Nostalgia (14 page)

“But I’ve already explained to you,” says Matron. “That’s not possible. Mr. Babb will change your dressing.”

Casper glances for a moment at Babb, who wears a snide expression, half grin, half grimace. “Then I reckon we’ll make do with what we’ve already got,” says Casper.

“That’s not possible either,” says Matron. “The surgeon has asked that it be changed today. And I have assigned the task to Mr. Babb.”

At that moment, the old man in the wine-colored suit appears at the foot of Casper’s bed, and Hayes notes that his arrival causes Matron to fairly swoon; all at once, he understands that this is surely the “gentleman” in question, “our Walt.”

“May I be of assistance?” the man says to Matron.

“No, sir, you may not,” says she. “As it happens, you’re the very cause of our trouble. This is precisely the kind of nonconformity your peculiar attentions arouse in our patients.”

The man turns up his palms. “What have
I
done?” he asks.

“Mr. Mallet refuses to have his dressing changed,” says Matron, “unless it is changed by a certain genius who haunts our hospital night and day. He simply will not budge, and I suppose that now I’ll have to inconvenience the wardmaster or Dr. Dinkle when—”

“Oh,” says the gray-haired man, smiling, “then I can be of assistance after all. I’ve only just left Dr. Bliss, not two doors from here. I’ll fetch him immediately.”

This news seems to disconcert Matron further—“This is no matter for the surgeon in chief!” she cries—but the man is gone before she can stop him. She turns to Babb and says, “Let’s not stand idle, Mr. Babb, when we’ve a hospital of very sick men to see to. Get number thirty-two ready, as I’m sure we’ll have an occupant for it before lunch.”

“You mean, ‘Please, get number thirty-two ready,’ ” says Babb.

“Yes, Mr. Babb,” says Matron, exasperated, “of course I mean
please
.”

They both move away and disappear into the flow of persons trafficking the ward’s central aisle. Hayes notices that the air has grown uncomfortably warm and that the breeze coming through the nearby window would be more welcome if it did not carry with it the essence of the canal. He wonders if there might be a parade of some sort outdoors, for beneath the general clamor of street noise, he believes he hears the cadence of marching feet. He thinks it is a kind of parade passing at the end of his bed as well, but somehow it lacks any clear aim or harmony—certainly it lacks music, save the terrible hymn-singing woman who now and again appears and assaults the ear. For a moment, he amuses himself with the thought of Matron’s depriving
him of his breakfast—what little incentive, that!—and soon feels himself dozing off. Then, in no time at all, there are people near the bed again: Matron; “our Walt”; and an imposing man in surgeon’s regalia, with a high forehead, a clean-shaven chin, and muttonchop whiskers, undoubtedly Dr. Bliss.

“Here’s how I see it,” Casper is saying to the three others. “This is mine, what there is left of it.” He pauses here to pat his stump affectionately. “I might not get much say in most affairs,” he says. “That’s okay, that’s a soldier’s life. But by God, I can decide who gets to touch my wee babe. Give me that much at least.”

Hayes notices that the gray-bearded man is smiling and even casts his smile for a second Hayes’s way, as if he’s very pleased with how Casper has made his case. Dr. Bliss, who has been provided a chair between the beds, turns and looks up at Matron. “And you have an objection?” he asks her.

Matron appears nonplussed that he should pose the question. “Well, yes, sir,” she says, “I do. A very strong objection. What if every patient wants a particular person for one thing and another?”

“Then you’ve had many such requests?” asks the surgeon.

“No, sir,” says Matron, “I have not, but there’s a principle at stake, isn’t there?”

“And what principle is that?”

“Well … the principle that … that some decisions belong to some and not to others.”

“I should think the principle at stake would go something like this,” says the surgeon. “That these men, who have given so much, and who complain so little, might not be denied wishes that are entirely within our powers to grant.”

Matron, silent, dumbfounded, swallows deeply. Hayes observes that she has turned quite pale. Dr. Bliss rises from his chair and lays his hand on Casper’s shoulder. “Have you much pain?” he asks him.

“Not with a little morphine,” says Casper.

“Good,” says the surgeon, then turns and gives an affirming nod to “our Walt,” as if to say,
Carry on
. To Matron, he says, “Now please come with me, Matron. I want to consult with you in another matter.” As they move away together, the surgeon’s voice gradually fades as
he continues: “And I want to know if you’ve had your walk outside today? I don’t at all like your pallor. I can’t overemphasize to you the importance of fresh air.”

Once they’re gone, the gray-haired man takes the surgeon’s chair, leans his cane against the bedside table, and begins to laugh. He falls into a fit of coughing, and when he has gained his composure, says, “As if she didn’t already sufficiently hate me.”

Casper holds out his stump to the man, who begins—with what Hayes deems a good deal of poise—to unravel the bandage. Hayes rolls onto his side, putting his back to the business, for he has seen as much of it as he wants to see; somehow the idea of redressing the site of the amputation excites his own wounds. He sees that the mattress has been removed from Leo’s bed. Probably, he thinks, Babb has taken it outside to air. He hears Walt softly talking to Casper as he works: “… his given name’s Doctor, named for a certain Dr. Willard who delivered him as a baby … in Albany … which means, after the required medical training, he became Dr. Doctor Bliss. Well, don’t look at me like that, my boy, I’m not making this up … I’m only reporting the truth as I know it. Dr. Doctor Willard Bliss. A fine man … an accomplished musician, too. Has an excellent singing voice, I’m told …”

Hayes closes one eye (the one nearer the pillow) and covers the other with his hand; he spreads two fingers and looks out, through the little triangle thus formed, at the river of visitors and nurses and preachers and attendants that passes at his feet—his aimless parade. Soon, something from the river spills into his triangle: a tall skinny man in a long gown staggers barefoot and florid into the space between the two beds. Apparently the victim of a head wound, he wears a turban of bandaging and glares down at Hayes with a look of bewilderment and fury. He is clean shaven, and his face and arms and legs appear to have been scalded with boiling water. “Pus in the blood, pus in the blood,” he mutters. “Quick-step, quick-step, chicken guts and skillygallee.” Now he throws himself onto the floor, facedown, whispering, “Killed a black snake six feet long … blowed a blanket up next to the stove …”

And then, after another moment, he is quiet.

Hayes leans over the side of the mattress enough to see that the man, prone and completely still, is peering with one eye down through a knothole in the wooden floor.

Next, a young woman comes along who looks strikingly like Sarah—same hair color, similar mouth—and says to Hayes, “I hope you don’t mind if Major Cross stays here awhile. He can sometimes get loud, but he’s harmless. You’re the boy that doesn’t talk. I’m Anne. You don’t remember me, but I washed you the night you first arrived.”

She smiles and looks again at the man on the floor. She cups one hand to the side of her mouth and whispers in a confidential tone: “He’s not really a major, of course, but he insists everyone call him that, so we indulge him.”

“A regular turkey shoot,” says Major Cross, softly.

“I don’t know why,” says the young woman, “but that hole in the floor’s the only thing that seems to bring him any peace. At first Matron wouldn’t have it, but Walt there spoke to the wardmaster about it, and he instructed Matron to leave the poor man be … let him have his knothole for heaven’s sake.” She laughs and adds, “All the day long, if he likes.”

Hayes removes his fingers from over his eyes. The young woman folds her hands at her waist and smiles again. “I wonder what in the world he thinks he sees down there,” she says.

T
HE PROSPECT OF
oyster soup initially repelled him, for, mistakenly, he thought it was oysters that had made him sick at Christmas. Then he recalled that sausages had been the culprits, not oysters. The soup is good and feels good going down. The man seems to derive enormous pleasure from feeding him, and so Hayes suppresses a puerile inkling of pride and doesn’t object. He notices the cuffs of the man’s coat, worn shiny and almost black at the rims. He accepts a sip of water from a white ceramic mug, and the man smiles in his kindly way, placing both the mug and the soup plate on the bedside table. He is not, as it turns out, an old man but merely gray. Though plenty talkative himself, he doesn’t seem to mind that Hayes speaks none at all.
Indeed, he appears to enjoy practicing a kind of clairvoyance, often guessing with uncanny accuracy not only Hayes’s thoughts but the exact moment that he is hungry, thirsty, too warm, not warm enough, in pain, or needing to visit the toilet. Though he frequently busies himself elsewhere while he is on the ward, he often leaves his hat and cane at Hayes’s bedside, indicating his inevitable return. Today he was at the hospital the entire morning, left for the afternoon, and returned in the evening. At suppertime, Hayes went to the dining room and sat at a table for a few minutes but was unable to eat anything. When the man showed up at his bed sometime later, he said, “I think you must be hungry,” and soon came back with the plate of oyster soup. Now he says, “I’ll read to you and Casper for a while, but please feel free to doze off. Great literature serves purposes besides those for which it was written.”

He stands and turns up the gas lamp behind the table a bit, though there is still a lot of light coming in through the windows.
Dusk
, thinks Hayes, but suddenly the word does not seem quite right.
Dust
, he thinks.
Outdoors, dust has fallen. No … “Can Honour’s voice provoke the silent dusk?”

Once the man has sat back down, he says, “I must say this is the hardest chair my backside has ever graced.” Now he opens the book, clears his throat, and reads: “ ‘The marriage-day was shining brightly, and they were ready outside the closed door of the Doctor’s room, where he was speaking with Charles Darnay. They were ready to go to church; the beautiful bride …’ ”

“… provoke the silent dust?”
thinks Hayes.

He awakens—how long afterward, he cannot judge—to a conversation conducted in hushed tones at the foot of his bed. He is careful to keep his eyes closed and not to stir in any other way. “All over Virginia,” says a man whose voice he believes to be that of Dr. Bliss, “boys lay dead and nameless. If they didn’t take the grim precaution of pinning notes to their coats, or if no letters or Bibles or photographs are found on their persons, we can’t know who they are. We put them into unmarked graves—you
know
this, Walt. Now they cannot speak, cannot tell us their names. And here, this one can, but won’t.”

“Sunstroke, I suppose,” says another, whom Hayes recognizes as the gray-haired man. “Exposure, I imagine.”

“More likely nostalgia, I’d say.”

“Nostalgia?”

“Hmm,” says the surgeon. “I’ve seen it worse than this. Nowadays, they’re mostly put in the asylum … which is better, I guess, than their wandering the streets or the countryside.”

“I don’t think him crazy,” says the other man.

“Perhaps not. But I don’t know how long I can justify the use of his bed.”

“Not all wounds bleed.”

“No.”

“Whatever his ordeal—and who among them hasn’t had his ordeal?—it’s obviously left him very low. When his strength comes back, so will his wits and his voice, that’s my theory. Can’t we indulge nature’s process, even though it seems … well, slow and inconvenient?”

“There’s a grand order,” says the surgeon, with laughter in his voice. “Indulge nature’s process. You’re very modern, Walt. In your own way you express the cutting edge of science. Now, tell me—how’s your own head?”

“Sometimes a good deal of pressure but little else. A persistent sore throat, I regret to say.”

“You need to take yourself out of here, out of the hospitals, and soon.”

“I think I’ll be all right.”

“Shall I be forced to order you out?”

“Maybe you shall, maybe you shall.”

After a moment, the surgeon moves away, his silence a begrudging, and most likely temporary, compliance in both matters discussed.

Now, though Hayes keeps his eyes shut, he feels the warmth of the gray gentleman’s gaze. He hears a chair being pulled alongside the bed and the man’s resettling in. He expects soon to hear more of Dickens, but instead, a long silence ensues—so long that he opens his eyes at last, sensing that the silence was designed for that result. The ward is darkened outside a pool of dim light that falls from the
nearby lamp. Casper sleeps soundly in the next bed; the gauzy tent, a mosquito curtain, has been lowered around him. “I think you must be an athlete,” says the man, very softly, and smiling. “To me, you look like an athlete.”

Hayes sees that the man does in fact hold the book open in his lap, and when next he speaks, his eyes rest on the pages as if he is reading. But what he says is not from Dickens: “I’m sure that whatever you’ve been through, whatever the story that landed you here, you’ve been very brave, for I see it in your face. I also see you’ve been badly harmed. I saw it in the faces of countless young men when I was in Falmouth, and I see it in yours. But I think you’re hurt in a particular way. You strike me in your silence as someone who waked from a terrible dream, then looked down and saw the scar it had left on you. Nod to me now if you understand me, my boy, for I don’t plan to speak to you quite this way again after this.”

Hayes nods, or his head nods of its own will, he cannot be sure which. “Good,” says the man. “If you already inspire in me love, it’s for a reason. I mean to be your friend, and as a friend to set you straight when you’re selling yourself short in your own mind, to correct your error in regard to yourself. I do it because of your clear deservingness. Don’t let anyone persuade you that you’ve done wrong. You differ from these others only in your silence being more complete, and your injuries less plainspoken. But I can wait for you to break your silence … at least for as long as my own waning health will allow. I’ll tell you something I’ve discovered about myself. I’m as touched by a man’s troubles as by his charms. Think about it—while the latter might affect my heart to race forward, as if to meet a lost friend, the former makes my heart beat steadily … and me to relax and wait for him to come to me in his own time.”