Russell Hoban - Kleinzeit

‘Good God,’ said Kleinzeit. He gathered up the bedroll and the carrier-bags, hustled Redbeard out into the street.

‘You still haven’t said why you drop the yellow paper and pick it up and write on it and drop it again,’ said Kleinzeit.

Redbeard grabbed the bedroll, swung it, knocked Kleinzeit down. Kleinzeit got up and hit Redbeard.

‘Right,’ said Redbeard. ‘Ta-ra.’ He disappeared into the Underground.

Kleinzeit got back to the ward in time for three 2-Nup tablets and his supper. He smelled his supper, looked at it, Something pale brown, something pale green, something pale yellow. Two slices of bread with butter. Orange jelly. He stopped looking, stopped smelling, ate a little. It may not be health, he thought, but it’s national.

Faces. Two rows of them in beds. He smiled at some, nodded at others. Comrades in infirmity.

‘What’s new, Schwarzgang?’ he said. Blips going all right, he noticed.

‘Be new?’ said Schwarzgang.

‘I don’t know. Nothing, I guess. Everything.’

‘D’you go?’ said Schwarzgang.

‘Here and there in the Underground. Coffee shop.’

‘Lovely,’ said Schwarzgang. ‘Coffee shops.’

Kleinzeit lay back on his bed thinking about Sister’s knee. Brown velvet sky again. An aeroplane. You’re missing what’s going on down here, he said to the plane. He extended his thoughts downward from Sister’s knee, then upward from her toes. He fell asleep, woke up when Sister came on duty. They smiled big smiles at each other.

‘Hello,’ she said.

‘Hello,’ said Kleinzeit. They smiled again, nodded. Sister continued on her round. Kleinzeit felt cheerful, hummed the tune he had played on the glockenspiel in the bathroom. It didn’t sound original, but he didn’t know whose it was if it wasn’t his. C#, C, C#, F, C#, G# …

THRILL, sang his body as intersecting flashes illuminated its inner darkness. C to D, E to F, with two hyperbolas. LUCKY YOU.

That’s it, thought Kleinzeit. My asymptotes. His throat and his anus closed up as if two drawstrings had been pulled. He drank some orange squash, could scarcely swallow it. Another aeroplane. So high! Gone.

MINE! sang Hospital, like Scarpia reaching for Tosca.

Aaahh! sighed the bed.

SEE ME, roared Hospital, SEE ME GREAT AND HIGH UPON MY BLACK HORSE, GIGANTIC. I AM THE KING OF PAIN. LOOK ON MY WORKS, YE MIGHTY, AND DESPAIR.

That’s Ozymandias, said Kleinzeit.

You mind your mouth, said Hospital.

Asymptotes hyperbolic, sang Kleinzeit’s body to the tune of Venite adoremus.

Tomorrow’s the Shackleton-Planck, he thought. Will there be quanta? Three guesses. And if the 2-Nup clears up my diapason they’ll probably find that my stretto is blocked. It feels blocked right now. And of course the hypotenuse is definitely skewed, he didn’t even bother to be tactful about that. What time is it? Past midnight all of a sudden. Half of us are dying. The groans, chokes, gasps and gurgles around him seemed repetitive, like the Battle of Trafalgar soundtrack at Madame Tussaud’s. Cannon booming, falling spars, shouts and curses. The orlop deck of the Victory every night, with oxygen masks and bedpans.

Blip, blip, went Schwarzgang, and stopped.

Sister! yelled Kleinzeit in a hoarse whisper. Darkness, dimness all around. Silence. Cannon booming, spars falling, bedpans splatting, shouts and curses, chokes and gurgles.

Kleinzeit checked the monitor, saw that it was plugged in. ‘It’s the pump,’ said Sister. The pump was humming but not going. The back of it was hot. Kleinzeit slid off the back plate, found a wheel, a broken belt. He turned the wheel by hand. Blip, blip, blip, blip, went Schwarzgang.

‘Pull out the plug,’ said Kleinzeit, ‘before something burns out.’

Sister pulled out the plug. One of the nurses rang up for a new belt. Kleinzeit turned the wheel. Blip, blip, blip, blip, went Schwarzgang a little faster than before. He had just awakened.

‘Tea already?’ said Schwarzgang.

‘Not yet,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘Get some sleep.’

‘Doing?’ said Schwarzgang.

‘Nurse spilled something on your pump,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘Wiping it up.’

Schwarzgang sighed. The blips slowed down again.

‘They’re looking for the key to the spare parts locker,’ said Sister. ‘Shouldn’t be long.’

Schwarzgang was choking. ‘The drip thing stopped,’ said Kleinzeit. Sister jiggled the tube, took off a clogged fitting, held two tubes together, bound them with tape, sent a nurse for a new fitting. Schwarzgang stopped choking. The blips picked up again. The wheel grew harder to turn, the burbling of the filter stopped. ‘Filter,’ said Kleinzeit as the blips slowed down again. Sister took out the filter, put gauze over the frame. The nurse came back with the new fitting.

‘Filter,’ said Sister as she installed the fitting.

‘They’ve gone to the annexe for a belt,’ said the nurse, and went off to get the filter.

‘I can turn it for a while,’ said Sister.

‘It’s all right,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘I’ll do it.’

Blip, blip, blip, blip, went Schwarzgang, slow and steady.

The nurse came back with the new filter, installed it.

Sister sat by the bed looking at Kleinzeit. Kleinzeit turned the wheel looking at Sister. Nobody said anything.

A memory came to Kleinzeit. From fifteen, twenty years ago. Married. First flat, basement. Hot summer, windows open all the time. Every day a big battered tomcat came in and peed on the bed. One evening Kleinzeit killed him, trapped him behind a chest and smothered him with a pillow. He took the corpse to the river in a pillowslip, dumped it in.

The sky was growing light. Mario Cavaradossi paced the battlements of the Castel Sant’ Angelo, sang E lucevan le stelle. Kleinzeit wept.

‘Here’s the belt,’ said Sister, fitted it to the wheels while Kleinzeit turned. Sister plugged in the pump. The regular sounds of Schwarzgang’s machinery resumed. Kleinzeit looked at his hand, smiled.

Blip, blip, blip, blip, went Schwarzgang.

The black howled in the tunnels, the tracks fled crying before the trains. Whatever lived walking upside-down in the concrete put its paws against the feet of the people standing on the platform, its cold soft paws. One, two, three, four, walking softly in the chill silence upside-down with great soft cold paws. Underground said words to itself, names. No one listened. Footsteps covered the words, the names.

Sister in the Underground, walking about in corridors. Approached at varying intervals by three middle-aged men and two young ones she declined all offers. There used to be more young ones, she thought. I’m getting on. Soon be thirty.

The red-bearded man came along, took a bowler hat out of one of his carrier-bags, offered it to her with the brim uppermost. Passers-by looked at him, looked at Sister.

‘Magic hat,’ said Redbeard. ‘Hold it in your hand like this and count to a hundred.’

Sister held the hat, counted. Redbeard took a mouth organ out of his pocket, played The Irish Rover. When Sister reached ninety-three a man dropped iop in the hat.

‘Stop that,’ said Sister to Redbeard. 5p more dropped in.

Redbeard put the mouth organ back in his pocket. ‘15p already,’ he said. ‘I could make a fortune with you.’

‘You’ll have to make it without me,’ said Sister, handing him the hat.

Redbeard took it in his hands but did not put it back in the carrier-bag. ‘It blew my way on a windy day in the City,’ he said. ‘Expensive hat, as new. From Destiny, from Dame Fortune. A money hat.’ He shook it, made the 15p clink. ‘It wants to be held by you.’