Will Self - Umbrella

A short time later Sir Albert De’Ath and Doctor Zachary Busner sit either side of the utilitarian desk in the nurses’ station of Ward 20. Busner smokes one of his own cigarettes — filterless Gauloises Caporal that none of the nurses can bear. Sir Albert has accepted a cup of tea, and now he adds demerara sugar from a rumpled cellophane packet with quick digging movements of a spoon that remind Busner of. . someone hurriedly filling in a grave . I have been researching further on encephalitis lethargica, Sir Albert says. Oh, really. . Busner isn’t exactly distracted, however he is quietly enjoying the way that Mind seems so much pettier when prised from its strange reef of impedimenta and set down in this workaday context, with a tatty staff roster framing its bald cranium. Ye-es, Sir Albert continues, as I said when we first met, I was aware of the epidemic at the time and had retained this data — the Lancet article, the HMSO report put out later in 1918, and a few other bits and pieces — but learning of my sister’s condition led me to investigate the matter more thoroughly and from a historical perspective. The old man, hunched up in his spiffy togs , sups his tea, and Busner mentally rubs at his outline , sees him smudged into senescence and so becoming eminently suitable for admission . — I wonder if you were aware that — insofar as these things can be established from fragmentary contemporary records and long after the fact — there seem to’ve been a number of other outbreaks. Really, Busner dreamily exhales. Sir Albert grows pettish: Yes, really, Doctor Busner: in London in the 1670s, in Manchester in the 1840s — in Vienna at the turn of the century, as we know, — and then quite possibly in the Nazi’s concentration camp at Theresienstadt during the Second War. . This does get through the tabac brun to the psychiatrist, who leans forward and stubs out his cigarette. Sir Albert continues in his usual robotic tone: Of course, on the face of it, there are perfectly obvious reasons — common to any of the epidemiological studies — why a brain fever should’ve affected people in these cities at these times: density of population, insufficiency of diet, etcetera, etcetera. . Yet something about the possible outbreak at Theresienstadt made me look at the question in a less analytical and more. . in a more. . It is strange indeed to see Mind lost for words . . yes, a more symbolic way — perhaps that’s your influence, Busner, or at least the influence of your professional expertise. To wipe away the bad taste of his sarcasm, Sir Albert gets out a heavily wadded and stained handkerchief from his breast pocket and rubs it around his mouth, then he resumes: I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Theresienstadt. . Where is this going? Does he want me put in there, long after the fact? but even by German standards it was a model of efficient administration and planning — albeit put to rather, ahem, inhumane ends. Perhaps as many twenty thousand Jews and other undesirables were crowded within the old town walls, which were not much more than half a mile square. Inside there were workshops of all sorts — upholstery, shoemaking, etcetera — a bakery, and a brewery, they even had a machine shop and an electricity-generating plant, and at one time, I believe, a small chamber orchestra and a theatre. Sir Albert takes a gulping tea break, then, with a sweet and tannic sigh, begins again: Ahhh, the aim, of course, was not to in any way improve the lot of the inmates, but rather to create a version of a Potemkin village that could be shown off to visiting Red Cross delegations — they made a rather grisly film of it, the Nazis, although unfortunately I’ve been unable to see a copy. . It would’ve been interesting. . he muses, long and disturbingly elegant fingers fondling his empty cup . . because it might’ve helped me to confirm the outline of my theory —. Which is? Busner breaks in, fully expecting some anti-Semitic nastiness. Surely, Sir Albert continues unruffled, you see the similarities here: all these cities had the high populations needed to support the disease vector at the time the epidemics occurred — indeed, they had all recently undergone considerable population explosions — but Theresienstadt is a case apart. If we look for the factor it has in common with the others — London on the brink of the first Industrial Revolution, Manchester in the throes of the second, Vienna caught up in a frenzy of wartime armaments production — we might hypothesise that it is not the numbers or density of humans that was the decider, but the density of mechanisation, of. . technology. Anyway. . abruptly for such an elderly man, Sir Albert rises to his full, looming height. . it is, as I say, merely the outline of a theory, I offer it to you by way of a valediction. And then Busner remembers: But, Sir Albert, I haven’t asked you. . I mean. . how did it go with your sister? Mind looks down on him with ill-concealed contempt, and says: Go? It didn’t go with my sister at all, Doctor Busner — she is, as I suspected, quite catatonic, altogether unreachable — didn’t register my presence at all so far as I could make out, and looked to be stricken by a terrible sadness, Melancholica attonica, I believe it’s called. . You see, I hope, that I’m not entirely the brute you take me for, I’ve explained it to your assistant —. — Assistant? Busner is on his feet as well, and the two of them edge round the desk in their respective crannies. Ye-es, Sir Albert says, African gentleman — Mboya, is it? Seemed very capable, I told him I’d make all the arrangements necessary for an annuity to be paid to Audrey for the rest of her life — paid even in the event of my predeceasing her. I was able to tell him this — and here Mind is unable to repress a smirk of conceit — in his own language, with which I have a little familiarity.

They are on the ward, and Sir Albert is pushing open the double doors to the corridor. His own language? Busner says, You mean. . Kikuyu? Sir Albert stops to beam contempt down at him, then answers: Good heavens, no, Dholuo — Mboya is a Luo, not a Kikuyu, which probably explains why he’s here and not in Kenya, eh? I’m not surprised your career is failing to advance beyond this institution, Busner, given your lack of interest in your colleagues. And with this parting knock-out blow, our professional association clearly being at an end, Sir Albert, for all his apparent solidity — dematerialised . . — Can I help you? she says. The woman is in her late thirties, idiosyncratically plump in places — the undersides of her arms, the top of her hips and ribcage — that imply the wearing of restrictive undergarments beneath her stretchy black top and stretchy black slacks. Self-defeating. . really . She has a handsome, hawkish face — Greek? — unloosed dark hair, and a prepossessing lack of make-up. Not what you expect from an estate agent . — I. . ah, well. . They are standing beside the large tabletop model of the hospital-turned-luxury development, and, feeling the beginnings of a swoon, Busner puts his old hand on to it to help myself . .I–I used to work here! The statement comes out as a weird exultation — he had been fully intending to stick with his imposture of being a prospective buyer for one of these Last Few Remaining Apartments, right up until it popped out of his mouth. The woman seems altogether unfazed. Really, she says, and what was it you did here — her eye tracks over his grubby clothing, rests on the crumpled and sweat-rimmed hat — did you used to work in the Upholstery Workshop, or the Occupational Therapy Unit, possibly? He laughs. — No, no, I really did work here — I was a psychiatrist. Around them in the former Friends’ Shop her own colleagues are tap-tap-tappety-tapping at their keyboards, twitch-twitch-twitchety-twitching at their computer mice, their eyes ticcing back and forth across a few fractions of inches, and in these acts alone crossing continents, journeying to alien worlds, or penetrating the psyches of others . .Shouldn’t be such a snob, he admonishes himself, after all, why’s it any different to poring over an atlas while listening to a radio — which I did plenty as a child? The woman has folded her arms to create more. . novel lumps — shouldn’t be judgemental about that either, not at my age . .and she says, I’m sorry, it’s just that we get a fair number of old patients coming back to look at the place. Busner starts to say: I’m surpri—, but then stops, realising that he isn’t surprised in the least. I suppose, he continues instead, that they are looking for some kind of. . then trails off. The woman looks at him critically and vocalises his thought: Security? Yes, I know they are, because they often tell me it was here they felt most secure — many, of course, are not at all happy, some are terribly distressed. It’s Busner’s turn to look at her critically, he can detect no irony in her tone, her expression is open. . sincere . She seems a most unaccountably therapeutic estate agent . .He smiles, and says, Am I right in thinking that you too feel a sense of security here? The woman laughs, a pleasingly rich and chocolatey chuckle, Ha-ha, well, ha, yes. . She puts out a hand, the maintenance of which, he imagines, costs her considerable effort, since each nail has been individually painted. . with crescent moons, rainbows, a dove, ten little scenes of rather mawkish. . security . .I’m Athena Dukakis, she says as they shake — and Busner searches quickly through many silver bands including one on her thumb! for the gold one on her marriage finger: mere force of habit . .Busner, he offers up, Doctor Zack Busner — I was here for a couple of years in the early seventies. Releasing his hand, Missus Dukakis turns to the model and gestures. — Well, as you see, there’ve been a lot of changes. I suppose I know the place as well as anyone — I almost grew up here: my father bought the buildings when the hospital was shut down in 1992. Busner again searches her handsome face and warm tone for any irony, any doubling or subterfuge. . a trapdoor beneath which the oubliette yawns, full of pain and despair . .He says judiciously, It must’ve been pretty strange for a young girl, I mean — it was a mental hospital. Dukakis makes things intelligible for me . .by running her crescent-moon-tipped finger along the Plexiglas lid of the model while saying, As you can see, the first thing he did was to demolish the entire second range of the hospital, leaving the first-range frontage intact — which is really the finer, original architecture, together with the spurs built off it in the 1860s. But you’re right, it was strange — she flips from realtor to reminiscent — I was in my teens, and he’d bring me up here on site visits and let me wander about. The last handful of patients had left in a hurry — their toothbrushes were still in the bathroom recesses, a few rather pitiful belongings in their bedside cabinets. The medical staff had abandoned all sorts of. . strange equipment — and there were the padded cells, of course, they pretty much freaked me out! Silently, their eyes travel over the simulacrum of the booby-hatch . .and Busner remembers the strange atmosphere of the old asylums in the late 1980s and early 1990s, how, as they were wound down, with each patient discharged a bed would be removed and not replaced, until there were only these small mattress islands in the great echoing wards — islands squatted on by hairy geriatrics Barbary apes . .It was, he thinks, akin to some process of decolonisation, with the far-flung possessions of the therapeutic empire being successively ceded, given up to the wrecker’s ball, and to. . luxury flats .