Robert Stone - Children of Light

“Do you remember what W. C. Fields said about death?”

“He said he’d rather be in Philadelphia.”

“I don’t mean that. He called death the Man in the Bright Nightgown. Do you see? It has the originality of delirium. Fields was in total bibacious dementia. So when he went out, his death probably looked to him like a man in a bright nightgown.” Dr. Siriwai giggled.

“I like your poppies,” Walker said. “I always think of them as wildflowers. I don’t associate them with gardens.”

Dr. Siriwai smiled at the fine blue sky.

“Poppies, yes. Sweet forgetfulness.” He closed his eyes.

“If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.”

“This stuff you give your … customers, does it work?”

“Work? My dear man, assuredly it works. It cures cancer.”

“Really?”

“I wish I had a tanner for every abandoned life we’ve saved here, Gordon. I myself have been awestruck with some of our turnabouts. It gives you a mighty respect for nature’s capacity to heal, I’ll tell you.”

“Is it what you give them or is it attitude?”

Dr. Siriwai seemed to find the subject trying.

“There are no miracles, Gordon. I mean to say, old chap, I don’t believe in miracles, do you? There is attitude, yes. Also herbal therapy, diet, exercise, the lot. Holism. The holistic method.”

“Anyway,” Walker said. “It’s a pleasant place.”

Dr. Siriwai looked grim.

“You learn to conserve your spiritual energy here. There’s a lot of negativity about. I instruct my staff to keep a positive attitude. Hang on to the handrails, I tell my people, or they’ll drag you down with them.”

“So you do lose a few. Customers.”

“Some of them, Gordon. It’s their time and they’ve no right to be here. But one doesn’t turn down a contract. Hope is the anchor when all is said and done.”

“Too bad,” Walker said, “you can’t save them all.”

“Well,” Dr. Siriwai said, “it would be wonderful for business. I mean, are we talking philosophy or what?”

“I was just curious,” Walker said, “about whether you believed in it or not.”

“I believe in hope,” Dr. Siriwai said.

“The anchor.”

“Indeed,” said Dr. Siriwai. “Exactly so.”

“I should be on my way,” Walker said. “I have a few hours of driving.”

“Tell them at reception to give you one of our decals. It’ll ease your passage on our highways and byways. We’re not without influence in this part of the world.”

They shook hands and Walker offered his thanks for the Quaaludes.

“I remember you, Gordon. I remember some fine evenings of drink and jaw under the palm trees. I always thought you were a clever fellow and a great wit. But the thing is, I don’t remember your work at all. Nothing you ever did quite maintained itself in my memory.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Doc. I thought you liked the things I did.”

“Ah,” said the doctor, “no doubt I did, no doubt I did, Gordon. But your work — I’d have to say it — sat lightly on my recollection.”

“Work in movies can be ephemeral.”

Dr. Siriwai patted Gordon’s forearm.

“That’s it, you see. Ephemeral. Sure, it’s the nature of the medium.” Siriwai’s eyes came alight. He took Gordon by the arm and walked him around the garden. “I had a list once, Gordon — not a written list, of course, but a private mental list — of people I thought were supremely talented. Or good at certain things. Or clever but spurious. Or talented but lost or wasted it. I wasn’t just a sawbones, y’see, indifferent to the artistic aspects of the motion picture. I cared”—he touched his heart—“and I loved, I appreciated the work of the people I met in practice. But in your case, Gordon, though I love you dearly, old son, I can’t for the life of me remember the things you did. Or where on me little list you figured.”

“As one who loved his fellow man,” Walker said.

“Oh ho.” Siriwai gave a little clap with his soft hands. “Well said.”

“I was all right. I started as a kid. I had no training and I never took acting as seriously as I should. Never learned my craft until it was too late. As for writing — the kind I did was always the kind anyone can do. I never tried another kind. Except, of course, for that show. The opera.”

“Never got to direct?”

“No.”

“Pity,” Siriwai said. When they had completed their garden round, he released Walker’s arm.

“Perhaps you gave in too much. The immediate rewards were impressive to a young fellow — I remember well. And in my day there was the glamour of it all. One can’t give in too much to immediate reward, you know. You lose something, eh? Have to pay off on one end or the other.”

“That was it, I suppose.”

“Look at me,” Dr. Siriwai said. “You’d think I was well situated. I might envy myself from the outside looking in but little I’d know about it. I’m more than sixty-five, Gordon. According to the Vedas I should be free. I should return to the mountains, free as a mountain bird to meditate, and think about it all from morning till night. But I can’t, you see.”

“How’s that?”

Dr. Siriwai laughed merrily.

“Because I failed where you failed, Gordon. Failed to do the job. When I was studying in Great Denmark Street, now, I thought I’d go home to practice. Up the valleys. Into the starving villages. Over the rope bridges I’d go, risking fever and dacoits, only my books for company. In the end — not a bit of it.” He shook his head and uttered a series of reflective grunts. “I had an odd experience on my way from Dublin back up to London. Doubtless you know the Indian expression ‘karma’?”

“It’s widely used, Doc. You hear it all the time.”

“Well,” the doctor continued, “there I was, years ago and I’m just off the ferry from Dun Laoghaire on the Holyhead — Euston train. Somewhere — Bangor it must have been — the guard comes through first class, shouting his head off for a doctor. Well, I thought, who’s that excellent thing if not myself? So I went with the man and what do I find a few cars back but a lad in an empty compartment who’s stinking of Jameson’s and going cyanotic before our eyes. There’s an empty tube of Nembutal in his fist.

“ ‘Stop the train,’ I cried, and they did and off I went with this chap, my very first patient, to the nearest hospital and they pumped him out and he awoke to the light of day. Now, I later learned, Gordon, that the fellow recovered completely. In hospital he chanced to meet a beautiful young Welsh nurse with whom he fell madly in love — as she with him — and whom he subsequently strangled. Naturally they hanged him. I was a bit put off by it. First patient, value of life and all that. I daresay I’d have been sued today. In any case, finally, I went for the big bucks and the bright lights just as you did.”

“First you think it’s the money,” Walker said. “Then you’re not so sure.”

“Well, there’s no going back to the mountains for me now, Gordon. I have to stay here and die. With my customers.”

“I guess,” Walker said, “I’d better be rolling. To get down there before dark.”

“Do get yourself straight, old fellow. Hope the anchor, eh? Who knows but you may do something worthwhile one day. Only remember what the holy book says, Gordon: ‘We are not promised tomorrow.’ ”

“Thanks, Doc. I hope you continue to prosper.”

“Gordon, as long as there’s … well”—he smiled broadly and, as Gordon had remembered, some of his teeth were indeed of gold—“you know what I mean. I’ll be in business for a while.”