Wild Woman

by Marina Sur Puhlovski

  XIV.

  Later he’d say that he was in the recording studio, sitting opposite the sound engineer, waiting for their guest who was late – some expert on recreation, which was the subject of their talk – the minutes ticked by but the guest didn’t appear and didn’t call, and then the sound engineer played a commercial, because you couldn’t have dead air on the radio, and the commercial was about a juice, which went with recreation, exercise, healthy food full of vitamins, yippee, and at that moment he felt his eyelids blinking and his fingers tremble, so he stood up and walked out of the studio. He went to the coffee machine near the front desk, and collapsed onto the armchair to have a cigarette and coffee, hoping to calm himself down.

  But when he took his first sip of coffee, which was like dishwater as usual, he felt a blow at the back of his neck, a heavy blow, as if wanting to knock his head off, and his head exploded into thousands of voices, as if a huge carnival parade was coming his way. And then he saw the parade, noisy and colourful, with people dancing, playing music, singing, shouting, performing acrobatic tricks with the ease of a monkey, hurtling towards him, coming but not arriving, and at the end of the parade he saw a woman, her cheeks pale, splattered with rain, and he called out to her. But the pale woman with rain-splattered cheeks didn’t hear him, and then he realised that the woman had no eyes, her eye sockets were empty, like Kostja’s African masks. And then the woman with no eyes dissolved before his own eyes and a black man stepped out of the carnival parade playing a tom-tom, dancing to the rhythm of the beat, twisting and turning, his naked body painted in a palette of colours, like Kostja’s African masks, and the orangey light turned crimson, then purple, and the naked man with the painted body and drum crouched in the corner by the coffee machine, and lay in wait for him.

  Then the man laughed, and he could see all his teeth, he had never seen such white teeth, and then suddenly the man turned into a toothless mouth, just a huge hole sucking him in and he fell through it like Alice in Wonderland, hopelessly trying to hold on to the tunnel walls, which were as smooth as glass. Then the stench of rot somewhere reached the hole, heavy and damp, as if it had come from the jungle, and finally he fell out of the hole straight onto the leather skin of the drum, there waiting for him.

  The black man grinned and raised his drumstick to smash in his skull, but then the door creaked, the man disappeared and he saw the olive-green wall splattered with blood and scratches. Then a rubber-gloved hand appeared, a syringe between its fingers, and a voice above the hand mentioned a spinal tap. Only then did he realise that he was lying on a high leather bed, waiting for the stranger to stab the needle into his spine.

  ***

  What’s he to you, your brother? the doctor on duty asked me after the spinal tap was done, and my darling was carried off on a stretcher into the corridor, until they found a room for him. No, not my brother, my husband, I said, and he was surprised, saying, I thought he was your brother, you look so young.

  Young, I felt a hundred years old, and there he was joking that I was young, I’d left my youth behind when I walked into the hospital, not even then actually, it had disappeared, with all its stories, and books and drinking and flirting, with its: what do we do tomorrow? What’s playing at the movies? What’ll we have to eat? Which lectures shall we go to, which shall we cut? When will we collect the teachers’ signatures for the semester, we don’t want to be late with that and have problems afterwards, shall we go with Filip and Petra to the talk on Camus and Sartre and their political falling out... Nothing, because we were full of ourselves, of our own endless importance in the world, which needed no proof, that’s simply how we were, citizens not of our province but of the world, all of us talented, all of us about to be famous, because that’s what talent strove for – to be noticed and acknowledged – and that’s what it fed on when it was not yet noticed or acknowledged, as if it were both. An interesting notion, I thought, and wonderful while it lasted, because sitting in our pub was like sitting at the Café de Flore in Paris, on Proust’s Boulevard Saint-Germain, where we’d never been, but we’d read about it, which was almost the same thing, it was like having Camus and Sartre sitting with us, sitting in our thoughts and our words, so what more did we want? Sitting with them, of course, was Simone de Beauvoir, the woman Sartre loved, their relationship an example for our future life, even for me, as somebody who married, though I didn’t know why, that was something I’d have to find out, but I knew that we would live like Sartre and de Beauvoir, in a partnership of the minds, not the kind with children, that no.

  That was my life until that moment, and then all I had left of it were ashes, as if it had burned up in an explosion in my darling’s head, and I was left to look at him lying on the stretcher on the floor, upset that he is lying on that floor at all – like all hospital floors it’s horrible, too many human legs walking by, too much despair saturating everything and no way to get rid of it, no rags or water or chemicals – lying there looking miserable and scared, and I can’t help him. There is nothing I can do, nothing, there is nothing worse than this feeling of helplessness you have in the hospital, and seeing the other person looking at you, expecting you to find an answer, to have an understanding that you haven’t got, to cooperate with his fate, expecting you to pass on some of the strength of your health, health that he doesn’t have but you do, as if you deserve it, which perhaps you do, but you don’t know the prescription for deserving it so that you can pass it on, you simply have something that the patient doesn’t and it’s horrible to have something unknowingly like that because you can’t share it. I already experienced that feeling with my father, but not as badly because I was his child, and therefore, by definition, weaker, somebody you’re not really going to depend on. But I still remember his eyes those last days before he died, they were as big as wheels, as they say in fairy tales, and they kept looking, looking, looking in an unfocussed, aimless way, not the way people look otherwise, it was as if they were looking inwards, looking for what was trying to destroy them, but they couldn’t see that far, all they saw was the void, and then suddenly, when they saw me, there was a spark of hope that there might still be a chance, that life was a solid thing and would not collapse, that it hadn’t all been a hoax.

  And now again a pair of eyes, looking for the last time, but these are the eyes of my darling, which are my eyes as well, my life will die with his eyes, I thought at the time, and my whole being is fighting it, don’t, don’t, I won’t let you, all of my support is in that non-acceptance, because any words of consolation ring hollow, and who believes in prayer? In my world, nobody believes, not even my mother. I’ve never heard her pray, even in secret.

  And then two drunks, as he later told me, entered this horrible scene, I assumed they were drunk because of their reddish-purple cheeks, bulbous noses, puffy faces and sluggish movements, as if they were too heavy to carry even themselves, notorious drunks, something my father never managed to become because he fell ill before he could do so. But I immediately dismissed the idea because I couldn’t believe they’d send two drunks to carry my darling from the corridor to the room, I couldn’t believe something like that was possible. But that’s what they were, drunks undergoing treatment and part of their therapy, along with other manual labour, was to carry patients on stretchers, so it was useful at both ends. They came and, with a worried expression on their faces, looked at my husband, who was just under six foot two inches tall, and big-boned, that’s to say, hefty, and they knew they’d collapse under his weight.

  What about leaving him here, one of them said, and then, after taking a closer look at him, added, he’s not going to last long anyway, I’ve seen it before, he said straight into my darling’s terrified eyes, as if he were an object that couldn’t hear them and as if I were the same; I agree with you, but the doctor won’t, the other one said, what can we do, said the first man, it comes sooner or later to everyone, and before I could jump up and throttle them, they leaned down, one in front and the o
ther at the back of the stretcher, lifted it and staggered off towards the service lift.

  I went with them, but I’d already been sidelined, the hospital sidelined you, it was useless. They wouldn’t tell you anything or you wouldn’t understand anything, or you’d understand only half of it and even if you understood everything it’d be wrong, you still didn’t know anything and you had no authority, you were just a passing visitor with limited time here.

  Then you go outside, where you have no life anymore, only the remaining stage set of your life, to the apartment where you have nothing to do except ponder what happened, talk endlessly about what happened, empty the ashtrays and pace the apartment like a caged tiger, unable to settle down with a book, or the TV, or in yourself, nothing to do except run to the hospital and come back, through the slush of the snow, your feet constantly wet because your boots aren’t waterproof. Nothing to do except freeze when the phone rings, look at the receiver as if it’s a funeral bell like the one that sometimes rings at the Church of St. Blaise, near our flat, and heave a sigh of relief when you hear it’s Kostja, or Adam, or Filip, or Petra, or my cousin Flora, or Irena, but not anybody from the hospital, and you sit down on a chair, put your hands between your legs and rock back and forth, staring into the void like a candidate for the lunatic asylum.

  Two days later, I’m back in the hospital corridor, sitting on a white bench that‘s harder than anything I’ve ever sat on, with Danica quietly crying next to me, as if she has an inexhaustible source of tears, so that I can’t even comfort her anymore, I just keep staring dully at the olive-green linoleum floor, the hospital is poor, like all our hospitals, we are all poor, and at the pathetic rubber plant by the window which is desperately trying to absorb the last of the winter light, slowly dying. We’ve been here two hours, Danica and I, here in this corridor in front of Intensive Care, where my husband, her son, is lying, we’re waiting to finally learn what’s wrong with him, as if that could comfort us, the only thing that will comfort us is to hear that there is nothing wrong with him, but we console ourselves with the thought that it would be progress to hear the exact diagnosis because then he can start treatment, that’s assuming that whatever he has is treatable; I’m numbed by the thought but can’t get rid of it... I suppose I already know.

  Finally the doctor appear, he looks imposing, they all do, even when they are small and ugly, because here they are king, and this one is tall and relatively good-looking, but even if he weren’t, because he is a bit too tall and long like a pencil, and his mouth is too small, because he has shrewd, round, coal-black eyes and looks kind, as if he wants to put you to bed with a fairy tale, which, when combined with everything else, is attractive, like a riddle you want to resolve, but you have to work at it, so the two of us immediately jump up from the bench, like students in front of their teacher, and wait for his verdict.

  I already know it isn’t meningitis that he has, knocking him for a loop and sending him straight from the dental chair to his bed, they’ve told us that already, but I’m close, this close with the diagnosis I gleaned from the Medical Lexicon, written for the people so that everybody can understand it, there is blood in his cerebrospinal fluid, a haemorrhage, bleeding into the brain from an angioma, a benign tumour consisting of blood vessels that could appear as a harmless mole, but its head is a bomb or a dormant volcano just waiting to explode and blow everything to pieces.

  You probably already knew about the tumour, the doctor says to Danica, her face puffy from crying, and she blinks like a glass-eyed Italian rubber doll, which she resembles, and he says, it’s an old injury, he says, probably from when he was born, he says, it’s already had consequences, he says, and looks at her questioningly. When he looks at her like that he purses his mouth and it seems even smaller. She’s nodding her head, but says nothing, she’s nodding at something inside her, and he knows that he won’t get anything out of her, he’s known that from the start, I realise. I see him smile ironically, pat her on the shoulder to show that heaven forgives us for being weak, weak and helpless, and then he turns around and walks away on his long legs, each step a yard long, his white coat, with the slit in the back, fluttering behind him like a flag.

  XV.

  I watch those legs and that flag at his back for a second and then run after him, he didn’t say anything about the prognosis, what next, what can we hope for, so I run and catch up with him, stopping him at the office door that has his name plate on it.

  I pepper him with questions, one after another, in no order, he’s the one in charge of keeping order here so let him sort them out.

  His round black eyes look down at me pityingly – at least in my imagination, because we all know that doctors can’t indulge in pity, otherwise it would mushroom into a jungle and devour them – and then he tells me to prepare myself because a tumour can bleed from other vessels, or from the main vessel, and kill him instantaneously. He is lucky that this hasn’t happened, but it doesn’t mean that it won’t. They’ll treat him, but the only treatment for this is an operation, and it’s too soon for that. Everything has to calm down first. And he can’t predict what else might happen around the area of bleeding or how much bigger the tumour might grow, but grow it most certainly will. And nobody knows what the consequences of either will be.

  Then he pats me on the shoulder, just as he did Danica, to show heaven’s compassion, because we are so weak, so weak and helpless, and says that all we can do now is wait, be patient and wait, he says, as if talking to a child, and then he disappears into his office.

  I’m not interested in the consequences, they’ll still be around later, I think naively, dragging myself down the corridor back to the bench and Danica, because I’m not in a hurry now. Just let him survive. Don’t let him die. Let him come home, I say to myself.

  Danica and I can’t leave the hospital, we have to wait for Frane who has gone to inquire about a job at the Institute for the Blind, where he’s found somebody he knows; his son is sick and they’ll need money, four hours a day, which is the maximum somebody with a disability pension is allowed to work.

  My head is like a cage full of exotic birds trying to out-squawk each other, my darling could die while I’m on my way home, while I’m eating a sandwich; he is here and then almost overnight he isn’t, you go to bed at home and wake up in rubble, nothing to help you transition between the two, just following the law of the hatchet, it isn’t an earthquake and it isn’t a war, how can that be...

  And nagging at me are those two extracted teeth, as if they started this whole devastating process, although I know they didn’t, they were just victims, portents of what is yet to come, and as such were killed, as in righteous times, extracted while still healthy, and yet, I think, none of this would have happened if they hadn’t been pulled out, it could all have been prevented if only we had known, if we had known, but we didn’t know so we helped the disaster to happen, to spread, I muse illogically... But what was logical about him having a toothache, when he was going to bleed in his head, absolutely nothing as far as I’m concerned, the logic of life is only in our imagination, in our desire for power, it isn’t reality, it’s completely illogical, I think in despair.

  I say this to Danica while we’re hanging around in the hospital corridors, waiting for Frane, in those desolate spaces where I grew up, my mother and I bringing food to my sick father, in perpetual search of a tree under the window that I can look at to save myself from the desolation, from the fatigue and boredom, that package of horror, until we finally come to what the doctor said – that they had known, they had known about this volcano in their son’s head, because it happened during his birth.

  They did and they didn’t know, I realise from her confused story about her difficult labour that had lasted for two days, because the baby was too big and got stuck on its way out. They had to pull him out by the head with forceps, to clamp and pull. Nobody knows anymore where the mistake was made, but he came out with the right side of his head damaged, with
a swelling that looked like a horn and took months to recede. She was told that she could die if she had any more children.

  And that’s all, I say to myself, but something is missing, what, for instance, if they had taken him for a check-up once the swelling had gone down, X-rayed his head, checked that everything inside was OK, that there was no damage. But she doesn’t remember anything, they were subtenants and having a hard time, barely making ends meet, she mutters, afraid that Frane would be arrested, it happened every day.

  I know, I say, one morning they collected my father off the street and my mother spent days looking for him until she found him in prison, blind – he’d temporarily gone blind with fear.

  We moved three times, she continues as if she hasn’t heard me, until she was given a flat by the Institute for Urbanism where she got a job, and with all that moving around they lost everything they had, all their furniture, but later they were given some and they bought some themselves. The only thing they saved was Frane’s lamp from Dubrovnik, which is now in our flat. A nice, tall floor lamp, with three lights under a yellow, gold-trimmed lampshade, and a round table in the middle to put your things, books, an ashtray, hanky, ring, if you have one, before you go to bed. It came to our flat later, after my father died, because there was no room for it in the little room by the kitchen. In their house it was shoved into a corner behind the television set, never used, dead, which is why it was given to us.