Criers & Kibitzers, Kibitzers & Criers by Stanley Elkin

Author:Stanley Elkin
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9781564782342
Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
Published: 1990-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

He had come, he knew, to a sort of clearing house for disease, and sometimes at night (he did not sleep much) he could visualize what seemed to him to be the tremendous forces of destruction at work in the room. His own cancer he saw as some horribly lethal worm that inched its way through his body, spraying on everything it touched small death. He saw it work its way up through the channels of his body and watched as pieces of it fell from his mouth when he spit into his handkerchief. He knew that inside the other men something like the same dark ugliness worked with a steady, persevering ubiquity, and supposed that the worm was pridefully aware that its must be the triumph.

One night as Feldman lay between sleep and wakefulness, there came a terrible groan from the next bed. He looked up quickly, not sure he had not made the sound himself. It came again, as if pushed out by unbearable pain. Feldman buried his head in the pillow to smother the sound, but the groan continued. It was a noise that started deep in the man’s chest and became at last a gasping yell for breath. Feldman lay very still. He did not want the man to know he was awake. Such pain could not continue long. He would lie quietly and wait it out. When the noise did not stop, Feldman held his breath and bit his lips. There was such urgency in the screams, nothing of gentlemanly relinquishment. He was about to give in to the overbearing insistence of the man’s pain, but before he could force himself to do something he heard the sick man push himself nearer. Feldman turned his face to watch, and in the glow from the red night lamp above the door he could see that the man lay half out of the bed. He was trying, with a desperate strength that came from somewhere deep inside, to reach Feldman. He watched as the man’s hand clawed the air as though it were some substance by which he could sustain himself. He called to him, but Feldman could not answer.

“Mister, mister. You up?”

The hand continued to reach toward Feldman until the wild strength in it pulled the man off balance and the upper half of his body was thrust suddenly toward the floor. He was almost completely out of the bed.

“Mister. Mister. Please, are you up?”

Feldman forced himself to say yes.

The man groaned again.

“Do you want me to get the nurse?” Feldman asked him.

“Help me. Help me in the bed.”

Feldman got out of bed and put his arms around the man’s body. The other worked his arms around Feldman’s neck and they remained for a moment in a crazy embrace. Suddenly all his weight fell heavily in Feldman’s arms. Feldman feared the man was dead and half lifted, half pushed him back onto the bed. He listened carefully and heard at last, gratefully, spasms of breath. They sounded like sobs.

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