Haun-nn Part II

I could leave. I have thought about leaving ever since I first came here. But would I survive? I am too old to get a job, and I am not naive enough to be belive I could live without some sort of income. Also the Home would never let me go. They would have me declared mentally unfit to live on my own. I have to face the unpleasant truth, I am trapped.

Sometimes I feel like the character in the Disch story "Descending." Trapped forever on a series of escalators, going downward for all eternity. My life resembles the life of the character very much, forever going down with no chance to make it back to the top. The top, as far I am concerned, would be a respectable life with a friend or two of my own age who could talk sense, who lived for the future did only glorify the past.

Friend? My last friend was Hermes, the wheelchair trapped explorer. Old Hermes, who had not really been that old - only sixty-eight, who had two crushed legs from a fall he acquired when mountain climbing. Hermes, who was one of the most alive men I have ever known. Even confined to that metal chair.

During his life Hermes had done just about everything imaginable. He had lived for a year on a jungle island with some native tribe. He lived as they did, and when he left he had risen to the rank of Chief-in-waiting. He had found as a mercenary in one of the countless wars that plagued South America. Once he told me he had been skin diving when a great white attacked him, and all he had was a knife. There was nothing Hermes was afraid of trying, and into his life he packed a hundred ordinary lives.

Than one day his luck ran out. He took a fall while mountain climbing, and both his legs were crushed. He was turned over to a son he had not seen in over thirty years. "So what could I expect him to do with me? He didn't want me anymore than I wanted him," he used to tell me. His son stuck him into the Home. "Once," Hermes would say, "I could have bought this home twice over. But I was never one to hold onto money. For me, money was only a means for me to accomplish my goals. I was rich and broke so many times I can't count." With a whisper he would end. "But I wish that I had ended up a cripple with a little money."

For a year I thought of the Home as a little more than just a jail cell. If Hermes could take his imprisonment, which he seemed to be able to, with a laugh and a wink, than so could I. We found each other like a moth finds a flame. We were the only two who did not think our lives were over. We used to talk about leaving the Home, and beginning a new life. One day in early December I found him in his room swinging from the ceiling, the noose cutting into his neck.

There was a note. It was addressed to me, and was from the final paragraph of Plato's "Apology of Socrates." No one ever read the note, but me. It read:

Dear Martin:
What can I say that has not been said before, and better? Thus I bid you adieu. "The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways - I to die, and you to live. Which is better, only God knows."
Your friend

That was the first time I ever cursed God.

With an angry gesture, I unlock my door. I take my cane from the floor where I threw it in the night before, and hobble from my room. I need some fresh air. I meet no one in the hallway, and I emerge from the building alone. I walk until I reach the shade of a tree.

Standing in the shade I watch a shuffle board match taking place. The participants play as if their lives depend on the outcome of the game, and in a way they do. For what are their lives without shuffle board? Watching them I begin to understand my hate. They have adjusted. They have accepted the fact that their lives are over. Save for the visit from the children, and the daily shuffle board game there is no meaning left in their lives. But they have accepted it. They can live with the remaining years with a smile on their lips. They smile, and say "What else can we do? It is either the home, or death? And who wants to die?"

Something flies in my eye, and I rub it free. I also understand something else. I have two choices. One is to become a smiling zombie, and live the rest of my life playing shuffle board. Or do as Hermes did, who understood. Thre are only two ways out. But can I become a mindless fool? Can I pretend the future does not exist? Still who wants to die? Not I. Do I?

I could continue as I am now. Damning them, but doing nothing. But my patience is at an end. I cannont continue my life as I am now. I either join the others, or I join Hermes.

Watching them a phrase drifts in my mind to describe the confition of my fellow inmates. Comfortably numb, from a poem by Roger Waters.

The child is grown
The dream is gone
And I have become
Compfortably numb.

Ah, I seem to always have the quote or word to describe my situation. But never the answer.

Tonight I must find the answer. My life the way I am living it now is slowly driving me insane. To continue will lead to madness.

I turn back towards the building undecided. Come morning they will either find a corpse, or I will join Mrs. Austen for breakfast. As for this night, I know only that I will get little sleep.