B008GRP3XS EBOK Page 5

  "Waste of the joint," the beautiful doctor thought aloud. "I don't think it's damaged. It will be easier to fix the artificial leg."

  "There aren't any short ones in stock, I think," the doughnut eater was not giving up, licking the sweet icing off her lips. "Only the long ones, full size."

  "But the artificial limb is fitted to the leg, to the stump, not the other way round," Rud dared to suggest.

  "Don't interfere, Milankiewicz," barked the one playing with her breast, and aimed the large nipple at him like a gun. "You look a ruin as it is. Six inches won't make any difference to you. It would be nice if our industry were to produce artificial legs made to measure for each of you, wouldn't it? Well, I can tell you that you wouldn't be able to afford one, it would cost so much. Haven't you ever heard of mass production?"

  Rud stopped interfering in the discussion of his body. He did not protest any more. He was, after all, in Heaven.

  Before the operation he was put in hospital to heal his open wounds. The unbearable itching of the skin, caused by the thick gel spread all over his body, drove him crazy. Hopping like a madman, Rud would wander restlessly among the bunk beds in the crowded ward, which in turn made other patients mad at him. Some of them, those from the upper beds, would punish him by pouring over him tea or the remains of their soup. One of them even burnt the skin on Rud's head with hot milk. He lost the rest of his hair then. Other patients, who still remembered what they had been through themselves, were kinder. Generally they were weak, wrinkled old men tired of life, who were afraid of the limping but physically stronger Rud.

  The pre-operation treatment also included daily pumping out of the stomach, which was making his insides tie themselves in knots; and daily enemas.

  "They probably want to rupture the constrictor muscle," commented Tony the epileptic. "Then they'll make you an artificial arse-hole on your belly. To prevent you stinking of shit all the time. They do it to everyone. With you, they must have forgotten to blast your arse during the interrogations. Did they connect the air-compressor to your arse-hole?"

  "No."

  "There you are. It bursts your gut."

  Tony's hands, covered with flowery patches, with big, knotty, rheumatic joints, trembled uncontrollably as he was trying to roll a cigarette. The precious tobacco, fine as dust, was spilling all over the floor. Rud tried to help him with his stiff, broken fingers. Three of them had new shoots of fingernails growing back.

  Rud's new ears, fitted in place of the old ones, which had been torn to shreds during the interrogations, were shapeless and devoid of their characteristic dents and folds, and had white hairs growing on them. They must have used the skin from his forearms. These were the only hair on his head. His skull was bald and shiny.

  "The nurses and orderlies are so rough and brutal," remarked Rud.

  "Just routine," answered Tony. "It's routine that on the men's wards they employ only female doctors and on the women's wards only men. The same rule applies to the nurses, orderlies and the rest of the personnel."

  "How do you know that?"

  "I spoke to the patients on the women's ward."

  Rud was so surprised that he added: "You're not allowed to have any contact with women before an operation. Only after an operation. Even in Heaven you have to dose the freedom sensibly: gradually. Otherwise you'll go out of your mind; too much joy."

  The surface wounds were healing although, or maybe because the nurses tore them off so frequently, always changing the dressings quickly, if not violently, pulling at the dried up gauze. They cut the dead tissue out of the wounds, and several times, accidentally, cut the living flesh with it. It was the more unpleasant for Rud since he didn't want to lose even those miserable remains of his genitals.

  He madly feared the operation. He observed with terror as the zigzag line tracing the daily record of his temperature headed inevitably for the purple, vertical line marking the date set for the operation.

  He feared those moments when someone else would be deciding the fate of his body without him being able to influence the process. He feared that they would turn him into a woman, for a joke. He often examined his leg trying to guess at which point the doctors had decided to cut it. The leg didn't hurt. The skin was healing smoothly. Only the shin had a grotesque, crooked shape from the badly set bone. Nevertheless, he could walk, though with a pronounced limp. He also feared they would cut off his inactive fingers. Looking into a small, fly-blown mirror hanging above the sink, he tried to imagine what he would look like with a hole instead of a nose. He still had a nose, although most of it was covered by a weeping scab and the nostrils were hanging in shreds. But it was his.

  After the operation, they had brought Rud back to the ward. He was bandaged from top to toe, and as a precaution a small screen was installed around his head to prevent him from seeing the rest of his body.

  The first hours were a nightmare. The ether made him vomit, to which his cut and sewn up flesh answered with terrible pain. Every move, every attempt to clear his throat, caused pain. The patients sailed through the ward looking him up. When Rud could speak again he asked Galahar, who was just leaning over him, to check how far they had cut his right leg. Old Galahar lifted the sheets with his walking stick.

  "It looks as if you're in one piece, with both legs. They've wrapped you up from top to toe with holes for your eyes, your mouth and your nostrils. But, you see ... when they cut someone's leg off, the artificial leg is also bandaged up so you can't see it. It's their kind of medical ethics - not to cause undue anxiety in the patient. Try and move this leg."

  Rud could move neither his leg nor his hand. The only movement he was capable of was rolling his head from left to right, and even that only to a limited extent.

  "I can hit your toes with my stick, maybe you'll feel the pain," suggested Galahar.

  "It won't help," Tony joined in. "He won't be able to differentiate the pain. A cut off limb hurts as if it was still there and as if it hurt all over, even though it's not there. They could cut off his arms and legs and he wouldn't be able to test it that way."

  "Aaa!" Rud jerked with fear and groaned, paying with pain for the hasty movement.

  "So what's left?" Rud forced the question out of himself when he managed to stifle the sobbing, and when the pain had returned to its normal level.

  "The uncertainty," quipped Tony.

  Soon the screen was taken away. Now it would be set up around his head only for changing the dressing or removing the stitches. They said it was to save him unnecessary stress. Lying passively, he would try to guess, in vain, what they were doing, and what they had done to his body. The only indication was the changing intensity of the pain coming from different places during the course of the treatment. The treatments were always carried out by one of the doctors who had examined him earlier. He remembered them all very well. He did not know their names with the exception of the redhead - the beautiful one - whom the patients called Panfilova.

  The doctors changing the dressings often tormented him with silly jokes. The one who had been playing with her breast, claimed they had managed to turn him into a pretty girl with a very attractive bust; even she was envious. She only complained that his hips were too narrow, but they would soon fatten him up, take some fat from his belly and pad out his thighs and buttocks. All this she said half-jokingly and Rud had no way of knowing the truth. He was still afraid but in time he started growing indifferent. Fear, if not accompanied by pain, turns into a habit.

  Once he gathered his courage and asked Panfilova how high they had cut his leg.

  She looked at him searchingly.

  "You'll be surprised when you see it," she said and gave him a hard, almost friendly, slap on the face.

  Another time, Neuheufel paid him a visit. Rud shivered seeing him again. He could not help it. Neuheufel made him answer hundreds of questions from a lengthy questionnaire. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, filling in page after page, smoking like a chimney. Rud could not st
and the smell of tobacco and after Neuheufel's visit he vomited.

  They could not keep him wrapped up in bandages forever; some day the uncertainty would have to end. When that day came, they took all the bandages off in one go and he was allowed to walk straight away. Rud examined his body suspiciously and asked for a mirror. His body didn't look too bad, in fact it looked far better than he had anticipated.

  They had not cut off his right leg. It was straight and the same length as the left. More important, he could urinate without too much pain. They had reconstructed his nose quite well. It was soft like a boxer's nose, but could have been worse. The ears were also where they should be, though ugly, badly shaped and too big. The hole on his shoulder remained but it had healed. His body was covered with fresh red scars and patches of pink skin, which looked like thin blotting paper, and which had freshly grown over the burns and where they had taken the skin for plastic surgery. He was given a special talc to sprinkle over these areas to avoid chafes and new wounds. He could bend all his fingers, though some of them moved only with difficulty. Most of the fingernails had begun growing anew.

  "Why? Why have I had to live in uncertainty?" he asked Panfilova, putting back on his grey hospital gown with a blue pentagram and his registration number.

  "The transition from Punishment has to be gradual, it's better for the mind this way," she answered. "And besides, we don't want patients to nurture unfounded hopes. An operation can be unsuccessful ... That's why the initial examinations always suggest the least optimistic outcome. We have to avoid disappointing the patient. What would you say if I'd promised you that I could save your leg and you'd woken up without it?"

  Rud didn't answer. Panfilova was throwing the bandages into the bin. She was working on her own; there were not many nurses on the afternoon shift. She looked tired. She had no make-up on. Her face looked pale because of it, but younger. She had a delicate net of wrinkles around her eyes. It was a completely different Panfilova from the one he had grown used to, though equally, or maybe even more beautiful. He wanted to ask her if she was not ill but thought it might have been a hangover and did not dare.

  "And what will happen to me now?"

  "The same as to everybody," she shrugged her shoulders. "They'll transfer you to the Adaptation Centre. You have to recover internally. The process is gradual. The same rule applies as with operations."

  The Adaptation Centre occupied a wide area surrounded on one side by grey hills and on the other by a sickly little wood. The blue-grey sky, unseen for so long, took his breath away.

  The Centre consisted of barracks standing in rows and built of black, rotten timber. Along the rows of barracks ran narrow streets trodden out in clay. When it was dry they were covered with dust, when it rained they turned into mud. Then there was a little factory employing people from the outside, who arrived by a train weaving its way through the hills; there were also a number of administrative buildings. The zone, with fences and sentry-boxes, was located on the side near the wood. The adaptation to Heaven should be gradual and so, for the sake of the inmates' mental health, their release into freedom was also gradual. One of the administrative buildings housed a small crematorium where all the hospital's refuse - used bandages, excretions, offal - were burnt. On windless days, thick smoke floated through the streets, irritating the throat. Those who, like Rud, were brought here by the lift from below, joked that the crematorium was fuelled by the unfortunate ones who failed to adapt to Heaven; but it was not true.

  The barrack where Rud lived was exactly the same as the others: through the middle ran a dark corridor, with electric wires from which hung speckled light-bulbs surrounded by buzzing flies. The corridor was filled with the stale odour of timber rotting in the damp warmth. On each side was a row of warped doors leading to the wards. The door was always padlocked when everybody had left the ward. In such cases the orderly of the ward - usually an old, decrepit man - took the key with him. It was inconvenient.

  At the end of the corridor was a toilet; two cubicles. In each there was a board with a hole in it; below, the cesspool and a swarm of fat, obstinate blue-bottle flies. The instructions stated that the seat should always be sprayed on both sides with a strong insecticide, as underneath often sat venomous spiders. People said that there were a few cases of bites, when the swollen victims had to be hospitalised. But more often than not, the aerosol was missing from the shelf made of a small rough plank. Thus there were only two toilets per barrack and every morning in front of them gathered a long, stinking queue. The stink was coming from the incontinent ones. Everyone crowded in, ignoring the stink, for even though in each ward there was a sink, urinating into it was strictly forbidden under the threat of extension of Greater Punishment; this was threat enough.

  The wash-room was outside, adjoining the barracks' wall. It was a long metal trough with a row of taps. In the morning, before everybody left for work, all the taps were in constant use. The water pressure diminished in each tap towards the end of the pipe. As a rule, the strongest always positioned themselves at the taps with the highest-pressure.-

  The shower was also located outside, fenced with a sheet of corrugated iron screening the body from calves to midshoulder. It was used rarely, for the water was ice-cold, as in the sink taps. The water was so cold it made hands numb and red. The regulations demanded that the hands be washed twice a day, and a bath taken every two days; those found with dirty hands, feet or ears were deprived of their ration of cigarettes or chocolate ersatz. Everybody therefore washed and took their showers according to the regulations, but no more often.

  One half of the barrack, the one further from the toilet, was taken by the Un-born. Rud didn't like the Un-born. He thought they considered themselves better than the others. Even in the barracks they occupied the parts where it stank less.

  He had seen an Un-born for the first time on the lawn outside the barrack. He had expected to see a tiny, dainty creature but the Un-born was quite big, the size of an ordinary new-born baby, ugly with a strange watery, limpid complexion. Later, someone told Rud that there were also Un-born who were eight months old.

  Rud looked at him. He noted the delicate skin which seemed almost too soft, the barely drawn fingernails, the big, grey-blue eyes without eyelashes, and the tender transparent ears. The Un-born was looking back at Rud with an unexpectedly strong, insistent, almost hypnotic stare. Rud averted his eyes. It was difficult to withstand the gaze of the Un-born. Both wore the same sort of grey linen jackets and trousers. Both had the blue pentagrams and registration numbers on their backs. Their jackets, of the same cut, were simple but practical. The Un-born's shoes were a miniature copy of Rud's camp issue clogs - healthy, airy, with wooden soles.

  "What tiny feet," thought Rud.

  "Beat it, mate. Get out of my way," thundered in Rud's head. The Un-born, with their undeveloped speech organs, used that strange, direct method of communication. Rud obediently stepped off the path. The Un-born toddled past him in mincing little steps with faint thumps of his wooden heels.

  On the ward, apart from Rud, there were only old men; some of them very old, gaga. The wooden beds had no top bunks; there was no way any of the old men could climb the ladder. Half the ward, those who slept on the window side, were in the care of Interrogator Neuheufel. He was their guardian and protector. The rest were looked after by Lieutenant Holzbucher, who hardly ever visited the barrack.

  Neuheufel managed to get all those in his charge out from below before the full completion of Greater Punishment. At least that was what they said; and so did he. Sometimes Neuheufel would bring some liver sausage or brawn from the canteen. He would take these treasures, wrapped up in soggy brown paper, out of the pocket of his uniform and put them on the table, which someone would hasten to wipe obligingly with their sleeve. They would all surround the table, watching devoutly his hands unwrapping the precious gift. Holzbucher's flock went green with envy watching the rationing ceremony from their bunks. Neuheufel shared out the meat a
ccording to work input and progress in re-socialisation. Those who in his eyes didn't deserve it would walk away from the table dejected, while the rest relished the gift. Neuheufel tended to favour Rud and his portions of brawn were always the biggest.

  "These rotting grandads piss me off," he confided once to Rud, "but what can I do? They only send that sort these days. Sometimes they do a round up on the other side and then we have crowds. Women, children, old and young. Whatever you fancy. You can work yourself stupid, there's so much of it.

  "But I like work," he looked at Rud searchingly, "it's better than doing nothing, like now ... But maybe something will turn up soon. At the moment there are only grandads. Very rarely someone young, from an accident, like you, Milankiewicz."

  That was how Rud learned that he had got there as the result of an accident.

  Neuheufel's casually dropped remark began to germinate in Rud's mind during the sleepless nights. At the first appropriate occasion he returned to that conversation. He asked directly why he had ended up with Greater Punishment.

  "I wonder myself," stated Neuheufel colouring the graphs in his report. "You have to be a right bastard to get Greater Punishment. You don't look it Milankiewicz."

  Rud had expected a different answer, he wanted an explanation. For many days he fruitlessly rummaged through his memory. Almost fruitlessly. There was one thing that kept coming back.

  Neuheufel's face grimaced in a strange expression, his eyes bulged, so greedily was he awaiting Rud's words. He thought that Neuheufel was trying to help him, as if by concentrating so hard himself he might help Rud remember the right reason.

  "There was really only one thing. It was about a girl," he started with hesitation, but as he spoke the words began to flow more easily. "She worked a till at a department store. Petite, slim, with a good figure, unpretentious, only her face was really beautiful."

  "The rest was ugly?" asked the interrogator.

  "Well, no, but her face was really unusual. Everything was beautiful on that face: the eyebrows, the eyelashes, the peach complexion and the same sort of down on her cheeks. Her nose was perhaps a little too prominent. She had searching eyes, vivid, blue-green. I'll never forget her eyes. And blonde hair. Excellent combination. Later, I found out that the hair was bleached. But it didn't matter all that much ... Always that blush ... The lipstick was unnecessary, too."