And the nurse…
He could imagine her running through the halls. He could hear her clattering like a noisy ghost through the halls of death. He could feel her running from ward to ward from the ward of the cripples to the ward of the deaf men to the ward of the blind men to the ward of the voiceless men summoning all the people of the hospital screaming out to them the news of the wonder that had happened. He could hear her voice as she told them that up in a little room away from the rest of the hospital a lid had been lifted from a coffin a stone had been rolled away from a tomb and a dead man was tapping and talking. Never before in the world had the dead spoken never since Lazarus and Lazarus didn’t say anything. Now he would tell them everything. He would speak from the dead. He would talk for the dead. He would tell all the secrets of the dead. And while he thought of what he would tell them the nurse was running running running through wards and corridors from floor to floor from basement to attic all through that great place from which so many dead had gone. She was trumpeting through the hospital like the angel Gabriel telling them to come and to listen to the voice of the dead.
While he waited for all the people she had summoned to come to him he could feel their presence as an actor must feel the presence of a thousand people in that moment before the curtain goes up. He could feel the vibrations of their footsteps dozens of them as they thronged into his room. He could feel his bed jostled back and forth as they pressed against it in their eagerness. The springs of his bed seemed to send up a constant low hum as his guests shifted for positions to get a better view of the dead man who was speaking. The temperature of the room became so much warmer that he could almost feel the heat of their massed bodies against the skin of his neck and the half of his forehead that was naked above the mask.
Then the door opened. He felt the vibration of a footstep a light one the nurse’s footstep. He strained to feel the rest. Then came the vibrations of another footstep this one heavier belonging to a man. He waited for the rest he waited for the hum of his bedsprings. But everything was quiet. Everything was still. There was no one in the room for the great thing that was about to happen except him and his nurse and this heavy-footed stranger. No one at all but the three of them. He felt an odd pang of disappointment that they should consider such a great event so lightly. And then he remembered the thing that was even more important than crowds. He lay there stiff quiet more like a dead man than he had ever been before. He lay there waiting to receive his response.
A finger came out of the darkness a finger, so enormous that it shattered against his forehead like the crash of a pile driver. It echoed inside his brain like thunder in a cave. The finger began to tap…
· – – ···· · – –
W H A T
– ·· ··
D O
·· ·· ·· ·· –
Y O U
· – – · – – · –
W A N T
What do you want?
xix
When he made out the question when he was sure he had translated it right he grew very quiet for a moment. It was like sitting in a silent room waiting for someone very important someone for whom you have been waiting a long while and then suddenly hearing a knock on the door. For just a minute you hesitate wondering who it might be and what does he want and why did he come. For just a second you’re scared because although you’ve waited for years you really never expected the knock. Then you get up and go over and open the door just a little at first to prepare yourself for the shock of disappointment at discovering it isn’t the person you’ve been wanting. But when you find that the impossible has happened that the visitor you’ve been praying for has arrived you’re so relieved and surprised you don’t know exactly what to say or how to begin it.
What did he want?
It was as if someone who longed for the sea and a ship were suddenly given his ship and then asked where he wanted to go. He hadn’t ever really expected the ship so he had spent all his time wishing for it and no time figuring out what to do with it after he got it. He was the same way. He had never really expected to break through it had been so long and he’d had such trouble trying to make them understand. The whole thing had been just an idea it had been something to hope for and work for and the more difficult it got the more important it became until in the end it was driving him almost crazy. But up to an hour ago he had never imagined himself in the position of actually breaking through. Now he had accomplished it. The thing was done and they were asking him what he wanted. And even though all that was left of his life seemed to depend on answering them he couldn’t organize his thoughts enough to make sense to himself much less to anyone else.
Then he thought about it in another way. Maybe it wasn’t so much a question of what he wanted as what they could give him. That was it. And what could they give him? He began to resent the question itself and the way they asked it and the ignorance that lay behind it. Who did they think they were and what did they think he wanted that they could give him? Did they think he would ask for an ice cream cone? Did they think he would ask for a good book and an open fire and a cat purring? Did they think he would ask to go to a movie and after that to a soda parlor for a nice cool drink of lemonade? Did they think he would ask for dancing lessons or a pair of binoculars or a course in piano lessons imagine how surprised your friends will be?
Maybe they thought he wanted a new suit or a silk shirt. Maybe they expected him to complain that the bed was a little hard and please bring me a glass of water. Maybe they thought he would ask for a change of diet. The coffee you’ve been pouring into my tube lately needs a little more sugar it tastes bitter to my intestines so add half a teaspoonful of sugar and stir it well please. The hash is too wet and it needs some seasoning. I think I would like some fudge. Next time you shove grub through that tube stick in a piece of fudge not sugary not too strong of chocolate but smooth and a little warm I’ve been waiting all these years and tapping all these months because I love fudge so much.
They should know what he wanted the silly bastards and they should know they couldn’t give it to him. He wanted the things they took for granted the things nobody could ever give him. He wanted eyes to see with. Two eyes to see sunlight and moonlight and blue mountains and tall trees and little ants and houses that people live in and flowers opening in the morning and snow on the ground and streams running and trains coming and going and people walking and a puppy dog playing with an old shoe worrying it and growling at it and backing away from it and frowning and wiggling its bottom and taking the shoe very seriously. He wanted a nose so that he could smell rain and burning wood and cooking food and the faint perfume that stays in the air after a girl has passed by. He wanted a mouth so he could eat and talk and laugh and taste and kiss. He wanted arms and legs so he could work and walk and be like a man like a living thing.
What did he want what was there for him to want what was there left that anybody could give him?
It came over him rushing and howling like a torrent of water from behind a dam that has broken. He wanted to get out. He could feel his heart speed up and his flesh tighten at the thought. He wanted to get out. He wanted to get out so that he could feel the taste of fresh air against his skin and imagine even though he couldn’t smell that it came from the sea or the mountains or the cities or the farmlands. He wanted to get out so that he could feel people around him. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t see them or hear them or talk with them. If he were out he would know that at least he was among them that he was not shut up in a room away from them. It wasn’t right that a man should be shut up in a room. It wasn’t right that he should be a prisoner forever. A man needed to be among other men. Every living thing needed to be among its own kind. He was a man a part of mankind and he wanted to be taken out so that he could sense other men around him.
Let me out he thought that’s all I want. I’ve been lying here for years and years in a room in a bed in a little covering of skin. Now I want out.
I’ve got to get out. You can’t keep a man here like this. He’s got to be doing something in order to be sure he’s still alive. I’m like a prisoner here and you’ve got no right to keep me because I’ve done no wrong. One room one bed like in a jail like in an asylum like in a grave with six feet of earth above. You don’t realize how a man can stand only so much of this without going crazy. I’m suffocating and I can’t suffocate any longer I can’t stand it. If I had arms I could move I could push I could widen the walls I could throw back the covers I could get into a bigger place. If I had a voice I could yell and holler for help I could talk to myself and be some company to myself. If I had legs I could run I could get away I could come out into the open where there is air where there is room where I’m not in a hole and smothering. But I haven’t got any of these things I can’t do any of these things so you must help me. You must help me quick because inside I’m going crazy I’m going insane I’m suffering like you’ll never know. Inside me I scream and howl and push and fight for room for air for escape from the smothering. So let me out where I can feel air and sense people. Please let me out so I can have room to breathe in. Let me out of here and take me back into the world.
He was about to tap to them in a flood of dots and dashes when it came over him that there might be difficulties. After all he wasn’t an ordinary guy to be released from an ordinary prison to lead an ordinary life. He was a very unusual case. All his life no matter where he was there would have to be people taking care of him. That meant money and he didn’t have any money and so he would be a burden to people. The government or whoever it was taking care of him probably didn’t have any money to throw around humoring a guy spending a fortune taking care of him just so he could feel air on the outside and the presence of people around him. That might make sense to some people but you could never get the government to understand it. The government would say he is nuts who ever heard of a guy without arms legs eyes ears nose mouth getting any fun out of being around people he can’t see or hear or talk to? The government would say the whole thing is a crazy idea and the hell with it he’s better off where he is and besides it costs too much dough.
And then he realized that he had it in his own power to make money plenty of it enough to pay his own expenses and the expenses of the people who took care of him too. Instead of being a burden and a bother to the government he could even make money for them. People were always willing to pay to see a curiosity they were always interested in terrible sights and probably nowhere on the face of the earth was there any living thing quite so terrible as he was. Once he saw an exhibition of a man who was turning to stone. You could tap a coin against his arm and it sounded as if you were tapping it against marble the coin would ring so. That was terrible enough but not nearly so terrible as he was. Yet that man turning to stone was paying his own way and making enough money to pay somebody to take care of him to boot. He could do the same thing. If they would only let him out he would be able to take care of everything.
He would be doing good too in a roundabout way. He would be an educational exhibit. People wouldn’t learn much about anatomy from him but they would learn all there was to know about war. That would be a great thing to concentrate war in one stump of a body and to show it to people so they could see the difference between a war that’s in newspaper headlines and liberty loan drives and a war that is fought out lonesomely in the mud somewhere a war between a man and a high explosive shell. Suddenly he took fire with the idea he got so excited over it he forgot about his longing for air and people this new idea was so wonderful. He would make an exhibit of himself to show all the little guys what would happen to them and while he was doing it he would be self-supporting and free. He would do a favor to everybody including himself. He would show himself to the little guys and to their mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and wives and sweethearts and grandmothers and grandfathers and he would have a sign over himself and the sign would say here is war and he would concentrate the whole war into such a small piece of meat and bone and hair that they would never forget it as long as they lived.
He began to tap that he wanted out. His mind ran way ahead of his tapping but he kept on tapping just the same. What did he want? He’d tell them what he wanted the goddam fools. He’d tell them he’d tap it out to them word by word he’d remember every bit of it and put it down in dots and dashes and then they would know. As he tapped he thought faster. He grew angrier and more excited and he tapped faster and faster trying to keep up with the words that were pounding on the inside of his mind the words he could finally use all the words he had thought of in all the years he had lain silent for he was talking now for the first time he had learned how and he was talking to someone outside.
Let me out he tapped let me out of here let me out. I won’t give you any trouble. I won’t be any care. I can earn my keep. I can do a job like anybody else. Take off my nightshirt and build a glass case for me and take me down to the places where people are having fun where they are on the lookout for freakish things. Take me in my glass case to the beaches and the country fairs and the church bazaars and the circuses and the travelling carnivals.
You could do a wonderful business with me I could pay you for the trouble. You could give them a good spiel. They’ve heard of the half-man half-woman. They’ve heard of the bearded woman and the thin man and the midget. They’ve seen the human mermaids and the wild men from Borneo and the meat-eating girl from the Congo throw her a fish and watch her snap for it. They’ve seen the man who writes with his toes and the man who walks on his hands and the Siamese twins and those little rows of unborn babies pickled in alcohol.
But they’ve seen nothing like this. This will be the god-damndest dime’s worth a man ever had. This will be a sensation in the show world and whoever sponsors my tour will be a new Barnum and have fine notices in all the newspapers because I am something you can really holler about. I am something you can push with a money back guarantee. I am the dead-man-who-is-alive. I am the live-man-who-is-dead. If they won’t come into our tent with that build-up then I am something more. I’m the man who made the world safe for democracy. If they won’t fall for that then for Christ sake they’re no men. Let them join the army because the army makes men.
Take me along country roads and stop by every farmhouse and every field and ring a dinner gong so that the farmers and their wives and their children and their hired men and women can see me. Say to the farmers here is something I’ll bet you haven’t seen before. Here is something you can’t plow under. Here is something that will never grow and flower. The manure you plow into your fields is filthy enough but here is something less than manure because it won’t die and decay and nourish even a weed. Here is something so terrible that if it were born to a mare or a heifer or a sow or a ewe you would kill it on the spot but you can’t kill this because it is a human being. It has a brain. It is thinking all the time. Believe it or not this thing thinks and it is alive and it goes against every rule of nature although nature doesn’t make it so. You know what made it so. Look at it medals real medals probably of solid gold. Lift up the top of the case and you’ll know what made it so. It stinks of glory.
Take me into the places where men work and make things. Take me there and say boys here is a cheap way to get by. Maybe times are bad and your salaries are low. Don’t worry boys because there is always a way to cure things like that. Have a war and then prices go up and wages go up and everybody makes a hell of a lot of money. There’ll be one along pretty soon boys so don’t get impatient. It’ll come and then you’ll have your chance.
Either way you win. If you don’t have to fight why you stay at home and make sixteen bucks a day working in the shipyards. And if they draft you why you’ve got a good chance of coming back without so many needs. Maybe you’ll need only one shoe instead of two that’s saving money. Maybe you’ll be blind and if you are why then you never need worry about the expense of glasses. Maybe you’ll be lucky like me. Look at me close
boys I don’t need anything. A little broth or something three times a day and that’s all. No shoes no socks no underwear no shirt no gloves no hat no necktie no collar-buttons no vest no coat no movies no vaudeville no football not even a shave. Look at me boys I have no expenses at all. You’re suckers boys. Get on the gravy train. I know what I’m talking about, I used to need all the things that you need right now. I used to be a consumer. I’ve consumed a lot in my time. I’ve consumed more shrapnel and gunpowder than any living man. So don’t get blue boys because you’ll have your chance there’ll be another war along pretty soon and then maybe you’ll be lucky like me.
Take me into the schoolhouses all the schoolhouses in the world. Suffer little children to come unto me isn’t that right? They may scream at first and have nightmares at night but they’ll get used to it because they’ve got to get used to it and it’s best to start them young. Gather them around my case and say here little girl here little boy come and take a look at your daddy. Come and look at yourself. You’ll be like that when you grow up to be great big strong men and women. You’ll have a chance to die for your country. And you may not die you may come back like this. Not everybody dies little kiddies.
Closer please. You over there against the blackboard what’s the matter with you? Quit crying you silly little girl come over here and look at the nice man the nice man who was a soldier boy. You remember him don’t you? Don’t you remember little crybaby how you waved flags and saved tinfoil and put your savings in thrift stamps? Of course you do you silly. Well here’s the soldier you did it for.