This day John John buys only a Guardian, avoids the grey scrambled eggs, has cereal, tea and toast for breakfast. The day shift greet him by his new name. He smiles; and again he has his temperature, pulse and blood pressure taken. Osman Rustar returns from the bathroom and grumbles to him, in Urdu, asking how can they expect him to get better when they wake him at such an early hour and then feed him such insubstantial victuals.
John John reads the paper. The news is much as yesterday's. All that he reads in full are two articles; one a woman’s opinion on how to treat male child molesters, the other a technical analysis of suspected nuclear weapon proliferation and current capability. He spends mere time comparing the solution to yesterday's two crosswords with yesterday's clues. He cannot understand the exact process whereby some of the solutions were derived from their clues, although those solutions were the same that he arrived at, if for no other reason than they could have been the only answers. Even so, though pleased that his answers were right, he would have liked to have known exactly how he did it. Sighing over his incomprehension, he deems the fault his own, and he lends his attention to today's crossword.
So the day passes, subject to the hospital routine and the procedures that Mr Assan and the detective have set in train. At ten thirty a porter comes to take him to Neurology. In the corridors the wheelchair overtakes women patients in dressing gowns carrying handbags. In Neurology he is laid on a raised bed and has pads stuck to his temples and a wired rubber hat fitted to his skull. He is told to relax. Fat chance. The white-coated operator, apart from gruffly informing John John that there are ten billion nerve cells in the human brain and so they have at best a billion to one chance of discovering why he has amnesia, is apparently preoccupied with weightier matters and is uncommunicative. The porter equally so. John John is returned to the ward little the wiser.
Osman Rustar has been taken somewhere for tests. John John concentrates on the crossword, has his blood pressure, pulse and temperature taken. He notices that, to distract from their ministrations, the nurses chat to the other patients about their families, their jobs, where they live. With him the nurses tell him of their own families, of where in town they live, of where their husbands, brothers, sisters and boyfriends work, asking him always, he thinks without ulterior motives, it he knows of the place.
A small Pakistani nurse from another ward, as slight and as slim as Osman Rustar is heavy and fat, stops by to test his Urdu. Her accent is different to Osman Rustar's. She says that her family comes from the Chagai mountains. John John doesn’t knew of the Chagai mountains; although he does, she tells him, speak better Urdu than many of the Pakistanis she knows here.
Osman Rustar is returned burping just before lunch. Osman Rustar complains about his lunch. Osman Rustar looks a profoundly tired man, a man weary of living, a man unable even to pretend to the tiniest appetite for life.
After lunch a young man in jeans comes to John John. He introduces himself as an odontologist, apologises for any deficiency in his bedside manner, says that he is more used to working with cadavers. Or bits of their jaws. Asking John John to open his mouth he picks pieces of John John's lunch out of his teeth, makes notes on a pad.
"Three fillings, one front upper crown," he tells John John, "Shouldn't be too difficult to trace."
During the afternoon lull in hospital activity other patients come up to John John with a smile, intrigued by his mystery, discuss him with Osman Rustar. Both John John’s English and his Urdu are pronounced impeccable. Many conclusions are reached concerning his possible identity, none verifiable. John John smiles, but greets each of these amateur sleuths with nervous unease, lest they trip him and he fall pell mell into his past. Yet the certain knowledge of a past would save him from being this object of such easy familiarity, such public curiosity.
He is saved from their speculations by being taken for a brain scan. Glad of the rest he lies passively on the metal bed, lets the metal tunnel move over him. By the time he is returned to the ward the other patients are quiet in their beds.
The library trolley appears during afternoon visiting. A passing nurse informs the bangled woman is charge of the trolley that John John is an amnesiac. Rising to the challenge, guided by his reading of The Guardian, the women selects three books for him — a biography, one detective mystery and science fiction. He is flipping through the books when the social worker arrives.
She laughs her squeaky laugh to see ‘John John' written on the bedhead; and setting her bulging case on the bed she tells him of the difficulties she has had in defining him for the DSS. No category exists for his precise circumstances. However they did agree to grant him a daily allowance, five days of which she has been given, but which are reclaimable on the return of his memory. She hands him the money in a small plastic bag,
"If you'll sign this receipt."
Again he holds the pen sketchily over a dotted line, then — with a beam of inspiration — he carefully writes 'John John'. The social worker studies the signature: the laboured handwriting is at odds with the reading matter on the bedside locker. But a signature is all that is required; and with a promise to bring his money again next week, telling him to contact her if his memory returns, in a rush she is gone.
He starts reading the biography of the opera singer, darling, understanding little of it, darling. When next his temperature and blood pressure are taken he asks the dark-haired nurse where he can buy some shaving soap and toothpaste. The nurse doubts that he will be allowed to go to the hospital shop on his own, tells him to make a list and she will go for him. Borrowing a sheet of paper from Osman Rustar he laboriously writes his list; shampoo, toothpaste, razors, shaving soap, deodorant and comb. Osman Rustar earnestly tries to dissuade him from buying anything in the hospital shop, says that if John John gives the list to his wife that evening she will buy them cheaper outside. John John thanks him, but says that he will need the things tomorrow morning.
The dark-haired nurse returns during afternoon visiting. John John gives her the plastic bag of money, tells her to take the pound, that Mr MacMaster gave him, for the nurses' fund. She is gone ten minutes, comes back with a white carrier bag and the price of each item written beside it on the list. As soon as she leaves Osman Rustar takes the list and shakes his head over the prices.
John John studies one by one his purchases, reading all of the print on all of the packages, before arranging them in his bedside locker. With each new possession he feels himself becoming more substantial, more here.
For the rest of the day he perseveres with the biography, darling.
Voice Off. Most human beings spend the greater part of their lives in a semiconscious state, being forced to evaluate their circumstances only in moments of crisis, of drastic change. These semiconscious lives are based on the fiction of non-change; thus change must always unsettle them, force them to address the frightening realities of their lives that, in their semiconscious state, they are avoiding.
Tuesday, 15 January 2008
Tuesday, 8 January 2008
more John John
In the sightless dark he is aware only of his fear. Then something (a single snore?) reminds him of the hospital: he pictures to himself the lines of beds on either side of the ward. A deeper grumbling snore from a nearby body further reassures him. Relaxing he wonders what it was exactly that first told him where he was. After several minutes he pinpoints it — the distant breathy whisper of lift doors opening. Followed by the almost inaudible whirr of cables.
He is pleased with his discovery, is encouraged by that small exercise of memory: his mind is capable of making connections, conscious and unconscious. But still only of this life, this hospital life.
Nervously he tries to recall his precise state of mind on waking. He didn't know where he was. Did he imagine himself somewhere else? If so, where? But those black waking moments were filled only with the horror of his not knowing, a timeslip memory of his first fearful awakening.
First?
His unknown past frightens him. He fears what he might have been. Even if it was only someone mundane. Especially if it was only someone mundane. He does not want to be reclaimed by the owner of those clothes. The past is standing like a trap before him; one wrong step and the amnesiac will again be that equally anonymous man. Simultaneously, though, he longs to be more than this, than this joke-named hospital patient, than this object of easy curiosity.
Ignorance of himself is shaming. He wants to know, and fears the consequences of knowing. There will be no escaping him again.
The nurses are rousing themselves from the torpor of their uneventful nightshift. He fingers the covers free of his face. The slowlimbed night sister is packing up her papers at the table in the centre of the ward. He can hear the clink-chink of empty cups from the entrance to the ward. He knows the routine now. In a few minutes the nurses will begin opening the curtains, chiding patients from their sleep, sitting men up in their beds, remembering if and how many sugars they take.
The night sister reaches up to switch out the light above the table. Two patients from the end of the ward are making stealthily for the bathroom. John John hugs his stillness close to him, loath to move before he has to, reluctant to pre-empt the routine.
An unvarying routine, for a man with no past, is a comfort. Ensconced in a routine, with his mind employed only in the serene contemplation of what is coming next, the past cannot leap out and frighten him. That past, that huge past of all those years, is terrifying in his having forgotten it. That past, of all those people he supposedly knew, has nothing to do with who he is at present, is an alien being inside himself, the revival of whom will mean the obliteration of his present self. To have that unknown past suddenly entrap and possess him is a fearful prospect, will mean a death of sorts. He can shut off such fears behind the anaesthesia of hospital routine, can limit his whole existence to that predictable routine. Therefore, his instincts reason, better not to thwart the routine lest some wrong step start an avalanche of memory, bring his past smothering down upon him.
When the nurses finally abandon the susurrations and languor of the night, more patients struggle into armtwisting dressing gowns and, towels over their shoulders, slop towards the bathroom in loose slippers. John John now feels conspicuous being awake and still abed; and he doesn't want to attract unnecessary attention to himself. So he too slips out of bed, takes the hospital towel from the bottom bedrail and joins his bedsmelling brethren in the bathroom.
He is practised now at urinating; but not until he joins the three deep queue at the washbasins does he realise that he does not have a plastic toilet bag, nor its contents. Second in the queue he feels over the two day growth on his chin.
"Course," a large man says to him via the mirror, "you got no razor. I got a disposable you can have. Drop my soap back to me later."
'Thank you," John John says to the reflection, watches the large man scrape his pliant jowls.
The large man has drawn the bathroom’s attention to John John.
"Nurse says you can speak Urdu," a thin little man says from the queue beside him. His shoulders curve in around his sunken chest.
"Heard who?" the large man at the mirror says. Last evening the large man was jovial with his visitors.
"I heard one of the nurses say..." the small man begins. The other men groan at his humourlessness. The small man blinking shuts himself up: he is used to being disliked.
The other patients, having realised John John’s predicament, they too hasten to help. A man in the queue behind has two toothbrushes, blushing explains that when he first came in he bought a toothbrush in the hospital shop and then his wife brought his old toothbrush from home. The man in the queue before him offers a squeeze of his toothpaste, others offer the use of deodorants and shampoo. Nodding his gratitude to all, John John finds himself at a basin.
He recognises the face now as his own; and, though, made hasty by the lengthening queue behind he has time to realise that he has no memory of something so mundane as cleaning his own teeth: a thing he must have done every single day of his previous life. Even the minty tang of the pink toothpaste is unfamiliar. He knows what to do only from his five minute observation of the others at the washbasins. So too with shaving: if he hadn’t watched the other patients he would have had no idea what to do. So unpractised is he with the aerosol foam that he almost covers his eyes; and then he cuts the slack skin under his chin, the bright red blood spidering over the wet pink skin; and only then does he realise why the other men reached their heads back, and belatedly he does so.
When he re-enters the ward the curtains are all open and the tea trolley has made its rounds. Having returned, with more thanks, the tin of shaving soap to the large man further down the ward, he hurries to the normalcy of his bed and his waiting cup of tea. And, sat back in his familiar bed, cup of tea before him, the mound of Osman Rustar still clinging avariciously to sleep, he glances often and with pride to his new possessions, accoutrements of an ordinary man — a red toothbrush and a blue razor — and he pats his smarting cheeks and once more sinks comfortably back into routine, to await the appearance of the grumpy cleaners.
While waiting he recalls that first glimpse he had, through the curtains, of the old man opposite sat in his chair, as now, waiting. That’s all we do here is wait, he thinks; is that why we’re called patients? He grimaces at his mechanical attempt at humour. This waiting, though, does lay to rest the last of his bathroom agitation. And he knows that, after the cleaners have been, the newspaperman will come, then the nurses on day shift will drift in with breakfast. Nothing to alarm him there.
Voice Off. When a chimpanzee cannot make itself understood, in despair it throws itself onto its back. Au eighteen month old human child reacts in the same manner. An adult human when earnestly trying to put over an argument sits on the edge of its seat. When its interlocutor refuses to understand, the human adult throws itself back into the seat in despair.
He is pleased with his discovery, is encouraged by that small exercise of memory: his mind is capable of making connections, conscious and unconscious. But still only of this life, this hospital life.
Nervously he tries to recall his precise state of mind on waking. He didn't know where he was. Did he imagine himself somewhere else? If so, where? But those black waking moments were filled only with the horror of his not knowing, a timeslip memory of his first fearful awakening.
First?
His unknown past frightens him. He fears what he might have been. Even if it was only someone mundane. Especially if it was only someone mundane. He does not want to be reclaimed by the owner of those clothes. The past is standing like a trap before him; one wrong step and the amnesiac will again be that equally anonymous man. Simultaneously, though, he longs to be more than this, than this joke-named hospital patient, than this object of easy curiosity.
Ignorance of himself is shaming. He wants to know, and fears the consequences of knowing. There will be no escaping him again.
The nurses are rousing themselves from the torpor of their uneventful nightshift. He fingers the covers free of his face. The slowlimbed night sister is packing up her papers at the table in the centre of the ward. He can hear the clink-chink of empty cups from the entrance to the ward. He knows the routine now. In a few minutes the nurses will begin opening the curtains, chiding patients from their sleep, sitting men up in their beds, remembering if and how many sugars they take.
The night sister reaches up to switch out the light above the table. Two patients from the end of the ward are making stealthily for the bathroom. John John hugs his stillness close to him, loath to move before he has to, reluctant to pre-empt the routine.
An unvarying routine, for a man with no past, is a comfort. Ensconced in a routine, with his mind employed only in the serene contemplation of what is coming next, the past cannot leap out and frighten him. That past, that huge past of all those years, is terrifying in his having forgotten it. That past, of all those people he supposedly knew, has nothing to do with who he is at present, is an alien being inside himself, the revival of whom will mean the obliteration of his present self. To have that unknown past suddenly entrap and possess him is a fearful prospect, will mean a death of sorts. He can shut off such fears behind the anaesthesia of hospital routine, can limit his whole existence to that predictable routine. Therefore, his instincts reason, better not to thwart the routine lest some wrong step start an avalanche of memory, bring his past smothering down upon him.
When the nurses finally abandon the susurrations and languor of the night, more patients struggle into armtwisting dressing gowns and, towels over their shoulders, slop towards the bathroom in loose slippers. John John now feels conspicuous being awake and still abed; and he doesn't want to attract unnecessary attention to himself. So he too slips out of bed, takes the hospital towel from the bottom bedrail and joins his bedsmelling brethren in the bathroom.
He is practised now at urinating; but not until he joins the three deep queue at the washbasins does he realise that he does not have a plastic toilet bag, nor its contents. Second in the queue he feels over the two day growth on his chin.
"Course," a large man says to him via the mirror, "you got no razor. I got a disposable you can have. Drop my soap back to me later."
'Thank you," John John says to the reflection, watches the large man scrape his pliant jowls.
The large man has drawn the bathroom’s attention to John John.
"Nurse says you can speak Urdu," a thin little man says from the queue beside him. His shoulders curve in around his sunken chest.
"Heard who?" the large man at the mirror says. Last evening the large man was jovial with his visitors.
"I heard one of the nurses say..." the small man begins. The other men groan at his humourlessness. The small man blinking shuts himself up: he is used to being disliked.
The other patients, having realised John John’s predicament, they too hasten to help. A man in the queue behind has two toothbrushes, blushing explains that when he first came in he bought a toothbrush in the hospital shop and then his wife brought his old toothbrush from home. The man in the queue before him offers a squeeze of his toothpaste, others offer the use of deodorants and shampoo. Nodding his gratitude to all, John John finds himself at a basin.
He recognises the face now as his own; and, though, made hasty by the lengthening queue behind he has time to realise that he has no memory of something so mundane as cleaning his own teeth: a thing he must have done every single day of his previous life. Even the minty tang of the pink toothpaste is unfamiliar. He knows what to do only from his five minute observation of the others at the washbasins. So too with shaving: if he hadn’t watched the other patients he would have had no idea what to do. So unpractised is he with the aerosol foam that he almost covers his eyes; and then he cuts the slack skin under his chin, the bright red blood spidering over the wet pink skin; and only then does he realise why the other men reached their heads back, and belatedly he does so.
When he re-enters the ward the curtains are all open and the tea trolley has made its rounds. Having returned, with more thanks, the tin of shaving soap to the large man further down the ward, he hurries to the normalcy of his bed and his waiting cup of tea. And, sat back in his familiar bed, cup of tea before him, the mound of Osman Rustar still clinging avariciously to sleep, he glances often and with pride to his new possessions, accoutrements of an ordinary man — a red toothbrush and a blue razor — and he pats his smarting cheeks and once more sinks comfortably back into routine, to await the appearance of the grumpy cleaners.
While waiting he recalls that first glimpse he had, through the curtains, of the old man opposite sat in his chair, as now, waiting. That’s all we do here is wait, he thinks; is that why we’re called patients? He grimaces at his mechanical attempt at humour. This waiting, though, does lay to rest the last of his bathroom agitation. And he knows that, after the cleaners have been, the newspaperman will come, then the nurses on day shift will drift in with breakfast. Nothing to alarm him there.
Voice Off. When a chimpanzee cannot make itself understood, in despair it throws itself onto its back. Au eighteen month old human child reacts in the same manner. An adult human when earnestly trying to put over an argument sits on the edge of its seat. When its interlocutor refuses to understand, the human adult throws itself back into the seat in despair.
Wednesday, 2 January 2008
more of John John
Two ancient astronomers have ensconced themselves before the lecture room bar. A corner of Barry's mind notices a man in a grey suit sitting high up, like a suspended presence; but his concentration is directed elsewhere, his imagination out in space with his line. Returning to the observatory tower he taps up various observations from last night, stays to study them lengthily on the VDU.
The Director seeks Barry out in the tower to tell him that he is going home. A few other of the guests linger on, take to wandering glasses in hand between the tower and the lecture room, discussing private matters on their perambulations.
Each observation on the VDU Barry cancels with impatience. Insufficient data. And the more he tries to concentrate the more his inattentive mind sidetracks him. Seems all his life he has been governed by a lack. And how does one qualify and quantify a lack? How does one measure its importance? By the effect of its absence? But, it being an unknown, how do we know what its lack of effect is? And being creatures of balance we automatically compensate for any lack, so any effect is diminished. Barry's father left when he was six. Other boys had fathers at home, had bikes. Other boys had dinghies, had home computers. Some could play musical instruments. What effect did his not having those things have on his life? If he'd had a father, a bike, a dinghy, a home computer, a saxophone... what would he be now? And now, here tonight, how does he enter these known lacks into his calculations?
He returns to the lecture room for a drink. The student barman has left and so have most of the guests. One ancient astronomer sits at the bar and helps himself and Barry. The man in the grey suit sits drinkless in the tiered seats above.
At three thirty Barry has had enough of the astronomer's pompous reminiscences, of how time and again he was proven right. Barry phones Mullard. The line is still open.
"Where is it now?" he asks.
"Passing Neptune's orbit, heading for Uranus."
"At that rate..."
'Tomorrow night."
The ancient astronomer wheezes, smacks his old man’s slippery lips. This night's events hold no interest for him.
"If it’s as heavily magnetised as you say..." Barry falters, "You realise its effect?"
"All satellite communications cut," the Mullard man crisply responds, "Be back to land lines."
"If it enters our atmosphere in any quantity, I doubt if even land lines will work. It's the other implications which bother me. All telecommunications will he affected. Including radar. Who knows what governments have got what radar-primed missiles pointed at one another?"
"Yes?"
"Only needs one to go, no communications, no human agency involved, and it’ll escalate automatically. If bizarrely. Because most of those missiles are also radar-guided. Could end up nuking themselves into extinction and thinking it’s some other side doing it."
"You do realise what you're saying? That it would mean our government unilaterally disarming? You do realise just how dangerous this could be?"
"The danger lies in having the stupid bloody things in the first place."
The Mullard man makes no comment. Barry re-listens to the man’s words: they were an airing of received wisdom for the benefit of those possibly listening at the Mullard end. There was no heat in them. Barry too adopts a reasonable tone: he does not want to estrange this his only source of information.
"So what do we do?" he asks the man.
"I’ll get in touch with the relevant authorities, tell them what you think might happen."
Barry realises that the Mullard man led him into making those statements to enable himself to pass on these fears as Barry's and not as his own, and his tone says that he is grateful for having been given the opportunity.
"Oh, we get the spectroscopics back," he says, "As expected, no ice. Just dust and gas. We’ll be in touch." The line goes dead.
Barry becomes aware of the grey-suited man standing over him.
"Until that call I was here only as an observer," the man shows a plastic wallet to Barry. Barry reads ‘M’ something, Government Agency and an Army number. The bland photograph matches the bland face.
"And now?" Barry looks him over: grey suit buttoned, white shirt, green tie.
"Now you have suggested that we disarm ourselves. With your unstable past we were afraid of something of the sort. So, from this point on, you've got yourself a minder." The ancient astronomer unsteadily absents himself.
"I hope," Barry says to the man, "that whoever my suggestion goes to has more sense than you."
"We'll ensure that they're aware of your past."
The man is smiling down on Barry — with the perennial amusement which the powerful, these in the know, have for the pitiful dupes below them.
"The facts’ll speak for themselves," Barry dismisses him. To Barry this smirking man is a distractive intrusion, a needless interruption to the flow of his thoughts.
"Either way, from now on you're under 24 hour surveillance."
"Just keep your distance."
Voice Off. Certain human beings own a temperament which has to have enemies. With a rival, a competitor to measure their own performance against, they are able to comfortingly enclose their thoughts.
The Director seeks Barry out in the tower to tell him that he is going home. A few other of the guests linger on, take to wandering glasses in hand between the tower and the lecture room, discussing private matters on their perambulations.
Each observation on the VDU Barry cancels with impatience. Insufficient data. And the more he tries to concentrate the more his inattentive mind sidetracks him. Seems all his life he has been governed by a lack. And how does one qualify and quantify a lack? How does one measure its importance? By the effect of its absence? But, it being an unknown, how do we know what its lack of effect is? And being creatures of balance we automatically compensate for any lack, so any effect is diminished. Barry's father left when he was six. Other boys had fathers at home, had bikes. Other boys had dinghies, had home computers. Some could play musical instruments. What effect did his not having those things have on his life? If he'd had a father, a bike, a dinghy, a home computer, a saxophone... what would he be now? And now, here tonight, how does he enter these known lacks into his calculations?
He returns to the lecture room for a drink. The student barman has left and so have most of the guests. One ancient astronomer sits at the bar and helps himself and Barry. The man in the grey suit sits drinkless in the tiered seats above.
At three thirty Barry has had enough of the astronomer's pompous reminiscences, of how time and again he was proven right. Barry phones Mullard. The line is still open.
"Where is it now?" he asks.
"Passing Neptune's orbit, heading for Uranus."
"At that rate..."
'Tomorrow night."
The ancient astronomer wheezes, smacks his old man’s slippery lips. This night's events hold no interest for him.
"If it’s as heavily magnetised as you say..." Barry falters, "You realise its effect?"
"All satellite communications cut," the Mullard man crisply responds, "Be back to land lines."
"If it enters our atmosphere in any quantity, I doubt if even land lines will work. It's the other implications which bother me. All telecommunications will he affected. Including radar. Who knows what governments have got what radar-primed missiles pointed at one another?"
"Yes?"
"Only needs one to go, no communications, no human agency involved, and it’ll escalate automatically. If bizarrely. Because most of those missiles are also radar-guided. Could end up nuking themselves into extinction and thinking it’s some other side doing it."
"You do realise what you're saying? That it would mean our government unilaterally disarming? You do realise just how dangerous this could be?"
"The danger lies in having the stupid bloody things in the first place."
The Mullard man makes no comment. Barry re-listens to the man’s words: they were an airing of received wisdom for the benefit of those possibly listening at the Mullard end. There was no heat in them. Barry too adopts a reasonable tone: he does not want to estrange this his only source of information.
"So what do we do?" he asks the man.
"I’ll get in touch with the relevant authorities, tell them what you think might happen."
Barry realises that the Mullard man led him into making those statements to enable himself to pass on these fears as Barry's and not as his own, and his tone says that he is grateful for having been given the opportunity.
"Oh, we get the spectroscopics back," he says, "As expected, no ice. Just dust and gas. We’ll be in touch." The line goes dead.
Barry becomes aware of the grey-suited man standing over him.
"Until that call I was here only as an observer," the man shows a plastic wallet to Barry. Barry reads ‘M’ something, Government Agency and an Army number. The bland photograph matches the bland face.
"And now?" Barry looks him over: grey suit buttoned, white shirt, green tie.
"Now you have suggested that we disarm ourselves. With your unstable past we were afraid of something of the sort. So, from this point on, you've got yourself a minder." The ancient astronomer unsteadily absents himself.
"I hope," Barry says to the man, "that whoever my suggestion goes to has more sense than you."
"We'll ensure that they're aware of your past."
The man is smiling down on Barry — with the perennial amusement which the powerful, these in the know, have for the pitiful dupes below them.
"The facts’ll speak for themselves," Barry dismisses him. To Barry this smirking man is a distractive intrusion, a needless interruption to the flow of his thoughts.
"Either way, from now on you're under 24 hour surveillance."
"Just keep your distance."
Voice Off. Certain human beings own a temperament which has to have enemies. With a rival, a competitor to measure their own performance against, they are able to comfortingly enclose their thoughts.
Wednesday, 19 December 2007
more John John
The Met has forecast a warm front, intermittent cloud.
"Unfortunately," the Director smiles cock-eyed at his guests, "it seems to be more mittent than inter."
With the persistence of the cloud the Director has pressganged Barry into joining him in one of the lecture rooms. The steep-seated lecture room has been easily converted to a circus — copies of last night's printout pinned like grey bunting to the walls, the Director’s pate polished to a ringmaster's pink brilliance. Even a bar has been installed and a student dragooned to act as barkeep for the benefit of the Director's guests.
These guests are academic celebrities, old pale and local dignitaries, including even the Mayor of Hastings, complete with chain. They stand about the dais in chattering groups, glasses in hand as if at a cocktail party, the last watering hole of the night on a worthies' pub crawl. At least, Barry consoles himself, the media are conspicuous by their absence; and he contemptuously accepts the congratulations of another good citizen for 'his' line.
Barry Tappell's anger for this gathering of notables is founded on his empirical distrust of the type. He regards them all as busybodies, as parasites, as social climbers disloyal to their disowned past. They are people who contribute nothing, who will only claim later to have been here, to have known him. Fame by association, like a pop star's hairdresser; all are here to claim their part in his discovery. And these are the privileged, are the elite of his society, are the people let in on the news, are idle people. Barry doesn’t have time to go wandering around strange observatories on the off-chance of seeing something novel. These are people with power, with connections: a smug Home Office type has justified the absence of government grants by telling Barry that the good old-fashioned ways have proved themselves yet again. He hasn't repeated that since the cloud came over.
Outside all that can be seen is a high white ceiling of cirrus. Twice the Director has rung the Met Office. They won't commit themselves to an improvement this night. Aware of his guests' disappointment, at 11:35 the Director suggests that Barry phone Mullard.
For the benefit and entertainment of his guests the Director switches the phone to open line. The guests hush one another. On identifying himself Barry is almost immediately connected with the voice or that morning.
"Cloud?'" the technician says sympathetically.
"The stone age," Barry responds for the benefit of the Home Office.
"Console yourself: you'd have had a job finding it tonight anyway. Your line is now curving and attenuated. As for its speed... we're almost certain that it's started to enter the solar system. That's what, we think, is making it waver."
"Could be the bottom of the curtain," Barry says, explains his net curtain analogy.
"Possible," the voice at Mullard is doubtful of any analogy, "We favour it's being because it's entering the solar system. Being drawn out of line by the gravity of the planets. Our guess is it's between Earth and Pluto now." Barry makes a note,
"Speed?"
"Fast. Exactly how fast we don't even want to speculate. It's also giving off too much noise for us to accurately focus. And from horizon to horizon... well, there's just too much of it. Put the dishes onto auto and it's like a fairground here."
"Any ideas on its composition? Ice?"
"It's about a million K."
"Active."
"Not half. The dust, so far as we can make out, is silicon, graphite and calcium. And the gas is hydrogen mostly, with neon, nitrogen, sulphur, argon and some oxygen."
"Nebula then."
"Your first guess. It's only its speed that's out of character."
"Direction?"
"Who knows. The sun? Us?"
"The sun... Will it nova?"
"Depends on the quantity. Might. A flare'd be bad enough."
"Should we warn somebody? For all that they can do. Be certainly safer to stay indoors."
"It's done. But as yet no panic. The way it’s twisting about it's definitely attracted to the planets. That should dissipate a fair quantity of it."
"If it does come to us, it’ll he one helluva aurora borealis."
"Aurora australis too. Mustn't forget our southern cousins. And with that amount of magnetism in the atmosphere it’ll be more than a simple aurora. We'll be ringing you for information."
At that last remark the Home Office type has puffed himself up again. As Barry replaces the phone the other guests raise eyebrows to one another.
"Is it dangerous?" the Mayor asks the Director. The Director looks to Barry.
"Possibly," Barry shrugs. "Don’t know enough for certain. If the line has entered the solar system... then it’ll reach here before the sun. In that case Saturn and Uranus will attract and absorb much of its dust. What puzzles me is, if it has entered the solar system then, no matter what its volume or mass, it has to be travelling at almost the speed of light... Unless its volume is so great... Or if its mass is increasing..."
"What if the sun does nova?" the Director asks Barry for the benefit of his guests.
Barry recalls himself from his conjectures,
"Bye bye sun. Bye bye solar system."
"And if it's a flare?"
"Depends on the height and duration of the flare. If for 24 hours, bye bye cruel world. If for anything below 12 hours, bye bye that hemisphere. Either way it’ll make all your nuclear bombs look like the original fizzling squib."
All those present had lived their whole lives under threat of one kind or another, in fear of some calamity — car accidents, plane crashes, oil spillages, gas leaks, pesticide poisoning, nuclear destruction... Another such possible threat now doesn't unduly bother them. And, soon afterwards, the majority of the guests, their appetite for news and sensation satisfied, they drift off into the night.
Voice Off. Those human beings who feel that they are the victims of their society so loathe that unjust society that they are prepared to take a grim satisfaction in seeing their whole world destroyed in the knowledge that it will mean the absolute destruction of that cruel and corrupt society.
"Unfortunately," the Director smiles cock-eyed at his guests, "it seems to be more mittent than inter."
With the persistence of the cloud the Director has pressganged Barry into joining him in one of the lecture rooms. The steep-seated lecture room has been easily converted to a circus — copies of last night's printout pinned like grey bunting to the walls, the Director’s pate polished to a ringmaster's pink brilliance. Even a bar has been installed and a student dragooned to act as barkeep for the benefit of the Director's guests.
These guests are academic celebrities, old pale and local dignitaries, including even the Mayor of Hastings, complete with chain. They stand about the dais in chattering groups, glasses in hand as if at a cocktail party, the last watering hole of the night on a worthies' pub crawl. At least, Barry consoles himself, the media are conspicuous by their absence; and he contemptuously accepts the congratulations of another good citizen for 'his' line.
Barry Tappell's anger for this gathering of notables is founded on his empirical distrust of the type. He regards them all as busybodies, as parasites, as social climbers disloyal to their disowned past. They are people who contribute nothing, who will only claim later to have been here, to have known him. Fame by association, like a pop star's hairdresser; all are here to claim their part in his discovery. And these are the privileged, are the elite of his society, are the people let in on the news, are idle people. Barry doesn’t have time to go wandering around strange observatories on the off-chance of seeing something novel. These are people with power, with connections: a smug Home Office type has justified the absence of government grants by telling Barry that the good old-fashioned ways have proved themselves yet again. He hasn't repeated that since the cloud came over.
Outside all that can be seen is a high white ceiling of cirrus. Twice the Director has rung the Met Office. They won't commit themselves to an improvement this night. Aware of his guests' disappointment, at 11:35 the Director suggests that Barry phone Mullard.
For the benefit and entertainment of his guests the Director switches the phone to open line. The guests hush one another. On identifying himself Barry is almost immediately connected with the voice or that morning.
"Cloud?'" the technician says sympathetically.
"The stone age," Barry responds for the benefit of the Home Office.
"Console yourself: you'd have had a job finding it tonight anyway. Your line is now curving and attenuated. As for its speed... we're almost certain that it's started to enter the solar system. That's what, we think, is making it waver."
"Could be the bottom of the curtain," Barry says, explains his net curtain analogy.
"Possible," the voice at Mullard is doubtful of any analogy, "We favour it's being because it's entering the solar system. Being drawn out of line by the gravity of the planets. Our guess is it's between Earth and Pluto now." Barry makes a note,
"Speed?"
"Fast. Exactly how fast we don't even want to speculate. It's also giving off too much noise for us to accurately focus. And from horizon to horizon... well, there's just too much of it. Put the dishes onto auto and it's like a fairground here."
"Any ideas on its composition? Ice?"
"It's about a million K."
"Active."
"Not half. The dust, so far as we can make out, is silicon, graphite and calcium. And the gas is hydrogen mostly, with neon, nitrogen, sulphur, argon and some oxygen."
"Nebula then."
"Your first guess. It's only its speed that's out of character."
"Direction?"
"Who knows. The sun? Us?"
"The sun... Will it nova?"
"Depends on the quantity. Might. A flare'd be bad enough."
"Should we warn somebody? For all that they can do. Be certainly safer to stay indoors."
"It's done. But as yet no panic. The way it’s twisting about it's definitely attracted to the planets. That should dissipate a fair quantity of it."
"If it does come to us, it’ll he one helluva aurora borealis."
"Aurora australis too. Mustn't forget our southern cousins. And with that amount of magnetism in the atmosphere it’ll be more than a simple aurora. We'll be ringing you for information."
At that last remark the Home Office type has puffed himself up again. As Barry replaces the phone the other guests raise eyebrows to one another.
"Is it dangerous?" the Mayor asks the Director. The Director looks to Barry.
"Possibly," Barry shrugs. "Don’t know enough for certain. If the line has entered the solar system... then it’ll reach here before the sun. In that case Saturn and Uranus will attract and absorb much of its dust. What puzzles me is, if it has entered the solar system then, no matter what its volume or mass, it has to be travelling at almost the speed of light... Unless its volume is so great... Or if its mass is increasing..."
"What if the sun does nova?" the Director asks Barry for the benefit of his guests.
Barry recalls himself from his conjectures,
"Bye bye sun. Bye bye solar system."
"And if it's a flare?"
"Depends on the height and duration of the flare. If for 24 hours, bye bye cruel world. If for anything below 12 hours, bye bye that hemisphere. Either way it’ll make all your nuclear bombs look like the original fizzling squib."
All those present had lived their whole lives under threat of one kind or another, in fear of some calamity — car accidents, plane crashes, oil spillages, gas leaks, pesticide poisoning, nuclear destruction... Another such possible threat now doesn't unduly bother them. And, soon afterwards, the majority of the guests, their appetite for news and sensation satisfied, they drift off into the night.
Voice Off. Those human beings who feel that they are the victims of their society so loathe that unjust society that they are prepared to take a grim satisfaction in seeing their whole world destroyed in the knowledge that it will mean the absolute destruction of that cruel and corrupt society.
Tuesday, 11 December 2007
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.
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, 28 November 2007
latest John John - tenth?
Barry knows that, before the Director agrees to an unscheduled meeting, he will check on what has been happening overnight in the observatory.
The Director is suspicious of his staff; he also likes to say 'I know' and 'I’m fully aware of that'. Authority, The Director believes, has to appear omniscient.
While he waits to be summoned, Barry puts his feet up on his own desk and, hands clasped in his groin, chin on his chest, he dozes; nods awake to note the passage of ten minutes, to stare at the printout pinned to the wall, and dozes.
Nine o'clock comes and goes with a queasy flutter of apprehension: the Director has arrived on the premises. He dozes. Ten o'clock moves forever into the past. He dozes. When the phone does finally ring it has him scrambling out of his chair and confusedly grappling the receiver upside down to his ear.
The hamstrings of both legs numbed by his peculiar sleeping position, Barry hobbles through the corridors to the Director's office carrying his printout and a sense of deja vu; seems like all his life he has been hurrying to confrontations.
Dumping his printout on the Director's desk, Barry drops into the chair opposite him. The Director raises one hairy eyebrow towards the naked expanse of his pink bald head.
"So..." he deliberately doesn’t look at the printout, instead leans away from it into his chair, "Convince me we haven't wasted a night's work."
Barry studies this ex-man of science become an administrator. Why is it, he wonders, that with every promotion these men, who enjoy authority, acquire another layer of subcutaneous fat? The physiognomy of administrators? Lifting his own thin hand he lays it, like a zealot bearing witness, upon the pile of printout, and he begins a reiteration of what he wrote in the log, explaining why the line could not have been a machine fault.
"Why should it not be an elaborate, entirely subjective, wish-fulfillment?"
"Wow!" Barry site back grinning, "Entirely subjective wish-fulfillment?"
Those in authority are suspicious of all humour. Humour is variously called insubordination, impertinence, mockery. The paranoia of petty power sees in every smile a threat. And, having been openly scoffed at, the Director now bridles, his ego puffing up, his pate flushing. Before he can let loose his indignation, though, Barry pats the printout,
"Wish-fulfillment might just explain my interpretation of the machine. It does not explain my viewing the line through binoculars."
"Only you saw it."
"Wrong."
"There was someone else here?"
The Director is springing a trap: no-one other than Barry was authorised to enter the observatory last night, and there'd been a fuss about his being allowed to be on his own.
"Not here. I checked with a friend in Teignmouth, as you must have read in the log. He saw it."
"After you told him what to look for. Autosuggestion?"
"And there's none so blind as those that won't see," Barry exposes his teeth in an attempt at an easy smile, "When I got off I phoned Woomera. Until my call they thought they'd had a fault in their optics. When they'd eliminated that, they thought it a freak heat distortion. When I phoned, they cursed; and they called their night's troubles the Tappell Line."
The Director’s expression has changed in a blink from narrow-eyed scepticism to eye-dancing speculation.
"I also phoned California," Barry says, to bring the Director now to earth, "They had no idea what I was talking about, hadn't seen anything, couldn’t be persuaded to even look in the right direction."
The Director brushes that aside — that someone hasn't seen something does not mean that it does not exist. Suddenly he is again the scientist, the discoverer, a pioneer prepared to lay his reputation on the line. On Tappell’s Line.
"What d'you think's causing it? Atmospheric phenomena?"
"Far too high. To be visible from here and from Australia, and to appear continuously more or less in the same place, it has to be way out. Way beyond the solar system."
"Then what is it?"
"Conjecture only. And a first guess at that. I'd say it's a galactic veil."
"Galactic veil?"
"Glue of the galaxies."
"They been known to move before?"
"Not out of station. Not so far as I’m aware. But, so far as science goes, we haven't known about them for that long. This sort of thing needs to be studied over centuries."
"Yes. But..." the Director runs a hand over his mouth, "Surely this has none of the characteristics normally associated with a galactic veil? What makes you suppose that it might be?"
The first intelligent question having been asked of him, Barry leans forward, the game behind him, earnest now.
"Simplistically it's this. Every view we’ve had so far of a galactic veil has been face on. Suppose you were to look along its side though. Like a curtain. A net curtain. Face on, flat on, a net curtain lets light through; and, if you focus beyond it, then it's as good as transparent. But if you stand to the side of the net curtain and look along its undulations, then it must appear as a solid straight line. Yes?"
"Yes..." the Director wiggles his bottom lip dubiously between thumb and forefinger.
"And that would also explain," Barry says, "Why we didn't see it coming. We were probably looking at it flat on; and looking right through it. And being comparatively close, it was, of course, easier to look through. Like a net curtain. The further away it is the denser it appears, the more visible it is. Chances are that if it hadn't turned end on we might never have noticed it. We need much more evidence of course. From various sources. Only then can we be sure."
"Do you," the Director portentously holds Barry's eyes, 'have any objections to going public with this? Though," the smile is paternal, "you might win more friends by having a shave first."
Barry knows that the Director requires the publicity to justify his claims for increased funding from their sole stingy patron; and increased funding will mean better facilities for Barry. And Barry has no objection to publicly advertising his discovery — but in scientific journals. What the Director wants, however, is to astound and to astonish the general public, make the line a news item. Barry is loath to be let out of his closed zoo, doesn't want to become yet another of the pursued freaks in the all-channels global freak show.
"I’d prefer further corroboration first. From a disinterested third party."
"Such as?"
"Mullard. They might also be able to enlighten us with regard to its constituents. And its distance."
The Mullard zoo receives a large government subsidy, in order that the government can lay rapid claim to anything of military benefit that Mullard might come up with. This makes the Mullard people, perversely, less secretive than those like Barry and the Director who are keenly aware of their zoomaster's egotistical motives. Such zoo owners, being already rich, they crave more than mere wealth: they want to lay claim to immortality in a star or a discovery being named after them. Such jealous vanity demands a watchful loyalty.
Barry’s suggestion makes safe sense to the Director: he no more wants to look a fool over a possible computer error than does Barry. Opening a desk drawer he removes a thick address book. When he is connected, he asks for an extension number. After the inevitable smalltalk; first name terms, the Director broaches the subject of last night's sighting, says that they are seeking corroboration.
The Director is asked to explain the nature of the sighting and does so, adding that he wants to go public with it.
"They haven't said yet," the Director holds his hand over the mouthpiece while the voice at the Mullard end consults with colleagues, "but they saw it. Only remains to find out when."
They wait. Eventually the Director says Hello, is handed to someone else, tells the newcomer once more of the sighting. Questions are asked.
"Hold on," the Director says, "I'll put us onto conference. My colleague here will be better able to answer your questions."
A button is pressed on the phone and the Director opens his palm to Barry.
"Good morning," Barry says sitting forward.
"I'm told you saw a line?" The voice says that it doesn’t want its time wasted.
Barry describes the line's position, how it moved throughout the night; and, lest they try to dismiss it as a machine fault, he tells them that he has already received independent confirmation from both Teignmouth and Woomera.
"I see," the voice says.
Barry realises that he is talking to his opposite number, the technician from last night.
"Did you see it?" Barry asks. Though ‘see’ is the wrong word: Mullard’s are radio scans.
"We saw something." The Mullard technician is also in the presence of his superior.
"Any idea to its composition?"
"What do you reckon?" the technician cagily throws the question back at him.
"A theory, and a theory only," Barry realises that he is trembling, "I think it’s a galactic veil viewed edge on."
"Yea. Or something along those lines. What distance did you make it?"
"I need more data. A reliable parallax. It's certainly way outside the solar system."
"It's between us and Sirius." The first direct confirmation, the first information.
"That close," Barry frowns.
"And closing."
Barry ponders that news. The Mullard technician gives him time.
"Is this from satellite. Or ground scans?"
"Both."
"What did you make of it?" Barry asks.
"Your galactic veil could well be right, So far as we can make out, at the moment, it's comprised of an unbroken band of heavily ionised gas and dust particles. Small particles."
"No ice?"
"Could be. That'll have to wait on spectroscopic. And then, the way it’s bending light, it'll probably be meaningless. Those small particles en masse are creating one helluva magnetic field. You said it was obscuring stars. It's not. It’s magnetism is so strong it's bending their light. And, as far as we can calculate, it's travelling at almost the speed of light."
"Is its mass changing?"
"No way of telling. It’s playing hell with all our instruments. We’re having to refocus on it all the time, and we can't get an objective measurement. Apart from anything else there are just too many lateral fluctuations. If it was a single solid body..."
The Director is tapping his watch.
"What time did you first see it?" Barry asks.
"Started giving us gyp all yesterday evening. 02:58 when we first focused on it."
"I've got it logged at 11:O5."
"So," the technician’s smile is audible, "it's yours."
"Woomera," Barry blushes, "calls it the Tappell Line."
"Good a name as any," the technician grunts, "At least now we know what to curse."
"Any objections to us going public with it?" the Director asks.
Mullard is silent.
"For the moment," the Director’s plummy opposite number replies, "we'd rather you didn't. Until we can be absolutely sure of its nature. And that it poses no threat. If you could hold fire for a couple of days? Until after the weekend? We will, of course, seeing as it's yours, keep you fully informed of all developments this end."
"Thank you," Barry says, before the Director can argue. Farewells are made.
Despite being thwarted at the last fence the Director sits back smugly,
"Now let them call this the polytech of astronomy." With an avuncular smile he studies Barry, "you'd better go home and get some sleep. I've got some urgent rescheduling to do. Angry voices to placate. From now on the Tappell/Schultz Line is The priority. See you tonight."
Voice Off. In human affairs novelty always takes precedence.
The Director is suspicious of his staff; he also likes to say 'I know' and 'I’m fully aware of that'. Authority, The Director believes, has to appear omniscient.
While he waits to be summoned, Barry puts his feet up on his own desk and, hands clasped in his groin, chin on his chest, he dozes; nods awake to note the passage of ten minutes, to stare at the printout pinned to the wall, and dozes.
Nine o'clock comes and goes with a queasy flutter of apprehension: the Director has arrived on the premises. He dozes. Ten o'clock moves forever into the past. He dozes. When the phone does finally ring it has him scrambling out of his chair and confusedly grappling the receiver upside down to his ear.
The hamstrings of both legs numbed by his peculiar sleeping position, Barry hobbles through the corridors to the Director's office carrying his printout and a sense of deja vu; seems like all his life he has been hurrying to confrontations.
Dumping his printout on the Director's desk, Barry drops into the chair opposite him. The Director raises one hairy eyebrow towards the naked expanse of his pink bald head.
"So..." he deliberately doesn’t look at the printout, instead leans away from it into his chair, "Convince me we haven't wasted a night's work."
Barry studies this ex-man of science become an administrator. Why is it, he wonders, that with every promotion these men, who enjoy authority, acquire another layer of subcutaneous fat? The physiognomy of administrators? Lifting his own thin hand he lays it, like a zealot bearing witness, upon the pile of printout, and he begins a reiteration of what he wrote in the log, explaining why the line could not have been a machine fault.
"Why should it not be an elaborate, entirely subjective, wish-fulfillment?"
"Wow!" Barry site back grinning, "Entirely subjective wish-fulfillment?"
Those in authority are suspicious of all humour. Humour is variously called insubordination, impertinence, mockery. The paranoia of petty power sees in every smile a threat. And, having been openly scoffed at, the Director now bridles, his ego puffing up, his pate flushing. Before he can let loose his indignation, though, Barry pats the printout,
"Wish-fulfillment might just explain my interpretation of the machine. It does not explain my viewing the line through binoculars."
"Only you saw it."
"Wrong."
"There was someone else here?"
The Director is springing a trap: no-one other than Barry was authorised to enter the observatory last night, and there'd been a fuss about his being allowed to be on his own.
"Not here. I checked with a friend in Teignmouth, as you must have read in the log. He saw it."
"After you told him what to look for. Autosuggestion?"
"And there's none so blind as those that won't see," Barry exposes his teeth in an attempt at an easy smile, "When I got off I phoned Woomera. Until my call they thought they'd had a fault in their optics. When they'd eliminated that, they thought it a freak heat distortion. When I phoned, they cursed; and they called their night's troubles the Tappell Line."
The Director’s expression has changed in a blink from narrow-eyed scepticism to eye-dancing speculation.
"I also phoned California," Barry says, to bring the Director now to earth, "They had no idea what I was talking about, hadn't seen anything, couldn’t be persuaded to even look in the right direction."
The Director brushes that aside — that someone hasn't seen something does not mean that it does not exist. Suddenly he is again the scientist, the discoverer, a pioneer prepared to lay his reputation on the line. On Tappell’s Line.
"What d'you think's causing it? Atmospheric phenomena?"
"Far too high. To be visible from here and from Australia, and to appear continuously more or less in the same place, it has to be way out. Way beyond the solar system."
"Then what is it?"
"Conjecture only. And a first guess at that. I'd say it's a galactic veil."
"Galactic veil?"
"Glue of the galaxies."
"They been known to move before?"
"Not out of station. Not so far as I’m aware. But, so far as science goes, we haven't known about them for that long. This sort of thing needs to be studied over centuries."
"Yes. But..." the Director runs a hand over his mouth, "Surely this has none of the characteristics normally associated with a galactic veil? What makes you suppose that it might be?"
The first intelligent question having been asked of him, Barry leans forward, the game behind him, earnest now.
"Simplistically it's this. Every view we’ve had so far of a galactic veil has been face on. Suppose you were to look along its side though. Like a curtain. A net curtain. Face on, flat on, a net curtain lets light through; and, if you focus beyond it, then it's as good as transparent. But if you stand to the side of the net curtain and look along its undulations, then it must appear as a solid straight line. Yes?"
"Yes..." the Director wiggles his bottom lip dubiously between thumb and forefinger.
"And that would also explain," Barry says, "Why we didn't see it coming. We were probably looking at it flat on; and looking right through it. And being comparatively close, it was, of course, easier to look through. Like a net curtain. The further away it is the denser it appears, the more visible it is. Chances are that if it hadn't turned end on we might never have noticed it. We need much more evidence of course. From various sources. Only then can we be sure."
"Do you," the Director portentously holds Barry's eyes, 'have any objections to going public with this? Though," the smile is paternal, "you might win more friends by having a shave first."
Barry knows that the Director requires the publicity to justify his claims for increased funding from their sole stingy patron; and increased funding will mean better facilities for Barry. And Barry has no objection to publicly advertising his discovery — but in scientific journals. What the Director wants, however, is to astound and to astonish the general public, make the line a news item. Barry is loath to be let out of his closed zoo, doesn't want to become yet another of the pursued freaks in the all-channels global freak show.
"I’d prefer further corroboration first. From a disinterested third party."
"Such as?"
"Mullard. They might also be able to enlighten us with regard to its constituents. And its distance."
The Mullard zoo receives a large government subsidy, in order that the government can lay rapid claim to anything of military benefit that Mullard might come up with. This makes the Mullard people, perversely, less secretive than those like Barry and the Director who are keenly aware of their zoomaster's egotistical motives. Such zoo owners, being already rich, they crave more than mere wealth: they want to lay claim to immortality in a star or a discovery being named after them. Such jealous vanity demands a watchful loyalty.
Barry’s suggestion makes safe sense to the Director: he no more wants to look a fool over a possible computer error than does Barry. Opening a desk drawer he removes a thick address book. When he is connected, he asks for an extension number. After the inevitable smalltalk; first name terms, the Director broaches the subject of last night's sighting, says that they are seeking corroboration.
The Director is asked to explain the nature of the sighting and does so, adding that he wants to go public with it.
"They haven't said yet," the Director holds his hand over the mouthpiece while the voice at the Mullard end consults with colleagues, "but they saw it. Only remains to find out when."
They wait. Eventually the Director says Hello, is handed to someone else, tells the newcomer once more of the sighting. Questions are asked.
"Hold on," the Director says, "I'll put us onto conference. My colleague here will be better able to answer your questions."
A button is pressed on the phone and the Director opens his palm to Barry.
"Good morning," Barry says sitting forward.
"I'm told you saw a line?" The voice says that it doesn’t want its time wasted.
Barry describes the line's position, how it moved throughout the night; and, lest they try to dismiss it as a machine fault, he tells them that he has already received independent confirmation from both Teignmouth and Woomera.
"I see," the voice says.
Barry realises that he is talking to his opposite number, the technician from last night.
"Did you see it?" Barry asks. Though ‘see’ is the wrong word: Mullard’s are radio scans.
"We saw something." The Mullard technician is also in the presence of his superior.
"Any idea to its composition?"
"What do you reckon?" the technician cagily throws the question back at him.
"A theory, and a theory only," Barry realises that he is trembling, "I think it’s a galactic veil viewed edge on."
"Yea. Or something along those lines. What distance did you make it?"
"I need more data. A reliable parallax. It's certainly way outside the solar system."
"It's between us and Sirius." The first direct confirmation, the first information.
"That close," Barry frowns.
"And closing."
Barry ponders that news. The Mullard technician gives him time.
"Is this from satellite. Or ground scans?"
"Both."
"What did you make of it?" Barry asks.
"Your galactic veil could well be right, So far as we can make out, at the moment, it's comprised of an unbroken band of heavily ionised gas and dust particles. Small particles."
"No ice?"
"Could be. That'll have to wait on spectroscopic. And then, the way it’s bending light, it'll probably be meaningless. Those small particles en masse are creating one helluva magnetic field. You said it was obscuring stars. It's not. It’s magnetism is so strong it's bending their light. And, as far as we can calculate, it's travelling at almost the speed of light."
"Is its mass changing?"
"No way of telling. It’s playing hell with all our instruments. We’re having to refocus on it all the time, and we can't get an objective measurement. Apart from anything else there are just too many lateral fluctuations. If it was a single solid body..."
The Director is tapping his watch.
"What time did you first see it?" Barry asks.
"Started giving us gyp all yesterday evening. 02:58 when we first focused on it."
"I've got it logged at 11:O5."
"So," the technician’s smile is audible, "it's yours."
"Woomera," Barry blushes, "calls it the Tappell Line."
"Good a name as any," the technician grunts, "At least now we know what to curse."
"Any objections to us going public with it?" the Director asks.
Mullard is silent.
"For the moment," the Director’s plummy opposite number replies, "we'd rather you didn't. Until we can be absolutely sure of its nature. And that it poses no threat. If you could hold fire for a couple of days? Until after the weekend? We will, of course, seeing as it's yours, keep you fully informed of all developments this end."
"Thank you," Barry says, before the Director can argue. Farewells are made.
Despite being thwarted at the last fence the Director sits back smugly,
"Now let them call this the polytech of astronomy." With an avuncular smile he studies Barry, "you'd better go home and get some sleep. I've got some urgent rescheduling to do. Angry voices to placate. From now on the Tappell/Schultz Line is The priority. See you tonight."
Voice Off. In human affairs novelty always takes precedence.
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