Your Presence is Requested at SuvantoBy Maile ChapmanGraywolf Press |
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September as the time for arrivals is a pattern left over from school days, and so there is a sense of expectation among the patients who live on the upper floor... though it has two sides, this expectation. Because, after all, what is being anticipated? The return to Suvanto of the many up-patients who went home for the summer, of course, who will come back with new stories, new anecdotes. But after that? There will be winter, and snow, and cold which will extend until the end of March or April or May – there was even a spring blizzard not too long ago. So the feeling is deceptive, it is a sense of expectation culminating in no real event, leading only into a long period of anticlimax against which some will struggle without realizing where the small, aching disappointment or the fear of futility comes from: from the air itself, from the chilly granite underfoot that erupts through the soil in places, hinting at massive unseen layers.
But for now, and for a little while longer, the upstairs corridors will remain underpopulated and conversation will lapse into periods of quiet. It is so nice like this. The water of the bay is compellingly dark blue in the background, three shades deeper than the sky, one shade deeper than the islands in the distance.
There is ample time now to follow Julia, who sleeps by day but not by night, who fidgets her snakeskin gloves until they peel, who writes frequent, clandestine letters to her husband. She goes up to the outdoor promenade to sit in a reclining chair and to watch the grounds, to watch the paths and the beach where water seethes on stones. She often watches those who walk below, where the beach path is suitable for the slow perambulations of invalids, packed tight enough for the wheels of wheelchairs. Sometimes she stands at the rail with her cane, made even more public now after a near-fall on the steps. She clicks it against the railing, irritatingly.
She has made herself unpopular by pushing Mrs. Minder in the buttocks with the dirty end of this rubber-toed cane, pushing and prodding her enough times that Mrs. Minder felt obliged to complain to Sunny and the other nurses. Julia says she couldn't help herself, that Mrs. Minder was staring and staring at the cane, trying to embarrass Julia, her rude behavior calling for some kind of answer; furthermore, says Julia, Mary Minder sometimes follows her around, even outside, even on her walks, and this makes her feel extremely uncomfortable. She never knows if Mary might be creeping up on her, at any time. The others have not learned to appreciate Julia’s sense of humor, and she knows this.
“Mrs. Minder is probably lonely,” says Sunny. “Has it occurred to you that she wants to be your friend?”
“No,” says Julia.
She comes to Mrs. Minder’s room to leave a note on the pad of paper stuck there for messages, something cryptic in place of the conciliatory conversation that Sunny has suggested. Mary Minder opens the door quickly. She sees the pencil in Julia’s hand and, confused, lets her in with a nervous little cry of “You can’t smoke in here!” And yet there is a small odor of cigarettes from Mary Minder herself.
“Why not?” says Julia.
“It’s against the rules.”
What she means is that although she will sometimes sneak a self-conscious cigarette outside or on the promenade, she will never again sneak one in her room, and this is because she has — accidentally! — started two small fires in the bedding, one at home and one here last year, and now she worries that no one trusts her.
“But you’re breaking the rules anyway, even if you smoke outside,” says Julia.
“Not exactly,” says Mary Minder, brushing her gauzy hair, stone blonde, same color as the sand the groundsmen scatter in the snow. “I’m on my best behavior, aren’t you? Good intentions count, don't they? I mean, we're all doing our best.”
Julia takes the better chair, rests her chin on her cane, resisting the urge to leave a dark bull’s-eye print on Mary Minder’s forehead, below the place where she is brushing and brushing her hair. And the more she stares, the more Mary Minder brushes, as if brushing will speed Julia out the door.
“Go to lunch!” she says finally. “Please go to lunch.”
“Why? So that you can follow me down to the dining room?”
“Just go!”
“Tell me why you follow me.”
“No reason. I get bored, that's all.”
“Boredom is the mark of a small mind.”
“Well you're a small – you have a small – ” says Mrs. Minder, groping. “You have a small head, and a small appetite!”
“Well spoken, Mary,” says Julia. “You've hurt me deeply.”
Mrs. Minder says something, quietly hissing under cover of the hairbrush.
“I can't hear you,” says Julia.
“I hope you die,” says Mrs. Minder.
“That's what I thought you said,” says Julia, smiling.
With the cane Julia walks along the curving corridor, takes the stairs down to the dining room. She likes to look at the photographs on the walls: the founding medical superintendent. The benefactor. One of the original site before construction, and beside it an aerial view of the hospital complex, curving along the coastline. Also, the brownish framed copy of a building sketch — the façade, the familiar front steps — lettered in careful, professional block script. She whistles between her teeth, a small sound. Sunny withholds judgement but she knows, sometimes this is happiness, this passive acceptance, and sometimes it is the beginning of decline. In the daytime notes she records: spirits, mostly good. Though the same cannot be said in the night notes. Howlers, writes Sunny. Increasingly frequent nightmares of a man standing at the foot of the bed, holding a four-foot knife pointed towards Julia, and the knife, she says, the knife has two distinct tips.
“Like this,” Julia says at night, demonstrating with her fingers, though her joints are thickened and cannot point as she intends. The ruby rings need cleaning but will not come off. She sits in bed, sipping a sleep-aid and pointing, pointing to mimic the knife.
“He stood where you are now,” she says.
“Did you have these dreams before you came here?”
Julia weighs the question, guessing that her answer will affect her credibility.
“Not quite the same,” she says, sipping.
Saturday afternoon, and Sunny takes her bicycle out onto the paths, as she normally does, heading away from the building for the sake of air and exercise. She slows down to cross one of the service lanes, looking both ways for safety; the trees are thinner here, affronted, maybe, by the passing of occasional delivery trucks. The scant sunlight has starved the lower branches, and she can tell that there are clearings nearby, open spots that have been cut and maintained. She can hear someone chopping wood close at hand in one of them.
There is a quick flash of color down the lane as she passes, scarcely seen. Unexpected, though normal enough. People work down there. And it must be awful work. She won't ride that way. It passes through the outbuildings, too near the clinging, bilious atmosphere of the pig barn and its stink of liquid excrement that not even the pines can filter from the air.
But Sunny rarely sees anyone on foot this far from the yard. She stops, backs up. The coat and hat had been red.
“Mrs. Minder?” Sunny calls, and gets no answer.
She rides on, but it troubles, and in a few minutes she turns back. The sound of chopping from the clearing has ceased, and she hears nothing when she pauses except boughs moving, brushing together.
She pushes her bicycle down the lane, face pinched in preparation for the smell, but there is nothing, only woodsmoke, which makes her pause again; in such quiet the sounds of fire stand out, hissing, as from greenish wood, and the smoke grows stronger as she walks. Sunny props her bike against a tree and steps into the shade, onto a footpath, walking suspiciously over soft needles.
The clearing is unexpectedly close, and immediately she sees – not Mrs. Minder, but Julia, with her back to the lane, cane in one gloved hand and the other steadied against the rough bark of the nearest tree. She is looking out into the clearing, where there is a traditional log smokehouse, its door standing open, and a man, working alone, keeping warm beside an outdoor fire. He wears a sturdy blue coverall, with a full apron tied over, and this is spotted, because he's busy cutting meat on a makeshift board-and-sawhorse table.
A pig, and particularly a sow, and particularly one watched from behind while it walks, is burlesque in the way of a zaftig and very naked lady, because of the rump, of course, and also because of the way that the thighs touch, mincing on hooves that are not unlike small, fancy shoes. There is also, similarly, the striking approximation of a human smile on the face of every pig, even a slaughtered one when hung upside down by the hocks: the small eyes close tight in mirth and the mouth hangs open in a pleasant expression made worse by the color of the face which, in its pallor, approximates the color of Nordic human flesh.
The cold carcass of such a pig hangs upside down from an iron frame beside the man's table, already bled and chilled and emptied of viscera. The man stoops to shift a slab of meat from the table onto his shoulder and takes it into the smokehouse. His eyes pass over the place where Julia stands, but without marking her, particularly; it's not the first time she's been there, watching. The fire in the firepit makes a merry sound, steaming, and another column of smoke rises straight as a string from the chimney. A cat crouches comfortably beside the doorway, watching for the odd scrap of fat, which the man will often toss and the cat neatly consume, leaving only a damp spot behind on the sill.
The man comes back out, takes up his hatchet, and slides apart the hooks. He steadies the carcass, one hand in the cavity. As it turns, it reveals repellently familiar wrinkles in the usual places – the back of the pig's neck; under the short, hanging arms; and between the up-ended legs, now spread in an attitude of violence. The man lifts the hatchet and rests it, blade down, just there, moving the tail out of the way for accuracy, or delicacy, and with his other hand he raises a mallet and brings it down hard, making Sunny flinch, though Julia doesn't react. The blade sinks into the rump and stops at bone, and he hits it again, repeatedly, splitting into the pelvis, cutting down through the spine. He pauses to trade his grips and the body slowly butterflies open. The pig's head and neck are sturdy, but then the back of the skull gives way and only the fleshy, elongated face remains intact and connected. When the face is sundered the animal will no longer be an animal; with the last blow the pig will disappear and meat will hang instead. He taps gently through the cartilage of the snout, and then the two halves move independently, swinging and bumping haphazardly.
In cross-section the body is surprisingly vivid, all pink and red and laced with white ribbons and pale chambers like a valentine or a split pomegranate. The head is full of tightly packed stuff, pearly, fresh, the jawbone lean, white, and very long. Buried in the sliced red meat of the cheek is a pattern of something pale – teeth?
The man lifts one of the sides and drops it heavily onto the table to portion out, some to smoke, some to send to the kitchen fresh, and a bucket of scraps for sausage. He tosses something more to the cat, the same cat who once hung around the back door of the hospital kitchen. It cleans its face, rubbing and rubbing, until the man tosses it another scrap, and the cat breaks off, staring, already full.
Julia has been chewing something as she watches. It's candy, and she puts another piece into her mouth, dropping the foil wrapper at her feet among half a dozen others. As she does so she looks back over her shoulder.
“Smoked ham for Christmas,” she says.
There is sudden laughter, and Sunny sees the red wool coat of Mrs. Minder in the clearing, a hundred yards from Julia but with her back to the trees, her mittens to her mouth, laughing, staccato, like a bird. The man glances at her, and then ignores her, until she throws a pine cone into his fire, scattering sparks. He speaks to her severely in Finnish and points the way back to the path, his face serious but unreadable.
“He's pointed twice now,” says Julia. “I hope he hits her with the hatchet next.”
Sunny wants to turn and be gone, back to the bike, leaning where she left it. But she feels pinned, perfunctory.
“Come away from there, Julia,” she says.
“No,” says Julia. “I'm watching out for Mary Minder.”
“You're making fun of Mrs. Minder. It isn't very nice of you.”
“She's enjoying herself.”
“Did you bring her out here?”
“Not really. She followed me. I can't help that.”
Julia, realizing Mary was behind her, had no doubt purposely changed her path, leading to a place with fire, a place of trouble. If Mary gets burnt, it's Mary's own fault, of course, but Julia will have helped.
“Maybe you can't help that, but you know better than to come out here,” Sunny says. “You shouldn't walk this far from the building.”
“Why not?”
And yes, why not? The up-patients aren't forbidden to walk the grounds. Yet for a moment Sunny weighs, with detachment, the difficulties of forcing Julia to go with her, the compelling, the pulling, the kicking, probably, and Mrs. Minder crying, no doubt, and for what? She passes a hand over her eyes, confused; she can't locate a reason for even considering this.
“I hope you aren't here when I check back in an hour,” she says, but only because she feels that she must say something.
“Or what?” says Julia, amused.
Sunny rides away, down the path, as first intended. Her time outside in the midday air has been spoiled, though, and part of her attention drifts up from the path again and again. An hour, she has promised herself an hour. She takes the hour. She is at pains to take the hour. And then she turns back, rides past the lane, sees nothing, hears nothing, rides on and eventually circles the hospital building, coming to a halt at the front entrance. She parks her bike and steps inside just long enough to check the book. Julia, Mrs. Minder, both signed in, a few minutes apart, Julia first, even given her slow pace compared to the red wool darting and rushing of Mary Minder. But then maybe Mrs. Minder had stayed longer, throwing more cones into the fire, not understanding when told to leave. And laughing, probably still laughing, not understanding the cultivation of boundaries – she has none – how could she understand that she wasn't welcome?
Sunny sees Mrs. Minder in the foyer that evening, and for a moment is obliged to stand with her among others waiting to enter the dining room. But nothing will come of it, no mention will be made, because even if Mrs. Minder had been aware of Sunny there, in the smokehouse meadow, she might not really remember, because Mrs. Minder lives in the moment, so close behind the glass of her own eyes that she has no distance to make use of, no perspective from which to contemplate, and so, as in the lives of animals, she just continues in her circles, in her routines, one day vanishing endlessly into the next without having registered in the first place.
“What's for dinner?” she says, stretching to see the specials.
Mrs. Minder, you ought to know already, but you don't, and this is proof.