JOHN

FROM A CLOSE CORNER of the room comes a fractured coughing "help" of a man sure he is dying or dead. Summoned professionals reassure him, but John is not convinced. John is not alright John is dying or dead and every moment that passes by without him in it is another note going to show that no one notices when he chimes with the day. His world is a chair his dictionary is blank he has "help". John is plied with broccoli even when all he can see is a crack in the sky and a hand reaching down to touch not quite, the wrong sort of diction, when a face is a bowl of fruit rotting, he requires the constant attention of the world but still it does not come; and it is always the wrong hour and the clock is hidden by curtains. She reaches into his mouth with a spoon of broccoli, he grabs her hand; steak paste, tea thickened into frog-spawn; he grabs her hand and stares at her. Nil by mouth, please, nil by mouth. She keeps her eyes on the plate and removes his hand, "help", she puts his hand on the arm-rest, and re-loads the spoon, he strains. The chatter of nurses now still the chatter of nurses and then, sex and behind the pale blue, lace underwear. "Help."

Mama Sita

In the same vein as my previous post, this one nonetheless has a distinguishing feature; I remember a little about its genesis. I asked Issa in the summer of 2002 for a name to give to a grand matriarch. It couldn't have been more succinct than Mama Sita. It's certainly a regret of mine that the following is the only occurence to date of that grand old lady:

Mama Sita was a remarkable lady. She was in the Triangle that day I went with Dr Rudolph, a Wednesday, and was looking to get away from him. My time spent under the grip of his hospitality was very useful, I mean, I’d met all sorts of people and made a fair bit of money, but I was feeling restless. One major reason, perhaps a paranoid one looking at it now, was that he seemed fairly frequently to be examining my eye-sockets. Of course he has rarely operated on males, nor has he tended to repeat his procedures on other patients. Nevertheless, I didn’t trust him; it’s quite conceivable that he gave me room and board, like he said, for intelligent conversation, that when talking to me he didn’t have to worry about shocking me – it’s quite true, I was never once shocked by a thing he said. I found him, in spite of his twisted operations, to be very easy to talk with. Of course, I had no doubt that he was a dangerous individual. Whatever, I had to get away from the bastard; I wasn’t shocked, no, but I’ll say I was getting increasingly disgusted cohabiting with some of his creations. The conditions that they had to live in, the cages, the lax approach to basic cleaning and maintenance. It just got to be too much, and then there was that nagging ethical outrage; I decided one day that I would liberate them, but I haven’t as yet acted on that urge.