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to you, though you didn’t want to tell them you didn’t want to be read to. Holding your hand and doing things like putting damp washcloths on your forehead, though you didn’t want those either. Angels, you’ve called them; so let your angels sleep. And you’re not in that much pain now. Comes more often than it goes. And the muttering voices have stopped and no one’s walking past your room but the regular nurses and aides, who’d come if you called out for them. Try to sleep. Time will go faster. I pull the covers up to my chin. I’m warm but not too warm. I’m comfortable. My body feels normal. I fall asleep. I dream I’m in Tokyo, where I’d always wanted to go, but got there without having to take a plane. I wake up and it’s the beginning of daylight. Dusk. Dawn. What’s it called again? I should know. That one’s so easy. Words are what I do. But I’m in pain again, which always makes me confused. I ring the call button. That’s what it is. Call button, call button; remember it. “Yes?” “Pain medication, please.” “I’ll tell your nurse.” A different one comes. “Hi. I’m Martha. Your tech’s Cindy. The new shift.” She erases from a white board on the wall the names and phone extensions of the previous nurse and tech and with a marker writes their own. “You slept poorly, your last nurse said. Lots of agitation and talk. Like you wanted a hot thermal bath. Sorry, fella. We don’t have that here. And how dragons were out to get you and something about your arms being cut off at the elbows by a sword. And you perspired something awful. She had to wipe you off.” “I don’t remember any of it. Well, dreams.” “Because of all that, I want to hold off giving you the pain medication as long as I can. Still hurting?” “Level nine or eight.” “Think you can tolerate it for another half hour? And you could use a fresh gown.” She takes off my wet one and puts a new one on. “Anything else you need?” “My cell phone.” “You’ve been sleeping on it,” and she pulls it out from under my arm. She goes. Poulenc’s dead. Prokofiev’s dead. Mahler’s dead. Granados is dead. Did I say Bartok’s dead? Pärt’s not dead. Who else isn’t dead? Tanizaki’s dead. Solzhenitsyn’s dead. Hamsun’s dead. Borges is dead. Conrad’s dead. Konrad’s not dead. Did Lessing recently die? The Italian writer whose first name starts with a D and who in one book wrote too much like Kafka is dead. Kafka, of course, is dead. Cummings is dead. Stevens is dead. Auden’s dead. Yeats is dead. Pollack’s dead. Leger’s dead. Kadinsky’s dead. Malevich is dead. Moore, Maillol and Matisse are dead. My pain isn’t dead. I shit in my head. I mean in my bed. Suddenly it came. I piss into a catheter, so there I’m okay. I want to clean myself up in the bathroom. I want to drink a glassful of icewater. I want to stand up and walk out of here. I press the call button. “Yes?” “I’m sorry, but I need serious cleaning up. And I presume new bedding and a new gown and my bed remade. I’m lying in slime. I’m sweating like a pig. I need the thermostat lowered. Please have someone come right away.” “I’ll tell your tech.” A young woman comes. Almost a girl. She has a new gown for me and sheets and washrags and a basin of water. “Oh, I see you already have my name on your board.” “You’re the tech? I’m sorry for the mess I made.” “I’m actually a nurse in training but a tech today. So let’s have a look. Roll over on your side.” I grab the side rail and pull myself up. “I don’t know where it came from. I haven’t eaten for a week. Nor drunk anything. All the nourishment and liquid I get comes from ice chips and what’s in those bags. And this time it’s not my imagination and did I defecate?” “In abundance. Won’t take a minute.” She takes off my gown, wipes and washes and dries me and shakes a can of baby powder over my behind. “Smells nice, doesn’t it. It’s one of my favorites.” “This must be awful for you. Cleaning up an old man. It made me hesitant to even call for you, but I had to. I’m locked in here.” “Don’t worry. I’m used to it. And when I become a full-fledged nurse in a year, I’ll mostly have a tech doing it for me. You have an abscess in your anus. Has your doctor or one of your nurses spoken about it?” “Nothing.” “It must hurt and you don’t want the infection getting worse. Tell them.” She puts a new gown on me and then changes the sheets with me in the bed. “It’s a wonderful profession, nursing. Look at the good work you do. I had to go into one that helps no one.” “And what’s that?” “Writing.” “I don’t read much myself. I’m more interested in the sciences.” “Good for you. Keep at it. Every man should have as a wife one who is or once was a nurse. That’s not a proposal. I was just thinking. Once you get sick the way I did, it’d be so comforting to know I could be taken care of like this by my wife, but at home. My wife’s dead.” “I’m sorry.” “Two years and a month. Greatest loss of my life.” “I can imagine. There, you’re as clean as new. And you smell nice too.” “Thank you again. As I said, you do wonderful work. Can you give me something for my pain now?” “The nurse will have to do that. I’m not allowed. Ring for her.” “If I have another accident, and you never know, I hope it’s another tech who takes care of it. I’d hate for you to have to do it again. Once, at least in a short period of time, should be enough.” “Honestly, I’m good with it. I’m on for twelve hours and it’s one of the things I’m here to do.” She goes. I ring. “Yes?” “Pain medication, please.” “Your nurse is very busy with another patient, but I’ll tell her.” “Isn’t there another nurse who can give it to me?” “It’s very busy out here. Sometimes it gets like this, patients who need immediate attention all at the same time. I’ll get you a nurse as soon as I can.” Hemingway’s dead. Faulkner’s dead. Paley’s dead. Sebald’s dead. Lowry’s dead. Camus’s dead. Eliot’s dead. Mandelstam’s dead. Akhmatova’s dead. O’Neill’s dead. Williams is dead. Miller’s dead. Hopper’s dead. Giacometti’s dead. Klee’s dead. Miro’s dead. Sheeler’s dead. Soutine’s dead. Arp’s dead. Sibelius is dead. Strauss is dead. Hovhaness is dead. Vaughan Williams is dead. I have to shit again. I need a basin. Whatever that thing is to put under me in bed. It’s comparable to a urinal, but for the behind. Not a chamber pot. I ring. Nobody answers. I ring and ring. “I told you, sir. All the nurses on the floor are tied up with other patients. One will attend to you soon as she can.” “But this is for a bowel movement. I don’t want to do it again in my bed. All I’m asking for is that thing that goes under me while I’m lying here.” “A bedpan?” “A bedpan, yes. You can get a tech to do it. But not the same one; Cindy. She already did it once, and expertly, but I made a mess and I don’t want her to go through that again.” “You don’t get a choice, sir. If she’s available, I’ll get her. And if not, someone else.” If it wasn’t for my daughters, I’d like to be dead. But I can’t have them going through their other parent dying so soon after the first. A different tech comes, gets the bedpan out of the bottom drawer of my side table, “Raise yourself,” and puts it under me just in time. “At least this time I’m not making a big mess in bed for you to clean up as I did with my regular tech.” “There’s always something that makes life look a little brighter. Think you’re done?” “No.” “Ring for me when you are. It’s a crazy house out there today, worse for the nurses than the techs, so one of us should come.” “Thanks.” Bergman, Fellini, Antonini, Kurosawa, Kieślowski—all dead. And Babel. How could I have left out Babel? Babel’s dead.
The announcer on the classical music radio station says the next piece will be a symphonic poem, “or what’s also called a tone poem,” by Rachmaninoff. The title is “The Rock,” and the piece is based on a short story by Chekhov called “Along the Way.” The story, she says, is about an elderly destitute man and a rich young woman who meet at an inn during a blizzard. “They’re sort of thrown together in a room the innkeeper calls ‘The Traveler,’ since it’s reserved for travelers passing through or stranded there.” The man and woman talk for hours and gradually warm to each other. “There’s a chance—one could even say a hope—they could become good friends or, at the very least, traveling companions for the rest of their journey. But the woman leaves the next morning in a sledge that the man, standing in the road, follows with his eyes till it disappears. He eventually begins to look like a huge rock covered by snow,” she says, “hence the title.” He doesn’t know the story, but the ending is a familiar one for Chekhov. Two people from vastly different backgrounds or economic circumstances or both who meet for the first
