Vital Parts (29 page)

He said: “We all know what has been said on certain historic occasions, Mr. Mainwaring. The ‘What hath God wrought' sort of thing. Now we can begin to write
our
script. The responsibility is staggering. It will be quoted forever. How do you feel as the first man to have a crack at eternal life?”

In spite of himself Reinhart looked again at Splendor, from under whose sheets a rubber tube traveled to an upended bottle hanging on a chromium pole. For a moment Reinhart thought of it that way: that Splendor was being drained, against gravity, into the bottle—certainly not; he was being fed intravenously. But when you were being devoured by cancer, where did your carnal mass go? Matter can neither be destroyed nor created. Splendor had been physically a splendid man. There could be scarcely seventy pounds of him left. Dying was, among other things, a materialistic mystery.

Reinhart asked: “Should you be talking this much? We don't want to tire you.”

Splendor laughed distantly, his sheet trembling. “I'm useless for anything else. … Who can say what the world will be when I awake from that long sleep? Man by then, physically speaking, may be largely synthetic. And what kind of morality he will embrace may be an utterly different thing from what we have seen. All religions have been responses to the fact of death. Those promising an afterlife have generally demanded adherence to a code comprising many prohibitions referring to the weaknesses of the flesh. What does the worship of God have to do with eating pork or not? A great deal, if you were an old desert Jew or Moslem. You might die from tainted meat. …”

Dying had not changed Splendor. He had always loved this sort of concept-spinning. And now, of course, nobody could say it was not appropriate to his condition, but Sweet had a job to do, one which would certainly benefit Splendor if it worked and would not hurt him if it failed.

There was a noise at the front door. The nurse opened it to reveal the party of Black Assassins surrounding the small figure of Streckfuss, who was grinning obsequiously.

“Madame,” he said to the nurse, “I am expected,
s'il vous plaît
. Could you explain to zese gentlemen—” He looked and saw Sweet. “Ah, Bopp!” Streckfuss coyly clawed the air in salutation and started in, but left the threshold, walking in air, as two guards lifted him at the elbows.

Sweet turned to Captain Storm, who subsequently made a signal to his stalwarts. The little scientist scampered inside as soon as he was released.

“You are the afflicted?” he asked the recumbent Splendor.

“No doubt about it,” Splendor said amiably.

“
Alors!
” Streckfuss cried, peering at the ghastly face on the pillow. “Intestinal malignancy?”

Reinhart's own bowels squirmed. “Must we talk of these things now?” he asked. “You can go over the whole situation with his doctor.”

Splendor's eyes were quick. He said: “You are a principal in this project, Carlo?”

“Splendor, I would have come as a friend, you know that, but I was not aware until the call came in. May I say this is not a profit-making venture.”

But Splendor was answering Streckfuss. “You can tell that by looking at my face? Great God, you must be gifted. Yes, it is my colon.”

“I expect zey wanted to remove it surgically,” Streckfuss said, nodding obsessively. “Surgery has no blace in medicine. I call it carpentry! It is but a hobby, did you know? But practiced on living tissue.” He was developing a fury and glared at Splendor.

“They were at a loss,” said the patient.

The little Swiss shouted: “Of course zey were. So anozzer living person is taken to pieces. The large intestine is of course virtually useless. We could do quite well to be born wissout a colon. But having one, we make it of necessity part of our integrity. You do not excize a piece of zuh body without affecting the unity of the whole, threatening the very fine equilibrium of blood, nerves, muscles, the distribution of weight, zuh ahnatomical zymmetry.”

“Listen to that, Raymond,” said Splendor, putting an eye towards his son, who remained at the rear.

Captain Storm shrugged. “I am forced to,” he said with evident disgust.

“Raymond is a mechanistic rationalist,” Splendor explained.

In the presence of his father he seemed much more of a boy. Reinhart had known Splendor's own dad slightly, and it was interesting to compare the three generations. Splendor had always been rather loftily superior to his father, a small, lively man who, the first time Reinhart had come upon him, had been burning a car for the insurance. A more practical type than his son. There was a theory that a grandfather's traits jumped a generation and landed in the grandson. Reinhart was inclined to take Storm's militarism seriously, not the uniform so much as the gun. Something new in the Mainwaring family was the hostility towards white men. But Storm had displayed less of it since entering the sickroom. Instead he was now sulky. That is why he seemed more boyish than earlier. Reinhart saw that relations with Blaine would probably be less abrasive if he, Reinhart, were dying: a radical solution.

“Splendor,” said Reinhart, “I think before we proceed, we should get hold of your doctor. He may take some convincing if he is the conservative sort. But if you insist he must finally give way. It certainly helps to find you in such a positive frame of mind.”

“Carlo,” Splendor said, “we live in a remarkable time. The phony is constantly turning into the real, and vice versa. God knows what the world will be when I am revived.”

Reinhart felt suddenly impelled to make a sanctimonious utterance. Here he was, a stranger in his boyhood home. If he searched the baseboards he would surely find certain dents he had put there with a toy tractor almost forty years before—the kind of damage too slight to repair, too inconsequential to be noticed by anybody but the maker thereof; the world was full of that sort of evidence, which lasted long after great buildings and massive bridges were pulled down for the erection of other transitory phenomena. Enormous mountains had been leveled for the railroads, for example, and now the latter were on their way out. The trick to survival was to accomplish something of no utility, and so small as to be inconspicuous.

However, what he said was designed to conceal his actual feelings, which seemed overly personal and perhaps downright racist. He kept telling himself that if his old home had to be occupied by someone else, how nice it was a Negro, to whom it represented progress. And the truth was that Reinhart never missed this place once Dad had died. All the same he found himself hating Splendor for choosing this house to die in.

Therefore he said: “I hope when you return to the world the people of all races will be living like brothers.”

From behind him Captain Storm howled. “I knew he'd get around to saying that sooner or later. A black man lies there eaten up by white disease, cheated and lied to by white doctors, in a white house for which we had to pay the white owner three times what it was worth, listening to white quacks promise him eternal life, and sure as shit one of them will talk about brotherhood.”

All this while Streckfuss had been nosing around the table, peering into bottles and vials, and now he lifted the sheet which covered Splendor and inspected him. Thank God the angle was not one from which Reinhart could see much. Reinhart backed away into the opposite corner, the former site of a drumtop table which for years had borne a picture of himself at twelve. The same was now displayed on Maw's dresser at Senior City. She was partial to the image, the last on which he would ever be represented with a grin.

“Raymond,” said Splendor over Streckfuss' bent head, “if you must use foul language it will not be in my presence.”

“I'm leaving,” his son said. At the door he blurted boyishly: “I'm sorry, sir.” And went out onto the porch.

Reinhart was careful to look at the floor, but he was most favorably impressed. Also he was astounded. Had he remonstrated with Blaine in this fashion the upshot would have been much worse than the original infraction.

“He's a good boy,” said Splendor, “but he is inclined to talk too much.” He shifted slightly under Streckfuss' examination.

Reinhart said: “He's a fine-looking fellow. I didn't even know you were married, Splendor. We've got a lot of personal history to fill in for each other.”

Splendor seemed detached from Streckfuss' rummaging about on him. There must not be much left to freeze. The restorers of the future would have their work cut out for them; Reinhart had always assumed the first man they froze would be a stranger to him. He felt now as if he were in the position of a doctor who treated a member of his own family. He himself would be part of Splendor's memory, arrested in ice: an eerie thought.

Streckfuss replaced the sheet at Splendor's chin and straightened up. “I must have a specimen of your your-reen,” he said. “I can make you comfortable meanwhile. Do not please take any more of zeze poisons.” He pointed to the medication on the table. “And zis nourishment is useless.” The hanging bottle. “I shall replace it with something else. But if your physician knows about zis he will undoubtedly object. Therefore discharge him.”

Splendor said calmly: “In view of my condition that won't be simple.”

“It is your damned life, is it not?” Streckfuss asked indignantly. But then he made an abrupt gesture, “Yes, it would look zuspicious. Above all, my presence must not be made known.” He peered violently around the room. So did Reinhart. The nurse was not there at the moment. “Mr. Mainwaring,” the Swiss went on, “I must tell you I am not licensed to practice medicine in this country. Are you troubled by zis disclosure?”

“Not much,” said Splendor. “You see, I'm dying.”

Streckfuss narrowed his eyes and looked towards Reinhart. “Perhaps,” he said.

“Freezing is not illegal,” said Reinhart. “Bob has that all checked out. As far as law is concerned, the body is dead—forgive me, Splendor, talking this way, but—”

“I want all the details,” said Splendor. “Squeamishness is for those who plan to stay deceased.”

Reinhart went to the bedside. “Old friend,” he said, “everything's going to come out all right. By the way, I don't know whether you know it, but this happens to be the house in which I was raised.”

Splendor smiled wearily. “Yes, I know that. It gives me a feeling I suppose you could call serenity.” He closed his eyes, and the nurse returned to show out the trio from Cryon.

10

“Why,” said Maw, “you big sentimental slob. When you were little you wouldn't let me cuddle you. I'd come near you as a baby and you would ball your tiny fists. So don't get sloppy at this late date.”

Reinhart had asked her if she remembered holding him as an infant, and what lullabies he had seemed to like especially. They sat in her room at Senior City. The bed did up to form a sofa of modern design. The other furniture was all-purpose as it stood, no converting necessary, and made of an impervious synthetic wood that looked like plastic and could not be touched by the results of routine forgetfulness: a cigarette dropped onto the coffee-occasional-bedside-card table would dwindle away harmlessly into gray powder and could be whisked off with a Kleenex.

“OK, then,” said Reinhart, coming clean. “What I really came about was that check you gave me the other day. You see, it bounced.”

Maw grinned into his face, though not with amusement. “Far from accidental, buddy-boy,” she said.

Reinhart's smile signified polite incomprehension. “I'm a little confused, Maw. So much has happened to me in the past couple days, I'm a little slow on the draw.”

“That's rich. When were you speedy?”

“Look,” said her son, “all you had to do was refuse if you didn't want to give me any money. Why go through such an elaborate performance?” He was sitting in an icy draft as usual: another air-conditioning duct was spraying him with chill. And because the outlet was concealed he could not divine whether the cold wind was above, below, or to the side.

“Carlo,” Maw said, “you misrepresented your situation the other day. I have often known you for a fool but never a liar. You have degenerated, boy. I expect you are on your way to the gutter. People homeward bound from a hard day's work will see your body slumped against a wall, an empty wine bottle nearby and the flies buzzing around your stinking mouth.”

Maw always had been capable of creating vivid word-pictures on unpleasant themes. “A shuffling bum in an old Army overcoat, eating in soup kitchens and sleeping in a fifty-cent flop,” she went on. “That's how sex maniacs invariably end.”

She had confused two types of going-bad, perhaps owing to her old prejudice against strong drink. Maw always saw alcoholism behind any villainy. Hitler, a famous teetotaler, was to her but another boozer. It was useless to attack this lifelong mania, but the juxtaposition of sex was quite new.

“Maw, do you intend to explain this assault on my integrity?” The persistent draft was causing his neck to stiffen. It seemed to issue from the blank wall, painted in dusty rose, behind his head, but there was no visible grille.

“I'll talk turkey with you, Carlo. Hardly had you left here the other day when your son made his appearance and showed me how you went at him with a shears. I consider that a vicious stunt—”

In traditional fashion Reinhart was always a child in Maw's presence, but mention of Blaine made him a father, a competitor as parent, and furious.

“He's lucky I didn't cut his throat. My conscience is clean towards that boy. I have given him everything, and he has turned out completely rotten. He has bad blood in him from his mother's side. That's the only explanation. I never used to believe in heredity, but I see it working in him.” Reinhart slammed a hand on the vinyl armrest. It felt like cold liver. He stared wildly around the room. “And where is that goddam air-conditioning coming from? Can't you turn the lousy thing off? I'm catching cold, for God's sake.”