more of John John....

Trailing a reek of mutton fat and overcooked cabbage the steel-sided trolley rumbles along the waxed corridor. Overtaking it he turns brusquely into Ward 11, and meets the blonde nurse. She has a gravy-smeared plate in her hand, tells him that the man's memory has still not returned, but that otherwise he is much better.
The men is sat in bed, table over his knees. On the table is a cup of coffee and a folded open newspaper. On the bedrail above his head, beside the name Assan, someone has written the name ‘John John’ in green felt tip.
"That your real name?" DC Hawkins points accusingly to the new name in its plastic sheath.
The man looks up, recognises him and instantly smiles. He tells of the porter who took him for an X-ray, of how the social worker wanted a name for her forms, of one of the younger nurses putting that name up as a joke....
As the man is telling the story another of the patients passes and greets him by name. The man’s smile in acknowledging the greeting is as broad as his blush is deep. DC Hawkins sees what is happening — the man, not liking to be regarded as abnormal, at the same time enjoying being singled out for attention, is proud of his new name, pleased at being a ward celebrity. DC Hawkins recalls the blonde nurse's smile when he asked after the amnesiac. Seems both patients and staff are relieved he's got a name.
All these smiles... DC Hawkins decides not to find the name amusing. Pulling up a chair he swivels the table aside and takes charge.
"You don't seem very worried by your amnesia today." It is an allegation.
"Maybe I’m getting used to the idea."
The man is wearing now a comfortable smile. Or, DC Hawkins thinks, you’re becoming confident that your little hoax will succeed.
DC Hawkins has yet to overcome the novice's shock of realising that all criminals are remarkable principally for their ordinariness. Criminals do not look like the smudged photographs of people wanted in connection with... Nor do they in the least resemble those sinister face-on videofits. Criminals own the three-dimensional faces of people in the street. Often he supposes all the people he passes on the pavements to be criminals, to be crimes waiting to be committed.
"No-one in Northamptons," he opens his briefcase, "has yet reported you missing. We might well be getting there though." He removes several sheets of printout from his briefcase, "That is if anyone at all has registered you as a missing person. Have you been circumcised?"
The man frowns. The word is new to him this life. But he finds it in his vocabulary, lifts the covers and peers below.
"No."
"That's that one out then," DC Hawkins draws a line across the top sheet of printout, scans the next, "Any freckles on your chest?"
The man, chin doubled, tries to examine his own chest.
"You tell me," holding his pyjama top open he turns to the detective. The detective studies the white skin under the black hairs.
"Two or three," he says, looks to the man's face. None there. "I think she may have meant more than that. Think you could have worn glasses for reading?" There are no indentations on the man's nose. "Any difficulties reading the paper?"
"No."
"We'll keep this as a possible. The name Richard Bofill ring any bells?"
"Richard Bofill?" the man looks inside himself, "Sorry."
"Dick Bofill?"
"No..."
The questioning has brought the man back to his reality, to the absence of himself, to the anxiety of his real namelessness.
DC Hawkins takes up the next sheet of printout, frowns over his own writing in one corner of it.
"Have you a small scar beside your left nipple?"
The man unbuttons his pyjama top, pulls his dark nipple about, shows it to the detective, who draws a line through that printout. A missing front tooth eliminates the next. The other two printouts list no peculiarities.
"The name Antony Bekel?"
"Sorry."
"James Otto?" The man tastes the name, ruefully shakes his head,
"Sorry."
DC Hawkins slips the printouts back into his briefcase, takes up his notepad, studies the man. What class? The accent is unaffectedly neutral. Nor does he have a built-in resentment or a fear of the police. The occasional arbitrary sharpness DC Hawkins has injected into his tone has caused the man merely to regard him with a brief puzzlement. Upper middle? With those clothes?
"Is there anything you’ve remembered since yesterday that might help me?"
"No," The man shrugs, "No," he says again.
"Right." DC Hawkins closes his notebook and briefcase, "I'll tell you what's going to happen now. Tomorrow, or the day after, a dentist will visit you. Dental charts are like fingerprints. No two alike. Unlike fingerprints, though, everyone has a dental chart. I'll also be reporting back to these four women. If any of them think that you might be their missing man I'll get them here to identify you. A photograph, a physical description is one thing, the flesh another. Don't you worry, one way or another we'll find out who you are." He tries to make those words as much a threat as a reassurance.

Voice Off. Humanity's arrogant intelligence has got into the way or thinking that, because the planet has always survived — from the cataclysmic wars and corrosive pollutants inflicted upon it by humanity — then the planet will always survive. Humanity is wrong.

Except for three of the clues, whose solution depends on a general knowledge he no longer possesses, the small Guardian crossword is simply a matter of finding synonyms. Even the Guardian's large cryptic crossword he finds easier than the Mirror's quizword. He enjoys picking apart the cryptic clues, finding the key word, doodling with Mr MacMaster's pen in the blank space provided.
The only clues in the cryptic crossword that John John is unable to solve are two which omit a word from a quotation. There, like the test of general knowledge in the quizword, his memory is blocked. Though, from its context, he does finally manage to deduce one of the omitted words.
Looking around the ward he becomes uncomfortably aware that he alone has no visitors. He takes himself off to the television room. One other patient is there, watching a quiz show. John John sits in a caramel coloured armchair. The plastic of the chair squeaks.
The quiz show, the adverts, are familiar in that they do not surprise him. The other patient, a ponderous lubberly man, asking John John if he minds, changes channels to a film. John John watches the film with interest, but for only a few moments: it is the same actors pulling the same anguished faces as before.
Before?
Again he looks curiously into himself, this time studying his emotions. He knows that fear, although no longer on the surface, still lurks large within him, ready to overcome him at the least unexpected turn of events. That fear, though, seems to have been a part of him for a long time now. Other of today’s emotions are new to him; like the gratitude he felt, still feels, towards Mr MacMaster; like the compassion he felt for the patient who suddenly paled and tottered back to his bed; like his sympathetic reaction to anyone who approaches him with sympathy... All these feelings are new to him; and if they are new what kind of life did he live before?
A stout perfumed woman and two shiny-faced men come into the television room to visit the lubberly patient. Their voices are loud. All of them light cigarettes, including Mr Ponderous, even though he has audible difficulty in breathing. Their conversation is a forced cheeriness. That, added to the artificiality of the film and the eye-smarting sting of the cigarette smoke, drives John John back to bed, where he again takes up the crossword. The one remaining quotation, however, like his previous identity, continues to elude him.
He has been half listening to the conversation in the next bed when, with a start, he realises all at once that he can understand what they are saying and that they are speaking Urdu. How, he asks himself, do I know that it is Urdu? No matter, he does.
The man and his wife have been arguing about her brother, who is the man’s business partner. The brother is taking advantage of the man's being in hospital to make certain alterations to their premises. The man halts his anger to burp painfully; then, wincing he complains to his wife of the diet the doctors have given him. The wife, glad of the change of subject, tells him that it is for his own good. She has a wrinkled forehead. From their conversation John John gathers that the doctors suspect him of having an ulcer and not heart problems.
Or, John John asks himself, is he imagining it? Is he assuming that their Pakistani accents are another language? He has to test it.
"Excuse me," he says in Urdu, "Are you speaking Urdu?"
Man and wife look over to John John, startled by his interruption. The two children also stare brown-eyed at him, look to their Father as he shifts heavily in bed.
"You speak Urdu?" he asks John John in Urdu.
"I can understand what you were saying. About your wife's brother."
The wife straightens her back, about to take offence at this tactless eavesdropper. The man explains that John John has lost his memory. She reassesses him.
"You’ve been to Pakistan," she asks/tells him.
"I don't know."
"Maybe you have a Pakistani wife?" The puzzle of him has excited her. John John shrugs.
"We haven’t introduced ourselves," the man says, "I am Osman Rustar," and he proceeds to name his wife and two children. "They have called him John John," Osman Rustar tells his family.
The wife questions John John, in Urdu, about his possible family. Osman Rustar mentions places in Pakistan — Lahore, Raul Pindi, Karachi... Names on a map, cities, buildings. John John has no clearer image of them than he does of the unseen buildings immediately beyond the hospital.
"Do I speak Urdu well?" he asks Osman Rustar.
"Like a native born," Osman Rustar tells him.
"Do you think I could be Pakistani?"
Osman Rustar, his wife and two children doubtfully appraise him.
"It's possible," Osman Rustar says. His wife asks about his religion, if he knows the Q'oran.
"I know what it is," John John uncertainly replies.
"Maybe he has a Pakistani wife," she says to her husband, "Or a Bengali."
"No," Osman Rustar tells her, "his Urdu is too good."
"Excuse me," John John finds the piece of paper bearing the detective's telephone number, "I think I'd better let the detective know about this. He’s trying to find out who I am. Thank you for your help."
The blonde nurse is in one of the little wooden rooms at the ward’s entrance.
"I've round out something about myself," John John tells her, "that I think the detective ought to know."
"Nothing terrible I hope," the nurse lays aside a ledger.
"I can speak Urdu," he says with awe.
"Go back to bed: I’ll have the phone brought to you."
He has seen other patients using that grey-scarred telephone on its tall trolley.
"I'm not sure I know how to use it."
The sister notes his discomfiture.
"Use this phone," she gestures to the black telephone on the desk, holds out her hand for his piece of paper, "Come round here. I'll show you how to dial."
The sister has red hands, white forearms. She taps the numbers, asks the police switchboard for an extension number, which she points out to John John.
"Ward 11 here," she says, "The amnesiac. He has something he wants to tell you." She hands the phone to John John.
"You've remembered who you are?" John John recognises the detective's faintly sarcastic voice. The telephone itself is unfamiliar: he finds himself wanting to look into the earpiece.
"No," he says carefully into the mouthpiece, "But I can speak Urdu."
"Urdu? How do you know?"
"The man in the bed next to me, Osman Rustar, he was talking to his wife and I realised that I could understand what he was saying. So I talked to him."
"In Urdu?'
"Yes."
"Are you fluent?"
"Like a native born, he said."
"Stirred any memories?"
"Only of the language. Nothing else. I just thought that you should know. That it might help you."
The detective is silent.
"It’s two years since any of these women last saw you. If it is you. And if you’ve got an aptitude for languages you could easily have picked it up since leaving them. Might help though. One more clue. Thanks for letting me know. Oh, I’ve managed to trace Antony Bekel. You're definitely not him. He’s dead. Now... you'll be seeing the dentist sometime tomorrow. And I’ll be seeing you as soon as I've got some results. Bye."

Voice Off. Morality is learnt. Morality is therefore taught. Morality is power. Propaganda is power. Morality is propaganda.