Kleinzeit (7 page)

I always knew I was lucky, said Kleinzeit, finished his medium-boiled egg.

Hurrah! The X-Ray room Juno, boobs bobbling, bottom bouncing, young blood circulating perfectly, not missing a single curve.

Hurrah! Shackleton-Planck for Mr Kleinzeit. Here he goes, anus quivering.

‘Luck,’ said Schwarzgang.

‘Keep blipping,’ said Kleinzeit.

The hard cold machinery room again. ‘Up your nose, down your tummy,’ said Juno. A tube writhed in her hands like a snake.

‘Aarghh!’ said Kleinzeit. ‘Ugg-ggg-hh!’

‘Quick,’ said Juno, putting ice in his mouth, ‘chew it.’

‘Crungg-ggg-hhh!’ chewed Kleinzeit as the tube snaked into his stomach. ‘Cor!’

Suction. Juno pumped something up the tube. Took the tube out.

‘Swallow this.’ Something the size of a football. Ulp.

‘Elbows back, stomach out.’ Thump. Click.

‘Take off your pyjama top, please.’ Electrodes. Here, here, here, here, and here. Respirator. Treadmill. Gauges. Roll of paper with a stylus. ‘Run till I tell you to stop.’

‘I rummilenahalf evmorng,’ said Kleinzeit inside the respirator.

‘Lovely,’ said Juno. ‘Keep going like that. Stop. Clothes on. Thank you.’

‘My pleasure,’ said Kleinzeit.

‘Dit go?’ said Schwarzgang when Kleinzeit got back to the ward.

‘Beautifully,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘Nothing like a Shackleton-Planck to start the day off right.’

Blip, went Schwarzgang. Kleinzeit had the back plate off the pump before he heard what Schwarzgang was saying.

‘Plug,’ said Schwarzgang. The cleaning lady had just
knocked out the monitor plug with her mop. Kleinzeit plugged the monitor in again. Blip, blip, blip, blip.

‘So nervous?’ said Schwarzgang.

‘I’ve always been high-strung,’ said Kleinzeit.

He slept for a while after lunch, woke up with his heart beating fast, was careful not to remember his dreams. He picked up Ortega y Gasset, read:

If we examine more closely our ordinary notion of reality, perhaps we should find that we do not consider real what actually happens but a certain manner of happening that is familiar to us. In this vague sense, then, the real is not so much what is seen as foreseen; not so much what we see as what we know. When a series of events takes an unforeseen turn, we say that it seems incredible.

I haven’t got a foreseen any more, said Kleinzeit to Ortega. Psychical circumcision.

You’re better off without it, said Ortega. As long as you have your
cojones.

Kleinzeit put down the book, concentrated on sexual fantasies. Juno and he. Sister and he. Juno and Sister. He and Juno and Sister. Juno and Sister and he. Tiring. Sex isn’t where it is right now, said Sex.

Kleinzeit took his glockenspiel to the bathroom, made music for a while. I don’t really feel like doing this, he said to the glockenspiel.

Believe me, said the glockenspiel, you were not my last chance. I could have had my pick. You are not doing me a favour.

Kleinzeit put the glockenspiel back in its case, put it under his bed.

Urngghh! said Hospital like a giant sweaty wrestler, squeezed Kleinzeit between its giant legs. Kleinzeit in agony thumped the canvas with his fist while his ribs cracked.

Supper came, went. Sister came on duty. She and Kleinzeit looked at each other. Aeroplanes flew across the evening sky. I didn’t mean what I said this morning, said the sky. I don’t think I’m eternal. We’re all in this together.

It’s all right, said Kleinzeit.

After lights out he took the glockenspiel to the bathroom, slowly played a tune with one beater. Sister came in with the helmet, laid it on the glockenspiel. Kleinzeit stood up and kissed her. They both sat down, looked at the glockenspiel and the helmet.

‘Shackleton-Planck results tomorrow?’ said Kleinzeit.

Sister nodded.

‘There’ll be quanta,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘Plus stretto trouble at the very least’

Sister squeezed his knee.

‘Meet me tomorrow afternoon?’ said Kleinzeit.

Sister nodded.

‘At the bottom of the fire stairs,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘Right after lunch.’ They kissed again, went back to the ward.

Kleinzeit was between sleeping and waking when he became aware of Word for the first time. There was a continual unfolding in his mind, and the unfolding, continually unfolding, allowed itself to be known as Word.

Doré was the one, said Word. Who since him has had a range like that! Don Quixote is the best thing he ever wrote, but the Bible is a strong contender, and of course Auntie’s Inferno.

Dante’s, not Auntie’s, said Kleinzeit. Doré didn’t write. He was an illustrator.

Of course, said Word. It’s been so long since I’ve had a really intellectual discussion. It’s that other chap who wrote the Bible. Firkin? Pipkin? Pilkin? Wilkins.

Milton, you mean? said Kleinzeit.

That’s it, said Word. Milton. They don’t write like that any more. As it were the crack of leather on willow. A well-bowled thought, you know, meeting a well-swung sentence. No, the pitches aren’t green the way they were, the whites don’t take the light the same way. It mostly isn’t writing now, it’s just spelling.

It wasn’t Milton wrote the Bible, said Kleinzeit.

Don’t come the heavy pedant with me, said Word. Don’t make a fetish of knowing who said what, it doesn’t matter all that much. I have seen minds topple like tall trees. I have heard the winds of ages sighing in the silence. What was I going to say? Yes. Get Hospital to tell you about what’s-hisname.

Who? said Kleinzeit.

It’ll come to me, said Word. Or you. Barrow full of rocks and all that.

What about barrow full of rocks? said Kleinzeit.

Quite, said Word.

Morning, very early. Redbeard, bowler-hatted, bedrolled, carrier-bagged, slanting through the corridors of the Underground on the breath of the chill, on the silence of the speaking walls and posters. Very few people about as yet. The lights looking plucky but doomed, the trains looking puffy-eyed, sleep-ridden. With a howling in his head he went from station to station sowing his yellow paper, came back harvesting it, feeling faint and dizzy.

Write it, said the yellow paper.

No, said Redbeard. Nothing. Not a single word.

Write it, said the yellow paper. You think I’m playing games?

I don’t care what you’re doing, said Redbeard.

Write it or I’ll kill you, said the yellow paper. And the story of you will come to an end this morning.

I don’t care, said Redbeard.

I’ll kill you, said the yellow paper. I mean it.

Go ahead, said Redbeard. I don’t care.

All right, said the yellow paper. To the river.

Redbeard took a train to the river.

Out, said the yellow paper. Up to the embankment.

Redbeard got out, went up to the embankment, looked over the parapet. Low tide. Mud. The river withdrawn to its middle channel.

Over the side, said the yellow paper.

Low tide, said Redbeard.

Over the side anyhow, said the yellow paper.

Redbeard took all the yellow paper out of the carrier-bag, flung it out scattering wide, fluttering down to the low-tide mud.

You, not me, yelled the paper. Gulls wheeled over it, rejected it.

Redbeard shook his head, took a bottle of wine out of the other carrier-bag, retired to a bench, assumed a bearded-tramp-with-bottle pose.

This was your last chance, said the paper lying on the mud. No more yellow paper for you.

Redbeard nodded.

What we might have done together! said the paper, its voice growing fainter.

Redbeard shook his head, sighed, leaned back, drank wine.

‘You’re doing marvellously well on the 2-Nup,’ said Dr Pink. Fleshky, Potluck and Krishna seemed as pleased as he was. ‘Diapason’s just about normal.’

Here they were together, the curtains drawn around Kleinzeit’s bed, the rest of the world shut out. They’re all on my side really, thought Kleinzeit in his adventurous pyjama bottoms. They’re like a father and three brothers to me. He smiled gratefully, overcome with affection for Drs Pink, Fleshky, Potluck and Krishna. ‘What about the Shackleton-Planck results?’ he said.

‘Hypotenuse not being very cooperative, I’m afraid,’ said Dr Pink. ‘Hypotenuse obstinate, more skewed than ever.’ Fleshky and Potluck shook their heads at the futility of trying to reason with hypotenuse. Krishna shrugged as if he thought hypotenuse might be more skewed against than skewing.

But you’ll talk to hypotenuse, won’t you, said Kleinzeit with his eyes. You’ll make him be nice.

Snap, said Memory. You win another one: the bully with the ugly face who shook his fist at you every day and waited for you after school. Once you fought him but you gave up quickly. Here he is, not lost any more: Folger Bashan, yours again from now on. Folger grimaced, showed his yellow teeth, shook his fist, mouthed silently, I’ll get you after school.

Thank you, said Kleinzeit. I am indeed rich in memories: my father’s funeral, the tomcat I killed, Folger Bashan. There was more, wasn’t there? Something, when was it? The day the fat man, the day M. T. Butts died.

Don’t be greedy, said Memory. You weren’t meant to have that yet.

‘And of course,’ said Dr Pink, ‘with a hyperbolic asymptotic intersection your loss of pitch and the 12 per cent polarity are now accounted for.’ The faces of Fleshky, Potluck and Krishna showed that they were not surprised.

‘And the quanta,’ said Dr Pink. Kleinzeit now saw the quanta as a marching army of soldier ants consuming everything in their path. ‘Where you have asymptotic intersection you can be sure that quanta won’t be far off,’ said Dr Pink. More like those awful hunting dogs that ate wildebeeste alive, thought Kleinzeit. Fleshky, Potluck and Krishna took notes.

‘Yes,’ said Dr Pink. ‘Everything falls into place now, and the stretto blockage is to be expected. If it weren’t blocked at this stage I’d be surprised.’

I may be a coward, thought Kleinzeit, but I’m a man after all and I can’t take this stretto business lying down. He made a feeble stand. ‘Nobody said anything about stretto before this,’ he said. What’s the use, he thought. I myself predicted stretto and I don’t even know where it is or what it does.

No one bothered to answer. Out of common decency they turned away as one man from Kleinzeit’s funk.

‘Right, then,’ said Dr Pink. ‘If you were, say, twenty years older … How old are you?’

‘Forty-five.’ The tomcat came into his mind again. Dead for twenty years.

‘Right,’ said Dr Pink. ‘If you were twenty years older I’d say live with it, you know. Diet and all that. Why get rough with your insides at that age. But as it is I don’t mind coming to grips with the thing sooner if it means we’re in a better position to avoid infinite regress later.’

Sooner, later, thought Kleinzeit. I can feel myself infinitely regressing right now. ‘What thing?’ he said.

‘That’s what I’m coming to,’ said Dr Pink. ‘I’m for making
a clean sweep: hypotenuse, asymptotes and stretto out before they do any more acting up. They want to play rough, very well, we’ll
play
rough.’ Fleshky, Potluck and Krishna showed by the light in their eyes that Dr Pink had the kind of boldness that commanded their respect.

‘Out,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘What do they do? I mean, weren’t they put there for something?’ They’ve been with the organization for forty-five years, he thought. Now all of a sudden it’s Thank you very much and all the best. On the other hand there’s very little doubt they’re out to get me.

‘We don’t know an awful lot about hypotenuse, asymptotes and stretto,’ said Dr Pink. The three younger doctors expressed with one collective look that Dr Pink was a deep one. ‘The hypotenuse of course is the
AB
connection that keeps your angle right. Subtention. Well and good I say, for as long as you can keep it up. With hypotenuse going twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, you oughtn’t to be surprised if there’s some strain as time goes on. You may experience flashes from
A
to
B
as hypotenuse, while maintaining right angle, begins to skew. That’s when I say, you know, Time, gentlemen. Time for hypotenuse to go. Some of my colleagues have pointed out that obtuseness or acuteness invariably follows its removal. My answer is So what. You can jolly well keep your angle right while everything else collapses around it and then where are you.’

Nowhere, said the faces of Fleshky, Potluck and Krishna.

‘Asymptotes,’ said Dr Pink, ‘seem purely vestigial, having no function other than not meeting the curve they continually approach. I don’t hold with that sort of thing. What I say is If you’re not going to meet the curve why bother to approach it. Naturally there’s going to be tension, and some of us tolerate it better than others. If we try to lean away from the tension there’ll be changes in axis and pitch until eventually there’s a double divergence and there you
are with asymptotic intersection. That’s when people come to me and say, “My goodness, Doctor, that doesn’t feel good at all, I can’t get any sleep at night.” You can guess what my answer is: no asymptotes, no intersection.’

That certainly follows, said the smiles of the three young resident doctors.

Dr Pink lowered his eyes tactfully, picked up his stethoscope as if he might sing into it, put it down again. ‘The stretto, old man, you know, well, there it is. Perhaps we’re no longer quite in the first flush of youth and we’re under pressure of one sort or another, and one morning we wake up and suddenly we’re aware of stretto. As we get on, you see, the fugal system has a little more trouble spacing out subject and answer, and if entries come too fast it’s rather like Sunday traffic on the M4. And there you jolly well are with a blocked stretto. Now, the only known function of the stretto being to channel entries, it’s of no use whatever if it’s blocked. You’ll feel a little breathless and as if everything is piling up inside you from behind while at the same time you’re quite unable to move forward to get away from it. Naturally that’s distressing, not to mention the possibility of worse trouble later on. What I say is Do it to stretto before stretto, you know, does it to you.’