Epitaph for a Working ManO (2 page)

I asked him if the fountain was watertight.

He pulled down the corners of his mouth. “I'm the stonemason – the builder's responsible for all the rest. But I hardly think the basin will leak. As long as the builder does his work the way I tell him. There's nothing to stop me giving good advice.”

Then, after a pause: “These days nobody can afford a solid stone fountain hewn from a single block. On the other hand waste material's cheap. Estermann makes a profit. I only earn pocket money: we agreed on two francs an hour. I don't care. It gives me something to do. And it means I can get away from here for the day.”

A couple of people came out to stretch their legs in the sunshine. The men were wearing ties, the women suits. Talk, laughter, the clatter of high heels on the gravel. Cigars were lit.

Father greeted several people; his greetings were returned. He told me who the people were. He'd repaired a couple of stair treads for one of them – that was years ago; for another he'd chiselled the stones for a garden wall. He remembered what kind of snacks he'd been given, where they'd given him ham, where only cervelat sausage, and where they'd given him nothing at all.

He ran his hand over his stubbly beard. “I'll shave today,” he said. “Once a week's enough, don't you think?”

He insisted on paying for the coffee. And before we got up he took the remaining sugar cubes and put them in his pocket. “For Naef. He loves sweet things.”

Other people suffer when they're unemployed. Without a job you're a nobody. People – either those with jobs or those without – don't actually say as much. Perhaps it's not even what they think. But you tend to behave as if they'd said it, as if it was what you yourself thought.

Other people? You? These people and those?

It almost came in handy having to go up to the hospital every other day to meet Father. It wasn't really necessary. He'd have found the way from the bus stop over to the hospital basement on his own.

*

A summer jacket, pale beige with two breast pockets, two side pockets, plus inside pockets left and right, and a zip fastener. Trainers, pale beige too, thick-soled, with red rubber-capped toes and heels.

“I have to go this afternoon,” he said. “Have to be there at three. Here, take a look, it's all in here.” He handed me the envelope.

He'd taken the first postbus. He'd had a cup of tea and two croissants in the café at the railway station. He'd decided he might as well take the opportunity to buy new shoes at Bretscher's, just next to the station. He'd bought his last pair there; he always bought his shoes and his clothes there. But they didn't have the same shoes as last year. He'd liked the ones he'd bought last year, he'd worn them all the time. Unfortunately they didn't stock that kind any more.

“And so I took these.” He pushed his chair back from the table and held up a trainer-shod foot. “I bought a new jacket at the same time.” He leaned back smiling. “I put everything on there and then. I've got my old jacket and my old shoes here in this plastic bag.”

“You look quite summery,” I said.

“Yes, don't I? Have to keep in fashion, you know.”

I fetched a bottle of beer and two glasses from the kitchen.

“I don't mind if I do,” he said.

I read the letter.

Doctor Lätt wrote that he'd removed a growth from Mr Haller's back last February. Now new nodules had developed. He thought they needed radiotherapy. He hadn't had the first tumour analysed.

Meanwhile Father had poured the drinks. We drank to each other.

“Well, now we'll soon find out exactly what it is you have on your back.”

“You know,” he said, “Lätt can't X-ray things like that himself. That's why he's sending me to the hospital. He can do ordinary X-rays; but they need a modern machine for what I've got on my back.”

“Do you think all they'll do is give you an X-ray?”

“That's what Lätt said.”

“We'll see.”

“First he said he'd send me to Dr Briner. But he never made an appointment. Now he's sending me to the hospital direct.”

I asked him what he'd like to eat. It was already half past eleven and Sophie would soon be coming home for her meal.

“Ah, you're the one who does the cooking now,” he said. He hadn't had rösti for ages. Nor tuna salad. They hardly ever had rösti at the home, and as for tuna salad, perhaps once in a blue moon.

I went into the kitchen and started peeling potatoes. He stayed in the sitting room with his beer and his cigarettes.

Sophie noticed at once that he was wearing new clothes. “You're looking very smart.” She kissed him on the cheeks. “Smoothly shaven too! What's up?”

It was just past twelve; she wasn't satisfied with my meal. “You could have offered your father something better.” He protested, but she didn't believe him.

She went out, and after a quarter of an hour she was back with an assortment of fancy cakes from Müller's bakery. “At least we'll have something decent with our coffee,” she said.

Father didn't eat much, but he assured us that it was good. He'd always been a small eater.

We listened to the news; then I turned off the radio. Father preferred the dry biscuits we already had in the house to the fancy cakes Sophie had bought. “Don't hold it against me,” he said. “The fancy cakes look tasty, but they're just a bit too sweet for me.”

Meanwhile Sophie had read the doctor's letter. “So you have to be there at three?” she asked.

He nodded. When I offered to accompany him he refused. Of course he'd go alone. He knew the hospital from his accident, he'd spent enough time there lounging around and hobbling about the place.

Sophie mentioned the new building. The new hospital was much bigger than the old one. Finally he yielded. Sophie said, “Okay, then. Good luck!” She hurried off back to the office.

After I'd done the washing-up I took the bottle of kirsch out of the cupboard.

“Let's treat ourselves to a glass.”

“Can't do any harm,” he said. “It's meant to be good for the digestion.”

*

At the hospital when the woman at the desk asked me for his particulars I didn't know his date of birth, not the day and not the year. I had to go back to the entrance hall, where he was ensconced in a chair getting his breath back, and ask him. No, it wasn't the kirsch in the coffee that was to blame. Even without the kirsch I wouldn't have known the date.

We followed the signs. Into the lift and down to the basement. Again we followed the signs. I was carrying the plastic bag with his old jacket and his old shoes.

The nurse at the second desk confirmed that we were in the right place and that we were registered.

A quarter of an hour too early. We were the first patients. We sat down.

No waiting room, just a recess in the corridor behind the X-ray department. To-ing and fro-ing of men and women in white, long-sleeved lab coats.

“They certainly seem to be busy here!” said Father.

In the distance you could see them hanging up X-rays against a frosted screen. When doors opened you saw gleaming metal bars, apparatus.

People arrived: an old woman, a young woman, a man, a girl. An arm in plaster, a leg in plaster; follow-up checks, specialist reports. Soon all the seats would be taken. A male nurse brought a few more stools.

Father took off his jacket. One thing less to take off afterwards. He gave it to me. He kept his cap on. His stick was within reach near the table with the magazines. No one was reading; the people sat there in silence.

“Cubicle two,” the male nurse said. Yes, of course I could be there for the consultation.

I helped Father out of his shirt, hung his vest, his shirt, his jacket and his cap on the hook.

The male nurse shot us a glance from the corridor. “Won't be long now… Not much space here, I'm afraid. You can leave the door ajar if you like.”

Father on the folding seat. Me standing, leaning against the wall. The jacket in the plastic bag and the clothes Father had taken off filled the cubicle with the smell of stale tobacco. It was years since I'd last seen Father's bare torso; he had smooth brown skin.

He showed me the scar. “Lätt had no idea what it was. He still doesn't know. Perhaps that's why he sent me here. He just cut it out, snippety snip!”

The scar looked just like any other scar.

He examined the cubicle, tapped the plastic wall with the palm of his hand. “You could easily fit four men in here,” he said. “But you'd have to pile them one on top of the other.” He smiled wryly. “Or turn them into corned beef first.”

I'd been afraid he'd come to the consultation unwashed. Before lunch I'd almost asked him if he didn't want to take a shower. He didn't smell of sweat. His clothes smelled of stale cigarette smoke, that was all. And they would remain in the cubicle.

It was warm. I pushed the door to the corridor open a crack more. The nurse, a young man with a little moustache in his broad face, came again. “Everything all right?” he asked. “Perfect,” said Father.

A few moments later something bumped against the wall in the next-door cubicle. “Someone's fallen off his seat,” said Father. “Fainted in the sweatbox,” he added, making a face.

And then, a little while later: “Patience is what you need.” And: “Too bad I'm gradually losing mine.” He turned toward the clothes hook, dug the bus timetable out of the inside pocket of his new jacket. “Here, find out the times of the bus to Breitmoos. There won't be much choice.”

He nodded as I read out the departure times.

“It still itches,” he said. “But they say itching's a sign it's getting better, don't they?”

And after a pause:

“I've always had healthy blood. Still, it's been a real mess.”

He raised his left elbow and using his right hand scratched himself under the arm, then he scratched the hair on his chest.

A door on either side, the ceiling low, neon light. Sounds from the corridor; now sounds coming from the consultation room.

“Come on, get a move on!” Irritably he glanced at the door handle next to his head. “Hurry up, I don't want to be stuck in here for ever.”

*

Dr Boren took the letter out of the envelope and glanced through it.

“Well, let's take a look at it then,” he said with hello-old-man joviality. “You'd best remain standing here, yes, like that, with your back to the window, so that we get enough light.”

Father leaned over slightly, holding on to the back of the chair. The doctor, a tall gaunt man, bent down over Father's back. His hand moved across the skin, palpating the flesh. “Yes, good, hmm, turn round a bit, yes, fine, hmm.”

He showed me what he saw. Small, pale red bumps scattered around the wine-coloured scar. And a broad line, three fingers wide, going down diagonally from Father's side to his hip.

“So they didn't send anything in?” he asked. He picked up the letter again and scanned it.

“What did it look like? I mean, before the operation?” I described the tumour. He wanted to know what colour it was. I still remembered.

“We'll definitely have to give him radiotherapy,” he said. He dictated some Latin words and some numbers to the male nurse.

“We'd better start today. You'll have to reckon on ten to fifteen sessions altogether. To start with, three times a week. Come and see me again next Wednesday. Then we'll take a tissue sample. It won't hurt. Just a prick. To find out exactly what it was. If necessary we'll adjust the treatment accordingly.”

He held various plywood shapes to my father's back, experimenting with different combinations. He drew a black line around the shapes, marking corner points. “First here, then here.” Again he dictated numbers and Latin words to the male nurse.

“Right, see you again next Wednesday. At three. You can arrange the appointments for the therapy with the nurse at the desk.”

During the whole of the consultation he'd only spoken to me.

Now we were dismissed.

He put out his hand to Father.

“Goodbye,” said Father. “And thanks!”

“Don't mention it.”

The male nurse showed us back to the cubicle. I'd hardly closed the door when Father said, “He must be crazy to think I'm coming here three times a week!”

He had trouble getting his arms into his shirt sleeves. Anger made him fumble.

Now the cubicle seemed more cramped than ever. “It'll make me lose at least half a day each time. What on earth is that man thinking of?”

He grumbled on.

The radiotherapy – over on the other side of the X-ray department – was soon over. We arranged with the nurse for him to come at eight o'clock each time for the following sessions.

“It really is a nuisance,” he said as we slowly climbed the stairs to the entrance hall. “I've got more sensible things to do than waste whole mornings coming here. Okay, I'll come again on Friday. As for next week, I'm not promising anything.”

*

Seven o'clock, the morning news. While Sophie was in the bathroom painting her eyelids I made salami and cheese sandwiches. By that time Father was already on the bus. Since they didn't start serving breakfast before a quarter past seven at the home, it was on an empty stomach that he'd left at ten to seven.

At twenty past eight, with the radiotherapy treatment already over, he was sitting at one of the round tables in the entrance hall.

As the hospital restaurant was closed to patients in the mornings we drank tea out of a machine – very sweet, lemon-flavoured tea. Father split open one of the sandwiches, took out the salami slices and ate them first. He'd always liked salami. He ate the bread and butter with his second cup of tea. Ever since I'd found out that he liked that tea I always made sure to take along enough small change in fifty and ten centime coins.

We watched the cleaners, a woman and a man who spoke to each other in Italian. The man pushed the floor-polishing machine across the stone floor; the woman emptied the ashtrays, ran her duster over the tables and chairs. Some of the tables were still stacked to one side to make way for the cleaning.

Father told me why stone floors were best for that kind of entrance hall.

After eating the salami and the bread and butter he swept the crumbs off the table. He'd eat the cheese sandwich later on, he said; perhaps he'd wait until he was on the bus, or he might even save it for the afternoon.

On the first morning of his radiotherapy treatment I hadn't taken him anything to eat, and he'd tried to stop me going to the nearest shop to buy him something after I'd found out he'd left home on an empty stomach. Nevertheless I'd run down to the Co-op on the Schützenplatz and he'd bitten hungrily into the ham sandwich. Now I always took him salami and cheese sandwiches from home. At his request the salami sandwiches would be spread with butter, and the cheese sandwiches with mustard.

If he'd said anything at the home, he'd probably have been able to have breakfast earlier. But he didn't say anything. “After all, they know that I have to leave before seven. If it doesn't occur to them themselves to put something out for me, there's no point in asking.”

*

It would have been useful to have had a car now. We hadn't had one for the past eighteen months. Did we really need one, Sophie had asked, when the time came round for the customary trade-in at the Renault garage. She'd always gone to the office on foot, and I myself didn't have a long way to work either (I still had a job at the time). We seldom went on trips, and for holidays we could use the train.