The Hospital

by Ahmed Bouanani

  My two friends left me alone. I sat down on a bench, under the trees. My heart was beating quickly, as if I’d been running all morning. Rover had been gone for half an hour. All I could see now was a large cat, frozen like a statue, in the same spot where he’d taken off to escape our sarcastic taunts; it was probably one of the neighborhood cats that no fence could prevent from reaching the large hospital trashcans. At this very moment Rover is making his way through a dense and noisy crowd, after rushing off a bus whose passengers seem horrifyingly unreal through its steamed up windows. Right now, he’s standing in front of his childhood home with the despair of someone who’s completely lost, trying to recognize a door with a bronze knocker, a low building with windows so minuscule he can’t imagine what purpose they could serve, a place that once observed him growing up on thin grasshopper legs, the neighbors’ oddly horizontal stairs, dark and stinking of urine and weak stew, which in a faraway time provided a refuge for a romantic idyll; his brain refuses to reconstruct the facial features of a young girl with braids. He stops, he doesn’t recognize where he is — or only barely — and nobody recognizes him. I don’t know why but in my imagination it’s pouring rain. By chance or by prophesy, it’s raining drops as big as light bulbs, which melt onto the crumbling cobblestones, street stalls, boutiques, old carts, and pack animals of this microcosm that I can’t tame, which I want to study in detail, giving it a semblance of life despite my ignorance. “Don’t tire yourself out,” Rover tells me. “Your landscapes are toying with you, teasing you. You see me in pale daylight that will darken soon enough, I’m as substantial as a watercolor in the rain, my outline is disappearing already, look at me oozing, trickling away in rivulets, it’s best to leave me alone, let me manage my own ghosts, angels, and ogres! Stay away, old man, my business is mine alone. People don’t get visitors in their graves you know!” Seated on a bench, under the trees, nothing can tear me away from my quiet serenity. The years go by, sowing wrinkles, white hair, disease, and forgetfulness. I’m no longer thinking about anything, I can no longer think. I’m frozen like that large cat, happy as a fool, indifferent to the changes in the seasons. The sun, warm as a Moorish bath set to its maximum temperature; a gust of wind laden with sea spray; a second gust filled with swirling dead leaves, then, once again, the Chergui, sand, dust, and water. Nothing makes a dent in my skin, which now resembles that of a tortoise. A tree with buds is pushing, growing, winding through the tips of my fingers, my knees, along my spinal column, and in my head, slowly spreading through my dried-out veins to conquer my innermost depths. There’s no use. I don’t have roots. Nothing but ink cap mushrooms sprouting from my ears, nostrils, and weeping eyes. Through my tears, in a halo, I see Guzzler, Argan, Fartface, and my other friends. They haven’t aged a day; as they smile at me in their awkward manner, I can see their concern, incomprehension, muted question marks, and a range of expressions that I’m unable to define, that’s how much my head — heavy and trapped in the jaws of a vise, in a circle of dizziness — is preventing me from seeing the pitiable reality in which I’m lost. Someone places a hand on my forehead, then a voice says: “Are you okay?” I straighten up on one elbow. “Of course I’m okay, what’s gotten into you guys?”

  “Well, what’s with you, huh, staying out in the rain?” Guzzler says.

  “What rain? Is it still raining in my head? Where’s Rover? The last time I saw him, he liquefied into colors.”

  People are moving around me, barely listening to me. I’m naked under the blankets. I touch myself: no mushrooms, no flower buds, the tree has deserted my feverish body. Where’s my tree? Someone brings me my pajamas and helps me put them on. The fabric gives off the pleasant smell of eucalyptus; the smell is strong, it permeates the space around me, chasing away all the other clammy odors: hyenas, jackals, rabbit holes, fenugreek, and rancid butter. It’s still daytime — but which day? A wood fire burns at the wing’s entrance, encircled by seated and standing shadows. So, I tell myself, the country boys kept their promise. The pleasant feeling of a makeshift camp reigns once again and the only thing missing is the intoxicating fragrance of bread baked with cow pats and the song of cicadas under a sky blazing with stars. In the glow of the nearby lights of the invisible town, our foggy sky is an immense, crinkled burlap cloth, lacking celestial bodies, lacking a Milky Way, a palette of drab colors whose scale of grays triumphs over the setting sky’s vague streaks of red-crimson.

  “You’re here thanks to the on-duty nurses. They found you sitting on the bench, in the rain, like one of those Hindu dervishes who thinks himself a mineral. Luckily it was just a drizzle. Next time you feel like taking a bath in a thunderstorm, I’ll lend you my best umbrella!”

  “And I’ll give you the coat Smalto gave me for my birthday!”

  We all laugh, Guzzler, Argan, and me, seated on the steps outside our wing, next to the bonfire. Within this circle of flickering light, the hunched shadows remind me of the Easter Island giants.

  good god, what the hell am I doing here? It’s the thousandth time I’ve asked myself this question, like some idle traveler who’s visiting a place where boredom very quickly becomes insufferable. “That’s why you’re here today. You will never know if you’re dreaming or not. Either way, your reality doesn’t matter!” I still hear this voice from the past. The head doctor, senior nurse, or one of the orderlies — unless it was someone I invented, influenced by my readings of Kafka, Borges, and Buzzati in my youth . . . no, it was definitely someone real — from our reality — who had forbidden us from coughing in his presence — as if we were coughing just for the fun of it — and reproached us with his military sergeant voice for not having invented the microscope or the butter knife.

  “Are we really a people?” — Now Fartface is sputtering away — “Think about it. We were born with our right hands outstretched, begging in our blood, not to mention cowardice, infamy, and fear, an insidious fear that drives us to curve our spines all the way to the ground! Fear of what, I ask you? Too much servitude has made us forget what dignity, generosity, and tolerance truly are. We don’t even know how to talk anymore, our people’s pitiful vocabulary barely fits in the palm of my hand, we’re nothing but a bunch of poor bastards, maggots, worms, garbage on credit! And me, the guy talking to you, vomiting on you, well and truly crazy deep inside my rotting soul, puffed up with a whole lot of nothing, I’m just renting this body, waiting for someone to give me a good kick in the ass and tell me that I’ve swallowed too much oxygen, that my carcass is creating a traffic jam: Go on, keep moving you old slob, enough fooling around!”

  “Okay Grandpa, enough fooling around!” interrupts Guzzler. “Let the cadavers have some fun. That’s enough blubbering out of you. You must be really thirsty, huh? You want a glass of red wine? Chausoleil, Moghrabi, or Vieux Papes? I must have a bottle of wine around here somewhere, right? Unless you prefer a Ricard, a double scotch? With or without ice? Dry? Like Humphrey Bogart! Very well, sir! At your service, sir!”

  Using a towel as an apron, Argan carries an imaginary tray, and bends down to serve Fartface, who has finally flopped onto his bed.

  Fartface plays along. He pretends to take the glass, shakes it, inhales like a true connoisseur, takes a sip, winces.

  “Mmmn! It’s the real thing. I bet it comes from Scotland! No one’s ever called me ‘sir’ before. Is that included in the price of the drink or the tip?”

  I shrink into my corner. I wonder, again one time too many, what I’m doing here. It’s an odd cemetery whose residents live above the graves, among the brambles, cacti, insects, reptiles, poppies, and jonquils, they move around in blue two-piece shrouds, wearing slippers or babouches, a heap of insults perched on their chapped lips, drooling from the corners of their mouths. And here I am among them, a voluntary prisoner, indolent, more lethargic than anyone, lazing around, pointlessly darkening page after page. My fingers tremble, sometimes they scratch out writing that isn’t mine, that I have trouble dec
iphering. Who will read me? My characters are cobbled together, haloed in off-the-rack dreams, drowning in deadly inertia and having solo adventures, drinking all the imaginary wine they can get their hands on, sleeping right and left with whores as beautiful as Nefertiti and Elizabeth Taylor, looking like gaunt cowboys, bandits, pirates, and gangsters suffering from chronic bronchitis, trachoma, and I don’t know what other form of divine benediction. In my solitude, I call out to them, one by one:

  “Fartface!”

  “Present!”

  “Age, profession, address?”

  “No age, no profession, no address!”

  “How old would you like to be?”

  “Old as a donkey.”

  “Explain.”

  “Nothing to explain, dear captain! The donkey is born, and instead of thinking, he farts; instead of talking, he brays; then he lives, he lives to transport loads, to get slapped around, to get erections come spring, and he never stops to take a shit, he’s always in a hurry, always servile. When he does die — he doesn’t know it, he dies, that’s it.”

  “The profession you’d like to have?

  “None, God forbid.”

  “A good-for-nothing?”

  “Oh, no, too ambitious. You see, dear captain, ever since I was born, people have told me: ‘Work is the ticket to health!’ So I worked, I slogged away like a slave, and one beautiful morning, I lost my health. For good. And that got me thinking. You don’t make money by working up a good sweat, but by cheating, stealing, running rackets, trafficking. I’m no lawyer but I say you have to know how to read between the lines of the law. Only idiots interpret it literally, idiots and honest people, which is the same difference. That’s why they built prisons, for those pour souls. When they say, ‘society is well designed,’ you should always ask yourself: for whom?”

  “Guzzler!”

  “Here.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “How do you know?”

  “My father was an accountant.”

  “What’s your profession?”

  “Ruffian, robber, occasional trafficker, gigolo, pimp, and when it comes to the Creator, an I-don’t-give-a-shitter, to name just a few.”

  “And now?”

  “I’m in between jobs, sir. Like everyone. My life is temporary, my hopes are temporary, my sleep and dreams are temporary. I am temporarily counting a lot on the future, and here, look, sir, I have a temporary work certificate for when I’ll be temporarily healed.”

  “Argan?”

  “Yes. I get my nickname from the rarely-seen argan tree from Sous, which provides the local beggars with a dark, heavy oil that they eat morning, noon, and night.”

  “Do you speak Tachelhit?”

  “I can insult and curse fluently, but on occasion I speak it very respectfully, like when I have to borrow something from the neighborhood grocer or ask for credit. He’s a stingy, hard-nosed guy, even with himself, but he’s a dyed-in-the-wool regionalist . . .”

  “Okay, okay, that’s enough!”

  “And you? Yes, you. You’re new!”

  “Yeah . . . I arrived two days ago, I think . . . I don’t know why, for that matter . . .”

  “You’re not sick?”

  “They didn’t give me a chance to ask. There was a guy yelling ‘next!’ the whole time, so I followed and here I am.”

  “And what’s your name?”

  “O.K.’s my name, at least that’s what my friends call me, they’re Americanophiles, unconditional enthusiasts of Yankee TV shows since birth, it sounds smart and you can say it quickly, but if you want to call me Oum Kalsoum, I don’t have any objections. I’m educated in literature, civics, religion, and sports. I know the Muallaqāt and the sixty verses of the Quran, which helps me distinguish the assholes-for-life from the Petit Poucets. Let me explain: the assholes-for-life never admit that it’s all gibberish, all the way back to Antiquity, they don’t understand a thing but they’ve got their stupid pride; the others have a memory like little Poucet, a verse here, a piece of the Quran there, gleaned along the way, like a trail of stale breadcrumbs leading from primary school all the way to their favorite café today. But you know what, after I left school, I found myself dragging my ass, in the mud and muck of a third category, the mystagogues of Arabic grammar, dandies who can’t even be bothered to make a living typing on an Underwood keyboard! I worked one month at the Ministry of Justice and had my fill, a real lake of shit and slime full of alligators, anacondas, and piranhas with an appetite for gobbling human beings up in a fraction of a second. I had to cleanse myself in unemployment for a while to save my idealist nature, but once again I found myself dragging my ass. But no crying here, where would I get my tears from?”

  “Hey, look who’s back from the Southern seas! Come on, Sinbad, tell us about your seventh voyage to the land of the turbaned Mormons. How was your pilgrimage to the springs of milk and honey?” Rover blows on his hands to warm them up, his eyes glistening but not brimming over. And when he smiles, he looks like some beachcomber who’d turned over all the pebbles on the beach only to find sand and corals. “Come on, old man, tell us what’s become of the outside world and the neighborhood virgins” — Rover bites his lip — “We’re thirsty for noises, cries, crowds, and skies.” He sighs and obstinately stops talking. It’s only later that he’ll share his odyssey of sadness and silence.

  “how’s it going?” “Good.” “Good-good?” “Meh, so-so I guess, could be better.” “The family?” “Good.” “The kids?” “Good, they grow up all on their own and then get the hell out.” “And the youngest?” “He had scarlet fever, measles, chicken pox, and diarrhea, but God is grand.” “So, you’re good, hamdoullah!” “And you?” “As long as you have your health . . .” “Yeah, that’s what my old man used to say, he’d repeat it from morning to night, until the day he started spitting up blood.” “We belong to God and to him we return.” “Hear, hear!” “Mektoub!” “Yeah, everything is mektoub! Everything is written. My dictionary’s so big you’d need a wheelbarrow and two brawny guys to push it!” “Yeah, mine’s a phone book from 1930.” “Why 1930?” “That way all the addresses are old and the phone numbers are always busy.” “Speaking of, what ever happened to what’s-his-face?” “He’s in prison.” “God bless him! Now there’s a fellow who never watered down his wine.” “Same with the other guy — what was his name again? — who hates anyone who drinks their coffee with milk.” “Oh yeah, where did he end up?” “In prison too, but at Ali Moumen or El-Ader, I don’t remember.” “Lucky bastard! He’ll have at least a degree in agricultural engineering by the time he gets out.” “I doubt it, twenty years or life, same difference. If he ever gets pardoned — you never know — the poor guy’s in for a shock, his chickens will have wisdom teeth and his mule a pair of Siamese twins!”

  Argan and O.K. excel at the art of talking without saying anything. Their conversations can go on for hours, and the stakes are high: a pack of Marlboros or chewing gum — it depends on the day — to whoever can keep from laughing or running out of responses. I hear their voices and sense the presence of the jury and a few others; lying in my bed, looking through dirty windowpanes, I watch the sky, a washed-out, icy sky with a small timid breeze, the promise of a storm at midnight or in tomorrow’s early hours. I’m tired of watching the sky, it’s giving me pits in my stomach and cramps in my brain. I open Moravagine at random, and read: “ . . . then you emerge among the Vallataons, called Jemez Indians by the Mexicans. The settlement has a Catholic church (an estoufa in the native tongue). The church is empty and half in ruins. It is dedicated to Montezuma, and in it a perpetual flame is kept burning in expectation of Montezuma’s return, at which time he is to establish his universal empire.” I close the book and I think about Blaise Cendrars. I tell him: “Take me to the end of the world!” He grabs me with his only hand and we sail around
in a dugout canoe, under mangrove roots, through jungles, fogs, awful smells, we subsist on oysters and crabs in the shape of ossified anuses, and eat honey ants — Blaise tells me: “The natives are mad for the honey ant; it’s a well-known aphrodisiac.” Suddenly, after several pages, we berth in Paris, Boulevard Exelmans. I leave him with Moravagine at a wine shop, and I return to the room in Wing C where, for a minute or two, blue Indians dance in my eyes before fading to make way for blue pajamas coughing at almost regular intervals. Then, I sink once more into my body, surrounded by Fartface, Guzzler, Rover, Argan, and O.K., I tell them: “I can no longer see the main iron gate, or the life beyond that simmers like a sauce pot full of nasty things. I think they’re building a new wall, no, I’m sure of it, and they’ll construct other walls that air, space, and our dreams can’t cross; only our silence will grow, fatten, swell like a mountain . . .” Guzzler laughs: “Smart-Ass has lost his marbles!”

  rover says: “when I arrived at the house, it was all over. An old shrew was washing the tile floor of my mother’s bedroom. After pouring out buckets and buckets of brackish water that two young girls had pulled up from a well beneath the staircase, the old woman found herself wading barefoot in an actual pond. Each time she stood up straight, groaning, she would hit her head against the single light bulb hanging from the ceiling; then, after mumbling two or three unintelligible curses, damning her rheumatism, the light bulb, or the two young girls — who dawdled each time they walked to the well, whispering and squealing in the dim light — the shrew would once again pick up the mop, plunge it into the lake, pull it out, wring it into a bucket, and plunge it back in again. I stood on the doorstep, thinking it would take her until the next day to drain the water. A cold, wet breeze made me shiver. I coughed. The old woman stood up and turned toward me: ‘Come help me lean the mattress against the wall.’ I did, silently. Once we were done, the woman ignored me and continued to mop the room. Before leaving the house, I asked the girls for news of my stepfather — the bastard, who’d been scrounging off my mother like a leech, was probably hanging around the bars and cheap restaurants, and wouldn’t return until late at night to play the tearful widower, getting a free dinner out of it from the neighbors. The harpy interrupted the girl talking to me, threatening to come after her with a club. ‘It’s old Aïcha’s son!’ cried out both girls as they hurried to the funeral room holding the bucket full of water. ‘What son? Aïcha only had one, and he died a long time ago!’ I walked out and leaned against the front door. I coughed even harder. When I was done, I had an irresistible urge to throw up. All I could conjure up were a few tears, and a dull anger. In the alleyway, a half-naked brat was calmly watching me; behind some shutters, Mohammed Abd el-Wahab was singing Moi qui toute ma vie n’ai jamais aimé; a newborn began to scream as if he was being poked in the bottom with a burning hot needle. My rage fed off my inability to strangle the brat, Mohammed Abd el-Wahab, or the infant. I staggered across the alley. A woman, who’d opened her door to empty a tub full of dirty laundry water, let out a stream of insults against drunks and against policemen not doing their jobs. I went to the Salé seaside cemetery. I’d remembered a plot of land with high grass, brambles, and nettles covering old, nearly erased tombstones and, next to a small koubba, several recent graves covered with tiles or simply cemented over, around which men loitered, squatting, like vultures, reciting the Quran in memory of the deceased, lying in wait for the grieving visitor who would give them a handful of figs, dates, and of course coins. When I crossed through a well-worn gap in the cemetery wall and found myself before hundreds upon hundreds of graves, I knew right away that I wouldn’t be able to find my mother’s. I wandered there, in the silence, a heavy silence despite the monotonous surf of the nearby ocean and the piercing cries of the seagulls. Butterflies, bees, flies, and beetles fluttered fearlessly around me, landing on my head or my shoulders; a man in a straw hat appeared from behind a cairn, pulling up his pants. He took a long time to zip up his fly. When I asked where my mother was buried, he gave me an odd look before responding: ‘What do you want me to tell you? It’s not like I have a hotel ledger here. There are tons of clients every day and they’re all the same. Can’t even be bothered to buy a properly carved headstone, nope, the families are too busy setting up landmarks. Look! This isn’t a cemetery, it’s a dumping ground, full of plastic bottles, rags, shards of glass, pieces of wood, even ripped boxer shorts and filth stained with menstrual blood!’ He yelled and spit on the ground at the same time. Instead of punching his pathetic face, I settled for asking him what he, the guardian of this respectable place, thought of those who shamelessly crap on the dead. I walked away, leaving him to freeze in his own rot. I wandered between the graves for a while, with no luck, and afterward I headed toward the fishermen on the rocks. And until sundown I kept my gaze on a boat that was struggling to get past the horizon. Returning to the house, I found the drunk snake swigging away, two plastic bottles of red wine wrapped in newspaper at his feet. He was yelling about ‘his’ money, the money spent on the shroud, the funeral, the food, the tolba, and the obligatory six feet of dirt; suddenly, he burst into tears. I was nauseated by this inebriated wreck of a man, by the acidic stench of bad wine combined with the stink of sewers and artichokes. I had to leave that house as soon as possible, and yet I couldn’t move, I was almost bewitched by all this disintegration. The hospital struck me as a peaceful haven. From that moment on, going back was a question of survival. I bitterly regretted where I was, staring at this man who’d been nothing but a stranger to me, a despicable person, a slug you should crush under your heel. Now, the bad wine was once again reviving the meanness in him. His eyes glistened with hatred. ‘You need cash, nowadays, to kick the bucket! You have to pay dearly to get eaten up by maggots! And his highness the gravedigger doesn’t bargain, no sir! His prices are set like at the big boulevard stores! That corpse eater sure knows how to fuck us over, you only die once, you know, and God is watching, up high, unfazed, though for that matter I wonder if He’s still there!’ The old cretin let his head fall on his chest, like it was dislocated. I figured he’d suddenly fallen asleep. I was preparing to leave when he straightened up and showered me with insults. He tried to stand up with the intention of strangling me, but his legs buckled. He collapsed in a heap and stopped moving. I spit on him and left, slamming the door shut once and for all. Outside, it was a beautiful and chilly day.”