Andrew McGahan - Wonders of a Godless World

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Title Page Wonders of a Godless World Andrew McGahan

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Praise for Wonders of a Godless World

Also by Andrew McGahan

Copyright

About the Publisher

The orphan knew something was up that night, even before the foreigner arrived at the hospital. It was a warm evening, early in the storm season, and she had been feeling strangely restless all day. More notably, the old doctor had stayed on much later than his usual quitting time, sitting quietly in his office, sipping now and then from a bottle, and listening to the radio. He waited in there all through dinner and past sunset, and even until lights-out in the back wards, by which time the orphan and the night nurse were normally the only ones left awake in the place.

The night nurse was annoyed, because most evenings he sat in the office with the radio and the bottle, but now he had to pretend to be working. The orphan wasn’t happy either, because the night nurse, to look busy, was interfering with chores she knew perfectly well how to perform alone. And the inmates in their turn, sensing the irregularity, were making all kinds of trouble for her—climbing out of bed, taking off their pyjamas, wandering the halls and piss-ing in the corners.

Dutifully, the orphan retrieved clothes and dressed bodies and mopped floors, and said no more than she ever said, which was nothing at all. The inmates had plenty to say, of course, but the orphan couldn’t understand them in any case. Between the late hour, the heat and the unusual goings-on, the madness in each of them was bubbling up in their throats, jumbling their words.

Her own madness was alive too. She could feel it beneath her feet, trembling and quivering. It was as if, far below in the earth, a giant machine hummed. The vibrations buzzed against her heels, running right up between her legs, and she couldn’t decide if it felt bad or if she was half on the edge of an orgasm where she stood. But something was about to happen, she was sure. And by chance she was out the front—emptying her mop bucket in the drainage ditch—when the arrival took place.

First, the town’s police car came bumping up the track and parked in the dim pool of light outside the hospital’s front porch. The orphan had to step out of the way, and into the ditch, to let it by. The police captain was behind the wheel; a short, sweaty man, frowning over the dashboard. His presence in itself wasn’t so unusual. The captain was a frequent visitor, if not always so late. But then an old white van drove up and parked behind him, and that wasn’t usual at all. And yet the orphan had seen the van before. She strained her memory. Then she had it. Yes! It was the ambulance. It came from the big hospital, down in the big town. It was used to deliver patients.

A patient! Someone new! Letting the bucket drop, the orphan hurried over to the van’s rear doors and tried to peer in.

Nothing. Darkness through the windows. Then the driver was there, shooing her away angrily. The orphan caught a glimpse of herself through the man’s eyes. He thought she was one of the inmates—a short, stumpy girl with a shaved head and a hairy upper lip and a hospital dress stretched tight over big floppy breasts.

Ha! She was ugly and a madwoman and he was scared of her. She barked out loud, baring her uneven teeth, but then the old doctor appeared, and the police captain, and the night nurse too, and the doctor was explaining to the driver that the orphan wasn’t a patient. As proof, she retrieved her bucket and held it out. But everyone had forgotten her already. The night nurse and the driver opened the rear doors of the van and from the dark interior they heaved forth a stretcher.

A man lay on it, apparently sleeping, covered to the neck by a sheet. His skin was pale, and his face had a raw, scraped look, but there was no other sign as to what might be wrong with him. The night nurse and the driver carried him away inside, but the orphan didn’t follow. She lingered instead by the police car, hoping for clues. The old doctor and the police captain were leaning over the hood, talking, and studying a sheaf of papers the captain had spread there. It was not an easy conversation for the orphan to decipher, full of long words and quick allusions she could never hope to catch. But she had known the doctor most of her life, and the captain too. She was familiar with their voices and their mannerisms and their moods, and that was some help.

She gathered, for instance, that the captain was displeased. It was too hot and he was working late because he had been called down to the big town to collect the new patient. He didn’t like the heat or working late, and he didn’t like the people in the big town. The word he used for them was devils , and they had made him sign a lot of papers and take responsibility for the sleeping man. The captain thought he had enough responsibility as it was. He held out a grimy pen. He wanted the old doctor to sign the papers and then the sleeping man would be the hospital’s problem.

But the old doctor, who was the cleverest person the orphan knew, didn’t take the pen. Instead, he rubbed his chin and asked a very odd question. He wanted to know if the sleeping man had a name yet. At which the captain, odder still, gave him a disappointed look, and then sighed, lowering the pen. No, no one knew the man’s name yet. It was a mystery. The authorities had put his picture in the newspaper down in the big town, and even on television, but no one had claimed him, and it’d been weeks now. The only sure thing was that he wasn’t local to the island.

A stranger, the orphan noted, her brow furrowed with the effort it cost her to take all this in. A foreigner .

The conversation continued. The old doctor suggested that the man might perhaps be a tourist. After all, more and more tourists came to the island every year. And hadn’t he been found asleep on the beach? But the captain shook his head. None of the hotels down in the big town knew anything about the man. Neither did anyone at the airport. And besides, he had been in some kind of fire. His clothes were just ashes when they found him. Burnt to rags. The police in the big town thought that maybe there had been an explosion on a boat out at sea. Perhaps he was a sailor.

The old doctor had another question. Why hadn’t the man woken up, or spoken, in all the time since? Was there a head injury? The captain only shrugged. He didn’t know. The doctors at the big hospital hadn’t told him anything. All they had said was that they couldn’t keep the man any longer. Perhaps if he had turned out to be rich, or someone important, then they would have let him stay. But it looked like he had no friends or family at all. And no money. So here he was.

The old doctor finally nodded, resigned. It wasn’t for him to argue with the big hospital. The captain offered the grimy pen again, but the old doctor, unthinking, took out his own, and scribbled on the papers.

The orphan let out a puff of air and saw spots floating before her eyes. That was that. And yet, did she understand right? The new patient had lost his name? Why, that was almost the same as her! Well, she hadn’t lost her name exactly. But she could never quite remember it either. Or anyone else’s. She knew that everyone had a name, of course—and that other things did too—but try as she might, she could never recall them. They simply refused to lodge in her mind. It was a symptom of her madness, she supposed. Most probably, the foreigner was mad too.