When Mike showed up he brought Ronco and Sadsack with him. Ronco was nineteen, older than most of us. The nurse kept him isolated in a room to himself. He had a record player, the only one in the ward, and Mike said his walls were covered with pin-ups. His favorite was a large poster of Marilyn Monroe, the most beautiful woman who ever lived, he said, because she was the kind of woman who could give you loving whether you were Joe DiMaggio or whether you were a poor crippled bastard dragging around in a wheelchair.
Sadsack was a polio case. He was tall and the disease had left him uncoordinated. His arms and legs flopped around like used rubber bands. He had the sad, wrinkled face of a bloodhound, and a mop of thin hair which was always sticking up. Folds of loose skin fell over his sleepy eyes. He was a complainer.
“They’re moving me to another ward,” I said.
Mike looked at me and nodded. “Yeah, news travels fast on the grapevine—”
“But why?”
“Ah the Nurse can be a bitch,” Ronco said hoarsely. The first tracheotomy they had done on him years ago had been done by a careless surgeon so when he spoke his voice sounded like a very rough imitation of Cagney.
“She likes her name spelled with a capital N,” Sadsack said, “so it’s yes Nurse or no Nurse … she runs a tight ward.”
“I guess she didn’t like being chewed out by Steel, so she’s taking it out on you … but don’t worry, we’ll go to Steel and get you back here.”
“Where is this other ward?” I asked.
“It’s down the way,” Mike motioned.
“It’s Salomón’s ward,” Danny reminded me, “it’s a garden full of vegetables, a real vegetable patch!” he laughed.
“Da, dat me-means he lib-lib in dah-dah Gar-garden!” Mudo croaked in approval, his thick, swollen tongue barely unravelling the words. I knew already he was one of Danny’s stoogies.
“Means Tortuga’s a vegetable too!” Tuerto, Danny’s other crony piped up, and he looked at me with his bulging fish eyes. The three of them laughed.
“Shut up!” Mike snapped. “We’ll get him out of there. He doesn’t belong there … Salomón knows that.”
“I don’t believe what Salomón says,” Danny countered.
“Well you better start believing you little bastard!” Ronco said harshly. “Salomón’s the only one who knows what’s going on here … might do your hand some good if you started listening to him.”
“What does he say?” I asked.
“He tells stories,” Mike shrugged.
“Yeah, he’s really smart,” one of the smaller kids I couldn’t recognize said.
“He reads books … that’s all he does, all day long, in the night … I bet he’s read a million books!”
“He’s been here longer than anyone else.”
“He’s a good storyteller—”
“Ah, he’s a carrot!” Danny persisted. “He’s king of the vegetables, that’s all. And they’re all stuck in their machines just like a bunch of vegetables stuck in the ground! They can’t shit, they can’t eat, they can’t do anything by themselves!”
“Yaugh—yeah,” Mudo gurgled then wiped the saliva from his mouth.
“It’s not that bad,” Ronco tried to reassure me, “you just have to get used to it. But if the Nurse tries to take you to any other ward then scream bloody murder. Don’t let her.” He glanced nervously at Mike.
“Nah, she won’t do that,” Mike said, “we’ll fight her. We’re going to go to Steel as soon as he has time … he’s been in surgery all day.”
“Yeah, we can report her to the Committee,” one of the kids volunteered.
“Damn right we can!”
“They put me in that ward once, to punish me, cause I’d broken into the crafts room and stolen glue for the kids who like to sniff it, an’ I couldn’t sleep. There must be a hundred iron lungs in there, cause the bad polio cases can’t breathe at night without the lungs, and at night they make a noise like a monster breathing in the dark … whoooosh, wouuuuu-shh, whooooosh … I’d rather they punish me with castor oil than to go in there!”
“Who else goes in there?” I asked. Mike shook his head. “It’s not exactly a place to visit,” he said.
I wanted to ask them more about Salomón but it was late in the afternoon and the supper call sounded in the hallway, calling everybody that could get there to the dining room. Those of us that were bed-ridden remained in our rooms, feeling the day end as the sad twilight filled the rooms. It was a time to think of home, of family and of warm times eating together … times which seemed so distant now that the memory was inseparable from a dream. I lay quietly, listening to the food trays coming down the hall, feeling the echoes in the near-empty ward, and looking at the mountain through the window. Then, beneath all the sounds, woven into them so you had to hold your breath to separate the cries, I heard the soft whimpering of babies. It was a sound no one talked about, and it seemed to come from where I guessed lay Salomón’s ward.
5
The next morning the Nurse appeared with the day orderly, a grinning giant called Samson.
“Ready?” she asked. She seemed cheerful. Samson smiled down at me, his bald head shining with light. Together they rolled my bed out of the room and pushed it down the empty hall. The bed squeaked and reverberated as we went deeper into the hospital. I tried to keep track of the direction, but we made too many turns into the dimly lighted maze.
Finally we arrived at a large wooden door. It was old and cracked, and when Samson opened it the dry hinges creaked. Then we entered a long, enormous room with a high ceiling. The air was dry and stale, and only the hazy light which shone through the high, dusty windows lighted the room. Long forgotten flower pots sat on the dusty sills, unwatered and unattended, their pale yellow tendrils and vines dropped in profusion down the gray walls. Overhead a network of electrical wires criss-crossed the ceiling, dropping a single cord down to each iron lung which rested by the side of each bed. I had never seen the iron lungs before. They were cylindrical tubes of steel with a porthole at one end for the head and plate glass windows along the sides. They looked like strange caskets in the dim light. Around them hovered the shadows of nurses, old women who moved silently from bed to bed … and as my eyes grew accustomed to the dark I could see the beds and the thin skeletons which rested on them. At first I thought they were all dead, the thin arms which rested over the single sheet that covered them were bones covered by a thin parchment of yellow skin. I looked closer and saw their heads, skulls, shrunken to the bone and penciled with thin, blue veins.
“They’re dead!” I gasped. Samson shook his head and motioned for me to look closer.
“Completely helpless,” the Nurse intoned.
I looked sideways again, watched the heads turn to follow my progress, then saw the eyes, the large sad doe eyes, the haunting eyes which burned in the hollow sockets and filled me with dread. They were alive! Each thin, shrunken body was alive! Air rattled through the tracheotomies at their throats as they gasped and sucked to keep alive. At most of the beds i-v bottles full of a yellow liquid dropped a tube which entered the permanent needles stuck in their arms. They were being kept alive with air and sugared water! The only thing they could do was move their heads and watch my arrival with their sad eyes. I cringed and felt myself draw into my cast. Damn, I cursed through gritten teeth and closed my eyes. Damn it to hell!
“They’re completely helpless,” the Nurse continued, while I cursed her and the room of cripples, “completely dependent … like you … but they’re cared for, fed, put in their respirators at night … kept alive … Ah, here’s Salomón’s room. It’s the only room in the ward … he needs privacy, and besides, he’s been here the longest. No one remembers when he came, I don’t, do you Samson?”
Samson shook his head, opened the door and they pushed the bed into the small cubicle. The walls were lined with bookshelves; books and magazines were piled everywhere. Small potted plants and vines dotted the shelves and the win
dowsill of the window which faced the mountain. I glanced at the outline of Tortuga’s hump as they pushed me close to the bed in the corner and turned me so I could see the thin, frail creature they called Salomón. He looked like the others we had passed in the ward, a thin skeleton drained of life, completely paralyzed and helpless, alive only because his eyes moved … and what sad eyes, deer eyes which shone with light and cut through me and filled me at once with pity and hate. He knew I was already asking myself why these poor cripples were being kept alive, helpless cripples, vegetables as Danny said.
“How are you, Sol?” the Nurse asked. “We’ve brought someone new to the ward, someone to share your room for awhile … Tortuga. That’s what the kids call him.” She smoothed the sheets on his bed and turned to look at me. “You can see how helpless he is, and yet he never complains, he never complains … I’ve never heard him utter a single complaint, have you Samson?” Samson shook his head. “He hasn’t moved an inch since the day he came … never will … but he doesn’t complain. He spends his waking time reading, devours books like a bookworm. Show Tortuga how you read, Sol.”
Salomón held a plastic rod or a pencil in his mouth. With his tongue he could manipulate the rod enough to turn the pages of the book fastened by its covers to the bedstand in front of him. That’s all he could do, move the rod and turn the pages of the book.
“… reads everything we can find for him … prefers philosophy and books like that …” She looked at me. “You’re going to like it here. Salomón is a good room mate. Doesn’t bother anyone, just reads all day long. Say hello to Salomón,” she said crisply.
“Screw you!” I muttered through clenched teeth. She jerked as if I had slapped her, a scowl replaced the smile she had put on for Salomón. “That kind of attitude is going to get you in trouble,” she said then told Samson to straighten my bed opposite Salomón’s, in the corner. “The nurses here will take care of everything you need … they have nothing else to do with their time. And who knows, maybe Sol will teach you how to read like he does …” She smiled and walked away, the limp in her left leg more pronounced now than the slight favoring I had noticed she gave it earlier. Samson trailed sheepishly behind her.
The initial pity I had felt for the vegetables was gone, now only a hopeless, smouldering rage remained, filling my stomach with such anger that it cramped and hurt. I couldn’t look at Salomón because I thought I’d cry, instead I gritted my teeth and let the anger out in a flood of curses.
“You bitch! You goddamned bitch! Do you think I’m going to stay here with these vegetables and rot to death! I’m not! I won’t! Get me out! Call the doctor! Call Steel! Did he double cross me too! The no good sonofabitch! Get me out of here! Get me out!”
I gasped for breath, felt panic fall on me like a heavy weight, like earth being shoveled down on a casket. I struggled to bend my elbows to try to lift myself, felt the cold sweat cover my entire body, but I couldn’t budge the heavy cast, and I couldn’t shake the suffocation, not even with my curses. One of the old nurses, a wrinkled, hairy crone, came in, motioned for me to relax, to lie still, and I cursed her. Another one appeared and together they pinned my arms, held me while one of them stuck a needle in my arm and I felt the drug ooze up my arm and then towards my stomach.
After that they looked at each other, nodded and left the room. But I wasn’t through yet. I turned what was left of my strength and anger on Salomón.
“I don’t belong here!” I shouted. “I’m not a vegetable! Look! I can move!” I bent my elbows and lifted my arms as far as I could to prove my point. “Look!” I wiggled my toes. “See! I can move! I’m not a vegetable!” And again I tried to push my elbows against the mattress, willing at this time to throw myself on the floor, to crack the cast in two if need be … to crawl out … to crawl like an animal before I remained here … in this circle of hell.
“I … I’d rather die first! Hear … die! No life like yours … Freaks … hear me … never …”
I shouted for the entire ward to hear me. I wanted them to know that I wasn’t one of them, their suffering was not mine. I heard my rage echo across the enormous room, felt it drift down the maze of halls. Then my eyes grew heavy as the morphine took over and sucked me into a dark, swirling mist. Get me out of here, I heard my shouts in the darkness—please don’t torment … please God … take me from this hell …
Around me the thin, crippled bodies of the vegetables floated in the water of my dream, and in the barren and dark desert I heard Salomón say:
Ah, Tortuga, we have been waiting for you … and you have come to us. Why question the ways of the creation. Know only that every man, in one way or another, must cross the desert. Life is such a thin ribbon, so fragile, so easily transformed … But as we teach you to sing and to walk on the path of the sun the despair of the paralysis will lift, and you will make from what you’ve seen a new life, a new purpose …
I know your journey was long, and the weight of the shell is tiresome … but know this, every person bears that weight in one way or another. It is the same with all of us. First we question why? Then we curse the gods that send the punishment … then the despair enters and there is only the chaos of nothingness left … a void in which we sink eternally, a plane of life so still and lonely that we think all of the creation has abandoned us … and still, it’s but a station of life, a form we cannot see. Let me tell you that long ago I came with Filomón across the desert … crucified to suffer the paralysis forever, I cursed God and prayed for death. I had the will left to kill myself and end the meaningless suffering, but I did not have the strength. I tried choking on my own phlegm, and they cut a hole in my throat and made me breathe. I could not eat and they fed me through my veins. When my lungs collapsed they placed me in the iron lung and forced the air to make me live. They fixed me for all time … in one place … a worthless piece of flesh rotting in the compost of self pity.
I cursed them as you have cursed them, and I cursed their God who could practice such cruelty on pitiful men … I cursed the sperm of my father and the marrow of my mother for giving me life … Life, what a cruel joke it had become … better death than this suspension in a plane where there was no movement, no meaning … so I prayed for death … I gave up the last of my will, let the darkness surround, and begged for death.
But it was not to be. One day I opened my eyes, and felt that I was empty of the hate and rage which had filled me. It was a soft summer day. I remember the air was sweet with the fragrance of the fresh cut hay in the fields below. Cotton from the cottonwoods drifted lazily in the warm, still air, the meadowlarks warbled their song across the fresh mown fields, all of life seemed touched by an energy which charged everything with its electric-acid. Even Tortuga rested calmly, bathing his old and tired body in the pleasant sun. Then the miracle which changed my life forever appeared at the window. I looked closely and saw a giant butterfly enter through the open window. At first I thought it was a humming bird, it was so huge this wondrous creature. It darted in and out of the sunlight, glowing with the iridescent colors of the rainbow and trailing the sweet, golden nectar and pollen of early summer. It flew gracefully around the room, darting back and forth, floating like a melody and trailing a symphony of music … And when it hovered over me it showered me with its golden dust.
I held my breath in wonder. That day my eyes were opened to the beauty and wonder of the creation. That day I felt the golden strands of light which unite all of the creation gather in that marvelous creature … and I sensed a strange salvation working its way into my soul. The numinous soul of the mountain and the sky and the water gathered in the light of the sun, reflected in the fanning of the wings, made music in its flight. But there is more … already my eyes were opening … already I had been granted more than most men are granted at such a holy moment … no, listen, there is more. The large butterfly fluttered over me then gracefully landed on the ball of cotton which covered the opening to my throat. I thought it would fly away when
it didn’t find a white rose … but no, it knew what it was doing. Softly it pushed away the dry cotton which filtered my bitter gasps for air, and then it settled over the opening at my throat … and casting its future with this crippled flower, it pollinated me …
Yes, Tortuga, it was a rare thing … a love returning when I thought all love had died. Its round, butterfly eyes caressed me with their love … a love it had brought from the flowers which grew along the slopes of the mountain and in the desert. It fanned its wings and spread the rich colors throughout the room, preened itself as butterflies will do, cleaning the gold pollen from its feet. Then it laid its kiss softly … I tasted the sweetness of its touch and felt a tickle in my throat as the tiny eggs and the pollen entered my throat. For the first time since the paralysis another form of life had come to touch me … as you have been touched by Filomón and Ismelda … and as you will be touched by the mountain and all the forms of life that live at its feet. I cried with joy as the tiny eggs burrowed into my blood and wrapped themselves in soft, chrysalis shells to sleep. I wanted to shout for the first time that I had felt the secret of all life … Instead I lay very quietly … watched the giant butterfly rise and disappear out the window … watched it until it became one with the desert and the mountain. I slept … and felt the death all flowers feel when pollinated. But inside I felt a new life growing, like the flower which wilts is born again in its own fruit, I felt the little chrysalises ripening, gnawing through their shells and rising to my throat to seek their freedom. These new winged beauties now burst from my mouth each time I speak. They fly from my soul to carry the words of love I learned that day. Each carries a new story, but all the stories are bound to the same theme … life is sacred, yes, even in the middle of this wasteland and in the darkness of our wards, life is sacred …