Thursday 6 December 2007

sorry this eleventh[?] John John is late

Where the stories in the two newspapers are duplicated The Guardian gives more details. One story, of an inquest into the death of a four year old Birmingham boy, is reported only in The Guardian. The Mirror contains not even a simplified version.
The Guardian's two columns of print, on page three, tell how, after the failure of her second marriage, the mother raised the boy on her own. She and the boy lived in a block of flats. Because she wasn’t able to go out to work and to also look after the child, she was dependant on state benefits. Because the flat was cold and damp she used more electricity than she was able to pay for. She and the boy had nowhere else warm to go. She got deeper into debt. Finally, taking all of her savings — money that was to have paid off some of her outstanding bills — the mother gave the boy a day out at a wildlife park. That night, after he had gone to sleep, she hit him with a heavy metal ashtray. The boy awoke. She comforted him back to sleep, then stabbed him with a pair of scissors. She herself took an overdose of pills. A bailiff broke into the house and found the two bodies the following morning. The mother was saved. The boy died.
The man lays aside The Guardian, checks once more through the smaller pages of the Mirror. But nowhere in the Mirror is the inquest mentioned. And The Guardian is satisfied with simply reporting it, makes no reference to it elsewhere. How was he able, the man wonders, to live in a world where such despair is seen as unremarkable? He reads on.
He is on page five when the dark-haired nurse adroitly removes the paper from his hands. The curtains have been drawn around Mr MacMaster's bed. In the centre of the ward four doctors are stood around a light table.
Three of the doctors are wearing white coats. The fourth is a small dark man, his straight black hair precisely combed, a dark suit adding angles to his round body. His square shoes are shined. The three younger and taller doctors defer to him.
The spotty doctor, who yesterday examined him, diffidently reads off his notes. Suited Assan points to an X-ray, speaks. The three respectfully nod, solemnly listen. The group then advances to the bed, Assan at their head. Behind them a young nurse hurriedly switches off the light table.
With a courteous good-morning Assan leans forward to look into the man's eyes,
"Any luck with the old memory yet?"
"Not who I am. Nor where I'm from."
Assan smells slightly of antiseptic scent.
"The police not found out for you?"
"I haven't heard from them today; and they said I would if I was a known criminal."
"Not often," Assan smiles, "I meet a proven innocent."
The three white-coated doctors glance to one another, and dutifully chuckle.
"The police may yet turn up trumps," Assan addresses himself to the man, "By which time, though, your mind will probably have solved the puzzle for itself. Actually you're a bit of a puzzle all around. We do not know quite what’s ailing you. You do have a mild concussion, but no skull fractures. Your heart is sound. Which is only as it should be: you're neither fat nor yet forty. And your kidneys are sound. You can't remember collapsing?"
"No."
"Any aches or pains?"
'No, none."
"Dizziness?"
"When I was weighed."
"So nurse told me. Possibly," Assan, raising his voice, partly turns to the attendant doctors, "the blood samples will enlighten us. We certainly know what you're not. You're not diabetic, nor do you have any heart disorders. Nor are you a criminal. And you do now appear to be on the mend. By the time we find out what ailed you, it will all probably be academic anyway. The mild bump you sustained on the head was not enough to damage any part of the brain. So, whatever the cause of this amnesia, it is more likely to have been an emotional shock of some kind. And to speculate on the causes of that would be simply pointless. Could be anything from redundancy to adultery. Actually your physical condition reminds me very much or shell-shock cases I have seen. Haven't been in any wars lately?"
Again the three doctors chuckle. The question does not require an answer from the man. Chin in hand Assan studies him. At the far end of the ward a similar group of doctors are gathered around the bed of another patient.
"If that were the case," yesterday's spotty doctor speaks, "wouldn't his reflexes be impaired? Wouldn't there be temporary paralysis?"
"Good point doctor," Assan beams beneficently up at him, "What’s amnesia, though, but a temporary paralysis of the mind?" He steps away from the bed, "Might be a good idea to do a brain scan as well as an encelograph. An EEC will eliminate epilepsy for certain. And," he turns back to the man, "I think we'll let you get up and about now. We won't know if your vertigo is cured unless you're occasionally vertical. Don't overtax yourself though. Be cautious. And movement of itself might be stimulus enough to jog that recalcitrant memory of yours." And with the aplomb of power Assan moves down the ward to his next patient, the three white coats trailing behind him.
The curtains are drawn back from around Mr MacMaster's bed. A nurse in a white tunic asks Mr MacMaster if he has everything. Mr MacMaster pats a small green-checked valise lying on the bed. He has on a brown cardigan, fawn trousers and suede shoes. He looks cheerily around the ward.
"Bye then," he says loudly.
The patients, sitting primly in their beds for the doctor's rounds, smile weakly in reply. Those tepid smiles do not satisfy Mr MacMaster.
"Don't you worry," he winks largely at the man, "it'll all come back. Maybe then you'll wish it hadn't." And he laughs. Wearing clothes seems to have made Mr MacMaster louder.
"Thank you for the papers."
"Don't worry about it," Mr MacMaster picks up his green-checked valise, "Gotta go now. My daughter's waiting."
Mr MacMaster leaves for his life outside the ward. He seems larger too in his clothes. With a sigh the man opens the paper to page five, finds his place.
"Good morning," a woman looks over the top of the paper.
She is wearing civilian clothes, is broad and plump and freckled. Lowering his paper he calmly waits for her to tell him her function.
"I'm the hospital social worker," she says, "I tried to get to you earlier, but..." she indicates her bulging briefcase, sits in the red chair, "I’m told you can't remember who you are." She sets the briefcase on the floor, extricates a pink form, finds a black pen. "This isn't going to be easy. Still don't remember?"
"No," the man says.
"Name..." she studies the form, "Can hardly call you Bed 2 Ward 11. What's it the Americans call them? John Doe. Got to call you something. Have you any money?'"
"Mr MacMaster, who was there," two nurses are stripping the bed down to its plastic floral mattress, "leant me a pound to buy some papers."
"Nothing else?"
"My pockets were all empty."
"And no memory of any family?"
"No."
"Shall I put down John Doe?"
"The porter called me John."
"Does he know you?"
"No. He said he comes from London. That they call everyone John there."
"Forename then is definitely John," she beams at him, "Surname?"
"Isn't a doe a female deer? And a female rabbit?"
"Actually I think it stands for ‘Dead On Entry’. Or something along those lines. What name do you fancy?"
"John..." he begins. She misunderstands,
"John John? Right," she laughs, a high squeaky laugh, "John John you are. Date of birth etcetera we'll omit. And you have no money apart from this?" she taps the change on the bedside locker. "In that case, until we find out who you are, I'll get them to give you a weekly allowance."
"Who?"
"DSS. Can't remember exactly how much it'll be. But you'll not need much in here anyway. Be enough for a daily paper. Soon as I get it I'll bring it along. Don't run up too much credit in the meantime. Just in case."
Interview finished she slots the form back into her briefcase, goes to rise.
"What's it like?" she asks, sees that he doesn't understand the question, "Not being able to remember?" And she blushes, aware that her curiosity has taken her beyond the bounds of professionalism.
"I've nothing to compare it with..." Since the pink nurse displayed a similar curiosity the previous day he has been thinking how to answer should anyone else ask, not wanting to disappoint them as he did the pink nurse. "It's frightening," he says, "And it's not frightening. Because I don't know what to be frightened of. I'm incomplete. I know things. But not where or when I learnt them. I can rationalise," he gestures to The Mirror's unfinished quizword, "but I don't know where I learnt to do it. Nothing has any value. All is meaningless. Everything is only what it is. And I feel it should be more. That it should have memories attached to it. Everything is a question. Why do I know what I do know and not know what I don't know? And," as he looks up she avoids his eyes, "I'm not so sure that I want to find out who I am. Because, if I've so easily forgotten, then it couldn't have been worth knowing. Could it?"
The woman uncomfortably shrugs, sorry to have evoked this outpouring. She lays her hand by way of apology, of hope, on his arm.
"See you later John John," she smiles, and is gratified by his answering smile.
He hears her talking with some of the nurses on her way out, her squeaky laugh, and then the silence there saying that she has gone. The two troupes of doctors are also leaving. He reaches for the paper, but it holds no interest. He thinks back over what he said to the social worker, what Assan said to him; and he decides to go for a walk as Assan suggested, seek stimulus, uncover this disquieting someone else within him.
Walking down the ward he watches his bare pink feet swinging along of their own accord below him. He knows how to walk, can't though remember having walked anywhere before. He looks up from his feet, and, in passing, he answers the timid half smiles of those patients in their beds.
The bathroom has stainless steel urinals under a green mesh window, with opposite a row of three white porcelain basins. Down one side are three doors labelled WC. On other doors are labels saying Bathroom and Shower Room. A patient is stood, baggy pyjama legs apart, at the urinal. The man watches him cross to the basins.
Following the patient's example the man goes to the urinal, takes out his penis. He pees. No memories of this either.
At the basins he soaps his hands, rinses them, dries them on a green paper towel. Above the basins are a line of mirrors. He recognises his reflection only as the man in last night’s photograph. Soggy green paper towel in his hand he studies this unknown visage.
"John John," he says, and smiling, and studying his smile, he feels foolishly grateful to that semi-articulate porter for releasing him from his namelessness.

Voice Off. All intelligence must first discover what it is to perceive from whence it views the universe.