of dawn-colored blue and glistening gold, braided and braiding, the one color twisting about the other, and I heard one note, a single call, a pure sound that gave me the strength to break the bonds with which they had tied me down.
They jumped back. Wouldn't you? I'm eighty years old, and the straps were thick. "I'm all right," I said. "All I need is an ice-cold glass of papaya juice."
This they understood, not because they're doctors but because they're Brazilians, and they turned off the timer that had been timing my death, let down their masks, and put away their stupid needles.
Then began six months of what was supposed to have been rest. The first two weeks of my recuperation were spent in the hospital itself. They took me to a room on a high floor overlooking the bay. I shared this room with a voodoo priest.
He had the same ailment I had: his blood vessels had been temporarily detached from his heart. It has happened to me now a few times, and now I know just to wait it out as you would a cramp or a headache. You see, the vessels are attached by means of some highly elastic material, and when they slip out they are under enormous pressure to resume their normal positions.
Of course, my physicians lampooned my understanding of cardiology, but I countered simply that as I had passed the age where they could make any claim to be effective, whatever kept me going was good medicine.
"You lose people at all stages of their lives," I said, "even adolescents as strong as wildebeests. And eighty-year-olds? All you can do with us is mimic the roles of drug pusher, jailer, and extortionist."
"We can't prolong life beyond its natural cycle," my physician replied. "We're not gods."
"Then let me go."
"We can't. You'll die."
"If I stay I'll die too, and I would much rather die in the rose garden in Niterói than here in this hideous hospital, next to
him.
"
"What's wrong with him?"
"Oh, nothing," I said. "He's just a voodoo priest who watches television continually. He's a robot, a slave, a zombie. He spends many gleeful hours with soap operas, and watching cleavaged women spin game wheels. He shrieks when they give away toasters or wind-sailing boards, and the only time he rests is when it's time for the news. Then he switches off the apparatus and paws through the chicken hearts and lizard tails that are brought to him by a steady stream of women whose heads are wrapped in bandannas."
"Would you like to be moved?"
"You
can't
move me. I've asked and been told that it's impossible."
"You insult me as if I'm in a trance," the priest said, turning away from a scene of a man and a woman arguing next to a waterfall. "I hear you."
"You are in a trance. You watch that thing all day."
"It has good programs."
"Even if it did, and it doesn't, you would be wrong to watch it. It's a usurper, like a catbird, or carbon monoxide, or Claudius."
"You," the priest said, pointing his finger at me, "are a crazy person.
You
attacked
me,
" he stated indignantly, "because I was drinking a cup of coffee."
"It wouldn't be the first time," I said under my breath, and then, because the doctor had left and the voodoo priest had turned away from meânot because he lacked the strength for argument but because a new program was startingâI fell back upon my pillows in weakness and defeat, but I remembered.
I had lost my battle with the world. No longer could I set foot in my own country, or speak my own language other than to a mischievous child prodigy or to oversexed Brazilian naval cadets who were required to take my course. I had long before alienated all my friends, or they had alienated me. I came to dislike most of them rather severely after a period of twenty or thirty years, when I would discover that I hadn't known them at all, and that they were capable of such things as abandoning their children, converting their faith, or attacking me because I do not drink coffee.
And coffee, of course, a drug, a filthy, malodorous
They jumped back. Wouldn't you? I'm eighty years old, and the straps were thick. "I'm all right," I said. "All I need is an ice-cold glass of papaya juice."
This they understood, not because they're doctors but because they're Brazilians, and they turned off the timer that had been timing my death, let down their masks, and put away their stupid needles.
Then began six months of what was supposed to have been rest. The first two weeks of my recuperation were spent in the hospital itself. They took me to a room on a high floor overlooking the bay. I shared this room with a voodoo priest.
He had the same ailment I had: his blood vessels had been temporarily detached from his heart. It has happened to me now a few times, and now I know just to wait it out as you would a cramp or a headache. You see, the vessels are attached by means of some highly elastic material, and when they slip out they are under enormous pressure to resume their normal positions.
Of course, my physicians lampooned my understanding of cardiology, but I countered simply that as I had passed the age where they could make any claim to be effective, whatever kept me going was good medicine.
"You lose people at all stages of their lives," I said, "even adolescents as strong as wildebeests. And eighty-year-olds? All you can do with us is mimic the roles of drug pusher, jailer, and extortionist."
"We can't prolong life beyond its natural cycle," my physician replied. "We're not gods."
"Then let me go."
"We can't. You'll die."
"If I stay I'll die too, and I would much rather die in the rose garden in Niterói than here in this hideous hospital, next to
him.
"
"What's wrong with him?"
"Oh, nothing," I said. "He's just a voodoo priest who watches television continually. He's a robot, a slave, a zombie. He spends many gleeful hours with soap operas, and watching cleavaged women spin game wheels. He shrieks when they give away toasters or wind-sailing boards, and the only time he rests is when it's time for the news. Then he switches off the apparatus and paws through the chicken hearts and lizard tails that are brought to him by a steady stream of women whose heads are wrapped in bandannas."
"Would you like to be moved?"
"You
can't
move me. I've asked and been told that it's impossible."
"You insult me as if I'm in a trance," the priest said, turning away from a scene of a man and a woman arguing next to a waterfall. "I hear you."
"You are in a trance. You watch that thing all day."
"It has good programs."
"Even if it did, and it doesn't, you would be wrong to watch it. It's a usurper, like a catbird, or carbon monoxide, or Claudius."
"You," the priest said, pointing his finger at me, "are a crazy person.
You
attacked
me,
" he stated indignantly, "because I was drinking a cup of coffee."
"It wouldn't be the first time," I said under my breath, and then, because the doctor had left and the voodoo priest had turned away from meânot because he lacked the strength for argument but because a new program was startingâI fell back upon my pillows in weakness and defeat, but I remembered.
I had lost my battle with the world. No longer could I set foot in my own country, or speak my own language other than to a mischievous child prodigy or to oversexed Brazilian naval cadets who were required to take my course. I had long before alienated all my friends, or they had alienated me. I came to dislike most of them rather severely after a period of twenty or thirty years, when I would discover that I hadn't known them at all, and that they were capable of such things as abandoning their children, converting their faith, or attacking me because I do not drink coffee.
And coffee, of course, a drug, a filthy, malodorous
Similar Books
