Janette Turner Hospital Collected Stories (7 page)

Krishnankutty went to the printer's and ordered fifty neatly scripted white invitation cards. They said:
You are invited to the inauguration of the new electric crematorium of Trivandrum. Conceived and designed by V. Krishnankutty, M. Eng. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology).
He set the date a week in advance to give himself time to find a corpse. He mailed the cards to the councillors of the Corporation of Trivandrum, to representatives of
The Indian Express
and
The Hindu
as well as of the Malayalam newspapers, and to various local dignitaries.

There was some fluster about obtaining a corpse, since recently bereaved families seemed quite unprogressively horrified at the idea. Luckily Saraswathi remembered an old beggar woman who for months had been coming to their door for a daily handful of rice, for weeks had been coughing and spitting blood, and for days had not been seen. Servants were dispatched to make inquiries and they found – alas – the beggar woman's body in a derelict hut. Since there seemed to be no kin to claim her, it was logical that she should have the honour of the first technologically advanced send-off in Trivandrum.

At the appointed hour, Krishnankutty and the beggar woman awaited their guests. Only one person arrived, the reporter from
The Indian Express.
Krishnankutty was incensed, and postponed the ceremonial pushing of the button for a day. He spent the afternoon contacting and visiting as many city councillors as he could. There were many reasons of great import and unavoidable crisis to account for the absences, and of course, they all assured him, they would be present on the morrow. But the next day it was the same, and although it pained Krishnankutty deeply, imperatives of climate and hygiene dictated no further hesitation. History was made before the irreverent eyes of the lone reporter.

Undaunted, Krishnankutty planned a re-inauguration, more public and inspiring. It was, however, difficult to obtain another corpse. Since the Muslims and Christians did not cremate their dead, one third of the city's population had to be discounted as potential clientele, and even the more progressive Hindu families were wary because of the history of the institution. It then occurred to Krishnankutty that his friend John was Christian, yet John's mother had been cremated. Why was this? Why did Christians in Kerala bury their dead, while for Christians in America the manner of disposal was apparently optional? Perhaps the answer to this problem lay in a re-education of the Christian community in Trivandrum. Once the public became used to the idea of the crematorium, once there had been a significant number of uneventful funerals, Krishnankutty was convinced that his difficulties would be over.

He went to visit the heads of the three leading churches of the Christian community of Trivandrum – the Syrian Orthodox, the Roman Catholic, and the Church of South India. The Syrian priest, who did not of course believe in the caste system, but nevertheless considered the Syrian Christians to be superior to the Nair caste (of which Krishnankutty was a member), received him frostily. Since it was well known to the Nairs that in Kerala their caste was of a greater and nobler antiquity than even that of the Brahmin immigrants from the Aryan north, Krishnankutty was not impressed. The priest explained matters to him as to a child. American Christians, he said, were living in a state of serious theological error. The Syrians, a people of great antiquity and nobility – he stressed this meaningfully – were the preservers of original historical truth, and would never deviate from ancient custom. Since the time of their founder St Thomas the Apostle, whose hallowed bones rested in Madras, they had buried their dead.

Samuel Varghese, the Roman Catholic priest, was a man of Indo-Portuguese descent from Goa. He was more courteous, deferring politely to Krishnankutty. He explained that since Our Lord himself had been buried, and since Christians awaited the final resurrection of the body. Catholic Christians all over the world, including America, considered burial the only acceptable final rite in the sight of God.

There were two equally important congregations of the Church of South India in Trivandrum. Theoretically they had merged thirty years previously in the union of all Protestant denominations, but in practice they had little to do with each other. The English-speaking high-born congregation was the legacy of the Anglican missionaries of the British Raj, and still used the Episcopalian liturgy. The bishop told Krishnankutty that cremation could never be contemplated because there was no provision for it in the Book of Common Prayer.

The pastor of the poorer Malayalam-speaking congregation, the Reverend Jesudas, had been trained by the evangelical Con- gregationalists of the London Missionary Society. He conceded that while there was no express theological injunction against cremation, within India it did of course have the connotation of a Hindu ritual. And Christians, he said, were a people called to be different, to bear witness to the gospel of Christ. He quoted from the King James version of the Bible. “Come ye out from among them, saith the Lord, and be ye separate and touch not the unclean thing.” For Christians, he said as gently as possible, Hindu rituals were – metaphorically speaking, of course – unclean.

* * *

All this was very confusing, and not very promising, for Krish- nankutty. But he felt that hope was not completely excluded with respect to the former London Missionary Society people. Perhaps if John, who was of that same Protestant tradition, were to talk with the pastor, something might be achieved. So he went to find his friend John, whom he had not seen during the many months of his construction project. But John, it seemed, had bent as new rice before the monsoon of enlightenment, and it was several days before he was found in a small and wretched hut alongside the temple. He was barely recognisable.

“Are you ill?” Krishnankutty asked in alarm.

“I am part of the cosmos,” answered John. “I am not my body, which does not concern me.”

There was an unwholesome yellowish tinge to John's skin and a dreadful odour about his body. Krishnankutty became aware of a puddle of bloodied excrement trickling from the straw mat on which John sat. Hepatitis, he thought with alarm.

“John, my dear friend, you are very ill. I am calling a taxi and taking you immediately to the Medical College Hospital.”

John gazed from his doorway, across the expanse of sacred water, to the towering
gopuram
of the temple.

“In the presence of Lord Vishnu, I am safe,” he replied. “I don't wish to go to a hospital.”

“This is being very foolish, John. Perhaps you are not trusting our hospitals? I assure you that Medical College Hospital is not inferior to excellent hospitals in America. We are going now, isn't it?”

“No! I will remain in the presence of the Lord.”

“John, John! I am a Vishnavite. Each day I make
puja
to Lord Vishnu. Yet I would not do this! No modern and educated Vishnavite would do this. You cannot do this. You are coming with me.”

“I have taken a vow to meditate at this shrine of Lord Vishnu for thirty days. I cannot leave. Would you have me break a vow?”

Nothing could be done about a vow. Krishnankutty went home in considerable consternation. Each day he visited his friend, bringing rice and fruit which John was unable to swallow. He then brought bowls of
payasam,
a thin sweet gruel, but still John vomited as soon as he had eaten. He was now feverish and often unconscious, but adamantly rejected all pressure to enter a hospital. Who can release himself from a solemn vow made to the Lord of the Universe?

He is dying, thought Krishnankutty. He is
dying
!

At first unbidden and pushed aside with shame, the thought came to him that John would be his next corpse. But after all, why not? Certainly he knew that John had no objections to cremation. He did not of course want his friend to die, but if fate decreed …

“I have a last request, Krish,” said John weakly from his straw mat. Krishnankutty bent solicitously over his friend.

“You are not to contact my relatives or send my body back to America. Mankind is my family, the universe is my home. My ashes must mingle with Truth, here in India.”

“Yes, yes. I promise,” said Krishnankutty sadly. He could see the invitation cards, discreetly edged in black.

“I want to be carried from the temple to the river bank, and it is my wish that you, my dear friend, you alone, should light my funeral pyre.”

“Ahh, John, John! I beg you, do not ask this of me. Consider the cause of progress …”

“It is my final wish that you scatter my ashes at Cape Comorin and let the three oceans carry them to the ends of the earth.”

Sadly Krishnankutty kept vigil while the universe, by subtle rearrangement, absorbed John. Then he crossed the street to the temple flower sellers.

It is my
karma,
he sighed.

He placed a garland on the corpse.

The Dark Wood

Angela turned off the car radio, not wanting to hear about Princess Margaret and boyfriend. Not at high speed on the turnpike with one death behind her and another one waiting ahead.

She wondered: why do I always pick the wrong men? She was surely second only to Her Highness in that respect, although she had been sufficiently adroit never to marry her mistakes and had been spared the embarrassment of having her terminal romances splashed across the international press.

And of course her work helped. She could become so absorbed in cases that she would not remember if there was anyone waiting for her at home or not. When she thought “home” she meant whichever one-and-a-half-room studio her Bokharas, pillows, and plants were gracing at that moment. She travelled light. Decorating style: expensive stark. Portable elegance. Nothing that could not be relocated in three trips of her MG with car rack. She moved in and out of her life.

On the turnpike she played with her blinkers like a magician, changing lanes, moving, weaving, dodging. Disengaging. Brendan, however, kept circling her consciousness like the foggy rings around Saturn. Brendan and his children, Brendan and his crisis, Brendan and his importunate pleading eyes – as persistent as that green Chrysler dogging her, arrogantly suffusing her rearview mirror. With deft timing she slithered into a momentary space in the next lane then back into the fast lane two cars ahead. The Chrysler, she saw with pleasure, was a dwindling green dot in her mirror.

She thought with contempt: all my men have been tail-gaters. Clinging. Hampering.

Well, there it was. Death of another relationship. She could not be encumbered with the debris of Brendan's life when her work was so important, people depending on her, matters of life and death. There had been, of course, grey spaces of betrayal in his eyes. That was the way it was with her men. Impossible demands and messy endings.

But this was misting away at the periphery of her mind. She changed lanes, jockeying for the exit. She always stayed in the fast lane until the last possible minute, defying entanglements, winning the off ramp. She parked in her reserved space at the hospital.

Odours come coded. The brackish tang of seaweed can sting the nostrils and suddenly one is feeling for a pitted anklet of scars and hearing an old scream hurtle off the rocks, childhood blood spurting from oyster shells.

Angela smelled the familiar wave of disinfectant, bed pans, assorted medicinal fumes, and felt invigorated. Other people might turn faint at that smell but Angela inhaled power. Within its ambience she had a certain licence to bind and loose. She made mortal arrangements.

Her case-load was heavy but it was the latest admission which most immediately concerned her. The bed of Beatrice Grossetti floated in its own haze of mustiness. The smell of the last century, thought Angela; of oiled furniture and old photographs; the smell of a person long unused.

Only a small fetal arc disturbed the bedding but the face on the pillow was gnome-like and ancient. Angela glanced at her clipboard. This was the clinical data: Beatrice Grossetti was seventy years old. No living relatives. Weight: eighty pounds.

The ancient eyes of the child-body opened.

Angela said briskly, “Good morning. Miss Grossetti.”

“Mrs Grossetti. Are you the doctor?”

“Not a medical doctor. I'm here to help you sort out anything that might be worrying you.”

The eyes closed again. “I thought the clergy did that.”

“They do, if that's what you prefer. Would you like to see a priest?”

“No.” Mrs Grossetti's eyes, startled and skittish as dragonflies, darted out from cover. “I don't know … perhaps later … Is it so urgent?”

She was wounded now, a cornered animal.

Angela, releaser of traps, liberator of caged spirits, sat beside the bed.

“No rush,” she said.

She was confident that the timing depended on her patient and herself. None of her cases had ever gone before they were ready. She had a certain knack, and the dying have instincts of their own.

“You will know when. And I will be with you.”

Mrs Grossetti's face contorted itself into what would have been a scream if any sound had come out. She clutched at Angela who took both gnarled hands between her own, leaning forward to press them against her cheek.

“It's all right, it's all right,” she murmured. “You're not alone. I am with you.”

“How can
knowing
… how can just the
knowing
… ?” The voice of Mrs Grossetti struggled to assert itself over some rushing undertow. “Two days ago everything was …
usual.
Slow and weak … just the usual slow and weak … just age. I watered my geraniums and my tomatoes. They're ripening so I have to watch out for the pigeons … I grow them in my window box you know, they'll be ready in about ten days … And then my … Mr Bernstein, the man in my little supermarket … he said – such a nice gentleman – he said: ‘I'm worried about you, Beatrice. You're looking a little thinner every time I see you. I wish you'd see a doctor.' And just to please him, you know …”

There was a long pause while Mrs Grossetti's forces deployed themselves. They tapped some wild energy of insight and she sat up abruptly.

“But nothing has changed! Just
knowing
cannot make any difference. Nothing has changed. I want my tomatoes.”

She slumped back wearily.

“Couldn't I go home to my tomatoes?” she pleaded. “Don't you think I could just stay home until …” She turned to the wall. “If anything is going to happen. I'd rather be home. I
would
like to see my tomatoes ripen. I'm frightened here. Couldn't I go home? Nothing has happened, except the knowing. Couldn't I go home, please? Just
knowing
can't make any difference.”

“It always does make a difference. For everyone.”

“I want to un-know! I only came as a favour to Mr Bernstein. Now I want to go away again. Couldn't I, please? Please … ?”

After a while Angela gently freed herself from the fingers closed tightly on sleep and hope.

It was well known to the friends of Dr Angela Carson that she did not like to be paged for personal calls while she was at the hospital. Although she did not explain it in so many words, it seemed to her as obscene as surreptitiously reading a paperback (neatly hidden inside the prayer book) at a funeral service. Consequently, when she was summoned to the phone she knew it would be Brendan. No one else, at the moment anyway, would be so rash and desperate. Jacob would have done the same thing once. And then Charles. But there it was again. Birds of a feather.

“Angela, we have to talk. I can't believe you meant what you said yesterday. I'll pick you up at the hospital this evening and we'll go out for dinner. You've been overreacting because you're overworked.”

“Brendan, you know I hate to be called here. Anything you might have to say is irrelevant to me while I am working.”

He said wearily: “Angela, I fail to see how some sort of semi-human robot can help the dying.”

“Goodbye, Brendan.”

“Angela! For god's sake! I don't even understand what happened. What are you afraid of?”

“I'm not afraid of anything. I have responsibilities.”

“But a visit, for heaven's sake! Do you want me to surrender the right ever to see my children?”

“Of course not. But you can't expect me to get involved in that sort of draining familial situation.”

“What's draining about a visit that's already
over
? You're being so irrational …”

She replaced the receiver delicately on its hook.

In all honesty, she thought, I cannot blame myself for this fiasco. She had not, after all, been anticipating overnight visits from his children. Infrequent or otherwise.

Angela's profession placed her under a heavy moral obligation. The dying cannot postpone the gathering up of loose ends and the settling of accounts. She owed it to her cases to lead an uncluttered life, to be capable of undivided attention, compassion, total commitment.

When Angela reached the door of Beatrice Grossetti's room, a young intern was moving a stethoscope about her body, pausing and listening, his face creased with solemn inner deliberation. As though he were sounding an old hull for seaworthiness, Angela thought.

“Doctor?” asked Mrs Grossetti in a small, apologetic voice. “What can you tell me?”

As she spoke she reached out tentatively, supplicatingly, and touched his arm. The young intern flinched, moving aside to put his equipment back in its case.

“You're in good hands, Mrs Grossetti.” He smiled paternally. “We'll take expert care of you here.”

He nodded at Angela as he left the room, flushing slightly before the direct baleful impact of her eyes. It was curious, she thought with anger, the way so many people cringed from contact with death. As though it were catching. As though the patient were already a leper, an outcast, no longer one of us. She had seen it in doctors, relatives, visitors.

The familiar look of shame suffused Mrs Grossetti's face, the embarrassment of imposing on the living. Angela saw the tears and instinctively leaned over and kissed her gently on the forehead.

“Tell me about yourself, Mrs Grossetti. Tell me how you came to have your beautiful name. Beatrice has always been one of my favourites, especially if you pronounce it the Italian way.”

“I can't blame them, I suppose. It's natural, isn't it?” replied Mrs Grossetti who walked down her own paths. “You are different though. I suppose you see so many … so much of this … it seems ordinary to you.”

“I do see a lot. Perhaps the difference is the doctors are fighting
against
death. But you see, I share it, I stay with my patients. No one is left alone.”

“Are you afraid of being alone?”

Angela was disconcerted. “No! Oh no. Not me. I don't want
you
to feel alone.”

“I would feel less alone with my geraniums and tomatoes than here. It is very cruel to keep me here. I've lived, you know. I've seen a lot. Buried my only son (he was just a child) and my husband. And a good many friends. I've seen a lot of … not as many as you perhaps, but I'm no stranger to … at least, I didn't think I was.”

Mrs Grossetti drifted in and out of sleep. Angela had other cases to attend to and she came and went. But she checked with Beatrice every hour. She had an instinct about these things.

Sometimes the frail body stirred and whimpered, and Angela would sit and hold her hand.

“Mrs Grossetti? I'm here. Is there anything you want?”

“Beatrice. My name is Beatrice.”

“It's such a beautiful name.”

“My father loved Dante. He taught in a college. My father, that is. You know Dante's Beatrice?”

“Yes indeed. I took one whole course on him in college myself. The professor used to make us recite the Italian aloud because it sounded so beautiful.
I' son Beatrice che ti faccio andare
…”

“Is that the part where she meets him in paradise?”

“No. It's at the beginning, in the dark wood. When he was lost and afraid.”

“Such a luxury. To believe there was somebody waiting for him … And then finally all that light and peace. Do you believe it?”

Angela said soothingly, as to a child: “Perhaps, perhaps. I don't know.”

“I used to. I wish I still could.”

“That's not so important. I do know that death itself is a moment of joy and peacefulness. I can
promise
you. I have
seen
it over and over again.”

“But after that you can't know, can you, doctor? I wish I'd never been a Catholic. It keeps you scared up to your very last breath.”

“Do you want to see a priest?”

“Not yet, not yet. I want to see my tomatoes ripen.”

Beatrice slept again and Angela went about her rounds.

The surfacing into speech was less frequent, the exchanges with Beatrice more fragmented as the afternoon wore on.

“It is so strange,” she said once, quite suddenly, “to think of the tomatoes ripening next week without me. Ripening and rotting all by themselves.”

Acceptance, Angela thought. The final stage. “Shall I bring a priest now?”

Beatrice opened her eyes and turned to face Angela.

“You're in such a hurry, doctor. Determined to see me off properly, aren't you?”

“You are a Catholic, Beatrice. It is customary …”

“Yes, yes. For the final promises. And will you believe him? Will you find the promises reassuring?”

Angela, caught off guard, almost said: I'm not the one who is dying.

Instead she said: “It is what
you
believe that matters, Beatrice.”

“It doesn't matter to you yet, doctor. Things
are,
things
are
– whatever we believe. I believed I was healthy two days ago.”

She sighed and seemed to lapse back into sleep. Angela was about to go but Beatrice seized her hand.

“Don't go, doctor. I'm afraid. I'm so frightened.”

Angela slipped her arm under the trembling shoulders. On impulse she raised Beatrice and cuddled her as though she were a small child. The figure felt light as an infant. Angela rocked back and forth on the bed, crooning softly.

As Beatrice slithered back across the hazy border into unconsciousness, her fingers curled themselves around Angela's wrist. The head, under its wispy halo of silver grey, sank a little more heavily against Angela's shoulder. Angela made no attempt to extricate herself. She continued to rock back and forth, singing a lullaby.

The eyes of the night-shift nurse widened. She stood indecisively in the doorway with her tray of medications. Dr Angela Carson seemed oblivious to her presence so she left again. It was something, she thought with wonder, to recount at coffee break.