We Are Both Mammals (7 page)

I had known that the thurga-a can weep, but
I had never seen it before, as they seem to be a rather serene
race. Tears began to trace a darker path through the thurga’s dark
brown fur, on either side of his pointed, possum-like nose. I held
his gaze in wonder.

For a long moment, all we did was stare at
each other.

“
I am so sorry, Avari-Ba,”
Toro-a-Ba said, in what was almost a whisper, still in his clear,
deliberate way. “Please forgive my ignorance. My misguidedness. I
thought that I was doing a good thing, but I have only brought you
pain. I should have let you die in peace. What I have done is
unforgivable, but I beg you to understand that my intentions were
only to help you.”

I was speechless.

Another long moment passed, and Toro-a-Ba
continued to weep. He did not sob, but the tears continued to soak
their trails into his fur, and the pillow underneath his head grew
damp patches. The big dark eyes blinked occasionally, but still
they regarded me.

Minutes dragged on, and still I had nothing
to say. At last Toro-a-Ba turned his head from me and inched
himself as far as he could onto his far side, facing away from me
as much as his bandages and the still-tender hose would allow. I
think he continued to weep, but facing away from me: alone, as much
as our circumstances would allow. We would never be able to cry
alone again.

And I, after watching him for a moment,
returned my gaze to the wall in front of me. He was right: he had
done this. If no volunteer had been found, the procedure would
never have taken place, and I would have been allowed to die
quietly, unconsciously, from my wounds. This was his fault. All of
it.

He should have let me die.

–––––––

That night, I awoke in the darkness. There was
silence aside from my own breathing: all the machines had been
turned off, as they were no longer needed: Toro-a-Ba’s and my
bodies were managing to function without external assistance
– that is, his was. My body would never function independently
again.

I lay in the deep gloom for a while, gazing
at the pale light that came through the curtains of the window, and
the more yellow light that dimly came from the doorways. The night
nurses would be on duty as always, somewhere in the building, but
this room was empty and I could hear no voices.

At length, I heard a clear murmur.
“Daniel.”

It was Toro-a-Ba, of course.

I looked across at him, hearing the pillow
make a slight scrunching sound under the back of my head as my head
turned, which seemed loud in the quiet room. The thurga and I had
not spoken since our conversation that afternoon.

There was a pause, and then Toro-a-Ba
said:

“
I do not wish you to be
trapped in a future that you have not chosen. If you wish to be
free of me, free of your life, all you need to do is talk to
Surgeon Suva-a and Surgeon Fong. They should be able to separate
you from me, and it is probable that I will live and you will die.
If this is what you wish, I beg you to do it.”

I swallowed. That very thought had occurred
to me, weeks ago, amidst the clamouring haze of other thoughts and
emotions, shortly after Surgeon Fong had informed me that it would
in theory be possible to save Toro-a-Ba if I were dying; and now I
wondered why I had not pursued it. Surely Surgeons Fong and Suva-a
could reverse the surgery, and if they were successful then I would
die while Toro-a-Ba would live.

Why was this thought not attractive? Why was
I not eager for this to happen?

If I wished to believe that my current self
had any altruism in it, then I could argue that Toro-a-Ba had
already consented to possible death for my sake and had sacrificed
much that I might live, and that therefore I did not want to put
his life at risk yet again, nor make his sacrifice pointless;
however, I could not deceive myself that such was the case.

Far more likely was that I was a coward.
Having cheated death once, the thought of surrendering to it
willingly ran counter to my instincts; even though my current life
was scarcely worth living, even though my future life had been
ruined, and even though my escape from death had been none of my
doing but indeed entirely without my sanction.

Was I so much a coward? So much
that I would live in misery, bemoaning my fate and hating the ones
who had bestowed it upon me, rather than end it as it could have
–
would
have – ended had they not intervened?

It would be a painless death; a knowing
death, a willing death; I would have time to make any and all
arrangements that I pleased; and if it could be confirmed that
Toro-a-Ba would survive the surgery, I would not be condemning him
to lose his life with me; – condemning him to die because I
refused his gift of life. I could die peacefully under anaesthesia
on the surgical bed, and Toro-a-Ba could live on, knowing that all
the suffering he had endured had been no one’s doing but his own.
And if he did not survive, that too was his own fault: he had
risked his life for a stranger, and though the first risk of
surgery had been survived, fettering himself to another was a
continual risk, and he had known that from the start. Either way,
Toro-a-Ba would have no one to blame but himself.

Was this not what I wanted?

Then why did I baulk at it?

Was life really so precious to me? Even a
life perpetually joined to an unchosen other’s?

“
I know,” I croaked flatly
to Toro-a-Ba.

There was a long pause.

Then Toro-a-Ba inquired softly, “Then what,
if I may ask, do you choose, Avari-Ba?”

‘
Mr Avari’. Hitherto he
had always addressed me, when we were alone, as just
‘Daniel’.

Except, I then realised, for this
afternoon.

I flexed the toes of one foot under the
bedclothes; one of the few movements I could make that brought no
pain.

“
I don’t know,” I replied
at last.

There was another long pause. The room was
so quiet. Not even the analogue clock on the wall ticked: its
mechanism was silent.

Then Toro-a-Ba gave a soft sigh.

“
Avari-Ba, if we may leave
aside, for a moment, your choice in this matter, I should like to
converse with you, if your state will allow it. I have lain beside
you for six weeks now, and still I feel that I do not know you at
all. Whether I live or die, or whether you live or die, I should
like to know the person to whom I joined myself. The person for
whom … I did this.”

I sighed, as deeply as I could without
incurring too much pain, and the sigh came from the deepest part of
me.

There seemed so little point in talking. So
little point in anything. If I was going to die, then nothing I
said mattered. If I was going to live, there would be plenty of
time for us to get to know each other; and what did our pasts
matter, anyway? If my future tied to this creature would be
different from anything in my life hitherto, then what did my life
prior to this point matter? What did it matter who I had been, or
what I had done, before?

“
You owe me nothing,
Avari-Ba,” Toro-a-Ba said quietly, after a long moment. “It was I
who did this to you. If you are already dead inside, then words are
meaningless anyway. I shall let you sleep.”

There was silence – a different
silence, now; a silence of expectations no longer expecting.

–––––––

Days passed, and I could not decide whether to live
or die.

For all the effort that living things put
into living, the question seemed like it should have been an easy
one to answer. Life is desirable, isn’t it?

Or if, for me, it wasn’t, then the answer
seemed obvious.

But I dithered.

I had woken from my coma feeling closer to
death than to life. Perhaps, when one has come so near to death
that it seems still within reach, just on the other side of the
veil of sleep, one is reminded of how unwelcome it is; how counter
it runs to the instinct, the desire, of living things to live and
thrive.

My brain had known how close I was to death.
My brain still knew that my life was borrowed, not my own. And
perhaps it was my brain that craved life, and feared returning to
the darkness that it had seen so imminent.

My body was healing; my brain desired life;
it seemed that my heart was the only part of me that was reluctant.
But a life with a heart that longs for death is no life at all.

I knew that my indecision was cruel to the
thurga beside me, who had placed his fate in my hands even while I
was still unconscious; but I could not make myself care. He had
done this, all of this, to me; since he had put me in this
position, he could now await my decision.

I did not speak to him, and he did not
attempt to speak to me.

The psychologist, Tara O’Callahan, came to
meet with us again. This time she remarked on the fact that she had
not seen me so much as glance at Toro-a-Ba, ever.

I shrugged, regarding the blankets.

“
This surgery was
performed without your consent,” the psychologist began. “I have
never experienced anything similar, but of course I can imagine
that it’s shocking and it’s traumatic to wake up to find that you
are permanently attached to someone else, and that you’re going to
have to live the rest of your life that way.” She paused briefly.
“You’ve effectively gained a conjoined twin, Daniel, and that’s
shocking. It is only natural that you should struggle to accept it;
anyone would. No one would go through this surgery happily and
without any issues.

“
But I get the feeling
that you are really unhappy about this. I’m starting to wonder if
you wish the surgery had not been performed.”

I was silent, regarding the blankets again,
but without really seeing them. I suspect that my face told
everything.

There was a long pause.

“
If you don’t want to
live, Daniel, that is understandable,” Tara said calmly. “But when
a person goes through something like this – any great trauma
– there is a lot of grief and processing that has to happen.
Even if you feel like dying now, it doesn’t follow that you’ll
always feel that way.”

“
May I speak?” Toro-a-Ba
asked quietly, after a brief pause had elapsed.

“
Go ahead,” the
psychologist invited him.

“
The surgeons have told us
that, if Avari-Ba were to die, then it is possible that the
surgeons could separate me from him, providing I could get to a
hospital in time. That being the case, I have discussed with
Avari-Ba the possibility that he could ask Surgeon Suva-a and
Surgeon Fong to separate us. If the surgeons can do so
successfully, then there is a good chance that I will survive, as
my organs are healthy. Avari-Ba would die … but he may consider
that preferable to living with me.”

Toro-a-Ba paused. No one spoke.

“
The thought that Avari-Ba
might not accept me occurred to me when I was volunteering to
undergo this surgery,” the thurga explained, in his calm,
soft-spoken manner. “I thought to myself about how I might feel in
Avari-Ba’s place, and I thought that I might feel angry and upset
that such a thing had been done without my consent.

“
But I had no way of
knowing what Avari-Ba would want. So I decided that if Avari-Ba was
angry with me, and wanted to die, I would accept that. I would
rather offer my life to a person who did not want it than hold onto
my life and send to death someone who, if they had been given the
choice, would have chosen to live, albeit with me.”

He paused again. The psychologist and I were
silent. Even I could not help but gaze at the thurga beside me.

“
And so, if Avari-Ba
wishes to die now, I will accept that. I do not want him to think
that he must live because of me. I have already risked death in
partaking in this surgery; I hold my life lightly and am ready to
let it go. I have given my life to Avari-Ba; if he wants it not, he
is free to reject it. My life is worth nothing if it causes more
grief than it alleviates; if it causes someone to wish for death
rather than for life. If Avari-Ba would rather die than live, I
will not demand that he live for my sake. My life for his was
supposed to be a gift from me, not a curse.”

There was a long moment of silence. I
returned my gaze to the blankets and sheets that covered my lap,
but I saw nothing. I did not know what to feel; part of me
definitely wanted to weep, but not in front of others.

‘
Not in front of others.’
If I did not die, my whole life would be lived in front of others,
now; at least one other.

“
I feel sorry for Avari-Ba,”
Toro-a-Ba murmured, since no one had spoken; he was making the
longest speech I had ever heard from him. “I did not know that my
actions would cause him such grief. I wish that I had known then
what I know now about Avari-Ba’s desires; but I wished that then
also, and that wishing did not help me to know. In that lack of
knowledge, whatever I did would be taking a risk, and I knew that
the outcome might be sorrow.


“It is not Avari-Ba’s fault; and it is not mine. Things are
as they are. I made my choice; now it is Avari-Ba’s turn to make a
choice.”

–––––––

I lay awake that night thinking about the thurga’s
words.

It occurred to me that if I was genuinely
eager for death, the choice would have been easy. The fact that I
was still thinking about it perhaps meant that I was not so sour
and ill-disposed toward the idea of living as I had thought I
was.