Tor Ulven - Replacement

A buzzing, followed by the weak, shuddering gurgle of Freon gas wandering the manmade grottos and galleries of the air-conditioning unit and nothing more. There’s no meteorological peep from the world outside, no howling wind, no rain tapping against windowpanes. The day might be calm and snowy, or cold and calm and clear, but you can’t see it, you can’t stand up and push aside the curtain to see out, or look at the thermometer to find out what the temperature is. You’re just lying there. And you think, as you’ve thought countless times before, that given the fact that you’re just lying there, that you’re stuck lying down, and that you’ll remain in this position until further notice, the white light switch, for example, which you can just make out on the far wall, is quite as unreachable as a star seen through the window. However, stargazing isn’t a possibility either, because the window is as unreachable as the light switch, not to mention whatever’s outside the window, a solid dark mass, say, punctuated by scattered lights hugging the landscape’s slopes and inclines as if they were a part of it, whereas human development is, in reality, a kind of ad-hoc parasite, but be that as it may, the space between, beneath, and behind the lights is surging with people, who are invisible at this distance, but who are people nonetheless, people you’ll never see, never greet, and maybe that’s just as well, you think as you lie there, as you continue to lie there. With your grotesque body, which looks like a half-squished grasshopper; you could, you think, just as well be reduced to a head, a talking head, which could be carried out on a covered silver platter at dinner parties, at which point someone would lift the lid up and, miracle of all miracles! you could talk, talk to the guests, converse with them intelligently on all manner of subjects, as if you were a real person, and not just a head, which is what you actually are, before the guests finally leave, and you politely tell them good-bye, and someone replaces the lid and carries the silver platter with your head back to the cupboard. Or something along those lines.

It’s eight minutes after six o’clock. What on earth is she doing up, or better yet, what’s she doing out at this time of day? you ask yourself. You’ve lived as many years as there are seconds in a minute, plus seven. If a year were as long or even as short as a second, you would’ve lived a whole minute and seven seconds by now, and in that case, you wouldn’t bother asking the powers that be for another thirty seconds, say, in which to get older and grayer. Except for the possibility. Iffing. The subjunctive. Unless. All those people, you think, who can walk, walk on their own two legs; when someone yells go! get out of here! be off with you! to them, they can go on their way, get out of there, take off, even run, sprint if the situation calls for it, all those people who think you’ve simply resigned yourself, that you’ve faced your fate, as they say, with a brave and cheerful grin, that you’ve long since, once and for all, given up the thought of walking, although you, like every other cripple, dream at least twice a week that you can walk, and at least twice a month that you can run, and at least three times every quarter year that you can dance, although every day, while you’re still awake, you imagine what it’d be like to be healthy, you imagine miracle cures, new medical breakthroughs, revolutionary treatments, and the indigestible, sickly-sweet stuff of your fantasies gnaws at you again and again, every single goddamn day. But not now. At the moment, you’ve really got to pee.

You shout the hated name into the darkness beyond the circle of light cast by the reading lamp, shout it in the direction of the half-open sliding door, which leads to the living room, where, you figure, there’ll be a half-open door leading to the hallway, where there’ll be another half-open door leading to the kitchen, and possibly one to the bathroom. You imagine you can hear your voice moving through each room, searching, peering into the space between the countertop and stove (where lint and dirty dishrags tend to collect), like one of those little whirlwinds kicking dirt up off the sidewalk in springtime, climbing a couple of stairs, peeking out into the courtyard before giving up and vanishing entirely. Where is she? Where is the telephone? The effort is exhausting, but you manage to shift the upper half of your body — the part of your body, that is, that still works — into a position that allows you to fumble around the edge of the bed; after discovering nothing but the empty telephone base, with its four indentions that resemble a stylized face either singing or talking, you give up and wrench yourself back into a prone position; that means the telephone itself is in the living room, and that you can’t reach it, and that you can’t answer it if someone calls, that you’re stuck patiently waiting until the phone has rung a set number of times, until the caller finally gives up, all you can do is wait until the last ring you hear is really the last ring, one of them will be the last, after all, and then the silence will be like it was before.

You’re lying here. Your eyes, which have grown used to the half dark, have no trouble picking out the gleam of your wheelchair’s steel components. The chair isn’t next to the bed or at the foot of the bed, but over by the window, shoved into the corner between the window and the closet (and you curse the idiot who stuck it there for convenience’s sake, no, out of pure laziness, so that she, the healthy one, the ambulatory one, the one who can get around fine, wouldn’t keep tripping over that stupid handicapped contraption). Theoretically, you could lower yourself carefully onto the pink throw rug beside the bed (God, you hate pink!), haul yourself half-upright and drag yourself, ass first, toward the wheelchair, until finally you’re able to pull yourself into it by the strength of your arms alone; practically speaking, anyway, you could’ve done that thirty years ago, maybe twenty years ago, but you’re an old man now, an old cripple, and you know that the very attempt, not in theory, but in praxis, would leave you spent and gasping on the hard floor, instead of lying in a soft bed like you are now, and so until further notice, you’ll continue to lie here in bed.

The whole house is full of a ringing silence that makes it seem twice as large. What was it she said? Being married to you, she said, is like hauling around a sack full of rocks every hour of every day, rocks that aren’t good for a damn thing; and even though you can stop and rest for a moment, you can never put the sack down, she said. Is the maid coming by today or tomorrow? You can’t remember. She’s always been quiet and timid, you think, timid and quiet. She’s done everything you’ve asked of her. No, not everything. She’s done everything she was supposed to do. And not a lick more. You’ve never asked for whims. What she calls whims. Could it be? you think, that the whiny, two-faced termagant really? In that case, she could’ve at least put things back where they go, you think, at the very least the telephone, you think. What are you supposed to do, though, when both your wheelchair and the telephone are out of reach? Is the maid coming by today or tomorrow? You can’t remember. You feel an urgent desire to call for help, as if you’ll burst from the pressure of it building inside you if it’s not released through your mouth, but you manage to hold the scream back. You’re not going to panic. You try to focus on the advantages of the situation, namely that you don’t have to be up and about, indeed, you can go back to sleep in good conscience, since you’re stuck in bed anyway and can’t do a damn thing about it.

You’ve really got to pee. What if she? you think, is she really? for good? you think, that means that (and you feel a sudden surge of joy sweep through you like a breath of fresh air, a gleeful sense of nervous anticipation, as if, somewhere deep down inside of you, someone had taken a dust rag to a magnificent crystal chandelier and then lit it in celebration), and at that moment you realize that’s it’s finished, that there’ll be no more endless whining, endless gloom and doom, endless absence of imagination (you wonder if, in the end, that’s why she married you; she simply wasn’t capable of imagining what life with a cripple would be like), the stubborn efficiency, the perpetual attentiveness (broken by fits of cynicism, like when a faithful family dog suddenly turns around and, to the owner’s amazement, bites someone, and then, as if to avoid being put down, returns to being the faithful family dog it was before, watching both owner and maimed victim with the same friendly, mournful, almost human brown eyes), she’s done everything you’ve asked of her, no, not everything; she’s done everything she was supposed to do, and not a lick more; in which case, you think, you’re finally, in a word, free, free! from the miserable creature on whom you’ve been completely dependent for years, for far too many years, whom you (with clenched teeth, repressed rage, physical disgust) have had to let lift, hold, support, wash, push, turn, and wheel you, and so on and so on; in that case it’s over and done with, case closed, bye-bye birdie, you’re free! you think, free! to do what you want when you want, without her weighing you down, or rather, without you weighing her down, no, without her weighing you down, who’s weighing who down, would a normal man have filed for divorce a long time ago, you think? Definitely. In any case, you’re free.