kagablog

135

He says he has been through the mill.

Operation after operation, months of hospitalization, pain, limitations.

He is divorced. ‘My two sisters are also divorced. We are unable to form proper relationships.’

The division in his family, how he left home at seventeen. The bitterness in his voice when he says he is unwilling to name ‘them’ as his legal next of kin.

136

The fat woman from De Aar has head and spine injuries. The back of her head is smashed in and she is in a semi coma. She wears a traction harness, a canvas headpiece which passes under the chin and pulls back over the ears and under the head. To it is attached a two pound weight hanging from a pulley behind her. Because it is difficult to move her she has not been washed and has the characteristic dried blood and sweat smell of the accident victim.

137

The woman with the fractured skull has started screaming. The cerebral cry, it is an involuntary animal wail. The inhuman quality of the sound as it echoes down the corridor has unnerved some of the patients and spoilt their appetite for lunch, which has just been served.

138

Benny Greenberg entertains his fellow patients.

‘In life you can be two things: you can be rich or you can be poor. If you’re rich you’re alright. If you’re poor, you can be two things: you can be sick or you can be healthy. If you’re healthy, you’re alright. If you’re sick there are two things that can happen to you: you can live or you can die. If you live you’re alright. If you die there are two things that can happen: you can go to heaven or you can go to hell. If you go to heaven you’re alright. If you go to hell you’ll be too busy talking to all your old friends to worry about anything else ever again.’

139

Mr Nobody is quite destitute and yet the Department of Social Welfare asserts that as he is from the Transvaal he is that province’s responsibility. He possesses shirt, trousers and a pair of shoes that have been given to him by a sympathetic patient.

He did try to speak to his sister in Johannesburg. He phoned, reversing the charges, but they gave him hassles.

‘They started tuning me this and that. Why did you do that? How are you going to do this? Are you alright for doing that? No, I could see it was just telling me not to say anything. I didn’t ask them. I’ve had enough of that. No ways. Better just me on my own. These people just give me hassles.’

Moral: Never try to reform a man - just help him. Especially if he is family.

‘The Salvation Army isn’t bad. Bed and breakfast for fifteen rand a month maybe. For pensioners and downers, you know.’

140

‘Your watch has stopped, Professor. Here, let me wind it for you.’

‘Be careful you don’t overwind it.’

A look of contempt and then, with incredulity:

‘What for do I want to overwind your watch, Professor? You sound like my grandfather. Cautious, cautious, cautious. Overwinding breaks a watch. Why should I want to break your watch? I don’t want to fuck your watch up. I want to wind it for you.’

141

‘That professor, why don’t you take him, and when nobody’s looking, push the cunt down the stairs? Christ, Man, I had to laugh, the way he moves on those crutches. Like a fuckin’ chicken pecking at the ground, the way his head keeps jerking forward.’

In his turn: ‘Look at that chap.’ Indicating Alberts, the new orderly. ‘Why does he have his hair like that? He looks like a Bassett hound.’ On another occasion: ‘Artistic looking, isn’t he?’ And: ‘Can’t have much grey matter.’

142

He was outraged when the prof told him he had found the Alex Quartet boring, and that he preferred Gerald Durrell. The woman intern who he was trying to chat had not heard of either Durrell.

‘You medics are philistines! You haven’t heard of Lawrence Durrell?’ Staggered. ‘You haven’t read the Alexandria Quartet?!’

143

It’s a pity that he should persist in such explicit sex talk. He likes to mention lovers, mistresses, affairs, dalliances, his prowess and virility, his broadmindedness, his vast experience. I find it irritating and a little embarrassing. He arouses my distaste for the personality which insists on pushing itself. Why can’t he speak in more general terms? Instead, he portrays himself as the male lead in his masturbatory fantasies. I walk away with a yawn of annoyance.

144

Of an afternoon the sun cuts and slants from the mountain behind the hospital. To the northeast soft patches begin to show and the Tygerberg gains definition, slumping low across the flats. Beyond is Africa, flat and brown and hugely barren.

145

Faith, Hope and Love.

Faith - the suicide, the leap that Camus spoke of. Surrender.

Hope - the futile delusion of an escapist.

Love - voluptuosity and self indulgent martyrdom.

146

Joe Da Silva is eighteen. He was in the army when he first began to have knee trouble. In a military hospital his leg was put in plaster but the pain grew worse. He was fast losing weight. The cast was removed to reveal a malignant carcinoma. Here he has undergone extensive tests and it has been discovered that the dreaded CA is metastasising and has already infested the lungs. Overs-kedovers. They have amputated just below the hip, for what purpose I do not know. Unlimited analgesics are prescribed. He has not been told.

Unfortunately the morphine causes nausea so they are having to balance his dysphoria by administering an ever increasing number of different drugs. Much of the time he is asleep or in a stupor of discomfort.

Just after lunch today he perked up. His radio was turned up loud and he hummed to the music and sat up in bed, his eyes wide and bright with some strange elation. Dark brown eyes with bottomless black pupils. His face has the first gauntness of death and his head is already becoming a skull. He has aged in the past week.

147

In B1 I shave a man who is pale grey with fear. He is being prepped for a colostomy.

‘Is it a terrible thing?’

‘No, it’s quite common in here.’

‘But you never feel normal again, do you?’

‘You’ve always got this bag.’

‘Does it give a lot of trouble?’

‘Well, it’s probably a little inconvenient but you can do almost anything you used to do, and go anywhere.’

‘Does it give a lot of trouble?’

‘Well, you have to change the bag instead of going to the toilet. But it’s not that bad. Better this than being dead, hey?’

There ensues a pause in which he turns an even paler shade of grey. Then he hastily pushes the towel aside and struggles upright.

‘This bowel washout thing I had this morning…. Still working. I must go to the toilet.’

Was it unfeeling of me to mention the shadows silhouetted against the curtain?