Janette Turner Hospital Collected Stories (3 page)

“Dellis, for God's sake, what are you doing here? It's almost midnight.”

“They were fighting at home again, and I couldn't stand it. I brought something for you.”

She held out a very perfect Cooktown orchid. Somebody's prize bloom, stolen.

“Come inside, out of the rain,” I said vaguely, listening to the lines from Eliot that fluted in my head – fragments and images half-remembered. I had to take down the book, so I showed her the passage:

‘You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;

‘They called me the hyacinth girl.'

–
Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,

Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not

Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither

Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,

Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

“Dellis,” I said, as (teacherly, motherly) I combed out her wet tangled hair, “for me, you will always be the hyacinth girl.”

“Poetry!”
she sniffed. And then: “What do hyacinths look like?”

“I don't know. I imagine they look like Cooktown orchids.”

The Inside Story

Genuflection can be disturbing. I noticed the oddly suppliant man when I signed in, his boot soles gawping at the public while someone attended to his ankles. His knees were crammed together on a stackaway chair, his locked hands rested on its back. God damn you, you sons of bitches, he doubtless prayed.

These things upset me. I was not at all suited to the job, but I got by with endless inner dialogue and a lunatic devotion to curriculum. After the sign-in, the identicheck, and the various double doors, I asked my class: “Do they always hobble you like that in public?”

What do you mean, in public? they demanded. This is an exclusive place. You've got to belong to be here.

“It seems so … so unnecessarily distressing. Surely handcuffs are sufficient?”

It's not so bad, they said. Except for boarding buses. And for dancing. It's a definite handicap at dances.

My class had a very stem rule about cheerfulness. I was often reproached for transgressing it. We can't afford your romantic empathy, they would say. Please check your
angst
in at the cloakroom before you see us.

On the day of the hobbling I had brought the Malamud novel. With
The Fixer
I hoped to broach barricades that had not bent for
Ivan Denisovich.
Curriculum content was a sore point, but nothing could be done about it. The budget would not run to a new set of multiple orders and English 101 was blue chip currency with the parole board, not to be traded in lightly. They were stuck with me and my reading list.

“I thought you would enjoy the prisoner as hero,” I protested.

Hero! they said witheringly. That whining little Deni- sonovabitch! He's just your regular run-of-the-mill convict. He's a paperback hero here only because he's in Russia. We could tell you a few things that would make us heroes in Russia.

“I detect jealousy,' I said. “You're jealous of Ivan Denisovich, and of Solzhenitsyn too. You want to be famous prisoners.”

You are a very sassy broad, they said.

“Kierkegaard suggested that we are all equally despairing, but unless we can write and become famous for our despair, it is not worth the trouble to despair and show it.”

You people with a tragic world view, they sighed, you make life so difficult for the rest of us.

George came to the door. He came twice a day in his white coveralls with his pail and putty knife.

“Haven't you got any broken windows?” he would ask wistfully.

He had been doing this for ten years, and is undoubtedly still doing it. A long time ago he killed someone.

Actually, the class did like the Fixer, solitary and unbowed.

“Tell me,” I begged with indecent eagerness – I have a sort of prurient interest in the metaphysical underpinnings of others – “how is it possible to endure such brutality and deprivation? How does anyone survive that? How does he stay human?”

It is comparatively easy, they said, when you are
completely
alone. It is fairly simple when the guards treat you like a dog. The real danger, the greatest threat, is the friendly keeper.

“But the degrading body searches?” I pursued. “The invasion of the Fixer's physical self? How does anyone survive that?”

The body can adapt to anything, anything at all, they said. Beating, hunger, cold, humiliation. We speak from experience. You would be surprised how simple it is to separate yourself from your body. But head space is another matter. There is no foolproof defence against the invasion of private head space. Ivan Denisovich had it easy. Just plain physical hardship, too exhausting for dreaming or thinking. The Fixer had it much worse, but at least he was alone. We are in graver danger than either of them. We have shrinks and counsellors and classification officers.

“It is not true that the body can adapt to anything at all,” I said. “I will add Frantz Fanon to your reading list. It is ludicrous for you to talk so glibly when you know nothing of torture or concentration camps or Siberian cold.”

It is even more ludicrous, they said quietly (they forgave me many moments of rashness), for you who know nothing of either body invasion or head invasion to presume to judge which is worse. We will not read Fanon – although we've never heard of him but can guess he's another tragic bloody humanist – because that would be the kind of invasion of our head space we can't afford in here.

“But you see – you must see – it is terribly important to answer these questions. How can there be any hope for us if we don't have an ideal of moral survival like the Fixer's? I hear you talking about the ‘sleaze'. I see the gestures you make. I know the men you all consider sleazes. You see, for you too, salvation lies in
not
being a sleaze.”

Oh
salvation
! they said. It is not exactly a major concern here, lady.

“But it is, it is. Or at least damnation is. The sleaze is damned. But he's only someone who has cracked under pressure. And all of us must have a cracking point, given torture. I'm deeply ashamed of it, but I'm sure I'd break at the first instant of physical brutality. Or even before that, at the mere fear of it.”

You are not allowing for the rage, they said. Because you've never experienced it, you can't conceive of the rage you would feel at physical abuse. There's a lot of energy there. It convinces you you're right. The Fixer, for example, could see that he was driving those pigs crazy. He had something they wanted so badly – the sight of him snivelling – that it was pure pleasure not to give it to them.

“I wish I could believe you, but surely fear is greater than rage.”

Not yours, they said. You get so worked up about these things. A good sign, if you're hung up on salvation. You'd get mad as hell and it would jolt you right out of all that garbage of fear you carry around inside your skull. Besides, you can take it from us, and we are experts on this subject, you are not and never could be a sleaze.

No other award, I am embarrassed to confess, has comforted me so much.

“Haven't you got any broken windows in here?” George asked from the door. “I fix them good.”

He sighed.

“Just ain't nothing for a skilled craftsman to do these days.”

“You know,” Jed said to me privately after class, “I don't mean to make an issue of it. It's no big thing. But we
do
know what torture is, we just don't give it such a fancy name. See, I was twelve when they had me up for B and E the first time. They were
interrogating
me, you know, licking their dirty lips. Three white cops staring at one naked black kid, scared shitless. Used a fireplace poker to jab me in the balls. You'd be amazed how many cops are perverted queers. But then, you wouldn't believe me. We're the guys your mother told you to stay away from. Nothing but grief, baby.”

One lunchtime, in the staff room, a guard asked me: “Have those snivelling
sob
s told you their cruddy little life stories yet? Every one a bleeding tragedy. They get better and better in the reruns. Mark my word, by the end of the term your whole class will be orphans with unhappy childhoods.”

“Another thing,” Jed said to me. “Get the hell out of this job. What kind of a nut are you? You think because we like you you're safe. You're too hung up on heroics. That shit just don't mean anything to us. Listen hard now. To me personally, and to a lot of the guys here, you are the sunshine itself. And I would like to pretend that I would lay down my life etcetera for you. Listen, when they throw me in The Hole, I don't give an inch. If I were the Fixer, just me against the screws, I wouldn't crack. But if things were to blow up here – everyone
inside
against everyone
outside
– and you were in the middle of it, I couldn't promise you a thing. I can't tell you what I'd do. I don't even know. I've been through one riot inside and it scared the shit out of me. I saw some ugly things and I did some ugly things. I'll tell you something – people inside dread blow-ups more than the screws do. I'm telling you this so you won't take it personally if anything happens. But I would consider it a favour if you would get your luscious little ass out of here, because you are such a stupid innocent snowflake in this hothouse, you make me weep.”

* * *

Protoplasmic, was how I thought of the class. Fluid in shape and structure, observers drifting in and out to watch and listen, credit students being drafted out to yard work or to The Hole or to other penitentiaries, reappearing and disappearing.

I could have looked up records, separated the murderers and thugs from the embezzlers, but I never did. Better not to know. Occasionally fragments of inadvertent information would slip out, but students were generally reticent about their pasts.

One student was a proselytising
tm
-er. If you have deep inner tranquillity, he said, you can make disciplined decisions even in times of chaos and crisis. For example, there had been a moment during his last bank robbery when he had a gun pointed at a policeman's head. In the frenzy of that instant he had had to weigh immediate getaway (which would have been possible had he pulled the trigger) against a lifetime of being wanted for a capital offence. If it were not for
tm
he would have blasted out in the heat of the moment. As it was, he had only a six-year sentence.

“Armed bank robbery!” I was astonished. He was slight and dreaming, with the mystic's eyes of intense vacancy.

“I was charged with six armed robberies.”

“Six!”

“They only have evidence for one,” he said modestly, “and they wouldn't have got that without plea bargaining. I am a very careful planner. I hate violence.”

Zen and the art of, I thought.

George came to the door again.

“Haven't you … ?” he asked sadly.

Oh George, they said, we'd gladly break a window for you. Only it would mean The Hole, you know. Which of course we love – all that privacy and special attention. But we mustn't be selfish. Been there a lot lately. Got to give someone else a turn.

“I fix them good,” said George. “I'm a real craftsman. Well, let me know …”

Christmas was a bad time. During the preceding weeks, a guard came to the classroom door with the day passes, just two or three each day to keep up the air of seasonal expectation. The class was monumentally indifferent. What a bore, they said, when their names were not called. Look at all the snow beyond these cosy walls! Who wants pneumonia for Christmas! No one to cook your meals, no one to see that you're safely tucked in for the night. New Year's re-entry hangover, who wants it?

Joe's eyes always slithered away from official visitors in bored disdain. And just before Christmas, the giver of gifts smiled upon him. Joe stared back.

“None for you, shithead,” said the guard. “You don't think they'd let an animal like you loose at Christmas, do you?”

Joe's fist hit the desk like a jackhammer on bedrock. Get out of here, you asshole! he blazed, and spent Christmas in The Hole.

“I hate those Steve McQueen movies,” said the bank robber who meditated. “Very irresponsible. They give young kids the idea that bank robbing is glamorous, just a joy-ride. It is not glamorous, it is hard and bitter work. I may have started young, but I can honestly say” – he said it with moral fervour – “that I never once did it for kicks. I only did it for the money.”

“I have a favour to ask you,” said Jed.

I had been dreading this, being asked to carry out letters or bring something in. But it wasn't that. I must have been lucky. They never inflicted that decision on me.

“It's about Joe,” he said. “You know how he is. From cold start to karate in one second flat.”

I had noticed this. You should figure out some intermediate steps for anger, I told him. Try grinding your teeth and clenching your fists first. It bums up some of the energy.

That was after the episode of his chivalry. One of the drifters – those people not taking the course for credit but assigned to the school wing for some vague reason or other – had interrupted the class with a lewd joke. Joe had smiled softly and beckoned the drifter out of the room. He returned alone a few minutes later.

“I gave him a little tap on the head,” he told me. “He'll sleep it off in an hour or so. He shouldn't have been disrespectful to you.”

“Joe's a good man,” said Jed. “But they have it in for him here because he assaulted a cop. I'm telling you this because he's up for parole again and he has to stay cool. They keep turning him down. He hasn't even been out on a day pass in five years. I'm just asking you as a special favour to avoid any mention of politics, philosophy, civil rights for queers, that kind of stuff, for a couple of weeks. Don't stir up his head space, you know? He has to stay cool.”

I promised. We had a quiet week. No word. No word. Joe skittish as an unbroken colt and still no word from his classification officer. At the end of a week, right in the middle of a discussion of Kafka's
Castle,
he suddenly stood up and bellowed. Like a gored bull.

And then he said in a quite normal voice: “It's better to blow it and be done with it.”

He blew it with style and with furious fist in the face of the guard who always said, “Keep your eyes off the lady there, you scum.”

It must have been satisfying.

“At least I was in control,” Joe told me after his spell in The Hole. “I didn't wait sweating and grovelling for them.”

“Why do you come here, anyway?” my class asked.

“No choice. We tragic bloody humanists have problems with our esoteric educations, you see. At the moment my skills are about as useful in the job market as fluency in Latin.”

“You mean you're just doing it for the money?”

“That's right.”