Arithmetic, arithmetock.
Turn the hands back on the clock.
How does the ocean rock the boat?
How did the razor find my throat?
The only strings that hold me here
Are tangled up around the pier.
—Tom Waits, “Alice”
August 1914
Johan woke up. He was holding the weighty silver cross. The shape of the item mattered less to him than the fact that it seemed to have come from some caring soul.
Haunting screams came down the dark corridor. Mickey was having his latest treatment. The mystery remained as to which skanky unfortunate had passed the ailment on to the Irishman. And which self-respectless and repugnant monster had given it to her? There must have been some Untermensch members’ club whose sole membership requirement was to be vile and rotten. Oh well, I guess there’s someone for everyone, Johan thought. Silently he saluted Mickey’s state of mind, for he suspected that it demanded quiet respect.
Johan peered over the mound his feet made at the end of his near-concrete, yet disinfected bed. Gabriel’s bed lay empty. The only time Johan had seen one-legged Gabriel was on an afternoon when the farm-hand (who, as a child, was renowned for sleepwalking, sometimes miles at a time with his black Labrador) had slid himself from his bed, fast asleep. He had hopped in ever-decreasing circles before arriving back at his place of rest. He then fell facedown onto his pillow, to continue his snoring.
Johan glanced at the silent corner to his right. The other young lad was sitting on the edge of his bed, waiting. He was not more than five feet in height and a skeletal eighty pounds, in a grubby grayish dressing gown and bare feet. The boy smiled a quarter smile which suggested that he was capable of not much more. Johan returned the gesture, and in a local dialect spoke to the urchin.
“I’m Johan Thoms. Pleased to meet you, young man.”
“And the same to you, sir. Cicero is the name.” His impeccable manners belied his appearance. “He was a famous Roman, you know.”
“Is that so? And do you have a surname, Cicero?”
“No, sir. Just Cicero. Cicero has no family. None worth mentioning, anyway. The other Cicero had no family and no surname. Cicero was born alone.” He puffed out his meager chest. “And Cicero will bet you all the money in your dressing gown that this is the only Cicero you know, so why would he need a surname, Johan Thoms?”
Johan pulled the corners of his mouth down and tilted his slowly nodding head to the right in agreement.
The lad was as bald as a kettle. Deep shadows circled his dark brown eyes, and sharp bones stuck out from his shoulder blades.
“I have been watching you,” he said. “You need to get out of here.”
“Why? What do you know? Have they been here asking about me?”
“No, I mean that they give you injections, and you will never leave if they keep on showing you newspapers.”
Johan realized that this pattern was true. He needed a cigarette. Cicero went on.
“The nurses are nice, and they like you. More than they did anyone else who has slept or died in your bed.”
Johan was taken aback by the scamp’s forthrightness. He told himself it must be the only way to be when one stares death in the face so cruelly young.
“You have a way with words, Cicero.”
“I don’t know what you two are talking about, but it sounds like nonsense to me,” Josephine announced in English as she came marching in. She fiercely scrubbed her hands on a towel which reeked of bleach, even from ten yards.
“We have a bright young spark here,” Johan said to her, nodding at Cicero. “Nobody warned me.”
“True. That young lad was not behind the door when balls were handed out, if you’ll excuse my French.”
Johan winked at a puzzled, monolingual Cicero.
“She likes you, Emperor Cicero,” Johan whispered (in Serbo-Croat).
The screaming from down the hall abated.
“How did you know he was emperor?” the boy said. “I never told you that. You must be smart to know that. And to speak to the lady nurse in that other language.”
“Not as smart as Cicero. And not as smart as you, when I was your age.”
Cicero looked marginally less pained, his features ever so slightly less gray. “I want to leave. The madman drives everyone crazy, and the nurses could give my bed to someone who needs it more. I could come with you, because you need to leave, too. Can we?”
“That is madness, Cicero. We cannot do that. We need their help. You especially.”
“I need to get out. If I have six months or six years to live, what’s the point of spending them here? I love the nurses, but if I see something of the outside for six days or six hours, it will be worth it.”
“It still makes no sense.”
“Of course it does, because I know what you see in those newspapers. These beds will soon be needed. Or if I go alone, maybe I’ll die before Dubrovnik, then you’ll be to blame.”
The little blighter had located Johan’s Achilles’ heel. Could he really take firsthand evidence of his stupidity here in this very ward? Soldiers bleeding, bawling for their mothers, dying feet away from him?
Could he take another death on his conscience?
The boy was not done. “Imagine if you were a young boy left to die in a hospital. Wouldn’t you want someone to help you?”
Johan’s memory darted back a decade or so. He saw the symmetry. And it was time to move on, in case they were indeed looking for him.
“All right, you damned scamp. Tell me more.”
* * *
By midnight, after having taken advantage of a Last Supper and having raided the stores for some opiates, they were gone.
An unlikely pair, with very different troubles, they headed out at Johan’s command:
“Let’s rusticate!”
* * *
Less than a mile down the road, Johan had Cicero on his shoulders. This went on for an hour or so until they freed a young donkey from a cruelly tight chain. The poor beast had not even been able to reach water. So, after drinking liberally at a nearby creek, he—the mule—was more than happy to take Cicero’s minimal weight.
On they marched, with Johan using the light cast on the moon as a guide to the sun’s position. Cicero leaned forward after ten miles or so. He rested his head, initially on the fuzzy nape of the donkey’s neck and then on a pillow which they had liberated from the ward.
Johan was back in his Schneider’s suit, which had been dusted down and pressed by one of the angels. His shoes were clean. His socks, which had been darned and cleaned, were now on Cicero’s feet. Cicero was in his own pajamas with Johan’s over the top of them, then the tent of Johan’s dressing gown. It would have been comical if it were not so tragic.
Cicero slept with a smile on his face.
Johan tried to take deep breaths and to put his troubles into perspective.
Before long, Angelface or Josephine, starting a new day of loving and giving, would find the empty beds. On Cicero’s pillow, she would see a note. She would open it, read its contents, and run from the ward, to find the other. Not to raise an alarm nor to set out a search party, not to tell the police of a petty thief or two, but to hug her colleague and probably cry with joy. Johan and Cicero were on their way, as friends, to show the sick and ballsy lad the tiniest bit of life. It was moments like this that would give the nurses the fuel they would doubtless need to get through the horrors ahead.
Their beds would be stripped and made ready for more unfortunates. If they were looking for him, they would not find him there!”
* * *
My dearest J.,
Where the hell are you, you silly boy? You know where to find me!
Yours, L. xxx