Anna Kavan: I Am Lazarus

The gong sounded, the doctor on duty appeared, and the patients flocked after him into the dining-hall. The table places were altered at every meal and each patient's place was marked with a card on which was written his name. The waiters, like well-trained sheepdogs, skilfully manoeuvred the patients towards their chairs. Mr. Bow was glad to find that he was not to sit beside one of the so called hostesses who were spaced round the big table to watch what went on. The patients stood at their places, waiting for the doctor to sit down. The doctor glanced round to make sure that everybody had found the right seat. Then he sat down. It was the signal. The room was full of loud scrapings as the patients pulled back their chairs.

Mr. Bow prepared to sit down with the rest but there was an obstruction; something impeded him. Sanguinelli had slipped quick as an eel between him and his chair. The Italian's eyes, full of malice, writhed like insane tadpoles from side to side.

‘Excuse — my place.’ He pointed towards the name card with a thin yellow finger.

‘No,’ said Thomas Bow, frowning. He was angry. He was tormerited and persecuted and he would not endure it. He snatched at the back of the chair but Sanguinelli was seated in it already. Everyone was sitting down now except the waiters and Mr. Bow.’

A hostess two places away took charge of the situation. Her hair went in hard, regular waves.

‘This is your seat here, Mr. Bow,’ she said amicably. There was a chair empty beside her.

‘No,’ said the Englishman slowly. ‘No,’ He frowned deeply. ‘My card is here.’

The Italian burst out laughing. He triumphantly displayed the card in front of him on which was written the name Sanguinelli. The hostess looked down and saw that the card next to her was indeed the name card of Thomas Bow.

‘Come along, Mr. Bow. You've made a mistake,’ she said in a firmer tone.

The young man recognized the firmness that was in her voice. He moved obediently and sat down in the empty chair and spread his table napkin widely over his knees as he had been shown how to do. He ate what was put before him, looking carefully at his neighbours to make sure that he used the same knives and forks as they did. All the time he was eating he felt angry and sad and confused. Something had happened which he did not understand. The card with his name had been there, he had seen it distinctly, but when he looked at it again Sanguinelli's name had appeared. Sanguinelli had triumphed over him in front of the whole room and it was unfair. He had heard the laughter go round the table. His heart was full of sorrow and shame. From time to time the Italian boy leaned forward and grinned at him from the stolen place, triumphant because no one had seen him exchange the cards.

After lunch the patients went out into the grounds. Games were organized. Mr. Bow was directed to take part in the simplest game which consisted in throwing large wooden balls at a smaller ball some distance off. Mr. Bow did not understand the game. He did not understand why some of the balls were brown and some black or why one player threw before another. He stood with the large shiny ball in his hand, waiting till he should be told to throw. He was not thinking about the game. He was thinking about the pigskin belt he was making. It seemed to him that the belt was his friend. Only the feel of the cool leather could assuage the hurt and the anger inside his heart.

The time came for him to make his throw. He held the ball cupped in his hand as he saw the other players do. He aimed conscientiously at the little ball lying out on the grass but his ball disobeyed him and flew far beyond. There was laughter. ‘Champion! Champion!’jeered the Italian voice.

Thomas Bow wandered away from the game. No one noticed him going. He wandered towards the workroom. He held out his hands to the grasses, but now they did not caress his skin like soft fur but pricked sharp as needles. As he walked he hoped very much that the workroom door would be open. It was shut, and blinds were drawn over the windows.

The young man sat down on the step in front of the workroom door. He looked bewildered and worried and very sad. He did not know what to do. It troubled him that the belt was locked away in there. He felt the belt lonely for him as he was for it. He glanced up. A cloud had passed over the sun. He would have liked to share his worry with the cloud but the cloud would not stay. He sat disconsolate on the step staring flatly ahead.

Presently he heard voices and two men came round the corner of the building. One of them was a man who visited the clinic periodically to do X-ray work. The other was a doctor with black hair and a bluish chin. Mr. Bow was afraid of the doctor who for many months had put him into a hideous sleep with his poisoned needle.

‘Hullo, what are you doing here?’ the radiologist asked.

‘I came for my belt,’ he answered. He stood up.

He was afraid of the doctor and wanted to get away in case he should be trapped and put back again into the nightmare sleep.

‘Your belt?’ The other man did not understand.

‘He's doing leather work at occupational therapy. I suppose he's making a belt,’ the doctor explained. He came up to the patient. ‘Don't you know that the workroom's closed in the afternoon?’ he said to him. ‘It's recreation time now. Get off and join the others,’ He gave him a friendly push. Mr. Bow started back in alarm.

‘I only wanted my belt,’ he said, starling to move away.

The other two watched him go.

‘He doesn't know how lucky he is,’ said the dark doctor. ‘We've pulled him back literally from a living death. That's the sort of thing that encourages one in this work.’

Mr. Bow walked carefully in the sunshine. He did not know how lucky he was and perhaps that was rather lucky as well.

THE wind was blowing like mad in the hospital garden. It seemed to know that it was near a mental hospital, and was showing off some crazy tricks of its own, pouncing first one way and then another, and then apparently in all directions at once. The mad wind sprang out with a bellow from behind a corner of the nurses’ quarters, immediately tearing round the back of the building to meet itself half-way along the front in a double blast that nearly snatched the cap from the head of a sister hurrying towards the entrance. With a clash and a clatter the door swung to admit her indignant figure huddled in its blue cloak. The wind came in too with a malicious gusto that died drearily in the recesses of the hall where the two doctors were talking.

The physician in charge glanced round as if he resented the unceremonious way the wind burst into his hospital. He was a man of about sixty-five, with a red, cheerful face and white hair. Magnanimously passing over the wind's interruption, he went on with the story he was telling.

‘When I went in next morning she was trying to tear up the sheet. So I said to her in a quiet, friendly way, “Don't you think that's rather a silly thing to do?” And she answered me back as quick as lightning, “If I can't do silly things here, I'd like to know where I can do them”.’ The red face creased into a net of jovial lines, the broad shoulders shook with laughter. ‘Pretty smart, wasn't it?’

The young doctor echoed the laugh politely. He was a visitor from the north who was being shown round the hospital. Himself a reticent man, he wished that the superintendent were a little less genial and expansive. So much good-humour aroused in him some disquietude, some slight distrust. He turned his lean, sensitive face, and his eyes rested reflectively on the other for a moment. What they saw was not altogether reassuring. There was something which they found faintly suspect about the appearance of the elderly man. His hair was too white, his face was too genial, his expression was too optimistic. He looked more like a country parson than a psychiatrist.