Бруно Травен: Aslan Norval

One of the four police officers who had arrived later asked one of the original cops whether they had asked the lady for her name and address.

“I asked her,” he whispered to his companion, “but her answer made me think that it might be wise to treat her with kid gloves. Just look at her vehicle! If someone drives that kind of car—you have got to be careful. Damn, they must be loaded!”

“We have her license plate. We don’t need anything else,” said the second officer. “We innocently give her license plate to the old man at the station, and in ten minutes he will have her name, address, age, fingerprints, names and addresses of her lovers, favorite nightspots, the number of bottles of imported whiskey she consumes annually, and the amount of her insurance coverage.”

While the officers bumbled among themselves, the lady had calmly gotten into her car. She teased the gas pedal with the tip of her foot, and the motor quietly began to buzz, more discreetly than a bee. She was just about to move the gilded lever into first gear when she leaned her head out the window with the sweetest smile on her lips.

“Do you gentlemen”—she did indeed say gentlemen—“have anything else important to ask me, before I take my leave?”

“N-n-no, of course not,” the six stuttered. They looked at one another in surprise as if they weren’t sure what they were doing there in the first place.

She pressed down on the accelerator a little. The six saluted and in order to appear friendly showed their teeth, smiling exactly as they had learned to smile at the police academy, exactly as they practiced at home.

The lady returned their greeting with a slight nod and drove off. She stopped only four blocks away in front of a drugstore and disappeared for a few minutes into a musty phone booth, to find out to which hospital the young man had been taken.

The young man had been assigned a room, in which he was to wait until he could be transported to the operating room, where he was meant to give the medical residents a welcome opportunity to prod and cut up his body. In the course of this examination, they would probably break several of his ribs, glue them back together, and await the results.

As they informed him of this with a friendly smile, they added: “You see, mister, none of this will cost you a single cent. The Cadillac carries an uncommonly large insurance coverage. We are diagnosing you with terrible shock. With a diagnosis like that, you can live in this beautiful hospital for six months, like a general in fascist Spain. You will live wonderfully and happily without having to do anything at all. The insurance company will pay for everything. And—please keep this confidential—this hospital is in financial trouble.” In response, the young man said that he did not have the slightest intention to live happily on someone else’s dime and insisted on leaving the hospital immediately to pursue his own affairs.

“You can’t do that, and you’re not allowed to do that,” answered the resident. “We decide what happens here, not you. You had an accident on the street. It could cost you your life if the shock you suffered should have consequences, which is possible. Indeed, very probable. The health department and the insurance agency will hold us responsible for your health, and we cannot abdicate this responsibility. Since you have been brought here, you can’t leave just like that. No way. You see, they would sue the administration of this very prestigious institution for professional negligence. The suit would cost a lot of money and take a lot of time. Therefore, please be so kind as to lie in this bed, rest, and as soon as we have treated a dozen similar cases, it will be your turn.”

With those words, the residents disappeared. They had to complete two years of residency in the hospital before they could receive their certification and be let loose on the unsuspecting population.

A quarter of an hour later, someone knocked on the door.

“Come in,” the young man called somewhat angrily, since he thought that they were coming back to bother him.

The lady came in.

“Oh, there you are, young man,” she said. “I was looking all over for you in this labyrinth. There’s no one around anywhere.”

The young man moved the only chair in the room closer. “Please, sit down, ma’am.”

“Thank you.” She sat down, while the young man sat on the edge of the bed.

“So, this is where you ended up. Terrible. I predict you will probably have to stay awhile?”

“I don’t even have a scratch on me. No trace of the accident.”

“Of course not. However, according to everyone else, there is a trace. Because of the shock you suffered—”

“Shock? Me? Shock? In no way at all, not in the least did I suffer a shock. I was in Korea for five years. I forgot what shock was in the first three weeks I was there.”

“That’s all well and good. But you see, there is the insurance to consider. In a case like today’s, it’s best just to run away as fast as possible. Don’t let them catch you, my friend! Don’t let them catch you! Run as if the devil were chasing you!”

“If I understand correctly, I am a prisoner here. Even the windows are barred.”

“That’s correct. You are a prisoner here. A prisoner of the insurance agency. This agency acts in its own best interest and has to act that way to protect itself against the sky-high damages that you could sue for in a couple of months.”

“I wouldn’t dream of making any kind of claim. I’m not injured and I’m not even in shock.”

“No insurance agency can rely on that, though. Even if you signed a form today stating that you didn’t plan to make any kind of claim either today or later, it would not be enough for the insurance agency. You could fall into the hands of a lawyer, one of those lawyers who builds his existence on such shady affairs. This man would prove with the help of bought witnesses that you had signed the release while still under the influence of the accident, and only to be able to leave the hospital.”

“So they have robbed me of all freedom of movement.”

“That’s right, young man, until a careful medical evaluation has shown that you have not suffered any damage that could affect your health negatively. Only when three attending doctors have given you medical clearance and it has been notarized will the insurance agency be immune to blackmail.”

“I have other, more important things to do than to stare at the bare walls of this box that smells like carbolic acid.”

“Where do you work at the moment?”

“I don’t work, not in the way you are thinking, ma’am. I served for five years in the military. Marine Corps. When the drama—the high command really called it drama—was over and I expected to be released and finally sent home to heal my wounds in peace and quiet, my orders were to stay. I had to help organize and train the newly established South Korean army for future eventualities. Afterward, I received a veteran’s pension that will end in a few weeks.”

“Like all honorably discharged veterans, you surely had the right to receive an education for a new job paid by the government, right?”

“That is only applicable to veterans of the war of 1941–45. Not Korean War veterans. We only receive a monthly pension for about three years. Of course, they expressly told us when they released us that we should be smart about how we used this pension to prepare for a future job, which would facilitate reintegration into normal life.”

“And certainly you must have followed this, as I consider it, reasonable suggestion?”

“I had the best of intentions, ma’am. When asked which job interested me most, I remembered the terrible floods of my hometown during my schooldays, so I said construction of levees and canals. And I have to give it to the military administration, they helped me in all kinds of ways.”