We Don’t Have the Right

Eda Kriseová

(Translated by Marie Bednar)

It was the month of July. In the blue skies a white cloud slowly grew and took on the shape of a huge righteous God. He resembled a kindly grandpa with a crescent of curly hair around his head and a big, slightly turned-up nose, shaped like a pickle. Before a few birds flew across the cloud, a corner of the God’s mouth drooped a little, the nose straightened itself and thickened at the base. The God was changing into a sombre Greek, with a barely perceptible, all-knowing smile, full of supreme wisdom and love. But neither kindness nor wisdom nor justice nor love survived for long, and shortly a poodle with a curly tail could be seen running across the sky.

It was the month of July, and in the reeds growing at the edges of the pond martins noisily chased insects which were peacefully breeding above the mud. At one time the pond belonged to a monastery, but now nobody took care of it, and little by little the pond was filling up with silt. The smooth surface of the pond was dark; a thin layer of dust and pollen covered it, as is sometimes seen on plums. Only a diving-beetle ruffled the calm surface of the pond from time to time, or a fish, which would briefly surface to gulp a careless fly.

It was the month of July. Lilies were blooming in the gardens, and stonecrop was hanging from the garden walls like scrambled eggs. Even nettles that grew near fences were fragrant then.

Kateřina Urbanová was sitting on a bench in the hospital garden, and only God knew if she noticed him when he briefly appeared in the sky, perhaps to let it be known that he was pleased with giving mankind this beautiful day and nobody spoiling it.

But even if Kateřina did see the God’s image, nobody would know, because she never spoke to a soul. That was part of her sickness. They knew what had happened that night ten years ago from her son – she had tried to kill him, and after that she stopped speaking.

At night Kateřina would climb obediently into the tall hospital bed and immediately fall asleep; she had pills for sleeping and pills for being awake. In the Summer when she sometimes woke up too early in the morning, she would watch the large wet spot on the wall above her bed. The stain resembled the shape of the country where Kateřina was born, grew up and became old. Even from the chair standing next to her bed the stain was visible, and on it she could try to place familiar towns. Or perhaps she saw nothing at all? Nobody knew.

She spent her days in the spacious, poorly-heated social room, wearing a threadbare hospital gown or a maroon sweat shirt, called inexplicably a work suit. She would be wearing long, thick stocking mended at the heels, but the rubber garters securing her stockings always slid down her skinny thighs, and the stockings would end up bunched up around her ankles like fat snakes. As she sat in her short dressing gown, her pale calves full of blue veins were usually exposed. But Kateřina Urbanová never complained. Like the other ladies she was hardy and never caught a cold, even in the winter.

Bare walls, simple chairs, a couple of benches, a high stucco ceiling and barred, narrow windows – that was the common room; the walls were painted yellow, perhaps to create an impression that the room was full of sun. Pots with puny geraniums sat on the windowsills, and pale, sickly vines dropped from beakers affixed here and there to the yellow walls. Thirty eight women sat there in total silence, hands folded on their protruding stomachs, thumbs tucked under the elastic of their sweat pants. They breathed with their mouth slightly open, staring straight ahead. The room smelled of hospital, unwashed hair and waiting – for lunch, for dinner, for the night. Anything else? For Death, of course.

Sometimes their lips moved silently, as they secretly summoned him.

Mrs. Doutlíková would at times almost succeed. He’d be right there, gawking at her with his empty sockets, but in the end he wouldn’t come through, the bastard. Often she had been lucky to find a needle somewhere and stick it into her body. Then, she would sink into her pain blissfully, hoping that the needle would quickly travel to her heart and stop it forever. But the ambulance was always called in time, and Mrs. Doutlítková was rushed to the emergency room. To punish her, they would poke around in her veins without an anaesthetic until they found the needle. The X-ray revealed all that was left of her crushed hopes – the lost needle that never reached her heart, got stuck in her muscles here and there like needles in a pin cushion.

Bare tables, simple chairs, a high ceiling with antique stucco decorations. In the reeds martins were chasing insects, and sparrows were still busy building their nests.

“Doctor, open the door,” Mrs. Střemchová cried in despair, pounding on the door of the nurses’ station. Pursued by her private demons, she had run barefoot along the long, cold hallway, meagrely lit by the bluish night light.

“Doctor, I can hear them fucking on top of supplies in the basement. Open up please, they are everywhere, you should know.”

“Doctor, let me in. They are doing it under my bed.”

She stood in the hallway of the former monastery, rubbing her calf with instep of her other foot. She pounded at the door and threatened:

“If you don’t open the door, I’ll write dirty words on the walls.”

Sure enough, the next morning the hallway was decorated with obscene words for everybody to see. They were huge, as Mrs. Střemchová had promised.

Kateřina Urbanová, on the other hand, sat day in and day out in the chair officially assigned to her. She never protested, never searched for shoe-laces to hang herself with. She didn’t fight with the other grannies, and she remained silent when they showered her with insults. She appeared to be beyond any disturbance from her hard-won peace. The doctors would never know what she saw when she stared into space or what she heard when she appeared to be listening attentively.

Thirty eight women sat together in the bare room, their hands resting on their protruding bellies. No chatter, no bickering, not even peaceful chitchat was to be heard. No female strutting or showing off was going on. Here womanhood had declined into lifeless calm and total apathy. Only from time to time a fight would erupt inexplicably, as in a rabbit hutch stomping and shrieking could suddenly be heard, and clumps of fur started to fly. Then everything quieted down again, as quickly as it had started. God knows why they got in a fight in the place.

Kateřina Urbanová was calm, quiet and obedient. She combed her hair and washed herself when told, and she never fought with the others. She was silent, listless. Perhaps she would be like that till the end of her days.

The monastery pond was slowly filling up with silt, branches of old linden trees were breaking off one by one, the chapel was gradually falling into disrepair, and the fragrance of lilies permeated the air. In the morgue a corpse had been waiting for nine days already; the family hadn’t come to claim it. The institution usually buried its inmates, a cheap funeral for one thousand crowns. The relations don’t bother to visit the granny for years, so why should come right now when it made no difference to her, even when she was alive nothing made any difference to her. Or did it? Who knows.

Alena Ujcová had the death certificate all filled out, and when the undertaker came she would accompany him. After all, it was in her job description to take care of the body. She had notified the kinfolks in case they would be interested in the body now, when the long-lost soul had departed to heaven. But they didn’t show up. Neither did the undertaker, and hot as it was, the smell of he body was spreading into the hallways. Thank God that the patients don’t know what is going on. Or do they? Who knows.

The social worker remembered the old woman’s furies. No more, she thought, and started to cry. For ten years already she had wept for all her grannies and their delusions. She hadn’t really wanted this job, but she had to support her kids. At that time, her brother told her, this is it, we have a job, and you have to take it.

“You must be crazy, Václav, me working in a nuthouse? Did you forget the stories about a patient who smashed the window with her fist, cut her belly open and stuffed the shattered glass inside her? That’s not for me, I couldn’t take it.”

In the early fifties, her parents sent her to a home ec school, which later became a nursing school. But Alena couldn’t attend a nursing school because she would have had to have become a nurse, and she couldn’t become a nurse because she was terrified of blood and death. But nobody cared about that. She fought with the Board of Education until finally they found a school somewhere in Moravia that took her in and gave her a diploma as a social worker, even though she didn’t know beans about social work, or much else, for that matter.

But right then Alena was walking through the hospital hallway, stepping over streams of light coming through the narrow windows, playing a game with light, as if she were afraid to step into it. She was carrying a letter to Kateřina Urbanová, a letter that went around numerous hospitals and mental institutions before it wound up in her hands. A daughter is looking for her mother.

Alena Ujcová was stepping over the slanted fields of light which was streaming through the narrow, barred windows, and she was carrying that letter. Little did she know that this letter would forever change the life of her patient and that she, Alena Ujcová, would forever be connected to her by a secret that she must tell no-one even here, in the hospital. It went against her grain to dwell on events that proved the total failure of human efforts, on something that seemed to put doctors on equal footing with their patients. Fate had capriciously tested this woman, was what Alena Ujcová preferred to think when she later recalled this incident. She avoided other thoughts about it as if such thoughts were sinful.

“I have been searching for my mother for several months,” wrote the daughter. “My brother, with whom she used to live, gave me the name of the hospital where he initially took her, but they don’t know where my mother is now. Would you please let me know if my mother might be living in your institution.”

The letter, dated March 21, came all the way from Slovakia, and it arrived in the psychiatric hospital in H. in July, exactly that day when the image of God changed into a Greek and then into a running dog.

Kateřina Urbanová was sitting in the monastery garden at that time, her cold feet stuck in the flimsy, worn-out slippers. Perhaps she was watching the little green apples swaying in the light summer breeze; maybe she saw the jays circling around the crumbling spire of the chapel and noticed how nimbly they steer with their tails. Kateřina Urbanová was sitting with her legs apart, her hands resting in her lap. On the clothesline behind her old, stained sheets billowed in the wind.

The social worker handed the letter to her, and she looked at it for a while. Was she reading it or not? Who knows. She didn’t let on of she understood what it said. She tilted her head as if she were listening, but Alena Ujcová had no idea if she was paying attention to her or to something else.

She left her alone and went to answer the letter.

*

It was the month of August. In the garden phlox was still blooming, smelling like a perfumed soap. Meadowsweet growing by the river was slowly wilting, and fishermen were fishing for pike. Smoke was hanging over the village in the evening, sometimes mixing with fog. Mornings were starting to be clear and cold.

“Dear Mrs. Ujcová,” the daughter wrote. “I haven’t seen my mother for almost thirteen years. When I got married, mother went to live with my brother who later moved to Bohemia. I used to send her presents every Christmas, and sometimes they were quite expensive – fabric for a dress, a bottle of slivovitz, warm winter underwear. I never heard if she got the things, she never wrote to me. My husband and I have a nice apartment and live all alone. I would like my mother to come and live with us. Let me know if she can be released to home care.”

Alena Ujcová, who used to work with mentally retarded children and had to teach them to greet her in unison with “honour to labour”, even though she knew full well that they would never learn much else besides this greeting and would never do anything that could be called labour, Alena Ujcová unlocked the knobless door with her key and entered the female ward of the mental institution in H.

Simple benches, pictures by impressionists, shining floors, window frames painted white – that was spotless, immaculate human decline in a well run mental institution.

“Doctor,” a tiny, fat woman with grey, curly braid and quick, wobbly gait called Alena Ujcová from the open door. It was Cecilka. The good-natured childish granny pointed her accusing finger at the villain. “She put a red devil with green eyes into my bed. He makes such terrible faces at me that I cannot even go to the john.”

“Doctor,” Cecilka shrieked, as if she had just seen a mouse, “take him away before he mucks up my bed.”

And Alena Ujcová went into her room and chased the red devil away.

“Don’t be silly,” her brother told her ten years ago, “we don’t use straight jackets or anything like that. We manage everything with pills. Pills make lambs out of them. You have no reason to be afraid.”

He was right. Only occasionally a devil would burst on the scene, as sometimes a flame suddenly issued from nearly burned out ashes. But what if the devil is really there? occurred to Alena Ujcová, and it’s only me who doesn’t see him. Whenever she had that thought, and it was often, she would stop and rub her face with both hands. To hell with it all, she would say to herself, our only weapons are pills. And theirs?

A movie crew came to the hospital once. When they entered the hall lined with a series of knobless doors, a group of patients approached them , and the star, a famous actor, passed out with a bang. And Alena herself, who had always been scared of everything, had to revive him.

Cecilka scurried off on her short, wobbly legs. Alena’s eyes followed her. I’ll weep for her one day, she thought, but not for Mrs. Střemchová. She is barely forty, like me. After all, this isn’t a place where people stay for a while, get better and then leave, but rather a place where madness is kept within safe limits, at an acceptable level. But right then Alena Ujcová had a reason to be happy – she was carrying good news for one of her little old ladies.

She entered the common room, and thirty pairs of eyes followed her as she approached Kateřina Urbanová.

She often thought how peculiar it was that she no longer saw them as different from herself. Who was sane, she wondered in such moments of weakness, me or them? And who gave me the right to make decisions about them?

At such times she would recall the words of a wise man called Kohelet, who lived some thousand years ago.

“I know that whatever God does remains forever – to it one cannot add and from it one cannot subtract, for God has so arranged matter that men should fear Him. I thought to myself concerning men, surely God has tested them and shown that they are nothing but beasts. For the fate of men and the fate of beasts is the same. As one dies, so does the other, for there is one spirit in both and man’s distinction over the beast is nothing, for everything is vanity. All goes to one place, all comes from the dust and all returns to the dust. Who knows that the spirit of man rises upward and spirit of beasts goes down to the earth?”

Alena Ujcová would sometimes watch the patients devouring their food. She saw her dear old ladies stuffing themselves and then looking like satisfied geese fattened for the holidays. And she would recall that this Kohelet, who searched for the truth deeper than anyone, came after his long search to the conclusion that all was vanity and chasing of wind and there was no greater good for man than eating and drinking.

Alena Ujcová shuddered. Every time she rushed Mrs. Střemchová to the hospital with a fresh needle, she had a feeling of total futility. What if to die is her right and we are depriving her of that right. She wants the needle to reach her heart, and I take her to a doctor that cuts her up in order to find the deadly needle and remove it. Since we can’t help her, why don’t we at least allow her to die?

But what if there really is only eating and drinking? What if they’re happier, because they don’t feel any pain, and because nothing can happen to them any more? They live in their delusions, and those can be happy too.

“Just look at them,” one patient used to say to Alena, pointing at those who sat idly in the monastery garden, sunning themselves. “They are pampered like rich folks, and how did they deserve it? Novachek over there runs parliament and the cabinet, has a fat income, plus he gets money from his books. And me, I worked my ass off as a coachman all my life, and now all I get is a measly crown per day. And on top of it, I stoke the furnace and feed the chickens and rabbits.”

I don’t have it so bad here, Alena Ujcová thought. What more do I want? I am better off here than with those retarded kids.

And right then she was especially happy because she thought Kateřina Urbanová would be happy too. But the old woman accepted the good news as she did the announcement that dinner was ready. Actually, she showed more interest in the food, Alena noted. But then again, she had no idea if Kateřina heard the good news or not.

*

Kateřina Urbanová left the hospital without a word, without so much as a farewell gesture. She didn’t shake hands with anybody. Early in the morning while it was still dark, she walked out of the gate timidly and got into the ambulance with Alena Ujcová. A touch of autumn was in the air already. The summer had been dry, and the leaves were turning prematurely. Rotting apples were strewn along the road, and heavy mist was rising from the meadows. The sun was rolling out of the clouds like a huge golden apple.

Kateřina Urbanová sat in the corner, pressed against the door, as if she wanted to fall out of the car. Unlike the other patients, she was quite skinny. Nobody knew what happened to the heaps of dumplings she ate. While the others put on weight, Kateřina stayed skinny as a rail.

After barely twenty kilometres Kateřina threw up. Alena was holding her head and tried to comfort her. And it went like that all day long, until they were both worn out. Kateřina was silent, and when she was feeling a little better she looked as if she had already gone beyond the limits of earthly existence and was wiser for it. She accepted everything, even what was to come.

Where am I taking her, Alena wondered. She so much wanted to believe that the daughter wasn’t just after her mother’s pension. All Alena wanted at that point was to have this over with, so that she could deliver her charge and hurry back home. She wanted to have peace of mind and a good feeling that for once she didn’t have to take her little old lady to the cemetery.

Finally the ambulance stopped in front of a modest house in a housing development. It was nine o’clock in the evening. Alena opened the door and breathed in the heavy fog which nipped the inside of her nose. That September felt more like November.

Kateřina Urbanová did not stir. She was crammed in her corner, and from time to time she closed her eyes, as if from fatigue. She didn’t know that they’d arrived, or she didn’t care. She seemed totally immersed in some deep space deep within herself, or maybe she was just dead tired. Alena got out of the car and rang the bell.

Momentarily the door opened. A heavy-set, fortyish woman quickly walked out and stood in front of the ambulance.

And what happened at that moment Alena Ujcová would never forget. That moment would always remind her that reason sometimes failed miserably, and that suddenly everything, when shown from a different perspective, was different from what one thought it was.

Kateřina Urbanová burst out laughing, and she kept laughing, joy bubbling up in her until she cried. She scrambled out of the car, poor dear, using both hands and feet and babbled on incoherently. When she finally managed to get out of the car she threw herself at Alena Ujcová and embraced her, and kept kissing her, and squeezing her in her arms, laughing all the time. Then, she threw herself at her daughter, choking with happiness and rattling incomprehensible words.

“She thanks you so much for bringing her to me,” cried the daughter between embraces.

And Alena Ujcová felt anger and happiness and despair and shame welling up in her and the feeling of helplessness and futility. She stood there, unable to move, her eyes glued to the two women. All of her suspicions were being confirmed. In a split years of uncertainty became certainty – we don’t have the right.

One can do nothing but ask why, the wise man Kohelet said one thousand years ago. And people nevertheless send one another to mental institutions and give one another death penalties.

Kateřina Urbanová spoke Hungarian.

By the time the three of them reached the daughter’s apartment, she told the daughter of the past ten years. Her son put her into a mental institution because he didn’t want her living with him. God knows what stories he made up about her; she had no place to go anyway. Nobody understood her, and she didn’t understand anything either, so she decided that she would stop speaking. Her silence became a symptom of her schizophrenia.

She didn’t protest. To whom? She didn’t complain. To whom and about whom? After all, he saw everything, the kindly God with a crescent of curly hair around his head, he saw it all and did nothing.