Saul Bellow - Ravelstein

I was then on very heavy doses of blood thinner and my fall was dangerous. I was bleeding internally. The nurses put me into a restraining vest. I asked my grown sons to call a taxi. I said I'd be better off at home, soaking in the bath. "In five minutes I could be there," I said. "It's just around the corner."

Often it seemed to me that I was just underneath Kenmore Square in Boston. The oddity of these hallucinatory surroundings was in a way liberating. I wonder sometimes whether at the threshold of death I may not have been entertaining myself lightheartedly, like any normal person, enjoying these preposterous delusions-fictions which did not have to be invented.

I found myself in a vast cellar. Its brick walls had been painted ages ago. In places they still were as white as cottage cheese. But the cheese had grown soiled. The place was lighted by fluorescent tubes-table after table after table of thrift-shop items, women's clothing, mainly, donated to the hospital for resale: underwear, stockings, sweaters, scarves, skirts. An infinity of tables. The place made me think of Filene's Basement, where customers would soon be pushing and quarreling over bargains. But no one was here to fight. In the far distance were young women who seemed to be volunteers doing charitable work. I was sitting, trapped, among hundreds of leather lounge chairs. Escape from this grimy-cheese corner was out of the question. Behind me, huge pipes came through the ceiling and sank into the ground.

I was painfully preoccupied with the restraining vest or pullover I was forced to wear. This hot khaki vest was constricting-it was killing me, binding me to death. I tried, and failed, to unravel it. I thought, If only I could get one of those Social Registry charity volunteers to bring a knife or a pair of shears! But they were several city blocks away, and they'd never hear me. I was in a far, far corner surrounded by BarcaLoungers.

Another memorable experience was this: A male hospital attendant on a stepladder is hanging Christmas tinsel, mistletoe, and evergreen clippings on the wall fixtures. This attendant doesn't much care for me. He was the one who had called me a troublemaker. But that didn't stop me from taking note of him. Taking note is part of my job description. Existence is-or was-the job. So I watched him on the three-step ladder-his sloping shoulders and wide backside. Then he came down and carried his ladder to the next pillar. More tinsel and prickly evergreen.

Off to the side there was another old fellow, small, nervous, and fretful, going back and forth in carpet slippers. He was my neigh bor. His living quarters opened at the end of my room, but he wouldn't acknowledge me. He had a thinnish beard, his nose was like a plastic pot-scraper, and he wore a beret. He would have to be an artist. But it seemed to me that his features were entirely lacking in interest.

After a time, I recalled that I had seen him on television. He was an artist, much respected. He lectured while drawing. His themes were fashionable-environmentalism, holistic flower essences, and so on. His sketches were vague, suggesting love of and responsibility for our natural surroundings. On a blackboard he first produced a hazy sea surface, and then with the side of his chalk he created the illusion of a lurking face-the wavy hair of a woman, like cooked rhubarb, glimpses of nature that hinted at a human presence-something mythic or, equally likely, a projection. Maybe an undine or a Rhine maiden. You couldn't actually accuse this fellow of mystification or superstition. All you could nail him for was self-importance and self-gratification-_suffisance__, in French. I like _suffisance__ better than smugness, just as I prefer the English suffocating to the French _suffoquant__-_Tout sujfoquant et blкme__. (Verlaine?) If you're choking, why worry about being pale?

This Ananias, or false prophet (artist), was settled here-he had a narrow apartment along the side of the hospital building. His quarters were around the corner, so I couldn't see them from my bed. I had a glimpse of his bookcases and a green wall-to-wall car pet. The Christmas tinsel attendant was very deferential to the artist, who, for his part, took no notice of me. Nil! I wasn't allowed to register an impression. By which I mean only that I didn't fit into any of his concepts.

This TV _artiste__, anyway, had the air of being long settled here, but it soon was evident that he was leaving that day. Cardboard boxes were carried out of his flat-or wing. The movers were stacking items. The books were disappearing from the shelves, the shelves themselves were dismantled in a tremendous hurry. A van was backed in and swiftly loaded, and then in a long green-gold gown the artist's old wife came out, stooped, and was helped into the cab of the truck. She wore a silk hat. The TV artist stuck his carpet slippers into the pockets of his topcoat, he put on loafers and crawled in beside her.

The male attendant was there to see him off, and then he said to me, "You're next. We need the space, and my orders are to get you out this minute." Immediately a crew dismantled the shelves and took everything to pieces. The surroundings were knocked down like theater flats. Nothing was left. A moving van meanwhile backed in, and my street clothes, my Borsalino, electric razor, toilet articles, CDs, et cetera, were stuffed into supermarket shopping bags. I was helped into a wheelchair and lifted into a trailer truck. There I found an office-no, a nurse's station, small but complete, with electric lights. The tailgate came up; the upper doors were not shut and the van roared directly underground, down into a tunnel. It continued for a time at top speed. Then we stopped, the giant engine idling. It went on idling.

There was only one nurse in attendance. She saw that I was agitated and offered to shave me. I admitted I could use a shave. She therefore lathered me and did the job with a disposable Schick or Gillette. Few nurses understand how to shave a man. They lay on the foam without softening the beard first as old-time barbers used to do with hot towels. When you haven't been soaped and soaked the scraping blade pulls the stubble and your face stings.

I said to the nurse that I was expecting my wife Rosamund at four o'clock, and it was already well past four on the big circular clock. "Where do you think we are?" The nurse couldn't say. My guess was that we were underneath Kenmore Square in Boston, and if they had stopped the engine idling we would have been able to hear the Green Line subway trains. It was now going on six o'clock, whether a. m. or p. m. who could say? We were now docking slowly beside a pedestrian passageway where people-not too many-went up into the street or came down from it.

"You look a little like an Indian brave," the nurse said. "Also you've lost so much weight that you're more wrinkled, and the beard grows inside the furrows. It's hard to get at. Were you stout once?"

"No, but my build has changed many times. I always looked better sitting than standing," I said, and despite my sad heart I laughed.

She wasn't able to make anything of these remarks.

And there had been no van. I had had to vacate my room-it was urgently needed-and I was moved in the night to another part of the hospital. "Where have you been?" I said to Rosamund when she arrived. I was annoyed with her. But she explained that she had suddenly sat up in bed wide awake and uneasy about me. She telephoned the intensive care unit, learned that I had been transferred, jumped into a cab and rushed over.

"It's evening," I said.

"No, it's dawn."

"And where am I?"

The attending nurse was remarkably quick and sympathetic. She pulled the curtain around my bed and said to my wife, "Take off your shoes and get in with him. A few hours of sleep are what you need. Both of you."