Pop!
And all around me the perspiring mortar
of the Mildendo Madhouse, the night sweat of expressionless
stone.
I see Polonius hanging on the wall. I see his grin.
~ * ~
viii Dissertation on the Burial Customs of the Lilliputians
We bury the dead man on his head, inter
his corpse upside down. Mouthing dirt, he grows
into the encoffining loam like a tuber;
not carrots, nor turnips, nor sweet potatoes
point downward more tenaciously than he.
In eleven thousand moons the Earth will turn
over upon itself. The dead will shake free,
their eyes clotted with poinsettia and fern.
Each corpse will slip through bog: a human plant
writhing its tendrils at a tarnished sun,
moving its mired roots, doffing wet dirt,
mouthing bald bulbs.
Little wonder that I can’t
term such topsy-turvy interment fun:
What vegetable love does not traduce the heart?
~ * ~
ix A Vision of Horses Comforts the Madman
On the lawn,
on the asylum lawn are horses,
many horses.
Years ago,
we evacuated them from the beach
at Blefuscu,
under heavy assault, martial duress:
banners, helmets, half-pikes, blades—
a veritable parade of slaughter.
(See
how their entrails—
horses’ entrails—
spill from their bellies
like
sodden ladies’ scarves
glistering
in the rain!)
Still,
many were saved
& hoisted up onto
the slimy decks of men-of-war
& galleon-galloped home.
Now,
on the asylum lawn
(where we retired them),
they scarcely move, but wear out
the grass
with yellow teeth & heavy hooves.
I am behooved
to watch them,
grey apparitions
in the incandescent sun—
nightmares & nightgeldings,
also nightstallions,
all in the full noon
of an incandescent sun.
Because I must,
I watch: In the apparitions
of old horses
resides a kind of balm,
an unguent
without urgency,
but not without sting.
It is
an infinitely equine,
infinitely patient thing.
Like them,
like black, like bay,
like dapple-grey horses,
I have never learned
to say
the thing which is not—
except in dreams,
like this equivocal little one
that I have sung:
Gulliver, one day, will return.
Unlike
my horses on the lawn
(the black, the bay, the dapple-grey),
substantial apparitions all,
I am myself
a thing which is not.
Ergo,
my every equivocation
is the truth.
In my singing,
the thing which is not
is a thing which is not,
for in my singing
is the equivocal truth:
Gulliver, one day, will return.
In the madhouse outside Mildendo
I sit at the window. I leer out.
<
~ * ~
ERNIE
Lowell Kent Smith
Someone who really cared about you, in a place
like that—how could he be real?
~ * ~
They took him to L. A. General.
He was an old man and he was sick.
When he woke up he was in a hospital bed. He was scared. He was afraid of hospitals. He’d never been sick before. So he was scared. The room was too clean. When you’re used to the street, clean places make you edgy. And there were no smells in the room. And it was sunny—too bright for his eyes.
They had him in a hospital gown. He felt naked. He rarely took a bath and just having his clothes off frightened him.
He felt cut off from his past, from reality. While he was unconscious the real world had seeped away from him. Or they had stolen it.
He closed his eyes, put his hands over his face and tried to remember. Tried to see in his mind’s eye what had happened, why he was in the hospital. But all he could see in the past was the street. An endless succession of nights in the street, all alike. And then this room.
He shivered. Then, after gazing at the clean, odorless, sunny room for some time, he pulled the blanket over his face, closed his eyes and waited.
After a time he slept.
~ * ~
He awoke because someone was calling his name.
“Bill,” the voice said. “Bill?”
He was Bill. The voice knew him. He opened his eyes and pulled the blanket down so he could see where the voice came from.
There was a screen in the ceiling over his bed. A gray-haired man, dressed in rumpled white, was on the screen. “Are you feeling any better, Bill?”
“Who are you?” said Bill.
“My name’s Ernie,” said the man.
“I don’t know you, do I?” said Bill, hoping that after all he did know the man.
“No, Bill, you don’t know me. I work here at the hospital. I just got your name when they brought you in. Are you feeling any better now?”
Bill looked the man over. He looked all right.
“You’re not a doctor, are you,” said Bill.
“No, Bill, I’m not a doctor. They just asked me to keep an eye on you while you’re in the hospital, and see that you’re treated okay. How do you feel?”
Bill considered how he felt, and for the first time noticed all the little buttons stuck all over his body.
“What are the buttons for?” he said.
“They help the doctors keep track of how you’re doing. Temperature, breathing, heart—things like that. None of them hurt you or anything, do they?”
“No—no, they’re okay, I guess. And I feel all right, I think. Can I go home now?”
The man—Ernie—looked pleased that Bill was feeling good. He smiled and sat back in his chair. “Where’s home, Bill?”
Bill frowned and thought a moment. “Just the street, I guess.” He studied the man in the screen. The man was lighting a cigar.
Bill said, “Say, Ernie? Could I have a smoke—is it okay to smoke in the hospital? Just one cigarette maybe?”
Ernie smiled and sat forward in his chair. “Sure, Bill. There’s a pack of cigarettes in the drawer of that table next to your bed. Here, I’ll push it over.” The table slid toward the bed.
After he’d lit up, Bill sat studying Ernie in the screen. They both just smoked for a while. Then Bill said, “What’s wrong with me, Ernie? Do they know? What happened?”
“You passed out on the street. Cops brought you in. The doc isn’t sure what’s the matter, so he wants you to stay here a few days and get some tests done. I’m here to keep you company— keep an eye on you. Make sure you’re treated right. That’s my job here.”
“What kind of tests, Ernie? They won’t hurt, will they?”
Ernie sat forward and tapped the ash off his cigar. “No, they won’t hurt, Bill. The buttons are making some of the tests. Some of the other tests they’ll have to take you places for, but they won’t hurt. And I’ll be along with you. That’s my job.”
Bill said, “Can you come to my room here? We could talk. I could tell you stuff they might need to know, or something.”
Ernie took the cigar out of his mouth. He looked sad for a moment, then he smiled again and said, “Bill—see, I watch over some other guys, too, so I can’t actually come to your room. But we can talk this way, see. Just as long as I can be here so I can watch the other guys, too. You understand?”
“Yeah—sure, sure. But we can talk, right? We can talk?”
“Sure, Bill, all you want. Whenever you’re awake I’ll be here to talk, and I’ll look in on you when you’re asleep, every once in a while.”
Ernie stubbed out his cigar. “You look sleepy, Bill. Why not sleep a while? I’ll see you later.”
But Bill had already drifted off, the cigarette falling to the floor.
There was a gentle hiss and the cigarette disappeared into a slot in the wall.
~ * ~
Clinging to the jumpseat of the bounding helicopter ambulance, James Lambert, M.D., watched L. A. International Airport drop away into the darkness until it was just another floating island near the megalopolis.
His stomach turned over. He shouldn’t be riding this ambulance. It was a job for the young interns or a paramedic. He should be sleeping. In three days he’d had ten hours of sleep— most of that on table tops or carts, and all of it taken in snatches between emergencies. Though he was thirty-three he felt about fifty, a tired fifty at that. Three years of interning and these last two as a resident had done it to him.
He winced and looked out the window. They were passing over the fusion-powered generating plants in Laguna. The near-shore ocean farms receded into the darkness toward both Santa Barbara and San Diego—a seemingly endless line.
He lit a cigarette. He smoked too much. He drank too much coffee. His wife was thinking about leaving him. Sometimes, like now, when the days and nights were too long, he would think briefly about his own problems and relax. He would smile over his salary, the working conditions and his prospects for the future. Maybe even think about getting a nice practice someplace in the country where he and Janet could relax more, where his wife could go out during the day without fear of being attacked.
An easy practice. He smiled and looked out the other cabin window.
Looking ahead toward the foothills to pick out the hospital towers, he knew why he flew these runs whenever he could. The fusion plants that supplied the water for the land, that air-conditioned the whole south-coast basin, that supported the ocean farms—those same plants also carpeted the valley with lights. Miles of lights. A river, no, an inland sea of lights. A profligate display of lights—of man’s power, holding the darkness at bay.
The lights drew him. They gilded the reality below. By day he knew that the teeming cities were places where men suffered and died. At night they became lights and he could forget the days. The shadows concealed the hurts, the pain, the death agonies below him. For a time he could rest, buoyed up by the lights beneath him. He could be awed by the technical miracles spread out below, without being depressed that no corresponding miracles had taken place in the men who lived and worked down there.
The cigarette burnt his fingers. He shivered inside his white jacket and glanced at his patient, studied the monitoring unit on the cabin wall.
The twin hospital towers loomed ahead now, three-quarters of a mile high, dominating the foothills. Earthquake-control engineering made the structure possible, and man’s frailty caused it to be built. Cancer was gone, stroke was gone, heart disease was going; but men were still frail and they sickened. This giant of the hospitals in the west was built to minister to that human weakness, that infirmity, that still-present mortality. L. A. General: enormous, ever active, demanding, heartbreaking. The only place Jim Lambert had ever really loved—the only place he felt at home.
They were landing. Leaving self behind, Dr. Jim Lambert turned to his patient and took up his profession.
~ * ~
An hour later Jim was drinking another cup of coffee and finishing yet another cigarette. A backlog of work had built up during his flight.
He picked up the top paper on the stack before him. “Who’s caring for this man Bill the police brought in three days ago? The shock and intestinal-bleeding case.”
The screen opposite his desk lit up and Ernie appeared there.
“Good evening, Dr. Lambert. I’m Ernie. Bill is in my care.” Ernie looked calm and rested and in complete control of his work. Jim caught himself liking the man in the screen.
“Okay, Ernie. How is Bill feeling?”
“Here is his record since he was admitted,” said Ernie, and his image was replaced by the standard format for patient data.
“What does it look like to you, Ernie?” said Jim.
“Old age, probably bleeding ulcers of the large and small intestine, systemic infection.”
“Treatment?”
“Control the infection, remove the damaged portions of the bowel before there’s a stoppage.”
“Prognosis?”
Jim studied Ernie’s face very carefully when he asked the last question. He wanted to see if he could detect anything in the screen image to go with what Ernie would say.
Ernie paused a moment before answering, then said evenly, “Bill is going to die here, Dr. Lambert, sometime this week, no matter what treatment he receives.”
Jim watched the man’s face. Did he detect any sorrow there? He could not be sure. He thought about the old man, Bill; and about Ernie.
“Ernie, how many patients have died under your care here?”
Ernie seemed to study the doctor for a few moments before answering the question. As though pondering the answer, or perhaps seeking to guess why Jim had asked.
“As of this minute, one hundred twenty-five thousand three hundred and twenty-eight. Four more are dying now.”
Jim thought about all those deaths, and about Bill, who would be one more.
“Are you sorry for the dying and the dead, Ernie?”
Again Ernie seemed to study Jim’s face before answering. “Death comes to all men, Doctor.”
“But not to you, Ernie.”
“No, not to me.”
The two men said nothing for some moments. Then Ernie said, “You seem well, Dr. Lambert, but are you having trouble with your wife? Are your hours too long?”
Jim smiled at the question. Then Ernie smiled too.
“I’m not the patient, Ernie. Not yet.” He sighed and picked up the paper on Bill.
“I suppose there is no point in doing the surgery at Bill’s age?” Jim said.
“We can’t be sure yet, but that is the estimate, yes.” The two discussed the case further. Finally Jim said, “He has no relatives, no friends?”
Ernie shook his head.
“Should he be told about his chances?”
“I think he knows, Doctor, but does not want to be told.”
“Should I see him and talk it over with him, do you think?”
“He would be frightened at first if you came, but I think it would give him courage. He is an old man and he is not afraid to die, but I think your seeing him might help.”
“And you’ll be there, of course.”
“I’ll be there with Bill until the end. We’ve talked about that. I think we are friends now.”
Jim thought about it for a time. He made an appointment to see Bill. Then he picked up the next paper on his desk.
“I’d like to talk with the person in charge of Mrs. Robert Barnes, please.”
The image of Ernie was replaced by that of a trim, beautiful woman in her early thirties, elegantly dressed and coiffed.
~ * ~
Two days went by. Bill got to know Ernie better in that time. They mostly talked. Exchanged stories. Ernie knew some of the men Bill had known, and they talked about those men—things they’d said or done. And Ernie knew a lot of men Bill wished he’d known. Bill listened to Ernie’s stories about those men by the hour. It was amazing how many men Ernie had met or heard about.
Bill asked Ernie if he’d traveled much, been places.
�
��No,” said Ernie a bit wistfully, “I’ve just worked here in the hospital. I’ve seen places, but never really been anywhere.”
So Bill didn’t ask that question any more.
Bill slept a lot, but when he awoke Ernie was always there on the screen. When they took Bill somewhere for tests Ernie would show up on a screen there, explain to him what they were doing and make sure they took good care of Bill.
Bill wondered how Ernie could be with him so much and still watch other guys too. But for some reason he never wanted to ask Ernie about it, until the day he met Bobby Winston.
Bill had been out of his room for a test, down some long halls and into a room with shiny machines. It wasn’t X rays, it was some other kind of rays. Maybe it was ultrasonics or the infrared, or some other things Ernie had explained—they all got mixed up in Bill’s head unless Ernie was explaining them.
Orbit 15 - [Anthology] Page 13
