Somewhere East of Life. Brian Aldiss

of difficulties, one on top of another, and a very great uncertainty and diversity in the school of wisdom itself …

      Perhaps that is how I was, Burnell thought. Uncertain. Perhaps it was my nature – and not despicable in Montaigne’s eyes. In which case, my dilemma at present is but a special instance of a more general one. He turned the word ‘certain’ over in his mind, as if it were a curious stone found on a seashore. The great conquerors of history had all been certain. Alexander, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Shi Huang Di, the First Emperor of China. He wasn’t sure but he thought he had never been built in that mould. His father’s tyranny had been enough.

      One sign of his lack of the tyrannical gene was that he could not beat Dr Kepepwe at tennis.

      After they had played in the echoing court, they drank lemonade together in a deserted canteen. She said she must get along home, but seemed in no hurry to go. On the contrary, she tried to discover how much he knew of recent history, exclaiming with a mixture of delight and dismay when he did not know who was Britain’s Prime Minister, or what had happened recently to the royal family.

      Her view of England was that it had now become like Ireland, a country with so much unemployment and such a lack of manufacturing base that many people were forced to go abroad for a living. Blacks and Asiatics, in consequence, claimed a greater role in running the country; it was they, by and large, who were fighting a Muslim insurrection in the Midlands. Dr Kepepwe portrayed the Midlands as an alien land; she was, she explained, a Southerner.

      When she asked Burnell what he could remember, he told her of a boyhood trekking holiday in Iceland on which his father had taken him and his brother. It remained as a landmark in misery and humiliation.

      She asked him how he enjoyed working in Germany. She had a fear of Germany. Did he not think continually of Hitler’s Final Solution and the terrible crime of murdering six million Jews, gipsies, blacks, and other harmless people?

      ‘I used to think about it, I suppose,’ Burnell told her. ‘But your question is part of a wider question. Watch the TV news. Terrible slaughter is taking place today in the Crimea, the Caucasus, Bosnia, and elsewhere. The wider question is why humanity is so appallingly cruel – man against man, man against woman, individually and en masse. If there were a God, he would have thrown up his hands in despair by now.’

      ‘No, no,’ said Dr Kepepwe, shaking her head and much of her body. ‘God never gives up.’

      As she was leaving, the doctor said, ‘I’m alone at present while my husband David is away. How I miss him.’ She represented him as the best husband a woman could have, saying proudly that he had won the Isle of Wight Sea-Fishing Trophy two years in succession. He was a brain surgeon and everyone respected him.

      David Kepepwe had volunteered to serve under General Stalinbrass in Russia, where surgeons and doctors were badly needed; he was in the Crimea at present. She hoped he was still alive.

      ‘Well, maybe I’ve talked too much to my prize patient. Tell me honestly how you feel in yourself.’

      Without thinking, he said, ‘An ocean, Doctor. A wide ocean with only a small island here and there. No continents. The continents have sunk into the depths …’

      That quizzical regard again. ‘FOAM, that’s what they call it. “Free Of All Memory”. You were lucky the villains didn’t steal everything. And there are advantages. I have bad things I’d like to forget. Think of the foam on that private ocean of yours. Remember, “oceanic” has good connotations, so don’t worry. I’ll see you in the morning.’

      In her office, Dr Kepepwe kept a well-behaved dog which waited patiently for her throughout her spells of duty. It was at least in part a long-haired terrier. Burnell learnt later its name was Barker. He saw the doctor collect Barker as she picked up her things to go home. The dog needed no lead. It was a dignified little animal, and gave Burnell a hard sidelong look to indicate that any patting would be regarded as condescending: also somewhat animalist.

      As Dr Kepepwe left with a wave of the hand, Barker followed at unhurried pace, walking stiffly, looking terribly English. Burnell could imagine it with a copy of The Times tucked under one arm. It and its mistress vanished into the dark to her car and a little unknown nook somewhere.

      ‘Whatever crimes and errors I committed over the past ten years, they’ve been wiped cleaner than if I’d been in a confessional. The Catholics should rig up EMV in all their confessionals. The forgiveness of sins could then be followed by the forgetfulness of sins … Which might make human life easier …’

      Once the doctor and her dog had left, loneliness overcame him. He knew no one, not even himself.

      Switching on his TV set, he found the movie channel was about to show a fantasy film of ancient vintage. Obispo Artists presented Brute of Kerinth, which he began indolently to watch. The film had immediate appeal in his anomic condition since the action was set on a planet and its moon far from Earth. The special effects pleased him, but the happenings, centring on a lost heir and a throne, were those of an historic costume drama. He lost interest, switched off, and gazed at the ceiling instead.

      When a half-hour had dragged by, he got himself on the move.

      Walking about the echoing hospital in his white gown, calm, savouring his own ghostliness, he imagined himself in an empty fishtank. Active steps were being taken to trace anyone who had known him during those ten lost years. Colleagues, parents. The confusions of war, the tight security now covering Britain, made ordinary communication difficult. But all would be well. He would be reunited with Stephanie in due course.

      In the long antiseptic corridors, green LCDs winked, often accompanied by hums and growls. The entrails of a glacier received him.

      Under cover of his ghostliness, he invaded Rosemary Kepepwe’s office. All there was neat and anonymous, conventional down to the stained coffee mug on the filing cabinet. On the desk beside a monitor screen stood a framed photograph of husband David. Shining black, he smiled into the camera, standing beside a large fish on a weighing-scale. Burnell recognized an Isle of Wight Sea-Fishing Trophy when he saw one. Another photograph showed two smiling boys in their early teens, with Barker standing meditatively beside them. He wondered about their lives. There was small ground on which to speculate. Dr Kepepwe was little more than an embodiment of kindness and a fast backhand.

      Burnell’s steps were solitary on the antiseptic tiled stairs. No use to question who had lived, survived, faded away under pain-killers, within these walls. The quota of patients had been cleared out. He was almost alone.

      The news was bad. The hospital awaited a new intake: dying and wounded from a fatal engagement in the Crimea. Military men from all the armies involved were being flown here for treatment. Together with the soldiers heading for the Radioactivity Unit would be sick scientists – scientists, Burnell had been told, who had flown out to Bulgaria to deal with a nuclear plant going critical, and had suffered high doses of radiation. The emergency militarization of the hospital was being carried out under a cloak of secrecy, as all Swindon knew.

      Taking a service lift up to the roof, he reflected that at any day now the wards would be filled with men harpooned by their wounds, poised on the brink of final white-out. What of the dead Larry? Had something in his cannonball head been moved to imitate the wider carnage taking place across the Crimea, Georgia and elsewhere? Had poor Larry mistaken Bishops Linctus for Stavropol, and died believing in his own gallantry?

      On the roof of the hospital stood air-conditioning plants, breathing out their stale breath. The grimy air of Swindon had painted them black. Burnell went to the parapet and looked over. In the darkness, evidence for the town was mainly electric; lines of street lights, glows from houses, beams of car headlights. By such tokens, the presence of humanity could be hypothesized.

      A cat approached him, daintily balancing along the parapet. It came without fear, to manoeuvre under one of his arms. As soon as he stroked it, the cat began to purr. Burnell put a cheek against the neat little head and addressed it affectionately.

      Overhead the stars shone, remotely promising something better than the brief rush of