Joanna Kavenna - The Birth of Love

‘No sign even of the head,’ says Patrick.

‘No sign at all?’ says Brigid.

*

Dr Gupta returns again, and he feels inside her and says little has changed.

‘For the sake of the baby, we cannot extend this any further,’ he says.

‘The head really hasn’t turned?’ says Brigid. Incredulously, because she hoped so much it would.

‘No, I’m afraid it hasn’t. At this point, the only real option you have is a Caesarean,’ he says. Already she can see people moving around the room, making preparations. ‘Anything else carries a greater risk for your baby.’

‘You are certain?’

‘Personally, I am certain that the risks of any other procedure are significant,’ says Dr Gupta. ‘A Caesarean is the safest course of action for your baby, and for you.’

*

Another doctor appears, with a form for her to sign. Consequences of a Caesarean may include … she doesn’t read the list. She signs her name, hands the paper back to the doctor. Patrick is beside her, winding his fingers around hers. They have no choice. There is simply nothing else she can do, and now she must abandon her efforts, submit entirely. She is close to tears once more, but she is exhausted beyond measure, flushed with chemicals, hardly in her right mind. There is a distant voice saying, ‘Why me?’ and she manages to conjure the image of Stephanie, just yesterday, and how sorry she had felt for her, and how certain she had been that this wouldn’t happen to her. But it is remote now, she can hardly remember yesterday. Patrick says, ‘I’m so sorry, darling,’ but he doesn’t understand. He assumes she is devastated, he doesn’t realise how far she has fallen. Because under it all, the confused pulsing of her thoughts and the insistent rhythmic beep of the monitor beside her, and the doctors murmuring at the door, she has tumbled into a dark secret sense of relief, that it is no longer her responsibility, that someone else will prise the baby out.

‘It’s over,’ she says, and Patrick doesn’t know what she means.

*

Prisoner 730004 is dragged roughly from her cell. ‘We must move quickly for your protection,’ says a guard. There is another guard beside him, both of them sinewy like trees, their faces wiped of everything except conviction. She sees them plainly before her, and then they open a door and the corridor is filled with light. Dazzled by the glare, she blinks and turns away. Now they are grappling with her, tying her hands.

‘For your protection and that of the species,’ one of them says.

She is walked along corridors, the doors tightly shut. Door after door, and she thinks that behind each door is another prisoner, and she wonders what they have all done, how they fell under the censure of the Protectors, and how they will be punished. She wonders if any of them will be freed — but that question seems absurd, when freedom is Darwin C. She feels sick and wants to pause, but the men lead her along. They will not look directly at her, they just march on, their boots hammering on the floor, a rhythmic thud, and she is dragged along beside them.

‘Where are we going?’ she says, after the hammering has gone on for a long time.

‘You are not entitled to ask such questions.’

‘Will I see my friends?’

‘You are not entitled to ask such questions.’

*

The hammering begins again and the doors are all tightly shut and Prisoner 730004 falls silent, they will not answer her. She struggles on, her grey-faced captors flanking her, their arms rubbing against hers, and she remembers her parents and how they were sent to the mass-scale farms, and how she believed at the time this was a good place for them to go, a pleasant retirement, a gift from the Protectors, and it was only gradually that she pieced the rumours together. Then she was stricken and horrified for many years, because she had been so eager to believe a lie. Because she had waved them off, in her willing ignorance.

*

Her parents had believed it too; they had gone to the train as if they were embarking on an adventure, and she wonders when they realised — whether they began to suspect something on the train itself, as they were shunted into a carriage with dozens of others, all of them old and frail and clearly expendable — or whether they suppressed their fears until they saw the farm itself. She wonders when they knew they were being discarded, and how long it took them to die.

*

Prisoner 730004 understands more than her parents did about this world, the world of the Protectors. If they send her to the mass-scale farms, she knows what that will mean. She will be given a bunk in a vast barn, full of others like her, she will be dragged into the domes at daybreak, there to collect the harvest, she will work until the sun drops beneath the horizon, she will receive her allotted ration of food. She will not be murdered, not precisely; she will be neglected and beaten when she fails to work, and her deprived body will protest, it will struggle for survival but it will decline nonetheless. She wonders what happens then — there are many rumours about what happens then — but now she does not want to think any more about the mass-scale farms. She is afraid, though she tries to tell herself that she must not show her fear. The drugs are making her afraid; they are conjuring these memories of her parents. The Protectors want her weak so she will beg for mercy. So she will tell them what they want to know.

*

But they will send her away whatever she says. Prisoner 730004 strives to remember that, despite the drugs they have fed her. Though the drugs are designed to make her cowardly and penitent, she tries to resist their effects. She must remember, she thinks, that she will not be saved.

*

The guards slam their feet on the cold floor. They slam their feet and she is dragged along beside them. The smell of the guards is thick and vile; she is repulsed by their bodies close beside her. They have walked for so long, it is a surprise to her when they stop. They come to a sudden halt outside a door. High and broad, and barred against her.

*

‘Wait here,’ say the guards.

*

In Lazarettgasse, Robert von Lucius hammers on the door of the asylum, and for a long time no one comes to meet him. He hears bells tolling in the distance. He hammers again, more loudly. There is another lengthy pause, and then, finally, the face of Herr Meyer appears, but he will only open the door a crack. He seems different today, all his oily charm is gone. It has seeped from him, and he is pale-faced and reluctant. He peers around the door with a sour pinched expression, and says, ‘Herr von Lucius. You have returned again?’

‘Yes, I wanted to see Professor Semmelweis.’

‘I am afraid you cannot enter,’ says Herr Meyer, holding up a hand.

‘Why not?’ Robert von Lucius is prepared to argue, to fight the man; he has come full of resolution and even excitement. He says, ‘Come now Herr Meyer, I demand an appointment.’

Herr Meyer says, perhaps less sour now and merely frightened, though prepared to deny everything, ‘Herr S is dead. He died in the night.’

And though his mind is suddenly blank, his thoughts erased by shock, Robert von Lucius hears himself saying, ‘But how? How did he die?’ He sees Herr Meyer working his mouth, forming a lie, he thinks. Even as Herr Meyer forms his lie, Robert von Lucius feels a great surge of rage as if he would like to strike him down.

‘He clearly had a degenerate condition. It festered internally and finally killed him,’ says Herr Meyer.

‘I do not believe you,’ says Robert von Lucius. His body is tensed with rage, and with the effort of suppressing it. Yet he tries to speak slowly and clearly. He says, ‘Professor Semmelweis told me he had been beaten. He said he believed he had internal injuries. He was a doctor, an esteemed doctor. He diagnosed himself …’