James Kelman - If it is your life

Even more astonishing, that a woman should allow such a hand to touch her skin, stroke her skin, to trace, these lines and surface of the skin who ever drew the surface of the skin, had any artist ever managed that. The greatest artists are the greatest but who among them had ever succeeded in drawing the surface of the skin oh my merciful heavens, the density of this, this skin. Skin is a surface.

It is. If the thought ever occurred in the past it had gone from my memory, vanished into that internal and all-encompassing ether which maketh manifest one’s internal space. But what does ‘manifest’ mean!

The urine sample. Even here in the hospital bed we surmount obstacles. Was it not crazy? All of it was. See the hand, the pencil, the bottle. Yea though I did reach it without mishap.

If I had gone to the lavatory I would have experienced pain. What about the pain, or pains. Pains growing from my belly or were they in from my belly, its lining. If the cancer was there, cancer of the lining of the belly.

What else could it be! Tell him tell him tell him! he screamed.

I refer to myself. Do not keep the patient in the dark. We have to deal with eternity so give us a break with that which may be known, that can be rendered manifest.

Manifest? There we have it again.

A boulder come to rest. I imagined it wedged there, the cancer entity, unyielding. I would have had to swallow it. How had I managed this! The journey down my gullet. But it had sunk and was at rest until then began its movement. The movement of the cancer entity. Feel my cancer. Touch it. This living thing, a growth that is organic but not organic. But it must feed. Upon what must it feed? Why, one’s entrails, one’s intestines, one’s blood and tissue, one’s bonemarrow; all manner of edible substances. One’s body is a feast, veritably so. Tumours grow and spread. How come? How come I had never learned about the subject? Not properly. Surely it should have been required reading for all. People die of cancer every second. If cancer it was. Of course it was.

So why had I not gone before? Had fate been smiling upon me!

Was I one of the lucky ones. Oy yez oy yez. Read all about it.

What are the statistics? Horrible.

Why had my parents not emigrated from this godforsaken hellhole where death and disease and malformity

Or grandparents! What kind of grandparents were they! Did they even deserve such a nomenclature! Ancient old bastards. No, they were undeserving. They were not grandparents at all. Not-so-grand-parents, this is what they were. Cowards. Why did everybody not emigrate. At an early age. Maybe they preferred to die young. Cowards cowards and again cowards. Them and their fucking off spring. Die die!

The damn notepad. Draw a face. Whose face?

Or the urine sample, I reached for that instead of the notepad and would have held it to my lips. Yes. Might one die from drinking urine? Of course not. Especially not one’s own. You would just seem like a pervert. But not if it was your own. Then you would just be mad. Mad! I’m mad I tell you, mad!

Look, the guy’s mad. He has a ghastly expression on his countenance.

Drinking piss. What a life. Cancer is better than that. At least I had my brains, they had not been gnawed. I imagined the movement of the cancer to resemble a gnawing activity.

There are these myriad afflictions we humans experience. All sorts of them. I was fortunate never to have had more than a couple. Not the worst. Not even close to the worst. A quaffer of urine! Oh mercy mercy, mercy me.

But apparently mothers did this of their off spring. They expressed an urge to quaff their babies’ piss and some went ahead and did it. They kissed their babies’ bums! Or was it licked? My god surely not! They held their babies up and rubbed their noses in their wee bums! Incredible behaviour. Yet womanly, motherly. Apparently.

A wee baby’s bum. What is wrong with that, they have had their bath and there they are all nice and clean and laughing away or gurgling. Babies gurgle.

You would hardly describe such behaviour as perverted; not if it pertained to mummy, performed in the maternal spirit. But take some unshaven unkempt middle-aged grandpappy cunt. In other words I myself. I would get fucking lynched man!

Fate.

Or else had one been a murderer, slave to the baser forms of violence; a wild beast, acutely dangerous to other human beings, and that violence was directed against children and very elderly invalids. One of these dirty evil bastards whose testicles one would willingly chop to safeguard others. Damn right. I would wield the axe. I had no compunction. I would shovel the ashes into the chamber, out of the chamber, whatever it took. Slam shut the door sir slam shut the door. It tolleth for you, you.

Along the way I saw Nurse Liddell; she was talking to her colleague, she was telling a tale. That humour in her voice. And most beautiful pair of legs. Nurse Liddell from Ghana, gesturing with her hands and moving on her feet. That old cliché, full of life. Her colleague was also from Africa but another country. That was a guess. Maybe it was the same one. She was listening, nodding, grinning; more pal than colleague.

I knew of Nurse Liddell that she was in love with her family and could not contemplate life without them. Her telling of the tales of her life established the fact. Her wider family; cousins and uncles and aunts, nieces and nephews: all interested her, each with a story to tell. Little did she know they told stories of her. She made them all laugh. She made them chuckle with pleasure. Also she was so damnably attractive. One experienced the urge to fling one’s arms about her, around her, her shoulders and just her person, really. There are such women. One marches towards them and there go the arms: I am not responsible! Forgive me forgive me!

But one’s arms are already there, the action performed.

I crave your pardon milady. My physical parts are autonomous. Causation my dear. The action an effect of your presence. You caused the action. You are the mover. Bang. And the action is created.

Whenever Nurse Liddell entered the ward there was movement below and it wasnt no tumour, god damn, no sir. Whenever that movement occurred I knew she was in the vicinity: the penis had raised his head.

Ugly. Ugly ugly. But that too! The pencil, behind the cup. I gulped saliva aware of a tenderness at the back of my throat.

My notepad from the cupboard, I lifted it across. What effort!

Why the exhaustion!

Why the pencil what the thought. Rawness and effort, tenderness at the back of the throat. Ugly ugly. I entered symptoms and feelings, hunger, lust. Lust theoretical. But theoretical or no, lust was crucial lust was life lust was

breathe in breathe out

good

Call the nurse. Excuse me, I believe you are monitoring my condition. I have to advise you, I am experiencing great lust, albeit theoretical.

Insolent bastard. Slap.

How to begin. I had no energy for this. Thoughts and pencils. The penis raised its head. Ugly ugly. I would draw it instead. The drawn penis is not so bad.

I used the pencil. It was not a lung disease. Why had I thought that. Because it was true.

The Nurse with the Beautiful Legs. Beautiful Boobs too. ‘Boobs’ is not my word: ‘tits’ is my word. My wife was coming to visit and if she spotted ‘tits’ she would wonder. She was not a woman for ‘tits’, that sort of word, it spoiled things, life, the life one shares. She would see the notepad, the drawn penis.

Goodness me. Oh well, ’twas her right.

I could have smiled. But a dust mite caught in my throat, I coughed into the top sheet. A dry cough, a rawness. Rawness. I wrote down the word, and noted it from a previous page. The female shape, her head and shoulders again, down her body, sketching fast, her legs. It was the nurse, I was drawing the nurse. She could take the breath away. Othertimes no, no. On the street one could pass her by, pass her by.