Wonders of a Godless World Read Free Page A

with the brush began to rake her skull so severely that blood was drawn. The boy’s rocking gradually became so violent he repeatedly threw himself to the floor. And the others started to moan and shout hoarsely from the depths of their sleep. The nurses were alarmed. What was happening? It was only when they noticed that things quietened down abruptly if the foreigner was removed—when he was taken to the shower, say—that they came to wonder if he might be the cause. True, he hadn’t moved or spoken in all that time, or done anything blameworthy. But there was something strange about him, they all agreed. Those beautiful eyes…
    The old doctor scoffed at the idea. He told the nurses that most likely the other catatonics didn’t even know the foreigner was there. But if they really wanted to move him somewhere else, then he wouldn’t stop them.
    This time they put him in with the geriatrics .
    It was another ward that was usually sleepy and subdued, for only the very old ended up there. Many of the inmates weren’t even all that mad, they were just too infirm to survive on their own, and had no one else to look after them. Others, however, had retreated into deep senility. They drooled, they leered, they smiled and laughed, and sometimes they yelled and cried, but mostly—thanks to the pills they were given morning and night—they dozed in silence. The foreigner, admittedly, was too young to belong there. Although exactly how old he was, no one knew. With his smooth, burnt skin, he didn’t look any particular age. Not young. But not old either.
    In any event, he had a peculiar effect on the geriatrics. One old man complained that he was not getting any sleep because the foreigner was climbing out of bed and dancing all night. Other patients concurred. But the orphan knew it wasn’t so. She checked the ward regularly on her evening rounds, and the foreigner never moved. His bedclothes were never even ruffled. Then one morning an old woman, a vague, timid creature who had never made any sort of fuss, was discovered completely naked upon the foreigner’s bed, legs astride his hips, shuddering back and forth in delight. When she was dragged away, she insisted that he had lured her there and possessed her with his eyes and that she would love him till she died. But even while she was on top of him, the man had remained as limp and unconscious as ever.
    That was enough for the nurses. Clearly the foreigner was a devil (that word again) of some kind. They wanted him shifted once more. The old doctor was doubtful. It didn’t matter what the old people claimed, he said. They were mad, they imagined things. But the nurses insisted. Of course, they weren’t educated people like the old doctor. They were just working women from the town, full of strange stories and superstitions. But the hospital couldn’t run without them, and so somewhere had to be found to keep the foreigner quietly out of their way.
    One option was to lose him among the general community, the everyday mad folk who made up the bulk of the hospital’s inmates. But those wards were chaotic places, full of yelling and running and wrestling, and in fairness, no one thought they were a fitting home for a man who was bedridden and immobile.
    Someone then suggested the locked ward. Usually, only violent patients were sent there, to be kept in individual cells, with barred windows, and with strong male nurses on hand. Still, the foreigner would certainly be out of the way. (Indeed, the orphan wouldnever have seen him again.) But the nurses protested. If he had disturbed the otherwise peaceful catatonics and geriatrics so much, what might result if he was placed in proximity to inmates who were already aggressive and unstable?
    Somewhere he would do no harm, that’s where he had to go.
    In the end, they settled on the crematorium.

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    The crematorium was the nicest of all the back wards. It was somewhat separate from the rest, being contained in a