A Many Coated Man

by Owen Marshall

  ‘Now,’ says Collett, ‘I’ll just have a flick through your file and the matters we discussed last time.’ He should have done it before Slaven came in of course. ‘It’s been a hell of a day actually,’ says Collett, ‘and it’s only morning,’ and then ah-huh, yes, yes, ah-huh, that’s right, ah-huh at intervals as he reads and he runs his thumb carefully under the edge of his tie, up and down without looking, as if testing the blade of a knife. Aldous Slaven, who has recently discussed the direction of national policy with the Prime Minister and who has become a face almost as familiar in the media as Amand Beardsley, has to sit and wait as his file is skimmed. Each time it’s the same though, isn’t it. He has high hopes of the interview, yet feels only mild humiliation and rather greater anger. Collett, this inefficient guts-ache, who patronises him, a man who won an open scholarship and the option to do medicine himself. Collett removes his hand from his tie and takes his own nose between thumb and forefinger instead. He alternates the pressure quickly from one nostril to the other, as if attempting to make bird noises. ‘How have things been with you in the meantime, in yourself that is,’ he says after considerable thought and acoustic experiment.

  In the meantime? How has he been, in the meantime, when he cannot sleep for the sound of the swell sucking through the mussels of the Lyttelton wharves, the scent of Cardew’s carnal breath, the feel of the wire as he hangs there, the flavour of the Beckley-Waite medication at the back of his mouth coming through the mint camouflage, a vision of himself returning from his great, new enterprise with the black sails hoisted. ‘I’m still wondering why I’m here,’ he says.

  ‘Aren’t we all. Wondering about ourselves, I mean. Do you know I’m supposed to ensure the well-being of over a hundred of the patients here. We’ve faced a deteriorating medical staff-patient ratio for years and now reduced provision for sabbaticals and course-leave. I should be in Vancouver now — Comparative changes in the etiology of bipolar illness and I was invited to give a plenary session paper.’

  ‘When can I leave? When can I go home and get on with my life? I have a wife and a political organisation which depends on me. I even have a profession of my own, you know.’

  ‘You never did a Wellington rally, did you. It’s a pity that. To have pulled out all the stops here, in the capital, would’ve been a most interesting thing. Wellington people are more canny of political issues than Aucklanders. It would have been an interesting thing.’

  ‘I can’t find out in the Beckley-Waite, can I.’

  ‘Quite. The thing is, Aldous, that while there’s no doubt of the underlying stability and coherence of your mental state, there is concern about the temporary, cumulative effect of the accident, the unfortunate attack, the enormous demands on your emotional resources in the public work that you’re not accustomed to. I’m amazed in fact that more extravagant symptoms haven’t been manifest.’

  ‘What has been manifest?’ Slaven thinks of Collett’s suppositions concerning a rally in the capital and imagines a great outdoor meeting on the expanse of the waterfront, or Telecom Park. The stiff wind from the harbour raising the hair of thousands of people and causing a whining feedback in the sound system. Collett and his fellows in a rather self-conscious group, come to see crowd dynamics at first hand. Slaven is cut off now, however, from an audience to command and sits before the desk of Collett’s authority.

  There is a place, looking over the Clyde Quay Boat Harbour to the city and the curve of mostly concrete wharf to it. The foreground has the bobbing, monied dreams called Wavelength, or Broker’s Rest, the shore is lined with lock-ups in Liverpudlian uniformity, each shaped like a Victorian bathing shed drawn down to the sea. The harbour is no millpond — ever — and the wind snatches each word from your mouth and flutters it away. Joggers trot from Oriental Bay past the few black and rust ships and overtake the business people also on the shortcut there. Where the old Odlin Timber and Hardware Building used to be, spirals the Naismith Computer Complex. Central is the Gotham City face of the BNZ Building with its aging cohorts stepping down to the harbour. There are a few gaps where the bewildered ground sees the sky at last, but only temporarily and only through the cross-hatch of the counter-balanced, derek cranes which are the city’s crucifixes. A steep hill to the skyline, with the remaining bush there under sentence and the buildings scaling with ever-increasing confidence.

  ‘We’ve been over this ground before,’ says Collett.

  ‘What is it that keeps me here when I want to leave?’

  ‘Do you want to see the videos again?’ Some mild degree of impatience is caught in Collett’s voice. He too experiences a sense of capture despite his training. A keen department head not much his senior blocks promotion, the golf club’s championship will never be his, he has begun to suspect that beneath the jargon of his profession will be found an equivocality and growing inconsequence. It’s not yet lunchtime, but already Collett is thinking of the end of the day.

  He and Slaven look at the video again. The interview room at admission with Slaven and Dr Eugene. The odd angles that the video seems to catch, like those of a chimpanzees’ tea party. Slaven’s face still stained with fading bruises. He is standing on a chair and rotating slowly as his own genie. ‘Do you know why you’re here, Dr Slaven?’ Eugene is saying in the warped, off-stage, sort of voice such videos produce and Slaven’s voice comes back.

  ‘I am here to raise the dead.’

  ‘I’m showing you this again as objective evidence for our concern,’ says Collett. ‘It’s part of your condition you see that ideas of conspiracy, or persecution on a minor scale, are quite likely to occur. A more structured and inter-active routine of the sort I’ve suggested has a value.’

  ‘I’m zonked out in the video of course.’ If less conscious of why he is with Collett, the on-going assessment, Slaven might argue that the man they watch on the screen isn’t him. Why should he admit to the yellow face and the King Chimpanzee crouch upon the chair, or a voice that stumbles in delivery. His own hands though, indisputably so in their damage and awkward carriage.

  ‘Come on now,’ says Collett. ‘Your own family made the request. You’re an important man these days. Bringing you to the Institute wasn’t decided lightly.’

  Slaven asks if he can have copies of his assessments so that he can send them to Garrity via Marianne Dunne and have an independent opinion. It is of course not possible in quite that way. Slaven is amazed at his powerlessness, his inability to be a greater threat to Collett, who has a quick glance at his watch and then a surreptitious one at the file of the patient he is to see after Slaven. How easily is Samson shorn. Collett offers however to pass on an appropriate report if Slaven gives him a name. He bears no particular grudge towards the CCP leader, but he is concerned with keeping to time, with the work he’s doing — could be doing — on bipolar etiology, with the solid kauri beam that he purchased during the demolition of the Lower Hutt Catholic Church and which he intends to fashion into a mantlepiece for his holiday home in the Rimutakas. Forest hideways are now just the thing. He needs some positive way to finish his interview with Slaven. ‘Over some evenings I’ve been giving your case particular thought,’ he lies. ‘It came to me that you might find it worthwhile to assist our own dentist, Dr Ovens, in his surgery.’ Brilliant, Collett hadn’t realised that he is still capable of such quick thinking. ‘I’ve been very aware of your complaints concerning boredom, but I wanted to sound you out before approaching Dr Ovens.’ Collett decides that he will sand it back himself with assiduous care and then bring up the grain with a little linseed oil, the way it had been done in the nineteenth century.

  ‘Oh, easy,’ says Slaven and holds up his hands.

  ‘There’s more than using the laser,’ says Collett, ‘however, it’s something for the future, perhaps.’ His face is oddly tight from the suppression of a yawn. ‘Is there anything else, to finish with?’

  ‘Why can’t I have visitors. More access to the outside?’

  ‘It’s part of
the depth therapy that’s been drawn up for you. You’d have to see the Director for any complaint about that.’

  Slaven makes his request, but well before he is informed of any outcome, he has more conversation with the Caretaker. ‘A corker of a night,’ says the Caretaker. Wellington has been known to have such a night. No wind at all to set the stars swinging and the scent of the Caretaker’s pipe rises undisturbed and so more pungently than usual. Slaven has his face to the window grill as if at confession and watches the car lights turning beyond the darkened courtyard. They are talking of places far away from the Beckley-Waite. Slaven recalls fishing in the southern shingle rivers. The Caretaker describes his boyhood at Ruby Bay and Mahakipawa.

  It said in the paper you had a breakdown because of emotional fatigue.’

  ‘I’m here to leave the field clear for others,’ says Slaven. ‘Nicely parked until after the elections, I suspect.’

  ‘Your wife and others are kicking up a fuss.’

  Yes, how easy to imagine Kellie, so resolute in facing the threat of things gone wrong. As she uses stakes to train the branches of a weeping cherry, she makes plans to counter the massive working of political enmity. It is her habit to wear no socks with her gardening shoes and so her hard, thin legs end in thinner ankles with the bolt of bone which secures them there set to whiten the skin. She will be mobilising the massive verbosity of Thackeray Thomas and the influence still traceable to Miles Kitson. Kellie never knows when she is beaten and perhaps you can’t be beaten, until you admit to it.

  There is still not a sign of wind, Slaven can hear only the subdued hum of the air-conditioning at a distance and the Caretaker spitting onto the cobblestones beneath. Slaven has a long breath which carries the aroma of the Caretaker’s tobacco, part direct from the pipe and part from the very lungs of the Caretaker: moist, mottled with the blood flow and swelling or sinking with a rhythm less dramatic than the heartbeat, but equally decisive.

  ‘Are you true?’ asks the Caretaker.

  ‘True?’

  ‘True. You mean what you say, but will you remember to be true to your views when the chance to do something comes. Seeing what’s wrong doesn’t take much brain, it seems to me. To know what needs to be done to fix it is a talent of sorts, but the big one is having the guts to carry it out when you have the chance.’

  ‘You make it sound like a Western,’ says Slaven.

  ‘It’s a shoot-out all right. No bullshit about it.’

  ‘Except that when you’re in the situation it’s never as clear-cut as the onlookers assume it to be. There’s obligations, compromises, half-truths and all.’

  ‘I reckon that once someone is comfortable with power that’s when it’s most likely to be abused,’ says the Caretaker, ‘but what do I know.’ He is quiet for a while and Slaven also looks into the night, says nothing. It is however, a companionable silence and now the Caretaker continues. ‘My great grandfather came back to Mahakipawa and built another weatherboard house there. He hunted Captain Cookers again despite leaving an arm at Monte Cassino, and told my father stories of the Italian women.’

  ‘I need some help,’ says Slaven. ‘Someone who will take messages to my wife and friends. An inside man.’

  ‘Yes,’ says the Caretaker. Slaven hears him spit, tap his pipe on the wall which separates them. ‘See you,’ says the Caretaker quietly.

  When he knows he is alone again, Slaven leaves the window and lies on his bed. He is so still that he can feel the slight vibration that is through all the Beckley-Waite and comes from the air-conditioning. He wonders about the unfamiliarity which is all about him and if he will survive it. Slaven has always considered himself an equable and self-sufficient person, but he hungers for the reassurance of customary, individual things. Here he is bereft of authority and achievement, of a past almost. He desires the evening light filtered through Kellie’s garden, the chimes of their wedding clock, the Van Gogh swirls in the walnut of his desk top, the shower with sides of amber glass far enough away so that he can raise his elbows. Where are the sycamore leaves and their winged seeds? Where are the comfortable friends who needn’t be impressed? Why do his most sincere principles seem suspect, trivial, in this place? The Beckley-Waite is a menagerie in which the inmates have been gathered from their habitats and those that maintain an identity hold fast to small, padding repetitions of the mind, or body. Kellie has sent him a photo and he has it by the bed. It includes even the son who has betrayed him. Slaven wakes sometimes with the elusive fragrance of warm grease and dung from his hobby sheep in the Canterbury sun, and sometimes to the receding protest songs of his great rallies — Welfare Heaven, After Tiananmen Square, Glasnost Galaxy, or the Hoihos with Half Moon Bay. The Foveaux storms are fading, baby, within the calm of Half Moon Bay.

  Amongst all that is despairingly new, Slaven seeks only the pipe and company of the Caretaker. The man from Mahakipawa with a great grandfather who went to Monte Cassino with the Maori Battalion and invested an arm there.

  See the Caretaker clean the grease trap in the kitchen of the east block. It has been negotiated that the women won’t have to do it. The Caretaker has negotiated this, because he does not feel demeaned by it and also if it’s not done well then in due time the more troublesome job as a result of the negligence, will be his. See him withdraw the heavy tray with a bale hook. In the centre is a space kept free of fat by the detergent and constant warm water — just some beef strings there, peas, chewed gristle, plastic top liners like coins, twist ties in blue and red. The rest is a polar bear’s armpit of ridged white and yellow grease which folds in a visible menu for the past two months, as the more enduring amber folds in the prehistoric fly.

  See the Caretaker — at the instant in which the model dips her bosom to the camera and the talk back host — thrust his arm strong despite his great grandfather in to the gap of the boiler flue and see the bars of soot like rasp files fall so much blacker than his hand.

  ‘Lovely,’ he says and coughs.

  See the Caretaker put the mower up while it’s still warm so that the oil flows easily from the drain hole and as he waits he cleans the spark clip to make a better contact. The very moment can’t you guess that the driver loses Slaven’s gold watch in a poker game and Dr Burlapp at Shangri La Motels shafts young Penny Ambrose while the going’s good. Yes, the very moment as you’ve realised that Ayesbury decides to accept promotion in his field to Wellington where the disasters he plans for are more likely to occur, the moment as the goose girl sleeps in a warm afternoon and the reflections of the passing water move on the pale arch of her neck.

  See the Caretaker use the carpenter’s square as nimbly as a salesman does his biro and the saw bite the particle board evenly for the sides of a doll’s house for the Director’s daughter. From redundant stock you understand. Before the dust has lightly met the floor, Miles feels a chemical boost which permits him to escape the dreary gravity of his body and gather his wits in a free orbit. All he asks of life, or death, now is that his mind be not entirely party to the decay of flesh. There is a place at the crest of Dansey’s Pass — ah, Jesus, so there is — perhaps you know it, for the wind comes up the hillside as a long Pacific swell and the tall snow tussock flails beneath. There’s not a tree. Not one tree as far as you can see, just the snow tussock plumed before the wind and a catch in all your breathing as you watch.

  See the Caretaker fit the speakers for the dignitary’s address in the corner of the large Waitangi Lounge. He lays the cable to the skirting board and attaches it in places with squashtac so that it can’t be caught up in people’s feet. The drapes of therapeutic yellow shiver at the windows as the Caretaker checks the mike. ‘Lovely,’ he says and it echoes from the panels of the empty room. In the time it takes to die away the entreaty man has his diagnosis confirmed and Natalie Lyons in the suburb of Johnsonville determines she is born to be a poet.

  Miles decides that he’s useless now, had it. He has blamed age and illness, but they haven’t stopped others
from worthwhile involvement. Perhaps the thing is that he’s become a believer in futility, and loss of resolve is the first step to death itself. He finds it difficult to feel passion for this rather than that, for this woman rather than that man being elected to some post or other. Everything that doesn’t immediately concern himself has become the same size, assumed a neutral aspect. I’m journeying back into myself, he thinks, and have become more avid for a slice of gruyere cheese with lunch than the salvation of humankind.

  See the Caretaker setting the poison trail for the rats which don’t officially exist and stacking three hundred toilet rolls in a cupboard which smells of marmalade and horse sweat. See him adroit on the fork-lift tractor as he trundles the pig food drums to the ramp. The slops have a merry oscillation, the drums groan as they touch, at the very moment that Slaven sighs at the pock marked ceiling and Mrs Wick’s canary takes its life in its wings once too often and flies in the face of a Mack. ‘That’ll do,’ says the Caretaker, almost loud enough to be heard by the bald-headed man with tramping boots who is warming down with the aid of exercises on the wrought iron fence.

  Slaven is allowed one outside, sightless call each week. It is the judicious decision of his doctors that more will jeopardise his cure. Slaven looks forward to each enormously and at the same time is upset by it, as a new school boarder is tremulous when ringing home — the real horrors only hinted at. The reaction confirms for him the pressure he is under; the bobbing of his psyche at the mooring of his control. But he says nothing of that to Kellie, having no doubt that the calls are overheard and could be used as snares against him, and there are factors which make indignant challenge of his kidnap more difficult. Imagine the media with his admitted oddities and the part of his own son in the committal. A certain amount of subtlety would be needed against the forces which were utilising the Beckley-Waite.