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The Finale

Rather than let himself get to the point of death, before approaching life, Sevo prepared himself for his final disappearance as the hunter might prepare for the whale.

‘His is not the task of post-mortemizing!’ said Sevo, looking over the rail of his bed.

‘You’re a tough one all right,’ said the orderly.

Sevo was still thinking about the whale. He imagined there wasn’t much time left and he would be best off thinking about the whole sorry affair as an adventure.

‘Christ, Sevo!’ It was the orderly again. ‘Can’t you help an old man out just a little?’

‘Sorry George,’ said Sevo, first lifting his back, then his backside, and finally both legs from the bed. ‘I was thinking about the whale’.

‘Your cancer, you mean?’ said George, slipping the new bed sheet under Sevo’s legs.

‘Which other whale is there?’

‘It’s a hell of a thing.’

‘And with a symmetrical tail,’ said Sevo.

Another hour, thought Sevo, alone now for the first time that day. Another hour of visitors to endure before he could get back down to dreaming. Not that any of them were there to see him. Most of them came for the Italian, Barzini. Sitting there in pairs, a man talked, the women listened…nothing. And Barzini’s got it tougher than most, too, thought Sevo. Not only is he dying, but his entire family is dying with him. They would be happier if that were true, if they had a little bit of the disease in each of them. The Barzini Cancer. A ward all to themselves and all the suffering they could ever have hoped for. Some people are like that. They act as if they were born to suffer and cannot understand why their God left them out of the loop.

Sevo was different. He neither suffered nor wanted to suffer. He just was. It just was. Again he thought of the whale and the hunter. He saw Barzini as the whale and of himself the hunter. He imagined his first glimpse of Barzini’s miraculous, eurhythmical tail and began preparing his wits for the imponderable, knowing that simply to have tried would ensure he would not have failed.

Next day McBride came on to the ward to bid a pre-emptive farewell to his patients. McBride was the head of oncology and often came by before his summer vacation with his wife, Sandra, to cheer up the troops. He preferred to think of his patient’s conditions as armies. Sevo’s had recently changed from the Japanese at Pearl Harbour to the Americans at Hiroshima.

Sevo had always respected his candour, even if this last little piece of imagery had seemed a little harsh.

‘Hey Sandy,’ Barzini cooed, ‘Won’t you come sit with me awhile? You cut such a profile compared to my mother.’ McBride waved her over and sat down in a crumbling wicker chair beside Sevo’s bed.

‘I don’t have to go, Sevo. I mean, if you would rather I stayed…’

Sevo did not reply, except with his eyes. It was as if he had suddenly seen a rattle snake appear behind McBride’s head.

‘What do you say, soldier-boy? I could send Sandra on ahead.’

McBride was breathing heavily and one or two veins had begun to show around the edges of his temples. He looked tired, Sevo thought, and ordinary. Far more ordinary than he remembered.

‘How long are you away?’ Sevo asked.

‘A month, possibly more.’

‘Then it’s goodbye.’

‘I could stay! She wouldn’t suspect us with what she carries as a brain in that head!’

‘What do you want from me, Jamie?’ said Sevo. ‘I get such awful headaches discussing things that have already been said.’

McBride lifted his head slightly and ran the palm of his hand over his eyes and down tight over his chin, pausing for a moment to itch his left sideburn with his middle finger. Sevo watched as he leaned his head even further back and was shocked by the position of McBride’s Adam’s apple. It looked a little too low, almost hidden by the heavy corduroy collar of his overcoat and again McBride looked incredibly ordinary to Sevo.

‘Goodbye then, my love,’ spoke Barzini from his bed. Both Sevo and McBride were somewhat startled by the sudden presence of Sandra at the foot of the bed. Sevo felt something he had not felt in a long time: guilt, and plenty of it.

‘Hi Sevo’, she said.

Sevo said nothing, but rolled over onto his side, facing away from McBride and raised his knees to his chest.

‘We should get going, Jamie,’ Sandra said.

‘You go out and start the car. I have to speak to the orderly for a moment.’ Sandra started off down between the beds, turning left out of the ward and disappeared.

‘I will write as soon as we arrive,’ said McBride.

Again Sevo said nothing.

‘Please Sevo! Won’t you look at me?’

Sevo remained coiled up, facing away from McBride. It had made him feel sick hearing Sandra use the name Jamie; a name he had not heard anyone else use for him until then.

For a moment, Sevo considered turning around and saying something, but as he readied himself, the militaristic sound of a woman’s heeled shoes came fast and heavy towards the bed.

‘Keys!’ It was Sandra.

‘Sorry,’ said McBride, ‘I’ll follow you out.’

All of a sudden the harsh, stilted sound started up again and Sevo wound himself tighter still, the few wisps of hair that remained on his chin brushing up against his knees.

McBride lent over and gently kissed Sevo’s hair.

‘Goodbye, soldier-boy,’ he said. ‘I love you.’

Sevo followed the sound of McBride’s footsteps, which squeaked a little each time he pressed down on the polished floor of the ward, until there was nothing left. Nothing at all. Not even the warmth of a kiss or the recollection of the way things were before.

*

The Barzini’s lived on the seventh floor of a government building, opposite the park. They were second generation Italians, who, unlike most of their kinsmen, had chosen to live south of the river. Joe, the husband, was dying of cancer. Maria, the wife, was not. She would rather take on “the trouble” (this was her word for Joe’s cancer) herself, and when speaking to the obdurate surgeons and doctors that incessantly hovered around Joe’s bed, often said that Joe had simply “got himself hurt…” before asking why no one was doing anything to “fix things”.

The only thing Maria now enjoyed, since Joe was no longer around to absorb her rectilinear remarks, was sleep. Or rather the feeling of it approaching. As she lay there at night, still bitter about Joe’s self-centred cancer, a great hand would unfurl before her and she would take it. It was the hand of night, warm and unashamedly reassuring. On its fingers hung the beads of a tattered rosary. Underneath each bead rose tiny hairs which Maria often compared to the spindly legs of mosquitoes. Rangy legs attached to sooty bodies which, come morning, firmly and deliberately commenced to bite.

Joe had laid some pretty heavy news on Maria, just two weeks before he was diagnosed. Like a heartbreaking record one can never listen to alone, he spoke of another love, of setting up another home. He even had a name for that love, that home: Luisa. Luisa Ancelli. Another Italian. The first time Maria heard this name, this Italian name, she felt an angry pocket of air rising up from her belly. ‘And Italian, no less!’ she bellowed. ‘Get out of here, now! get out! get out! OUT!’ Which is just what Joe did, until, two days later a routine trip to the quack with a persistent backache turned into a death sentence.

Maria stood thinking back on these events at a seventh floor window. At the same window where her and Joe used to stand and make jokes about their poverty. ‘I’d steal the bleach from the water, if I could,’ Joe used to say, and they would laugh without ever feeling the relief of having done so. Maria thought about Luisa the Italian and Joe’s cancer, about the angry pocket of air that was now immovable at the base of her throat and suddenly becoming flatulent, published a tear or two heavily scented with a fear of the abyss, a knowing of the unknown.

*

It was a good morning, Sevo thought. There was a heavy condensation on the windows and as it dripped down on to the sunny, wooden sill, forming puddles in the splintered surface, he was reminded of the sweet scent of damp timber yards on summer mornings after a night of heavy rain.

Across the ward, George was working on Barzini. Sevo watched as he jerked the catheter bag away from its nozzle and saw a few drips fall and then tick as they hit the hard, polished floor. Barzini’s concave cheeks blushed a little as he heard the sound.

‘Watch your step, Georgie!’ he began, ‘The footing’s rough down there now that...’ Barzini coughed. He always coughed at the end of sentences he did not know how to finish.

‘Playing with the audible ellipsis again, Barzi?’ Sevo asked.

‘You’re crazy,’ replied Barzini, his smirking mouth contracting in to a vaudevillian cough. ‘All the English are that way. Look at Georgie here.’

‘I’m Scottish,’ George replied.

‘That’s alright by me,’ said Barzini, ‘But the English…like cats caught up in a whirlwind concerned only by the thought of rain.’

After lunch came the real Barzini Cancer. His wife, Maria, sat rabbit-eyed at the side of his bed. Sevo had watched as she came in at the head of the column, followed by Barzini’s mother, sister and those Barzini described as “people who claim to be related to me in some way.”

Beside his wife sat Sara, the mother, and next to her, Angellina, the sister. Then came Otto, Angellina’s husband. To Barzini’s left, his nephew, also Otto.

‘How is it, Barzi? Sara asked, flushed, her corduroy hands nodding as one, curled into a loose fist just above the bed.

‘What?’ Barzini replied.

‘Always the smart one, Joe,’ Sara said. ‘And look at you now! Mama! Mama! Di’graziato, male detto!’

‘So Joe,’ it was big Otto trying to calm things down some. ‘The new tiles for the kitchen were delivered today. Terracotta, you know!’

‘Christ!’ Barzini said.

‘This boy of mine!’ Sara exclaimed, lifting her hands from the bed and shaking them energetically as if about to throw some dice.

Sevo was watching little Otto lightly kicking at the tubes and cables that were keeping Barzini alive. He wondered if the kid knew something everyone else was blind to. Perhaps little Otto knew that this whole charade was pointless, that Barzini was going to die and it didn’t mean shit if he liked to have a lend of his mother or indulge in the odd blasphemous aside.

‘Say Sevo,’ barked Barzini across the ward. ‘How did a crazy Englishman like you end up with a spic name like Sevo?’

‘I’m Spanish, you dumb bastard!,’ Sevo roared back.

‘Ha!’

‘So does that mean I’m not crazy?’

‘That depends,’ said Barzini. ‘How long have you been in England?’

‘Twenty five years.’

‘Then you may well have caught it by now.’

‘How would I know?’

‘How is you sperm count?’

‘Ask your mother, Banzi.’ Sevo and Barzini were on a dead man’s roll now. This was the most fun they had had in some time, and not even The Barzini Cancer was going to turn the brakes on them.

‘How’s yours?’ Asked Sevo.

‘Ask McBride.’

‘Not Louisa?’

‘Who’s Louisa?’ Asked Sara, who was done tossing dice. Instantly, Sevo knew he had gone too far. Barzini looked at his wife, who looked at Barzini’s mother, who looked at Angellina.

‘Louisa from the deli?’ Asked Angellina hopefully, a little embarrassed

‘No,’ said Maria, ‘Not Louisa from the deli. Joe, who’s this Louisa your friend is talking about? Mama wants to know.’

‘He’s no friend of mine,’ said Joe. ‘Why don’t you ask him who Louisa is…’

‘You,’ said Maria, looking at Sevo, ‘Tell Mama who Louisa is.’ Joe was looking pretty bad. The sound of his catheter bag filling was the only thing to affect the silence, until, with her rabbit-eyes pointed straight at Sevo, in fact with the entire Barzini Cancer pointed straight at him, there came what now seemed to Sevo to be a gift straight from the gods: a fart!

‘Auntie farted!’ said little Otto, full of enthusiasm.

‘Shut up, Otto!’ Maria said. ‘Well, spic, who’s this Louisa?’ Just then, the militaristic sound of a woman’s heeled shoes came fast and heavy towards the bed. It was Sandra, McBride’s wife.

‘Where’s Jamie?’ Asked Sandra, her face flushed. She was carrying a bottle of Bushmills in her right hand, half full, and in her left, a piece of creme letter paper.

‘You’re asking me?’ Sevo replied.

‘Dirty bastard wasn’t even man enough to leave me for another woman,’ Sandra began. ‘He’s left me for this…’ she said, stuttering, turning to the Barzini’s and pointing at Sevo, ‘This dead man!’

Again the gods seemed to be on Sevo’s side, as, even louder than before, Maria farted.

‘Don’t even think about it, Otto,’ said Maria to the child, who was holding both hands over his now heavily inflated mouth.

‘What do you want me to say?’ said Sevo, crossing his hands behind his head and shuffling up a little in the bed.

‘Why don’t you tell Mama who Louisa is,’ said Maria. Sevo did not reply, Sandra took a hit on the whisky and Joe punctuated the exchange with muted, rasping coughs.

‘OK, Mama,’ began Sevo, ‘Louisa is the woman Joe’s been humping behind Maria’s back, and Sandra, your husband is a homosexual and he was a homosexual long before he met me. If you are looking for someone to blame, don’t.’

Joe was coughing more and more now. The sound was awful, like the futile roar a flooded lawn mower . Sara began shaking the dice again and, finding her feet, called out to George, the orderly.

Barzini was in a lot of pain.

‘I can’t catch my breath,’ he said to George.

‘He’s going to die?’ asked Sevo.

‘It’s not good,’ said George.

‘Georgie!’ It was Sevo, nodding towards Sara, who was not looking too clever herself. ‘She’s going to pass out!’

George calmly went round to the other side of the bed, took Sara by the arm and led her slowly towards a vacant bed to Joe’s left.

‘Sit here a moment,’ said George. ‘You,’ he was looking at big Otto. ‘Take her hand and see that she doesn’t try to get up.’

‘Take this one next, lord!’ said Sandra, pointing a long tawny finger at Sevo, slurring her words a little and gazing up towards the ceiling. She’s drunk, thought Sevo, watching her slowly closing both her eyes, then tilting her head slightly to one side.

‘Which of you wants to stay with him?’ George asked. ‘It’s not good.’

‘Goddamn this shit!’ said Sandra, turning a little too quickly on her heels and almost falling, before finding her legs to be where she needed them to be and swaying off somewhat theatrically down the hall.

‘Everyone except the boy,’ said Maria.

‘Can you put me in the chair, George?’ said Sevo. ‘I’d rather wait out in the hall.’

‘One moment,’ said George, sliding a needle into Joe’s arm, checking his watch and holding Joe’s wrist until the coughing eased.

‘Will you take the boy with you?’ said Angellina.

‘Yes.’ said Sevo.

George went out into the hall for a moment and came back pushing an old looking wheel chair with minuscule wheels at the front, and what looked like two full sized bicycle wheels in the rear. Sevo sat up as best he could and, using his down turned fists to help him move across the bed, sat about upright on the edge. George held him under the armpits and helped him into the chair, then took hold of the handles and walked Sevo and the boy down and out of the ward.

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