me a buzz while I was able to hold on to it. After another five-minute struggle with the front page, I gave up and added my own snores to those of my roommate.
EIGHT
A parade of days passed, with muffled drums, not at all dissimilar to the days I’ve just described. The only difference was that the days, however long they seemed at the time, appeared to blend in to one another and get lost. The days dragged themselves through weeks that flew. Today might be clear and in focus, but yesterday is the distant past. Almost an abstraction. I could no longer remember whether I had had visits from my doctor, from my parents, or from my police friends yesterday morning. Or was it the Saturday before?
“Will you be eating your dinner in your room tonight as usual, Mr. Cooperman, or would you like to join the others in the dining room?” It was the silent nurse who always called me by name.
“I think I’ll try the dining room. How will I know when they’re serving?”
“You’ll see the others pass your doorway, Mr. Cooperman. If you miss them, we’ll come and collect you.” Something to look forward to.
I tried to keep track of the days of the week, as posted in large letters and figures in the dining room, but the days seemed to scatter like those montage sequences in old movies where the leaves blow off the calendar to show the passage of time. It had been three weeks since I “woke up.” Or maybe it was six. Or longer. I had no strong belief in any of my opinions. People kept telling me that it was longer. I wasn’t counting the time I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t even imagine it. What was it that Englishman wrote in his book about intrigue in a stately home before the First World War? “The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.” Something like that. I was looking at time through the wrong end of a telescope.
I soon became regular in my attendance at meals. The dining room was a large, well-lighted room across the hall from the nursing station. Some of us arrived at the tables long before the food reached the fifth floor in the elevator. It came out the sliding doors with a metallic clatter and puffs of steam. The servers quickly emptied the noisy carts into the dining room. It was a sound of joy to the newcomers, whose first out-of-room meal this was, and an occasion for complete indifference to old-timers, who had learned to limit their expectations.
Among the most enthusiastic of the old-timers were the three Belgians, who had struck up quite a friendship since their strokes had flung them together. One was a retired engineer, who now had trouble remembering numbers; another was a former mover-and-shaker in the sublime upper reaches of financial policy for the World Bank; and the third was the curator, now retired, of a major art gallery. He did not say which one, but from his conversation, I could tell that he had seen them all. These three entertained one another and those nearby, since they always spoke English, with stories about the best meals they had eaten in the best restaurants around the globe. They argued about whether this or that great table had maintained its standards in the last few years, or whether everything had gone downhill after Madam or Maître Charles had died.
There were women on this floor too, of course, only I didn’t get to know many of them. There was the real estate broker who was something of a celebrity since she had returned to this floor with her second stroke. And there was the older woman who argued with the people on the TV screen.
My scant acquaintance with the great tables of Europe tended to limit my contributions to the conversation. Not only did I not know much about the favourite eateries in Paris, London, Brussels, and Rome, I didn’t know much about the fancy dishes they were talking about. I had heard of foie gras and frogs’ legs, but I couldn’t really keep up with their repertoire. And when they turned to the great wines of the world and were joined by a former United Nations representative from Prague, I decided that listening and keeping quiet was the better part of valour.
“Not far from Chopin’s little retreat at Nohant, near La Châtre in Berri, there’s a village called Vic. Best lunch I ever had in Europe. For simplicity, for originality …”
“Come now!”
“It’s true! I insist! Such care! Such attention to detail! Ah, I grow weak just thinking about it.”
“My dear friend, you haven’t lived until you have eaten at Chez Georges not a block from the unjustly celebrated Coq d’Or in Nîmes.”
“Unjustly celebrated? Ah, but you didn’t know it when the old man was still alive. Big as a mountain, he was, and he kept that kitchen in order, I’ll tell you. Never have I eaten such chicken. And his salads! Cyrano’s friend, Ragueneau, the pastry chef in the play, could have written sonnets praising his sauces alone.” And so on. The conversation was as animated as though we were sitting in a five-star restaurant, surrounded by the greatest living chefs. Sitting among this group of world travellers were patients who commented with looks and shrugs across the table. One of these, I think, was a former judge, another was a trial lawyer, famous in stories my father told. Meanwhile, just so you don’t get the idea that this was some sort of gourmets’ retreat, the rest of the patients stared into their bowls without uttering a word, or if they did, it was about something they were watching on the television screen which, as far as I could see, had no off switch.
“So here you are, you sly old fox!” It was the nurse who spelled off the one whose name I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t remember her name either. “You didn’t tell us you were married.”
“I didn’t tell you I was married because I’m not. Do you mean my friend, Anna? Anna’s as close as I get to a wife.” A cloud ran across the nurse’s eyes, as if the joke she had been about to make had melted in her mouth. My companions leaned in closer.
“Are you saying you aren’t married?” asked the nurse.
“Not now and never have been, so help me.”
“Well, that’s odd.”
“What’s so odd? It’s not bothered me much. Has it become compulsory?”
“I was talking to Erna Pyke. You know, she runs the desk when Lib
by’s off. Anyway, she told me that a week or so ago you had a visit from your wife. She said she lived in Grantham and everything.”
“And it wasn’t Anna Abraham? My friend, Anna Abraham?”
“Not according to Libby. And she knows Dr. Abraham.”
“I’ve never heard of a Dr. Abraham.” This was the contribution of one of the gourmets. I explained that Anna was an academic friend of mine. She had been more than a friend for a long time, but we’d retreated from that advanced position some time ago. He didn’t have to know about that. He shrugged his indifference.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have brought this up at the table, Mr. Cooperman. I’m sorry.”
“See if you can find out what my wife is supposed to have looked like. Maybe she was just trying to get in?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”
“I’m not embarrassed. I’m intrigued but not embarrassed. I’d like to know more. Like when this happened and what did she look like.”
“I’ll see what I can do. And … I’m really sorry.”
“What was that all about? Are you married or not?” asked the retired engineer to my right.
“If it’s any of our business,” added the diplomat.
“Right,” said the banker. “We don’t mean to pry.”
“It’s just as much of a mystery to me as it is to you.” I didn’t tell them what I was thinking. Was it someone trying to finish the job started in the Dumpster, or was a new character in this tangled tale making a dramatic entrance? I wanted to find out. But I didn’t know where to begin.
NINE
I missed Anna Abraham. All the talk about my mysterious “wife” made me wish Anna would come to see me. I understood from the nurses that Anna had sometimes come up to the fifth floor, but that I had been off in cloud-cuckoo-land. One of the young cleaners, who, I gathered, had encountered Anna while mopping my room, shook his head at me, saying, “I hope I’m never that tired.”
