I stagger in from the pub, roll a joint, get some Cohen on the stereo. Open a fifth of Bukowski. Now, now I am home. Here with Cohen and Bukowski, Waits and Genet, Nick Cave, Bill Burroughs – this is where I live, here is where I belong, horizontal in the gutter of intentional squalor, desperate to ingratiate myself with those who have lived in the shadows, in the margins, in italics, in extremis.
Cohen and God have this much in common: I am vaguely aware that I owe them something significant for a gift they did not necessarily intend me to receive and I am helpless in the face of my inability to repay them.
I suck down a lungful of pure Thai, feel it blossom like ink in water. Press play on the stereo. Is This What You Wanted lurches to its feet, Cohen’s voice that of a cancer patient girding his loins for yet another blast of chemo. The voice is the very articulation of humanity: a monotonous procession of shackled grace notes hinting at the impossible wish to negate the contradiction of consciousness, which is to be alive and still hope to be somehow pure.
Cassie and I bring her niece to feed the swans. The morning is bright, warm and sunny, the river full and gleaming, sinuous. Cassie’s niece is named for the heroine of a Russian novel, as are all three of her mother’s daughters. With all the impertinent innocence of those who have yet to learn that the world demands on pain of persecution a homogeneity of signifier and signified, Anna calls the swans ‘Pollys’. Innocence is yet another manifestation of purity, and Anna’s high-pitched squeals, as she throws shreds of bread to the impervious Pollys, are all the more delightful for the impending pollution of that innocence. Innocence, purity, beauty and life evoke the same sensation in the aware observer: awe shot through with a frisson of impending catastrophe, like freshly squeezed orange juice cut with the blade of an early morning vodka.
But where are we? We are not standing on the bank of the Garavogue, thrilling to the sharp, sweet scent of cut grass. We are not half-blinded by the glare of an early morning sun reflecting off a sinuous river. We are not thrilling to the impending disaster that attends all manifestations of beauty, purity and innocence. There are no Pollys; no nieces named for Russian heroines; no Cassie. We are at home, where we belong, in the gutter of intentional squalor.
How then did we manage to confuse Anna and her Pollys with Cohen and Bukowski? What is this perversity that demands we undermine, puncture, taint and torture? Perhaps it is because they only make sense when juxtaposed with repulsive squalor that we tattoo our juvenile graffiti across those lushly peachy buttocks, Purity and Beauty.
But where are we, really?
The soundtrack is that of Cohen’s New Skin for the Old Ceremony but can we depend on soundtracks to root our perceptions of reality? Surely the point of art is to diffuse reality, to make it more acceptable, perhaps even digestible. Is it possible to slum it with Cohen and Bukowski and still inhale the scent of cut grass, to hear unpunctured bubbles of childish glee float away across the river on the early morning air?
Of this I know as much as you. There are times when the only rational answer is ‘Maybe’. In an infinite universe, anything is possible, including God.
New Skin finishes with Leaving Green Sleeves just as the windows begin to grey behind the curtains, just as countless nieces named for Russian heroines wake in anticipation of feeding the Pollys, just as countless millions rise from their beds with all the urgency of Cohen’s voice, those millions whose day-to-day existence is a relentless course of emotional chemotherapy, those billions who do not have the luxury of deciding whether or not to slum it, to choose squalor over beauty, to lie horizontal in the gutters or recline lazily on the plush cushions of comfort.
The only honest question is this: Do you choose pain or oblivion?
The only sane, reasonable answer is: Maybe.
A brief list of creatures who have repeatedly survived the mass extinctions that claimed up to 80% of all living material:
Sharks;
Roaches;
Spiders;
Snakes;
Crocodiles;
Bacterium.
None of the above are prospective Teddy Bear material. None of them lend themselves to the kind of cuddly anthromorphism that might inspire a young child to take a giant stuffed roach, say, to bed at night. A croc is a croc, even in Peter Pan. A snake is a snake, even in The Jungle Book. The merchandising spin-offs to Dreamworks’ Shark Tale failed to meet expectations.
True survivors inspire fear, revulsion and disgust. Thus, this: our mission is to inspire fear, revulsion and disgust. So be it.
My line for today is, Nothing could be decently hated except eternity (Giuseppe Lampedusa / The Leopard).
The one-legged mechanic returns. While he was away he signed up for health insurance, which allows him to request a private room. This may or may not be a green light. This may or may not be the old man waving a white flag. This may or may not be a red flag to yours truly, I, Karlsson.
A veritable rainbow arcs out across the hospital. A spectrum of possibilities presents itself for examination, x-ray and dissection. Each must be investigated. We cannot afford to draw hasty conclusions here. A man’s life is at stake.
I wheel my cart into his room. He appears to have shrunk and hardened, as if to ball himself into a fist to shake at the world, charged with adrenaline and poised for fight or flight.
The eyes are shelled peas, his pallor faintly olive, like liver left out too long. He is glad to see me.
‘Ah, the writer.’ Alone in the private room he has removed his dentures and so his mouth wobbles loosely when he speaks. ‘How’s that story coming on, son?’
‘It didn’t work out.’ I shrug. ‘In any other circumstance I’d say it was good to see you again.’
He grins ruefully. ‘What can you do, son? The mind thinks one thing and the body goes ahead and does what it wants to do.’
I allow a respectful moment to pass. ‘Has it spread?’
He taps his knee with the butt of his palm. ‘They don’t know. They say I should be showing signs of progress by now and they have me back in for tests.’
‘What is it they’re looking for?’
He smiles, wanly. ‘I’m probably best off not knowing.’
This is a hospital accountant’s wet dream: a relatively healthy patient who possesses insurance and is unconcerned as to the outcome of an indefinitely prolonged series of expensive examinations.
‘Want me to ask?’ I say. ‘If you change your mind, I can probably find out.’
He shakes his head. ‘No news is good news, son.’
He sticks with the peach yoghurt and Dairy Milk, reaches for the little battered leather purse on the bedside locker. I wave him off. ‘Consider it a welcome-back gift.’
‘Appreciate it, son.’
I wheel my cart out of his room. The corridor is ablaze with red rags, green lights, white flags. The blood pounds in my ears. Tomorrow I bomb Cambodia back to the Stone Age.
Maybe.
‘Remind me,’ Billy says, ‘that we need to get a letter from the old man. For Cassie, like.’
‘You’re going to bump him off?’
‘I don’t know. I like him,’ he says. ‘Being honest, I don’t want him to go.’
‘Even if he wants to?’
‘That’s his choice. But I don’t have to fall in with it.’
‘True.’
He sips his cappuccino, leaving a little frothy moustache on his upper lip.
‘Listen,’ I say, ‘about the whole blowing up the hospital thing.’
‘What about it?’
‘Well, my books generally come in around the seventy thousand words mark. We’re nearly halfway there already and we still haven’t come up with a plausible plan.’
‘Leave it with me,’ he says.
‘I’ve been leaving it with you.’
‘Yeah …’ He tugs at the tip of his nose, then discovers the creamy cappuccino moustache and wipes it away. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘how would you feel if I went ahead and wrote that up myself?’
‘Sound, no problem. Just so I know there’s something happening.’
‘What I mean is, I write those sections up, then deliver them to you when we’re finished.’
‘When we’re finished?’
‘The rest of the book, like.’
‘What’re you talking about, Billy?’ The stress starts the dull pain burning in my chest again, but I’ve left the Gaviscon in the house. ‘The whole point of redrafting is to blow up the hospital. I can’t write around that not knowing what you’re saying. It’d be a train-wreck.’
‘Call it an experiment,’ he says.
‘In wrecking trains, yeah. You and me, a character and a writer, sitting out in the backyard drinking coffee – that’s not experimental enough for you?’
‘I hear you, man. But …’
‘But what?’
He refuses to make eye contact, and suddenly I realise what the problem is. ‘You think I’m going to steal your idea? You think I’m going to plagiarise you?’
‘You’ve never come up with anything like it before,’ he says defensively.
‘Leaving the ethics of it aside,’ I say, ‘and just for a second saying I steal your idea, what’s to stop you pulling another trick like putting Lily in the shed? Or maybe dropping her in the pond this time?’
His eyes widen. ‘You think I put Lily in the shed?’
‘I didn’t do it. And Aileen damn sure didn’t do it.’
‘You think I’d harm a baby?’
‘That’s cute, coming from a guy who wants to blow up a hospital.’
He stares wordlessly. Then he shakes his head, disappointed. ‘It’s fiction, man,’ he says quietly. ‘I told you before, we’re making this up. Maybe you need a break or something, get away on holiday, buy yourself some perspective.’
‘So who put Lily in the shed?’ I persist. ‘There’s no way she could have crawled all the way out there.’
He shrugs, then gathers together his notebooks and pen, his papers, and packs them away in his satchel. ‘You’re a fucking nutcase,’ he says, getting up. He touches his fore and middle fingers to his lips, then waggles them at me. ‘Give Lily a kiss from Uncle Billy.’
Then he slouches away down the garden, crunching along the gravel path, and disappears behind the rhododendron.
Three days pass with no sign of Billy. I believe he is sulking and will return when he realises he needs me more than he needs his self-pity.
After a week, though, I start to wonder if he’s ever coming back.
This leaves me contemplating a half-finished redraft, which is akin to going to work in my underwear for the rest of my life. Who wants to be found dead in only their underwear?
Aileen gets back from the doctor’s with the test results.
‘Asthma,’ she says.
‘Shit. That young?’
‘She asked me how often we dust and hoover. I said it was every week or so.’ This is a lie. The C-section means Aileen can’t hoover or dust high areas, which in turn means the house hasn’t been dusted since Lily was born. ‘And she asked if either of us smoke.’
‘You know I only smoke upstairs.’
‘Doesn’t matter. She says anywhere in the house is bad news.’
‘So it’s my fault?’
‘It’s not a matter of blame, it’s how we can help her now. And you either stop smoking or only smoke outside. You know which one I’d prefer,’ she adds.
‘I can’t write without smoking. You know this.’
‘Then you’ll have to convert the shed or something. Or stop writing.’
‘You’re serious.’
‘A baby with asthma, Dec. That’s serious.’
‘Okay, yeah. I hear you. I’ll take a look at the shed and see if it’ll work.’ We both know it won’t. ‘Listen,’ I say, ‘I’ve had some bad news.’ I tell her that an old school-friend has died.
‘That’s terrible,’ she says. ‘Who?’
‘You wouldn’t have known him. We fell out of touch years ago.’
‘What did he die of?’
‘They’re being a bit vague, actually. I’m getting the idea it might have been suicide.’
‘No.’ She watches my eyes. ‘Are you going home for the funeral?’
‘I’m thinking about it. Would you mind?’
‘Today?’
‘This evening, yeah. I’ll just scoot down and do the necessaries tomorrow morning, show face. I’ll be back by the afternoon.’
‘You don’t want us to go with you?’
‘It’s hardly worth the hassle. Will you be okay with Lily on your own?’
‘Of course.’ She’s relieved. ‘I might even go down and stay with Mum and Dad for the night.’
‘That’ll be nice for them.’
‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m grand. I hadn’t spoken to the guy in years. But I really should go.’
She nods. ‘Billy the Kidder won’t be turning up here, will he?’
‘I doubt it. If he does just tell him I’m in Sligo for a funeral, I’ll see him the day after.’
‘I don’t want him in the house,’ she says.
‘Don’t worry about that,’ I say. ‘He’s like a vampire, he needs to be invited in.’
The following morning I’m up at the hospital early, heading for the smoking area where the porters congregate for their pre-work toke.
Billy joins me as I leave the parking lot, appearing from nowhere to fall in beside me.
‘Apology accepted,’ he says with a leer.
I glance quickly around.
‘What’s wrong?’ he taunts. ‘Ashamed to be seen with me in public?’
‘I thought you’d been arrested,’ I say as we turn up towards the hospital entrance.
‘Arrested? But the old man hasn’t ––’
‘Not for him. For your supervisor.’
He laughs out loud, then shakes his head in mock dismay. ‘Here,’ he says, digging into his satchel and coming up with some printed pages. ‘Read this first, then that. I’ll meet you on the fifth floor in twenty minutes. I need to see Frankie before I clock in.’
Good news, people: my supervisor does not die in a car wreck. He does not apply the brakes too sharply as he underestimates a tight bend, and so does not experience the gut-sucking horror of impending Nothingness.
He lives. O joy, O rapture, etc.
Bear with me, people. Apply logic at all times. What is to be gained from the death of my supervisor? More importantly, what do I lose? I gain the title of prime suspect and lose anonymity.
Besides, there’s no percentage in the breaking-in of a new supervisor all over again. Plus the guy already drives like a chimp with three bananas. It’s only a matter of time before he takes himself out.
Be aware, at all times, that words are only tools. Do not be lulled by apparent patterns. Resist the seductive blandishments of cozily sequential icons. History has its own agenda.
I read pacing up and down the long corridor outside the elevators on the fifth floor. The tension I’d been feeling, half-expecting to be picked up as Billy’s accomplice when I arrived at the hospital, quickly dissipates, replaced by a gradually mounting excitement, a quivering anticipation.
Billy has been a busy boy.
The hospital is an imposing edifice. Technically speaking it is two imposing edifices, connected to one another by a long glass corridor.
The first building belongs to an era of tuberculosis, vaulted ceilings and Cuban crisis. The second is a more contemporary construction. It boasts an excess of glass coupled with manifold variations on a theme of polished surface, an essential element of the contemporary experience.
Shop windows. Car mirrors. Reflective tiles. Buffed floors. Aluminium frames. Plate glass. It is possible to walk from one end of a modern city to the other without once losing sight of yourself. This may or may not be a sop to the multitudes wracked with doubts as to their very existence. It may or may not be to facilitate the raging narcissism that has colonised the soul of modern society. I project, therefore I am.
These days we stare into the Medusa’s eyes and see only our own reflection. Already bored, our eyes glaze over before we have time to be transfixed.
The hospital was built on a hill overlooking the town. Its domination of its environment presupposes the need for justification. Once upon a time, churches were built on hills too. This may or may not be a coincidence. This may or may not be because it is hospitals that today provide the chimera of hope and consolation, or because people today lack the imagination to diagnose spiritual ailments. This may or may not be because people refuse to believe that a service provided free can have worth and/or value.
It may be time for libraries and churches to start charging admission. Thus people will come to believe they are missing out on an experience of worth and/or value. Pews will overflow. Vestibules will become as clogged as A&E departments. Penitents will throng the book-lined aisles.
I go searching for the architect’s blueprints of the hospital plans. In theory this should be a simple operation but I am hampered by the fact that I cannot march down to City Hall and request a copy of the plans. I am hamstrung by the need for anonymity. Instead I try searching my old friend and inert tool, the internet. This requires time and imagination, but lo and behold, etc.
I download said blueprints, print, frame and hang them. Said blueprints are art in that they are as aesthetically pleasing as they are functionally effective. They convey specific information that allows the mind to configure a 3-D image. The reverse is also true, reading from the aesthetic to the functional, in that it can be as enjoyable to see how an edifice was constructed as it is to contemplate the finished project.
I while away many pleasant hours staring at the blueprints. I come to know them intimately. Eventually we share our dirty little secrets. I tell the blueprints of my ambition to destroy the building they represent. The blueprints, locked away in a dark and dusty basement below City Hall, denied the glory the building commands, whispers to me of its bunker.
This bunker, it whispers, is a vacuum-sealed chamber. It was incorporated into the design of the larger public buildings built during the era of tuberculosis, vaulted ceilings and Cuban crisis. Not a lot of people know that, it whispers, but then not a lot of people were intended to find shelter there when the first mushroom clouds began to darken the horizon.
Survival has never been a right, I tell the blueprints. Survival has always been a matter of hard-earned elitism.
I take the framed blueprints of the hospital down off the wall. I scan said blueprints intently. I find said bunker, an underground monument to the humility that presumed we were worth the waste of a good warhead. It lies to the rear of the hospital, built into the hill beneath the morgue and situated close to a support pillar. A ventilation shaft ascends at a sixty-degree angle to emerge on the hillside behind the hospital.
This is interesting. This is promising.
As I push my cart along the glass corridor that connects the hospital’s buildings, I am reminded that in ancient Corinth two temples stood side-by-side: one to Violence, the other to Necessity.
If this succeeds I want to be tried as a war criminal alongside Henry Kissinger.
My line for today is, If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied (Corinthians 15:19).
I’m folding up the sheaf of paper, tucking it into my back pocket, when a matron comes squeak-squeaking along the corridor to the bank of elevators. She presses a button for the ground floor, then glances across at me and makes a production number of looking at her watch.
‘Shouldn’t you be in uniform, Mr Karlsson?’ she says. ‘It’s already ten after.’ She tut-tuts. ‘Once you’re properly attired,’ she says, ‘I’d be very grateful if you’d come back up here and remove the sharps bags. They’re piling up in there. I don’t think they’ve been cleared out for three days.’
‘Yes ma’am.’
I get back home around 5.30. Lily, unfortunately, is sleeping off her afternoon feed. She lies on her back with her fists bunched tight and raised above her head, a tiny comatose champion.
‘How’s my peachy pumpkin dumpling?’ I whisper. But she’s not listening.
Or maybe she can’t hear me above the wheezing of her little chest.
‘How’d it go?’ Aileen says when I come back through and flop down on the couch.
‘As well as can be expected. A weird thing, though. I went up to the hospital looking for Billy and got mistaken for Karlsson.’
‘Seriously?’
‘This matron, she told me to take out some bags of sharps. Told me I should be in uniform.’
‘She didn’t mistake you for Billy?’
‘No, Karlsson.’
Aileen points the remote control at the TV and flicks through the channels. ‘That is weird.’
‘Did you get a chance to catch up on the latest redrafts?’ I say.
She jerks a thumb over her shoulder, where a neat pile of clothes sits on the ironing board. ‘What do you think?’
‘Maybe tonight,’ I say.
‘Tonight,’ she says, settling on a Coronation Street re-run of an episode she missed the night before, ‘I’m hitting the town with Lucy. I’ve already expressed two bottles, they’re in the fridge.’
‘But I’ve a heap of stuff I need to ––’
‘Hey, Hemingway? One more word and I’ll open up the ironing basket. Your peachy pumpkin dumpling needs some daddy-time. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘Think positive,’ she says. ‘At least I don’t expect you to wear a uniform. Oh, and there’s those.’ She toes a pile of invitation cards and stamped envelopes on the coffee table. ‘They all need your Herbie Hancock.’
‘John Hancock.’
‘Whatever. The christening is the 26th of next month, so get them signed and posted by tomorrow morning.’
‘Yes ma’am.’
© Declan Burke, 2008
