sort of God would have allowed him to break his back and become paralyzed for life
after watching his wife die, and his daughters, and his friends?
No God at all, that was Who.
A tear trickled from the corner of his ear. Outside the hospital room, a bell rang softly.
A nurse squeaked by on white crepe-soled shoes. His door was ajar, and on the far wall
of the corridor outside he could read the letters NSIVE CA and guessed that the whole
sign must read INTENSIVE CARE.
There was movement in the room – a rustle of bedclothes.
Moving very carefully, Morris turned his head to the right, away from the door. He
saw a night-table next to him with a pitcher of water on it. There were two call-buttons
on the table. Beyond it was another bed, and in the bed was a man who looked even older
and sicker than Morris felt. He was not hooked into a giant exercise-wheel for gerbils
like Morris was, but an IV feed stood beside his bed and some sort of monitoring console
stood at its foot The man’s skin was sunken and yellow. Lines around his mouth and eyes had driven deep. His hair was yellowish-white, dry and lifeless. His thin eyelids had a
bruised and shiny look, and in his big nose Morris saw the burst capillaries of the life-
long drinker.
Morris looked away … and then looked back. As the dawn light grew stronger and the
hospital began to wake up, he began to have the strangest feeling that he knew his
roommate. Could that be? The man looked to be somewhere between seventy-five and
eighty, and Morris didn’t believe he knew anyone quite that old – except for Lydia’s
mother, a horror Morris sometimes believed to be older than the Sphinx, whom the
woman closely resembled.
Maybe the guy was someone he had known in the past, maybe even before he, Morris,
came to America. Maybe. Maybe not. And why all of a sudden did it seem to matter? For
that matter, why had all his memories of the camp, of Patin, come flooding back tonight,
when he always tried to -and most times succeeded in – keeping those things buried?
He broke out in a sudden rash of gooseflesh, as if he had stepped into some mental
haunted house where old bodies were unquiet and old ghosts walked. Could that be, even
here and now in this clean hospital, thirty years after those dark times had ended?
He looked away from the old man in the other bed, and soon he had begun to feel
sleepy again.
It’s a trick of your mind that this other man seems familiar. Only your mind, amusing
you in the best way it can, amusing you the way it used to try to amuse you in –
But he would not think of that. He would not allow himself to think of that.
Drifting into sleep, he thought of a boast he had made to Heather (but never to Lydia;
it didn’t pay to boast to Lydia; she was not like Heather, who would always smile sweetly
at his harmless puffing and crowing): / never forget a face. Here was his chance to find out if that was still so. If he had really known the man in the other bed at some time or
other, perhaps he could remember when … and where.
Very close to sleep, drifting back and forth across its threshold, Morris thought:
Perhaps I knew him in the camp. That would be ironic indeed – what they called ‘a jest of
God’. What God? Morris Heisel asked himself again, and slept.
19
Todd graduated salutatorian of his class, just possibly because of his poor grade on
the trig final he had been studying for the night Dussander had his heart attack. It
dragged his final grade in the course down to 91, one point below A- average.
A week after graduation, the Bowdens went to visit Mr Denker at Santa Donate
General. Todd fidgeted through fifteen minutes of banalities and thank-yous and how-do-
you-feels and was grateful for the break when the man in the other bed asked him if he
could come over for a minute.
‘You’ll pardon me,’ the other man said apologetically. He was in a huge body cast and
was for some reason attached to an overhead system of pulleys and wires. ‘My name is
Morris Heisel. I broke my back.’
That’s too bad,’ Todd said gravely.
‘0y, too bad, he says! This boy has the gift of understatement!’
Todd started to apologize, but Heisel raised his hand, smiling a little. His face was
pale and tired, the face of any old man in the hospital facing a life full of sweeping
changes just ahead — and surely few of them for the better. In that way, Todd thought, he
and Dussander were alike.
‘No need,’ Morris said. ‘No need to answer a rude comment You are a stranger. Does
a stranger need to be inflicted with my problems?’
‘ “No man is an island, separate from the main -“‘ Todd began, and Morris laughed.
‘Donne, he quotes at me! A smart kid! Your friend there, is he very bad off?’
‘Well, the doctors say he’s doing fine, considering his age. He’s seventy nine.’
‘That old!’ Morris exclaimed. ‘He doesn’t talk to me much, you know. But from what
he does say, I’d guess he’s naturalized. Like me. I’m Polish, you know. Originally, I mean.
From Raden.’
‘Oh?’ Todd said politely.
‘Yes. You know what they call an orange manhole cover in Radan?’
‘No,’ Todd said, smiling.
‘Howard Johnson’s,’ Morris said, and laughed. Todd laughed, too. Dussander glanced
over at them, startled by the sound and frowning a little. Then Monica said something
and he looked back at her again.
‘ Is your friend naturalized?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Todd said. ‘He’s from Germany. Essen. Do you know that town?’
‘No,’ Morris said, ‘but I was only in Germany once. I wonder if he was in the war.’
‘I really couldn’t say.’ Todd’s eyes had gone distant./
‘No? Well, it doesn’t matter. That was a long time ago, the war. In another two years
there will be people in this country constitutionally eligible to become President –
President! -who weren’t even born until after the war was over. To them it must seem
there is no difference between the Miracle of Dunkirk and Hannibal taking his elephants
over the Alps.’
‘Were you in the war?’ Todd asked.
‘I suppose I was, in a manner of speaking. You’re a good boy to visit such an old man
… two old men, counting me.’
Todd smiled modestly.
‘I’m tired now,’ Morris said. ‘Perhaps I’ll sleep.’
‘I hope you’ll feel better very soon,’ Todd said.
Morris nodded, smiled, and closed his eyes. Todd went back to Dussander’s bed,
where his parents were just getting ready to leave – his dad kept glancing at his watch
and exclaiming with bluff heartiness at how late it was getting. But Morris Heisel wasn’t
asleep, and he didn’t sleep – not for a long time.
Two days later, Todd came back to the hospital alone. This time, Morris Heisel,
immured in his body-cast, was deeply asleep in the other bed.
‘You did well,’ Dussander said quietly. ‘Did you go back to the house later?’
‘Yes. I put the box back and burned the damned letter. I don’t think anyone was too
interested in that letter, and I was afraid … I don’t know.’ He shrugged, unable to tell
Dussander he’d been almost superstitiously afraid about that letter — afraid that maybe
someone would wander into the house who could read German, someone who would
notice references in the letter that were ten, perhaps twenty years out of date.
‘Next time you come, smuggle me in something to drink,’ Dussander said. ‘I find I don’t
miss the cigarettes, but -‘
‘I won’t be back again,’ Todd said flatly. ‘Not ever. It’s the end. We’re quits.’
‘Quits.’ Dussander folded his hands on his chest and smiled. It was not a gentle smile
… but it was perhaps as close as Dussander could come to such a thing. ‘I thought that
was on the cards. They are going to let me out of this graveyard next week … or so they
promise. The doctor says 1 may have a few years left in my skin yet. I ask him how many,
and he just laughs. I suspect that means no more than three, and probably no more than
two. Still, I may give him a surprise and see in Orwell’s year.’
Todd, who would have frowned suspiciously over such a reference two years ago, now
only nodded.
‘But between you and me, boy, I have almost given up my hopes of seeing the century turn.’
‘I want to ask you about something,’ Todd said, looking at Dussander steadily. ‘That’s
why I came in today. I want to ask you about something you said once.’