In the Country of Last Things

  “But Sam isn’t a doctor,” I said. “It would be a lie, and I don’t see how you can help people if the first thing you do is lie to them.”

  “This isn’t lying,” Victoria answered. “It’s a masquerade. You tell lies for selfish reasons, but in this case we wouldn’t be taking anything for ourselves. It’s for other people, a way of giving them hope. As long as they think that Sam is a doctor, they’ll believe in what he says.”

  “But what if someone finds out? We’d be finished then. No one would trust us after that—not even when we told the truth.”

  “No one will find out. Sam can’t give himself away, because he won’t be practicing medicine. Even if he wanted to, there’s no medicine left for him to practice with. We have a couple of bottles of aspirin, a box or two of bandages, and that’s about it. Just because he calls himself Dr. Farr, that doesn’t mean he’ll be doing what a doctor does. He’ll talk, and people will listen to him. That’s all it amounts to. A way of giving people a chance to find their own strength.”

  “What if Sam can’t pull it off?”

  “Then he can’t. But we won’t know that unless he tries, will we?”

  In the end, Sam agreed to go along with it. “It’s not something I would have thought of myself,” he said, “not if I lived for another hundred years. Anna finds it cynical, and in the long run I think she’s right. But who knows if the facts aren’t just as cynical? People are dying out there, and whether we give them a bowl of soup or save their souls, they’re still going to die. I don’t see any way of getting around that. If Victoria thinks that having a fake doctor to talk to will make things easier for them, who am I to say she’s wrong? I doubt it will do much good, but there doesn’t seem to be much harm in it either. It’s an attempt at something, and I’m willing to go along with it for that.”

  I didn’t blame Sam for saying yes, but I continued to be angry with Victoria for some time. It had shocked me to see her justifying her fanaticism with such elaborate arguments about right and wrong. Whatever you wanted to call it—a lie, a masquerade, a means to an end—this plan struck me as a betrayal of her father’s principles. I had had enough qualms about Woburn House already, and if anything had helped me to accept the place at all, it was Victoria herself. Her straightforwardness, the clarity of her motives, the moral rigor I had found in her—these things had been an example to me, and they had given me the strength to go on. Now, suddenly, there seemed to be a realm of darkness in her that I had not noticed before. It was a disillusionment, I think, and for a time I actually resented her, was appalled that she should turn out to be so like everyone else. But then, as I began to understand the situation more clearly, my anger passed. Victoria had managed to hide the truth from me, but the fact was that Woburn House was on the verge of going under. The masquerade with Sam was no more than an attempt to salvage something from the disaster, an eccentric little coda tacked on to a piece that was already played out. Everything was finished. It was just that I didn’t know it yet.

  The irony was that Sam was a success in his role as doctor. All the props were there for him—the white coat, the black bag, the stethoscope, the thermometer—and he used them to full effect. There was no question that he looked like a doctor, but after a while he began to act like one, too. That was the incredible part of it. At first, I was rather grudging about this transformation, not wanting to admit that Victoria had been right; but eventually I had to give in to the facts. People responded to Sam. He had a way of listening to them that made them want to talk, and words came flooding from their mouths the moment he sat down to be with them. His training as a journalist no doubt helped in all this, but now he had been imbued with an added measure of dignity, a persona of benevolence, as it were, and because people trusted that persona, they told him things he had never heard from anyone before. It was like being a confessor, he said, and little by little he began to appreciate the good that comes when people are allowed to unburden themselves—the salutary effect of speaking words, of releasing words that tell the story of what happened to them. The temptation would have been to start believing in the role, I think, but Sam managed to keep his distance from it. He joked about it in private, and eventually he came up with a new set of names for himself—Doctor Shamuel Farr, Doctor Quackingsham, Doctor Bunk. Underneath this jocularity, however, I sensed that the job meant more to him than he was willing to admit. His pose as doctor had suddenly given him access to the intimate thoughts of others, and these thoughts now became a part of who he was. His interior world grew larger, sturdier, more able to absorb the things that were put into it. “It’s better not having to be myself,” he once told me. “If I didn’t have that other person to hide behind—the one who wears the white coat and the sympathetic look on his face—I don’t think I could stand it. The stories would crush me. As it is, I have a way to listen to them now, to put them where they belong—next to my own story, next to the story of the self I no longer have to be as long as I am listening to them.”

  Spring came early that year, and by mid-March the crocuses were flowering in the garden out back—yellow and purple stalks jutting from the grassy margins, the burgeoning green mixed with pools of drying mud. Even the nights were warm then, and sometimes Sam and I would take a short walk around the enclosure before turning in. It was good to be out there for those few moments, with the windows of the house dark behind us, and the stars burning faintly overhead. Each time we took one of those little walks, I felt that I was falling in love with him all over again, each time falling for him in that darkness, hanging on to his arm and remembering how it had been for us in the beginning, back in the days of the Terrible Winter, when we lived in the library and looked out every night through the big, fan-shaped window. We didn’t talk about the future anymore. We didn’t make plans or talk about going home. The present consumed us entirely now, and with all the work to be done every day, with all the exhaustion that followed from it, there was no time to think about anything else. There was a ghostly equilibrium to this life, but that did not necessarily make it bad, and at times I almost found myself happy to be living it, to be going along with things as they were.

  Those things could not continue, of course. They were an illusion, just as Boris Stepanovich had said they were, and nothing could stop the changes from coming. By the end of April, we began to feel the pinch. Victoria finally broke down and explained the situation to us, and then, one by one, the necessary economies were made. The Wednesday afternoon rounds went first. There was no point in spending money on the car, we decided. The fuel was too expensive, and there were enough people waiting for us right outside the door. No need to go out looking for them, Victoria said, and not even Frick raised an objection to that. That same afternoon, we went for a last spin through the city—Frick at the wheel with Willie beside him, Sam and I in back. We chugged along the peripheral boulevards, dipped in occasionally for a look at this neighborhood or that, felt the bumps as Frick maneuvered the car over the ruts and potholes. None of us said much of anything. We just watched the sights as they slid past us, a bit awed that this would never happen again, I think, that this was the last time, and soon it was as though we were not even looking anymore, just sitting in our seats and feeling the odd despair of driving around in circles. Afterward, Frick put the car in the garage and locked the door, and from then on I don’t think he ever opened it again. Once, when we were out in the garden together, he pointed to the garage across the way, and broke into a broad, toothless smile. “Them things what you see when nothing more,” he said. “Say good-bye and then forget. A shining in the head now. Whoosh it goes, you see, and gone. All aglow and then forget.”

  The clothes went next—all the free handouts we had given to the residents, the shirts and shoes, the jackets and sweaters, the trousers, the hats, the old pairs of gloves. Boris Stepanovich had bought these things in bulk from a supplier in the fourth census zone, but that man was out of business now, had in fact been run out of it by a consor
tium of thugs and Resurrection Agents, and we no longer had the means to keep this end of the operation going. Even in good times the purchase of clothes had accounted for thirty to forty percent of the Woburn House budget. Now, when hard times had finally come, we had no choice but to strike this expense from the books. No cutbacks, no gradual diminishments—the whole thing all at once, axed in one go. Victoria started a campaign of what she called “conscientious mending,” stocking up on various kinds of sewing equipment—needles, spools of thread, cloth patches, thimbles, darning eggs, and so on—and did what she could to restore the clothes that people already had when they arrived at Woburn House. The idea was to spare as much money as possible for food, and given that this was the most important thing, the thing that did the most good for the residents, we all agreed on the correctness of this approach. Still, as the fifth-floor rooms continued to empty out, not even the food supply could withstand the erosion. One by one, items were eliminated—sugar, salt, butter, fruit, the small rations of meat we had allowed ourselves, the occasional glass of milk. Each time Victoria announced another one of these economies, Maggie Vine would throw a fit—erupting into a wild clown’s pantomime of a person in tears, banging her head against the wall, flapping her arms against her legs as though she meant to fly away. It was no picnic for any of us, however. We had all grown accustomed to having enough to eat, and these deprivations caused a painful shock to our systems. I had to think through the whole question for myself again—what it means to be hungry, how to detach the idea of food from the idea of pleasure, how to accept what you are given and not crave for more. By mid-summer our diet was down to a variety of grains, starches, and root vegetables—turnips, beets, carrots. We tried to plant a garden out back, but seeds were scarce, and we managed to grow only a few heads of lettuce. Maggie improvised as best she could, boiling up a number of thin soups, angrily preparing concoctions of beans and noodles, pounding out dumplings in a swirl of white flour—gooey dough balls that nearly made one gag. Compared to how we had been eating before, this was awful stuff, but it kept us alive for all that. The grim thing was not really the quality of the food, but the certainty that things were only going to get worse. Little by little, the distinction between Woburn House and the rest of the city was growing smaller. We were being swallowed up, and not one of us knew how to prevent it.

  Then Maggie disappeared. One day she simply wasn’t there anymore, and we found no clues to tell us where she had gone. She must have wandered off while the rest of us were asleep upstairs, but that hardly explained why she had left all her things behind. If she had meant to run away, it seemed logical to think she would have packed a bag for the journey. Willie spent two or three days searching the immediate area for her, but he couldn’t find a trace, and none of the people he talked to had ever seen her. After that, Willie and I took over the kitchen duties. Just as we were beginning to feel comfortable with the work, however, something else happened. Suddenly, and without any warning at all, Willie’s grandfather died. We tried to comfort ourselves with the thought that Frick had been old—almost eighty, Victoria said—but that didn’t do much good. He died in his sleep one night in early October, and Willie was the one who discovered the body: waking up in the morning and seeing that his grandfather was still in bed, and then, when he tried to rouse him, watching in horror as the old man crashed to the floor. It was hardest on Willie, of course, but we all suffered from this death in our own ways. Sam wept bitter tears when it happened, and Boris Stepanovich did not speak to anyone for four hours after he was told the news, which must have been some kind of record for him. Victoria did not show much on the surface, but then she went ahead and did something rash, and I understood how close she was to an ultimate despair. It is absolutely against the law to bury the dead. All corpses are required to be taken to one of the Transformation Centers, and anyone who does not comply with this regulation is subject to the stiffest penalty: a fine of two hundred fifty glots, to be paid on issuance of the summons, or immediate exile to one of the work camps in the southwestern part of the country. In spite of all that, within an hour of learning of Frick’s death, Victoria announced that she was planning to hold a funeral for him in the garden that afternoon. Sam tried to talk her out of it, but she refused to budge. “No one will ever know,” she said. “And even if the police do find out, it doesn’t matter. We have to do what’s right. If we let a stupid law stand in our way, then we aren’t worth anything.” It was a reckless, wholly irresponsible act, but at bottom I believe she was doing it for Willie’s sake. Willie was a boy of less than normal intelligence, and at seventeen he was still locked into the violence of a self that understood almost nothing of the world around him. Frick had taken care of him, had done his thinking for him, had literally walked him through the paces of his life. With his grandfather suddenly gone, there was no telling what might happen to him. Willie needed a gesture from us now—a clear and dramatic assertion of our loyalty, proof that we would stand with him no matter what the consequences. The burial was an enormous risk, but even in the light of what happened, I don’t think Victoria was wrong to take it.

  Before the ceremony, Willie went into the garage, unscrewed the horn from the car, and spent the better part of an hour polishing it up. It was one of those old-fashioned horns you used to see on children’s bicycles—but larger and more impressive, with a brass trumpet and a black rubber knob almost the size of a grapefruit. Then he and Sam dug a hole next to the hawthorn bushes out back. Six of the residents carried Frick’s body from the house to the grave, and as they lowered him into the ground, Willie put the horn on his grandfather’s chest, making sure that it was buried along with him. Boris Stepanovich then read a short poem he had written for the occasion, and afterward Sam and Willie shoveled the dirt back into the hole. It was a primitive ceremony at best—no prayers, no songs—but just to be doing it was significant enough. Everyone was out there together—all the residents, all the members of the staff—and by the time it was over, most of us had tears in our eyes. A small stone was placed on the gravesite to mark the spot, and then we went back into the house.

  Afterward, we all tried to pick up the slack as far as Willie was concerned. Victoria delegated new responsibilities to him, even allowing him to stand guard with the rifle while I was conducting interviews in the hall, and Sam made an effort to take him under his wing—teaching the boy how to shave properly, how to write his name in longhand, how to add and subtract. Willie responded well to this attention. If not for a dismal stroke of luck, I believe he would have come around quite nicely. About two weeks after Frick’s funeral, however, a policeman from the Central Constabulary paid us a visit. He was a ridiculous-looking character, all pudgy and red-faced, sporting one of the new uniforms that had recently been given to officers from that branch of the service—a bright red tunic, white jodhpurs, and black, patent leather boots with kepi to match. He fairly creaked in this absurd costume, and because he insisted on thrusting out his chest, I actually thought he might pop his buttons. He clicked his heels and saluted when I answered the door, and if it hadn’t been for the machine gun slung over his shoulder, I probably would have told him to leave. “Is this the residence of Victoria Woburn?” he said. “Yes,” I said. “Among others.” “Then step aside, Miss,” he answered, pushing me out of the way and entering the hall. “The investigation is about to begin.”

  I will spare you the details. The upshot was that someone had reported the funeral to the police, and they had come to verify the complaint. It had to have been one of the residents, but this was an act of such astonishing betrayal that none of us had the heart to try to figure out who it was. Someone who had been present at the funeral no doubt, who had been forced to leave Woburn House after his allotted stay and bore a grudge for being driven back into the streets. That was a logical guess, but it didn’t much matter anymore. Perhaps the police had paid this person money, perhaps he had merely done it out of spite. Whatever the case, the information was deadl
y accurate. The constable strode out into the back garden with two assistants trailing behind him, scanned the enclosure for several moments, and then pointed right to the spot where the grave had been dug. Shovels were ordered, and the two assistants promptly fell to work, searching for the corpse they already knew was there. “This is most irregular,” the constable said. “The selfishness of burial in this day and age—imagine the gall of it. Without bodies to burn, we’d go under fast, that’s for sure, the whole lot of us would be sunk. Where would our fuel come from, how would we keep ourselves alive? In this time of national emergency, we must all be vigilant. Not one body can be spared, and those who take it upon themselves to subvert this law must not be allowed to go free. They are evildoers of the worst sort, perfidious malefactors, renegade scum. They must be rooted out and punished.”

  We were all out in the garden by then, crowding around the grave as this fool prattled on with his vicious, empty-headed remarks. Victoria’s face had gone white, and if I hadn’t been there to prop her up, I think she might have collapsed. On the other side of the expanding hole, Sam was keeping a careful watch over Willie. The boy was in tears, and as the constable’s assistants continued to shovel up the earth and fling it carelessly into the bushes, he began to cry out in a panic-stricken voice, “That’s grandpa’s dirt. You shouldn’t be throwing it away. That dirt belongs to grandpa.” It got so loud that the constable had to stop in the middle of his harangue. He eyed Willie with contempt, and then, just as he began to move his arm in the direction of his machine gun, Sam clapped his hand over Willie’s mouth and began to drag him off toward the house—struggling to keep him in check as the boy squirmed and kicked his way across the lawn. In the meantime, a number of the residents had fallen to the ground and were begging the constable to believe in their innocence. They knew nothing of this heinous crime; they had not been there when it happened; if anyone had told them of such foul doings, they never would have agreed to stay there; they were all being held prisoner against their will. One cringing statement after another, an outbreak of mass cowardice. I felt so disgusted I wanted to spit. One old woman—Beulah Stansky was her name—actually grabbed hold of the constable’s boot and began to kiss it. He tried to shrug her off, but when she wouldn’t let go, he drove the tip of his boot into her belly and sent her sprawling—moaning and whimpering like a beaten dog. Fortunately for all of us, Boris Stepanovich chose to make his entrance at precisely this moment. He opened the French windows at the back of the house, gingerly stepped out onto the lawn, and strolled over to the hubbub with a calm, almost bemused look on his face. It was as though he had witnessed this scene a hundred times before, and nothing was going to ruffle him—not the police, not the guns, not one bit of it. They were pulling the body out of the hole when he joined us, and there was poor Frick stretched out on the grass, the eyes now gone from his head, face all smeared with dirt, and a horde of white worms writhing in his mouth. Boris did not even bother to glance at him. He walked straight up to the constable in the red coat, addressed him as general, and then proceeded to draw him off to the side. I did not hear what they said, but I could see that Boris hardly stopped grinning and twitching his eyebrows as they talked. Eventually, a wad of cash emerged from his pocket, he peeled off one bill after another from the roll, and then placed the money in the constable’s hand. I didn’t know what this meant—whether Boris had paid the fine or whether they had struck some sort of private agreement—but that was the extent of the transaction: a short, swift exchange of cash, and then the business was done. The assistants carried Frick’s body across the lawn, through the house, and then out to the front, where they tossed it into the back of a truck that was parked in the street. The constable harangued us once more on the steps—very sternly, using the same words he had used in the garden—and then gave a final salute, clicked his heels, and walked down to the truck, shooing aside the bedraggled onlookers with short flicks of his hand. As soon as he had driven off with his men, I ran back out into the garden to look for the car horn. I thought I would polish it up again and give it to Willie, but I couldn’t find it. I even climbed down into the open grave to see if it was there, but it wasn’t. Like so many other things before it, the horn had vanished without a trace.