Black Mountain

by Venero Armanno

  My gait had become powerful and smooth. Scouts would come to watch and I was often asked to join various athletic teams. Though I liked the fact that they wanted me I always made excuses. Organised sports weren’t for me; I preferred to run to the rhythm in my own head and no one else’s.

  Be yourselves, Don Domenico had admonished the people on the Amati estate he’d been leaving behind. Well, I was being myself, for better or worse, in this long fallow period when no one loved me and when I allowed myself to feel no love in return.

  Looking back, I find it hard to believe that the thin façade of my life and everything that I was involved in hadn’t been more transparent to me, but Don Domenico had established his world with care and my background as a boy-slave had left me prone to be unquestioning about matters that I should have looked into more deeply. Added to which, of course, I was so much like my master that I skated over the surface of life in Bologna and was like a ghost when it came to the everyday ebb and flow of human intercourse.

  The change came simply enough, and the façade, when it fell, vanished as if by the flick of a magician’s wrist.

  The lectures this day were particularly dull, commencing with a consideration of Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and ending with a long-winded analysis of Italian philosophers from the Eliatic school.

  I made beautiful notes in artistic script: Southern Italy, 400 to 500 bc, Parmenides, Zeno and Melissus. Being exists, non-being does not exist; what is rational is real and what is real is rational; truth exists but is clouded by illusion, prejudice and preconceived ideas, therefore to uncover truth thinkers must free themselves from common sense and its convictions.

  For reasons I couldn’t yet define, this refined discourse on the nature of being and non-being soured my mood. After the class ended, I returned to my rooms exhausted and enervated. I had no mother and father and no early memories to fall back on; there was nothing except a man delivering me to another man, whom I now believed was Gozzi. I had no parents but I still existed; I had no childhood experiences but I was still real. I hadn’t fallen out of the air, I hadn’t been made out of nothing – I was here and I was flesh and blood. Yet I lived like a ghost; I spoke to people only when necessary; my dreams were of living like Domenico, totally alone. What was I then? A being or a non-being?

  The books we’d discussed said that to uncover the truth, thinkers had to liberate themselves from common sense. Common sense said I was a boy who’d been sold by his parents at an extremely young age into slavery. That explained the lack of memories, that was the sensible answer, but a voice of pure unreason, of nonsense, told me that none of this was so.

  Then what? Then what?

  I had no answer.

  It was time for my evening shift at the hospital and I welcomed the fact that I could put these thoughts aside and go immerse myself in that place of other people’s miseries.

  I ate in the kitchen quickly and without enjoyment, then caught my usual trolley car for the start of the eleven p.m. to six a.m. shift. These were the best hours to work, I found, being neither very populated with hospital staff and patients in extremis, nor being particularly demanding. For the most part this shift involved cleaning and burning, and would lead into lazy Saturdays when I could sleep and read the day away or do whatever it was I wanted until my classes recommenced the following Monday morning.

  Tonight however I was surprised to find that Doctor Vliegan was in attendance, conducting a surgical procedure in an operating theatre that was very seldom used, at least in my experience, as it was on one of the older and dismally unrenovated floors of the great hospital. This section of a smaller building contained facilities that were by no means as modern as those taken for granted in the more widely used theatres. My suspicions were aroused, but at least to this point, not unduly so. At this time of the evening it couldn’t be that there were no other surgical theatres available, so something of either some significance or of some secrecy had to be taking place.

  As I watched through the glass of the adjoining room, and saw Doctor Vliegan at work with only one nurse rather than his usual retinue of assistants and fellow doctors, I assumed that in several minutes I’d be transporting a dead foetus or half-formed baby into the fires of the basement furnace. This occurred with some regularity, and even though the activities of abortionists were strictly forbidden, there were enough incidences that couldn’t be avoided: of diseases, accidents, threats to the physical well-being of mothers, or of the simple pity by doctors who believed in their modern ways that women had the right to control whether they should or should not become mothers. That Doctor Vliegan had chosen to conduct this particular procedure in this particular place gave me added suspicion; though he was quiet and unassuming, I reasoned that in all likelihood he was aborting a baby that he himself had helped conceive. Well, I had no judgements to make, and so I simply waited where I was to be called when needed.

  Soon there was the tinkling of a bell. I wheeled my disposal trolley inside. Doctor Vliegan, in a lather of sweat and with an expression of distress, turned toward me. I saw the alarm come into his face.

  ‘Cesare,’ he said, using the new name, which he’d adopted readily enough. He’d either not realised or had forgotten my roster; why he should have cared whether it was me who was there or some other hospital worker mystified me.

  I glanced at the individual on the surgical table. I’d been mistaken. Though this person was completely covered in sheets – even to the extent of hiding the head and face, as well as the feet, which was extremely odd – this was definitely not a woman’s form.

  ‘Who else is there?’ the doctor asked.

  ‘Only me. What’s to be done?’

  Doctor Vliegan was exasperated and tired. I hadn’t seen him for a number of months and thought he even looked a little unwell. Whatever was going on in this theatre, it was clear he’d run out of time.

  ‘It was an amputation. Just the disposal please.’

  He moved to wrap a severed arm with rags and a bloodied sheet. No doctor ever bothered to do this; it was usually the task of underlings such as myself, who of course usually failed to bother with such niceties. Human parts simply went into the trolley and into the fires without ceremony or decorum.

  I noticed that the nurse had not turned or lifted her head, and was in fact doing her best to keep her face hidden. Curious, I slowly stepped toward her and she edged away. Like a dance I half-circled her. She couldn’t hide. Signora Rosa stared back at me.

  ‘Cesare,’ she said to my dumb gaze, ‘it’s a little hard to explain.’

  Though I’d always known she’d been well trained in nursing, I’d had no idea she ever worked here in Bologna, and certainly not for Doctor Vliegan. Something in my head wanted to swoon. The earlier nausea and throbbing of the temples had returned. A voice told me I ought to understand what was being played out: take away preconceived notions, take away illusion and ignore what you know is common sense, and the truth is in front of you.

  ‘Please,’ Doctor Vliegan said, ‘we’re wasting time.’ He placed the amputated arm into my trolley. ‘Cancer.’

  Now I saw that his face was grey. Sweat beaded his forehead and had gathered at his upper lip. Not only that, but the man definitely was in pain. His hand involuntarily moved to his side, low down.

  ‘Will I return for the patient? Which ward should he go to?’

  The doctor shook his head. ‘No, we’re finished here. After you’ve made the disposal please go on to your normal duties.’

  I tried not to make anything of this, or at least not to let them see that I already did. The person under the sheet was certainly not dead; the cloth rose and fell over the chest area and there was an irregular fluttering where the nose would be. Then why should this patient’s face be covered?

  ‘Thank you, doctor,’ I nodded, glancing at Signora Rosa as I wheeled the tro
lley away.

  Doctor Vliegan’s voice stopped me at the operating theatre doorway. But for the three of us, and the poor one-armed soul on the table, there was no one else around. This basement area was silent as a tomb.

  ‘Rosa is going home to Catania tomorrow. I apologise, Cesare, but please don’t feel slighted. There simply wasn’t time to arrange a social gathering.’

  I dipped my head. How much they believed in my nonchalance was reflected in the unhappy expressions in both their faces.

  ‘Good night, signora,’ I said. ‘Thank you, doctor.’

  There was something about the furnace room that could remind me of the mines: heat, putrid air a torture to breathe, the way the walls themselves seemed to sweat. A pungency emerged from your own body in competition with the ghastly odours that seeped through that place. My years of mining experience meant I could sustain myself here far more easily than my fellows – in comparison to those pits this place was dreadful but hardly enough to complain about. When a great pile of human detritus accumulated – hands, feet, legs, arms, organs, meat – and had to be gotten rid of, my fellow attendants would pool their trolleys and beg me to do it while they smoked cigarettes in the cool outside.

  So now I entered, shut the door behind me and opened the grate into the furnace. The all-consuming flames leapt up. I lifted the wrapped and dismembered arm. Throw it in and go, I told myself. Don’t pause even a moment. Raw heat seared my face but I held back. I left the grate open and sat down away from the fire, in a wooden chair by a far wall, contemplating the bloodied sheets of the wrapping.

  Doctor Vliegan had done it carefully. Doctor Vliegan and the woman who’d been like a mother to me, at least the only mother I’d ever know. Why was she here? Why had they been working together in that neglected old theatre? And why was a patient who was still breathing hidden under a sheet? To hide the individual, of course, but not specifically from me. Doctor Vliegan clearly hadn’t expected me to be there. So the person worth hiding probably wasn’t someone I knew, such as Don Domenico, for instance. What then? A person of importance – a politician, a leader of the church, even a famous musician, singer or actor?

  Common sense told me that it was certainly one of these things, but the irrational part of my thinking screamed, No, No, No. It’s something else.

  I knew I oughtn’t do it but I did. I lifted the dismemberment out of my trolley and laid it on a table. Gingerly I picked away at the corners of the bloody sheet and tightly wrapped rags until I started to reveal what was there.

  Yes, it was an arm, a perfectly ordinary arm. Its only features were that it was not attached to a body and seemed almost bloodless. Had it been drained?

  The arm was the colour of milk, and not only that, it was completely smooth, utterly hairless. Otherwise it was unremarkable: an arm.

  What ridiculous conspiracies had I already conceived? Yet I couldn’t resist studying this thing more closely. I found that the bone that had been sawn through was soft, almost gelatinous. Horrible. I hadn’t studied anatomy or human diseases; was this what cancer could do to the human body? I was about to feed the fire in disgust when I noticed something else. The hand, which was curled in on itself, had perfectly formed fingernails, but the palm was completely unlined, like that of a doll. I touched it, ran my fingertips over it. A man’s hand totally devoid of character. I fitted my own hand into that palm in the attitude of a gruesome handshake. I could feel this was a true hand, that it was correct in bone structure and form, muscles, ligaments, tendons, what have you. It was even a little warm from the life that had been in it. Strange.

  Suddenly overcome with revulsion for this dead thing, I threw it hard into the furnace. Its wrappings followed. I slammed the grate and slid the main bolts until they locked. In seconds there would be nothing left.

  I didn’t feel well. My stomach was churning and my head hurt, and something that was human without quite being so was already smoke and vapour, no ashes.

  During the night shift, as I was finding excuses to visit various wards in case a one-armed patient might have been settled there, I received word that I was wanted in the main building immediately, in the duty registrar’s office.

  He was tapping his fingers, a tiny man with a narrow moustache, soulful eyes and a prematurely receding hairline.

  ‘I’m sorry, Cesare, we can’t use your services in the hospital anymore. Here’s your pay packet. You’ll see it’s up-to-date and includes a small amount for severance.’

  He pushed the envelope across to me.

  ‘What have I done wrong?’

  He made a face.

  ‘It’s not my decision, my job’s to pass on the news. You know the hospital lurches from financial disaster to accounting fiascos on a weekly basis. There’s probably been some decision to cut more corners than usual, so don’t take it personally. Part-time staff will always be the first to go.’

  The first to go from any place, I thought, were sure to be those who’d seen things they shouldn’t have. Doctor Vliegan had to have made the decision on the hospital’s behalf.

  ‘When should I finish?’

  ‘Well, it’s quiet. I was told there was no need to make you see out your shift. You’re free to go immediately.’

  I took the envelope of cash and slipped it into the pocket of my trousers beneath the light blue apron and smock that constituted my workwear. Then I extended my hand. With a little surprise the registrar reached up and extended his.

  As I firmly shook his hand I said, ‘I’d like to thank the hospital for the employment here. If financial circumstances allow it, I’d enjoy the opportunity of returning.’

  The little man’s face broadened into a smile. He hadn’t expected a lay-off to display such charm; Don Domenico had taught me well in the art of good manners and sincerity.

  ‘May I drop off my workwear and say goodbye to one or two co-workers?’

  ‘Certainly, and the best of luck with your studies, young man.’

  I left him and walked with every semblance of nonchalance down the corridor, even forcing myself to stop and have a friendly word with two nurses I barely knew. One, who also happened to be the prettiest, actually blushed deeply and found it hard to meet my eyes. I wondered why I’d never bothered to try to engage any of the young females working in this place in conversation but, as always, the thought had simply never occurred to me.

  Pleasantries completed, and out of their sight as well as the registrar’s, I hurried towards the wards housing accident victims and patients recovering from recent surgery. My curiosity was now at a fever pitch. So was a vague sense of dread, plus the churning sickness in my belly. I wouldn’t be put off. That severed arm with its soft bone and the inhumanly unlined palm meant something that was as clear and precise as a mathematical equation, but I couldn’t seem to focus my mind on its solution.

  As I took a staircase at a trot I knew I ought to be safe enough to make this investigation. Word couldn’t have spread that my employment had been prematurely terminated. I imagined Doctor Vliegan wouldn’t have wanted to tell anyone except those who needed to know. And within the vast labyrinth of this major hospital, with its five separate buildings, each a labyrinth in itself, very few staff knew me personally anyway. My outfit and the fact that I knew what I was doing were the only access pass I needed. Outside a maternity ward, where a new mother was wailing more loudly than the now disturbed group of babies, an elderly doctor even stopped me and asked for surgical gauze and strip bandages to be found as quickly as possible. I served him in minutes. He hurried back to his patient but had no further task for me.

  It took the better part of four hours before I was convinced that the one-armed patient hadn’t been moved into any of the wards or even into private rooms meant for wealthier patients. Had the individual in question been taken away from the hospital? It was a possibility, even a probability no
w that I’d failed to unearth him in this place. What with the awful concern in Doctor Vliegan’s grey face, not to mention Signora Rosa’s inexplicable presence and my own termination, anything could be happening and this patient could have been sent anywhere.

  I took a winding staircase in the smallest hospital building, the one that housed the old theatre where Doctor Vliegan’s operation had taken place, and returned to ground level. Before I was prepared to remove my hospital clothes and give up I decided there was one more possibility: the ambulance bays.

  Drivers were asleep on gurneys as they waited to be summoned to emergencies. In the small staff office the two who’d been assigned the watch were smoking, eating cheese and listening to American music on the radio. They both knew who I was – a large proportion of my work had involved wheeling people from the backs of ambulances into waiting rooms, theatres or the morgue.

  ‘All quiet?’ I asked, helping myself to a small slice of cheese. I felt in the trouser pocket that held the envelope and took out my severance pay, which was a generous wad of notes. I counted several bills and placed them on the table. ‘For the kitty. Thank you for all the coffee and snacks you’ve always had available. I’ve been given my marching orders.’

  Though they didn’t care about my employment one way or the other, their mood immediately brightened. If there was any kitty at all it was probably for alcohol and the illicit medications that allowed these men to remain alert through the unforgiving hours to daylight.

  ‘Quiet all right,’ the first said. I remembered his name was Andreas. ‘One pick up all night.’

  ‘Accident?’ I asked.

  ‘Maybe.’ The man rubbed his jaw. ‘Arm. But not from the street.’