Night Theater

by Vikram Paralkar

  “But then, Saheb, how do we know what to do? How do we know we’re not doing something wrong tonight?”

  “We cannot know,” said the surgeon, surprised at the bitterness in his own voice. “We cannot know. That’s the most difficult thing about this, and not just tonight. We hope that before we die we’ll find some final truth, a magic bulb to switch on and make all the wrong paths disappear. Until then, all we can do is walk through thorns and try not to trip.”

  “Then why not leave it to fate, Saheb? Whatever will happen, let it happen. Why try to change it?”

  There was an ache in his calf. He was tempted to remain seated on the rock and indulge it; rest while he ruminated on the questions the girl kept tossing at him. But she was too young. Maybe she thought her doubts original, and maybe someday he would have time enough to explain to her just how ancient they were, and how unanswerable.

  But now it was almost eleven. He raised himself with his palms anchored on his thighs, straightening his knees first and then his spine. He was an old man now. His reluctant bones had to be prodded into motion.

  They were at the very edge of a circle that the clinic lights had carved from the darkness. Beyond it, a cloud blotted out the moon. A few selfish fireflies idled in the grass, doing nothing to illuminate the shape moving up the hillock. It wasn’t an animal, that was all the surgeon could tell. And it wasn’t on a bicycle.

  He pressed a finger to his lips. “Shhh . . .”

  The pharmacist raised her head, confused, and then she too saw. For a moment she sat there, as frozen as he. Then she said, “I’ll hide them,” and headed to the clinic.

  EIGHT

  NO, IT WAS TOO absurd. That he could even think it was evidence enough of his slipping mind. Why would an angel appear in this way? He could materialize from the air, spy on them through walls. He wouldn’t trudge up with this slow, ominous walk.

  But then why was he himself clinging to his little limbus of light? If it was some villager—and who else could it possibly be?—surely it’d be better to stop him as far from the clinic as possible. And if it were indeed the angel, what shield would the dim light provide? Yet the surgeon found himself unable to step forward. It wasn’t fear, he insisted. And what if it were? The hour was late, after all. Why not remain where he had a sliver of an advantage against some madman with a knife?

  Hushed words were uttered behind him. A door closed, soft and slow as the creak of a tree. The angle from which the visitor was approaching wouldn’t allow him to see directly into the clinic. For that at least, the surgeon was thankful.

  “Doctor Saheb.”

  The voice was slurred, and the surgeon instantly recognized it. A mortal, and the basest of them all. His blood rose into his temples.

  “What are you doing here? This late?”

  The man was closer now, his rosaceous nose entering the light before the rest of him did. He was taking one step at a time, as if confirming that the first knee wouldn’t betray him before he trusted the next with his weight.

  “My leg, Doctor Saheb.”

  “What happened to your leg?”

  “Blood, so much blood.”

  The man’s dhotar was folded to the middle of his thighs, and his shins were coated with mud. He had the breeze at his back, and even at this distance, the surgeon could smell the stench. Alcohol and vomit, and everything else about him.

  “What blood? I don’t see anything?”

  “Look, Saheb.”

  “Stand right there. Don’t come any closer.”

  The surgeon twisted his neck back. The corridor was empty. The girl had managed to conceal them in time. The man walked past him, made for the clinic. The surgeon considered reaching out and grabbing him, but the very thought of touching the drunkard made his nerves curl.

  “Go home. It’s late, I don’t have time for you now.”

  The man started wailing at a grating pitch. “Doctor Saheb, the blood, do something. I’m dying.”

  “Quiet. What nonsense is this? It’s just a little scratch. Go home.”

  “I won’t go back. Why should I return to her? She threw me out, at this time, this late, Doctor Saheb. What kind of wife—”

  On any other night, all the surgeon would have had to do was cup his mouth and yell in the direction of the village, and a few strong farmers would come and muscle the man away. But now the dog was already at the clinic entrance.

  “What do you want? Money? Here, take this and go.”

  The man studied the two notes the surgeon had pulled from his wallet, grasped at them. His hand missed a few times, and then he let a wave of martyrdom wash over him.

  “Don’t want it, Doctor Saheb. What’ll I do with money? Money is for educated people like you. Not for us. We’ll stay this way, live and die in the ditch.”

  The man was actually bleeding, the surgeon could now see. There was a cut on his calf.

  “Sit right here, on the grass. I’ll bandage you up. Do you promise you’ll leave after that?”

  “Yes, Saheb, I’ll go, I swear on my mother’s ashes, my father’s ashes. They’re both dead. I swear on them, I’ll go.” With these words, the man lurched into the corridor.

  The surgeon scrambled ahead, squeezed past the drunkard. The doors to the pharmacy, the back room, and the operating room were all closed—hopefully bolted from the inside so that if the man fell into them, they wouldn’t fly open. Only the door of the consultation room was ajar. The surgeon confirmed with a quick look that no one was hiding there.

  The man collapsed on a bench. The surgeon had to bite back the urge to kick him out, physically toss him on the gravel. Who cared if he broke a bone or two? How could the dead, with their corpse-like bodies, smell less revolting than this living creature?

  Under the lights, the gash in the man’s calf was more visible. The surgeon considered just bandaging it and sending the man away, but that wouldn’t work. The bandage would soak through, and then he’d be back.

  “You’ll need a few stitches. Don’t move. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Saheb.” There were red cobwebs around the man’s irises.

  All the supplies were in the operating room. The surgeon walked up to the door and pushed the handle, but it was latched from the inside.

  “I’ll check here,” he said in a raised voice, as if to no one in particular, and tapped his knuckle softly on the doorframe.

  The latch on the inside clicked. He looked back at the bench. The man was still there, his leg stretched in front of him, the rest of his body bent sideways like a sack of grain. He didn’t seem to have noticed. The surgeon stepped in and latched the door shut behind him.

  The pharmacist was there, sweat beading her brow along the line of her hair. “Where are they?” he mouthed, and she pointed toward the back room.

  The lamps were all switched off, and only the ghost of the moon seeped in through the thick, frosted windows. In the near dark, he put on a pair of gloves and picked out a needle and thread, some cotton and gauze and tape, a bottle of iodine, a small tray. He also picked up his very last vial of lidocaine. Not out of compassion, it had to be said. He just couldn’t afford to have a screaming man in his clinic now. The trays around the operating table were as he’d left them—the instruments, the spleen, the clots, all there under a blood-drenched drape. Drained of color by the moon, the drape glistened in silvers and grays. It was terrible to leave the pharmacist in the dark in a room like this, but what else could he do?

  She didn’t need to be told. She flattened herself against the wall as he opened the door.

  The drunkard had wandered from his bench. He was at the door of the back room, trying to rattle it open.

  “What are you doing? I told you to sit there, didn’t I?” He grabbed the man’s shoulder, pushed him down the corridor, forced him back where he was.

  The man was blabbering. “I was trying to find you, Saheb. Didn’t know where you went.”

  The surgeon knelt down and placed his tray on th
e floor. He’d forgotten the forceps. With his gloved fingers, he bundled a piece of cotton, soaked it with iodine, and swabbed the wound. He then drew the lidocaine into the syringe.

  “This may burn a little.” He guided the needle into the edge of the wound.

  “Oh, God,” the man cried out when he was pierced. “Save me, it hurts so much, I’m dying, I’m dying.”

  The surgeon ground his jaw. He’d seldom felt such rage. The man yelled as the surgeon stuck the needle in at one angle and then another, into the right edge of the wound and then the left, emptying the lidocaine into the wound. Then the surgeon raised his face to the drunkard and roared, “Shut up or I’ll smash your teeth in.”

  The man cowered under him, muttered something incoherent. A black crust coated his gums—the foul residue of tobacco he’d been chewing on for god knew how long. The surgeon felt the urge to retch.

  But the lidocaine worked. The man didn’t even notice when the suturing started. It was a pity there was no drug to paralyze his tongue.

  “She’s a whore. She lets anyone enter her. Nothing but a whore. I should charge the neighbors—fifty rupees to look, another fifty to touch between her thighs, another fifty to spread them and—”

  “Don’t you have any shame, talking about your wife this way? You could search for ten lifetimes and never find someone like her. You beat her every night, and still she stays with you, I have no idea why. Any other woman would have returned to her parents by now.”

  “Her parents are dead too. All gone. Ashes, Doctor Saheb, it’s what everyone becomes in the end. No difference between a man and the wood they use to burn him. And I’m telling you, I never touched a bottle before my marriage. Ask anyone, ask the sarpanch if you want. All of this, it was only after she—she came to my house, the witch. She did this to me, turned me into this.”

  The surgeon tried to block him out.

  “Don’t want this life, nothing of it. Better to be dead than to live like this.”

  “Stop talking and let me do my work.”

  “I’m telling you, Saheb, I have a bottle of rat poison. After I go back tonight, I’m going to drink it, drink the whole bottle. Don’t want this life.”

  The man had done this thrice already, his theatrical attempts at suicide. He’d swallowed some DDT the last time, then walked to the village square to beat his chest and announce it to one and all. They’d brought him to the clinic with his beard white with powder, more DDT outside his mouth than inside it. But the surgeon did what he had to do. He put a tube down the man’s nose, washed out the contents of his stomach, pumped it full of charcoal powder to absorb any remaining poison. The man then vomited all over the clinic, and the smell took forever to wash out of the mattresses. The same farce now, on this of all possible nights. This imbecile threatening to take his pathetic life while the dead waited in the next room for a resurrection. And it was half past eleven already.

  “If you want to kill yourself, why are you here at all? Why do you want me to stitch up this scratch? Just go home and drink your poison. And lock yourself in your room so that no one brings you here half-alive again. I hope that when they find you, your bones are as cold as ice, and you’re gone, once and for all.”

  These words penetrated even the drunkard’s thick, intoxicated skull. His eyes opened wide and he slumped back, finally silent.

  The surgeon finished stitching the wound and knotted the ends of the sutures together. Not a drop of blood squeezed through them. He rolled a bandage around the calf and shin and taped it in place.

  “Up.” He lifted the man without taking off his gloves, steered him out.

  The drunkard pushed up against the wall, tried to slither out of his grip. “I know who you’re hiding.”

  Had the man seen? “What are you talking about?”

  “What will the villagers think, Saheb? It’s not right.”

  “Just say what you have to say or get out.”

  “Does it suit you, someone of your position? With that girl? I saw her run in and hide. Look at your age, look at hers. And she’s married, too.”

  The surgeon felt fury burn his throat. “Go. And if you ever come back, I swear I’ll smash every single bone in your body.”

  The drunkard showed real fear now. Perhaps the alcohol was wearing off. He almost lost his footing on the two short steps and limped his way down the hillock, turning back once or twice but not stopping. The surgeon stood at the clinic entrance, arms crossed, as though he were the keeper of some forbidden cave.

  “He’s gone. You can come out now.”

  The dead emerged in a huddle from the back room. The boy clutched at his mother, shrinking behind her when the surgeon looked at him. The surgeon couldn’t help his irritation at this. What did they expect him to do, keep up some charade of benevolence all night? There were limits. He wasn’t a saffron-clad monk. If they couldn’t put up with the way he did things, they were free to leave.

  Yes, he remembered now, he’d been talking to the pharmacist when the bastard interrupted them. She hadn’t appeared from the operating room.

  He pushed the door open. She was clearing away the trays. She’d already gathered the soiled drapes, and was emptying some of the remains into a plastic bag.

  “You should go home and sleep,” he said with a dismissive wave.

  “No, Saheb. You working through the night alone? What will my husband say when he returns? I’ll sterilize the instruments.”

  NINE

  WHATEVER TRIUMPH THE SURGEON had let himself feel after mending the boy’s injury was completely dulled now, partly by his lingering ire over the drunkard, more at the prospect of facing the woman’s wounds. He felt a deep resentment against all creation for putting him in this position. Why had the neck been designed this way in the first place? All those vessels, so close to the skin. Countless necks had been slit since man sharpened his first stone, but each new one came into existence as flimsy as the last.

  The woman’s odhni hid her injuries, and the three appeared deceptively whole, a family like any other. Apart from the pallor of their skin, there was no hint of their trials and migrations, or of the strangeness of their bodies. When he said, “Come,” the woman patted down her hair and adjusted her clothes. Even in death, it seemed, the habits of life were not entirely lost.

  “The two of you should stay here,” he said to the teacher and his son.

  The woman tried to pull her fingers from her son’s grip, but the boy kept grabbing at them, higher and higher, tugging at her hand, her wrist, her forearm, first one side, then the other. The teacher tried to restrain him, and the boy resisted, but neither made a sound. Father and son grappled in pantomime until they were locked, larger fists imprisoning smaller ones as though doubled in prayer.

  The pharmacist wasn’t done clearing the operating room, so the surgeon walked to the entrance and surveyed the hillock for loiterers. Nothing he could do would jeopardize the woman’s life beyond what was already fated, he told himself. It was tempting to adopt the pharmacist’s way of thinking about the world and everything in it. Whatever would happen would happen, she’d said . . . or something similar, some aphorism of endless absolving circularity.

  Without turning, he said to the dead: “This will take at least a few hours. You’ll have to be patient.” He cast one last look outside. There was no sign of the drunkard, or the pharmacist’s husband, or anyone else.

  In the operating room, he now became aware of another astonishing aspect of the visitors’ physiology, if that word could even be applied to the bodily mechanisms of the dead. Before the first surgery, he’d listened to the boy’s chest with his stethoscope, more out of custom than with any specific intention, for what changes would he have made to his plan had his findings been abnormal? And abnormal they certainly were. The boy had no heartbeat, which, given that there was no blood to flow, wasn’t particularly unexpected. It would’ve been more startling if the familiar lub dub, lub dub had reached his ears. But the boy breathed, an
d his chest rose and fell. The stethoscope confirmed the steady tide blowing through the maze of his airways. Now, what need could there be for respiration when there was no blood to be oxygenated? No obvious answer presented itself, and since the boy’s injuries involved only his abdomen, the surgeon abandoned that line of questioning and proceeded with the surgery.

  But in the case of the woman, due to the nature and location of her injuries, he was forced to give the mechanics of her breathing greater attention. Her larynx was cut in such a way that there was a good chance her vocal cords had been damaged. And the cut had definitely produced an air leak, a direct connection between the inside and outside of her throat. How could she possibly speak with such an injury?

  This led him to an extraordinary discovery—a phenomenon every bit as bizarre as her silent heart. Her voice appeared to form not in her larynx but in the back of her mouth, somewhere in the space behind her tonsils—from empty air as best he could tell. How that could possibly be, he hadn’t a clue. Her speech was unconnected to her lungs and her voice box, and though her words were coordinated with her breathing, they didn’t seem to depend on it in any way. He found that she could, with little effort, overcome the innate habits of her body and speak without interruption throughout both inhalation and exhalation. And, astonishingly, even with her breath held.

  The anatomy of the dead was incomprehensible. Some of their bodily systems worked, others didn’t, but it was all just enough to allow them to impersonate the living. If his old EKG machine hadn’t been roasted by a power surge, he would’ve taken tracings from their chests. What scrawls might the box have produced? Waves and peaks? Flat, monotonous lines? Or something else? Patterns, letters, perhaps; messages in some ancient, unbreakable code. Equations containing the deepest enigmas of death. He would keep the tracings running endlessly, paper every wall with EKG strips. Years, perhaps decades later, when his mind had become weak and every memory doubtful, he could return to read the chronicle of these hours plastered from floor to ceiling. Perhaps then he would see everything more clearly.