The Search for Joyful (11 page)

Robert had found us and put an arm around each. He was perfectly at ease. Indeed he was at home in this frenetic strobe-light jungle that pierced you with drums and syncopated music intoned by a beautiful black singer.

“How do you like it? Exciting, huh?” I nodded numbly as he pointed. “Over here they're shooting craps. The dice have to bounce off the rail for the throw to count. If they don't, look out, some thug is apt to chop off your hand.” One player was talking to his dice, beseeching them. A woman was kissing hers. Everything was extravagant, exaggerated.

“And over here, Montreal's own game, barbotte. You'll find it played in any alley for penny stakes—and here for enough money to buy all the buildings on the Place d'Armes.”

He herded us over for a better look. “It's the stupidest dice game ever invented: five winning combinations, five losing, nothing else counts. A strictly even chance, minus the cut of up to five percent the house skims off on each roll. Played with tiny ‘peewee' dice, easy to shave. No skill, no strategy, no technique whatsoever—just plain dumb luck.”

Crowded around the table were a raucous and ill-assorted bunch of frenzied gamblers, some dressed to the nines, one who looked as though he'd slept in the bus station. This man, unshaven and reeking of cabbage, was rolling the dice, a mad gleam in his eyes.

“That's Marcel. They call him Magister Ludi, King of the Games. He has more luck than any living person, of both kinds, good and bad. You should have been here last week when he came in without an overcoat. He pawned it for six bucks, lost that stake in two rolls, scraped his pockets for all the change he had on him, lost that, and finally panhandled nickels and dimes from the spectators to make a last two-dollar bet. He won. And won again. Walked away at closing time with more than seven thousand dollars. He bought a new wardrobe, paid a year's room and board in advance at some fleabag inn, and he's back tonight losing the rest.”

Making room for the vultures who wanted to savor Magister Ludi's bankruptcy, Robert finally brought us to a table where he was welcomed by players and croupiers alike.

“This is my game,” he announced. “Roulette.
Le rouge et le noir.
”

Through the din I heard the croupier calling numbers and colors, the French words an invocation.

“So, little ladies,” Robert adapted his manner to the place, “what is your pleasure? What will it be? Red or black? Even or odd? Columns? Rows? Or thirty-five to one on your lucky number?”

“You go ahead, Robert,” Mandy urged. “Kathy and I will just watch until we get the hang of it.”

“No,” I declared. When the pony sheds! Where did he get off, standing me up? “Place your bet, Robert. And I will too.”

“Kathy!” Mandy was as amazed by this new side of me as I was. “Are you really going to?”

I laughed and repeated her words back to her, “No use going to a gambling casino if you don't gamble.”

“A woman after my own heart,” Robert encouraged.

“In that case . . .” Mandy followed reluctantly.

Robert stepped up to the roulette table and placed his chips on Black. The croupier barked his warning call, the gigantic wheel spun, sending out sparks of light, and the money was raked away. Bettors lost and bettors won, their winnings added to the piles in front of them.

I picked a person with a mountain of chips before him, a gentleman with a malacca cane adorned in mother-of-pearl. The handle unscrewed, and out came a small flask from which he refreshed himself in moments of stress. He seemed to be the luckiest one there, and when he put his chips on Red, I emptied my purse and placed the first and last bet of my life.

My last, because after it was explained to me in French that the house accepted only chips, not cash, and the croupier with a resigned expression exchanged my money for a small, very small pile from a store he kept for ignorant females—to the relief of impatient gamblers and a crowd of kibbitzers the lighted wheel could be spun again, the winning number proclaimed, and the long arm of the rake descend to capture three weekends of movies and Sister Egg's ten dollars.

It was gone in under thirty seconds, including the conference with the croupier. The gentleman with the malacca cane barely paused to resupply his hoard. I couldn't do this. Mine was gone. Forever.

I realized a rather dull evening stretched before me. I should have patronized the slot machines, where I could have drawn out the excitement. I realized I was wrong about Mandy too. She didn't seem ready to confide anything to me. Perhaps I'd been mistaken, and there was nothing to confide.

So I amused myself watching as the strobe lights traversed the room, spotlighting one client after another. An elderly woman with a figure like a girl's, who wore both slacks and jewels, a large bald man, who squinted at the light and waved it angrily away—then the light found Mandy. She was watching Robert a few feet away at the roulette wheel. There was an odd expression on her face. When Robert was picked out, I was struck once more by his relaxed, self-confident manner. Was he too much at home here? That might put Mandy's expression into context—it was worry. Or was it fear?

I laughed at myself and inhaled the disgusting smell of brilliantine. With his back to me and shielding himself from the strobes in a row of slot machines was the one called Frankie. He was also watching.

He was watching Mandy.

 
I DROPPED BY to see Sister Egg with the first of my repayments, and she gave me two letters. I tore open Crazy Dancer's first. A letter from a sister can wait.

 
There was a P.S., an army post office number where I could write him. On this he abbrevated his name to just Crazy.

I glanced away smiling. He hadn't stood me up. He thought of me, just as I thought of him. He missed me—a lot.

“Good news, Kathy?” Sister Egg regarded me contemplatively.

“Oh yes. From someone I didn't expect to hear from.” I had to look away from her gaze to hide the fact that I was out-of-all-proportion joyful.

And she was rewarded for being her good egg self with wonderful news. The Reverend Mother had quietly quashed the bingo scheme. But at the last minute when Ruth was about to be separated from the service and dispatched, not to Arizona but to some inferior institution, one of the radiology technicians admitted she had accidentally splashed some drops of hypo on the film. At the time she hadn't realized what had happened, and only later associated the accident with the diagnosis of lung lesions that had showed up on Ruth's X ray.

I don't think Ruth herself could have been more elated than Sister Egg. “A girl with an appetite like that I knew couldn't have tuberculosis.”

I had opened the letters in inverse proportion to their importance. Connie's was the most thrilling.

 
I stopped reading and hugged the letter. What if “someday” was now? What if I too—?

I carried the letters back to my room and waved them at Mandy. “What do you know—my sister, Connie, is in love.”

At this announcement of mine, her eyes filled with tears.

I looked away, pretending not to see them. Whatever it was, she kept it to herself.

I wrote Connie immediately, trying not to let any of the uneasiness I felt about Mandy come through. While I was enthusing to Connie, saying how happy I was for her, I kept remembering how happy Mandy had been. Love, I thought, must be difficult.

More about the romance came the next day from Mama Kathy. Jeff, according to her, was perfect for Connie. And she put in details that Connie didn't bother with. He was a stress analyst who worked in the same plant as Connie. His job was on some sort of experimental aircraft. It was very important work. In fact, it struck me that everything about Jeff began with a superlative. He was very handsome, very talented, very important. I wondered how Georges would feel about this
very very
person who wanted to marry his twin.

I was answered in the next mail delivery. Georges, in a hasty scrawl, wanted to know a lot more about “this Jeff character.”

Like pups from the same litter, we three were headed in different directions.

Mama's world had brought me far, given me an education and a profession. But it didn't accept me. And, what was worse, didn't admit it didn't. As a student nurse I had gained respect and the confidence of the Sisters and my fellows. During working hours I was on an equal footing, there were shared jokes, friendly remarks; I was included. Mama always said—
Kathy is to be included.
Here, at the hospital, my uniform was a badge of admittance. Out of it, my status disappeared, and I wasn't included except once or twice as an afterthought. That's when I remembered how much kindness can hurt.

Looked at fairly, Mama's white world had prepared me, as few Indian girls were, to take a place in it. But had I left room for joy? Happiness I long ago rejected as not good enough—it must be joy that lifted you up to the skies. Joy at seeing, feeling, hearing, joy at being in the world. Joy became my prayer. The only prayer, Sister Egg tells me, God wants to hear.

So each day I remind myself I am Oh-Be-Joyful's Daughter, and look for a piece of joy to take to bed at night. I seize on a cloud lighted by a sinking sun, or the pattern in a leaf, or the reds and golds autumn brought, and wrap myself in it before sleeping.

But in the morning I have to face the pain, the useless bravery and hopeless courage in the wards. I couldn't get the ulcer case out of my mind. The ulcer broke through to the stomach, and a nasogastric tube was used to suction it. That afternoon the patient died.

Not “the patient.”
Ralph. Ralph died.
I was hiding from his name. You can't allow names, they make it too real.

No one expected him to die. It was a shock. I kept reviewing the plasma drip I'd been responsible for. But that had gone routinely. I could think of nothing I could have done to keep him alive. So I played a game of dominoes with cot 14, remembering to call him Bob. The dominoes were bone, not wood, and the clicking sound gave him a great deal of pleasure.

“Is there any strategy to this game?” I asked. “It just seems to be matching ends.”

Bob's answer was a grin. “You got to beat me before you complain about it being too easy.” Midway in the game he said, “No holding out. If you
can
play, you got to.”

I gained a new respect for the game. It was like life: you have to play if you can play. And those pieces that were sidelined? You had to forget them and go on.

 
THE WAR ITSELF was a morass of contradictions, fought from the fogs off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland where wolf packs hid, to the sands of el-Alamein with Rommel falling back to Tunisia chased by Anderson's First Army. Massive German reinforcements arrived, and the battle seesawed.

I don't think in Washington, Ottawa, or London they really knew how the war was going. A victory here offset a defeat there.

Outside Stalingrad German troops were mired by winter. In the Pacific Admiral Halsey mounted an offensive against an island I'd never heard of—Guadalcanal. U.S. and Aussie troops attacked the Japanese in Burma and drove them out of Gona.

Recently there were German prisoners among our patients. I found it difficult to even approach them. There they lay, looking like everybody else. They didn't wear the blue-gray uniform of prisoners, with the large red circle in the middle of the back, a target in case they tried to escape. No, they were in the usual white hospital gowns.

They might look like anybody else, but they were responsible for the shrapnel cases, the amputees, the boy with infected shell fragments in his back. One of them might have killed the Clark boy. And what about cot 19? It was not impossible they had had a part in John's face being shattered, or the abscessed jaw in the corner, with yellow streaks seeping into the fibers of the dressing. They were Nazis, the horde that overran Europe, occupied Paris, bombed London.

The senior nurses were slow in answering their calls and more and more it was left to me. I tried not to think that even now their comrades were trying to kill Georges. Lying helpless on army cots they were just more broken bodies with the same fear-filled questioning eyes. Yet when they cried out, it was in guttural words I didn't understand.

They didn't ask anything of us, there were no requests. It was clear they found their position a peculiar one. While they themselves had been captured, they knew—
we
—knew that in the broader theater of the war Germany was the victor. Everywhere land was taken, ships sunk, populations driven into camps. They must wonder why we inferior peoples didn't recognize that we were conquered. Why didn't we give up and admit defeat?