Russell Hoban - Kleinzeit

Dr Pink — ‘Do it to stretto before stretto, you know, does it to you.’

Sister —

Drs Fleshky, Potluck & Krishna — Krishna said good luck.

Hospital— Can take no responsibility for death or other mishap.

Flashpoint — Dead.

M. T. Butts — Dead.

Schwarzgang — Blip blip blip blip.

Redbeard — Last one before me. STAFF ONLY?

Piggle — Code?

Thucydides— ‘The appearance of the ships.’

Death — ‘I’ll get you later.’

Shiva — ‘Let it get moving, you know.’

God — ‘Give the yellow paper a whirl.’

Underground — ‘Are you Orpheus?’

Folger Bashan — ‘I’ll get you after school.’

Wife — Remarried.

Children — ‘Bye bye, Dad.’

Father — ‘I didn’t know.’

Mother — ‘I knew.’

Brother — ‘Nobody can tell you anything.’

Tracksuit, socks, running shoes — Buy tomorrow.

Kleinzeit studied the list, drew brackets in the margin connecting various items. Then he made another list:

Barrow full of rocks.

Harrow full of crocks.

Arrow in a box.

YARROW — Fullest Stock

SORROW; FULL SHOCK

Morrows cruel mock.

He shook some dandruff over that list, made a third one:

Flashpoint — Distended spectrum — Hendiadys — Zither? — Yellow paper?

M. T. Butts — Ullage — Fruity buns

Schwarzgang — Ontogeny — Tobacconist — Yellow paper

McDougal — Glaswectomy

Smallworth — Enlarged proscenium

Raj — Hesperitis

Damprise — Efflorescence

Piggle — Imbricated noumena — Office? — Conrad? — The Secret Agent? — Code? — Yellow paper

Drogue — Fusee trouble

Old Griggs — Palimpsest

Redbeard — Slipped fulcrum — Yellow paper — Mouth organ — Fruity buns

Kleinzeit — Hypotenuse — Diapason — Asymptotes — Stretto — Glockenspiel — Yellow paper

Kleinzeit pondered the three lists for a long time. Very good, he said. I don’t know any more than I did before. The yellow paper had gone to sleep. Without waking it up he wrote a second paragraph, a third, finished the page, wrote a second page and a third.

He went to the door, listened, heard Death breathing. You there? he said.

Not half, said Death.

Do me a favour, will you, said Kleinzeit. Run down to the off licence and get me twenty Senior Service. I’ll give you the money through the letter box.

I’m bloody not fagging for you, said Death. You run down yourself.

You won’t do it because you’re not real, said Kleinzeit. If you were real you’d take this real money and nip down to the real off licence and buy the real cigarettes. Here’s the money. He dropped it through the letter box, heard the coins fall on the floor outside.

You there? he said.

No answer. Kleinzeit unlocked the door, opened it. Nobody there. He picked up the money, went down to the off licence, bought the cigarettes himself.

When Kleinzeit got back he picked up Thucydides, held the book in his hand while he thought about things. When all the existing data have been correlated and analysed, said Kleinzeit, we find nothing whatever.

That’s firm thinking, said Thucydides.

Thank you, said Kleinzeit. There may be, however, some evidence, as yet unconfirmed, of the existence of a group of yellow-paper men. There may possibly be a whole ward of them in Hospital. Dr Pink diagnoses, prescribes, operates, Drs Fleshky, Potluck, Krishna, assist, Sister and her nurses minister to the patients in Ward A4. I am one of the A4 men.

Be patriotic, said Thucydides. Don’t let the side down.

The etiology of the various malfunctions and diseases in Ward A4 is unknown to me, said Kleinzeit. If, as we suspect, yellow paper occurs in all cases, it might be interesting to learn the histories of those who recover.

He rang up Sister at the hospital. ‘Do you know anything about the men in A4 who’ve been discharged?’ he said.

There was a silence.

‘You know,’ said Kleinzeit, ‘the ones who’ve recovered and gone home.’

No answer.

‘Are you there?’ said Kleinzeit.

’Yes,’ said Sister. ‘There haven’t been any since I’ve been here.’

‘How long is that?’

‘Three years.’

‘But that can’t be. I mean, look at me.’

‘You discharged yourself. There haven’t been any who were discharged. And you’re the only one who’s discharged himself.’

‘But they aren’t all the same patients who were there three years ago, surely,’ said Kleinzeit.

‘Oh, no. We’ve lost a good many.’

Surprising how cold it is in here, thought Kleinzeit. Redbeard needn’t have flogged my electric fires.

‘Are you there?’ said Sister.

‘For the time being,’ said Kleinzeit.

HELLO, LOVER BOY, shouted Hospital into the telephone.

HOO HOO! yelled Death through the letter box.

‘But it isn’t,’ said Kleinzeit, ‘a terminal care ward or anything like that, is it?’

‘No,’ said Sister. ‘It just sort of happened that way.’

Kleinzeit said goodbye, rang off. If the Athenians lost I’m not sure whether I can keep going, said Kleinzeit.

Think Athenian, said Thucydides.

Kleinzeit read for a while, came to the part where the Spartans asked the Athenians to stop the war. They had a good chance for peace there, he said to Thucydides. Why didn’t they take it?

You know how it is, said Thucydides. You’re winning, so you think why quit now.

I’ve done three pages, said Kleinzeit, but nobody’s making peace offers.

Win some more, said Thucydides.

I feel a little faint, said Kleinzeit. He leaned back, found that he was leaning against Word.

Yes, said Word, in the immortal words of William Wandsworth: ‘hoof after hoof …’ Keep that in mind, my boy.

Wordsworth, said Kleinzeit. Wandsworth is south of the river.

But ahead of his time, said Word, and don’t you forget it. After all, he conceived the caterpillar tractor, or at least the caterpillar tractor horse. Army tanks and all that. Where would modern warfare be without Wormswood?

Wordsworth, said Kleinzeit. What are you going on about?

What I said, said Word: the caterpillar tractor concept. ‘My horse moved on,’ he said, ‘hoof after hoof’. It’s perfectly obvious, I should think, that he had in mind an endless revolving tread shod with horses’ hooves, thus prefiguring today’s machines of war and peace. The industrial revolution, the breaking up of rural patterns. All that, you know. He was a deep one all right, was Whatsisworth. And under and over it all, ‘hoof after hoof,’ red in tooth and claw. Like Old Man River, it just keeps rolling along, eh?

Kleinzeit had stopped listening. I’ll start running again in the mornings, he said. Buy a tracksuit tomorrow.

Good show, said Thucydides. A running mind in a running body.

Right, said Kleinzeit. He went into the bathroom without turning on the light, washed his face and brushed his teeth in the dark, peed by ear.

What’s happening? said the mirror. Who am I?

Morton Taylor, said Kleinzeit with a sinister chuckle, and went to bed.

The next day Kleinzeit took time out from his business in the Underground to buy running gear, also a shirt, trousers, underwear and socks. Still enough in his cheque account for three months, and the busking was covering his daily expenses. In the evening he went to the hospital.