PART 1
He shot up through cool waters wondering whether he'd ever make the surface or not. That was a lot of guff about people sinking three times and then drowning. He'd been rising and sinking for days weeks months, who could tell? But he hadn't drowned. As he came to the surface, each time he fainted into reality and as he went down again, he fainted into nothingness. Long slow faints, all of them while he struggled for air and life. He was fighting too hard and he knew it. A man can't fight always. If he's drowning or suffocating, he's got to be smart and hold back some of his strength for the last, the final, the death struggle.
He lay back quietly, because he was no fool. If you lie back you can float. He used to float a lot when he was a kid. He knew how to do it. His last strength going into that fight when all he had to do was float. What a fool.
They were working on him. It took him a little while to understand this, because he couldn't hear them. Then he remembered that he was deaf. It was funny to lie there and have people in the room who were touching you, watching you, doctoring you, and yet, not within hearing distance. The bandages were still all over his head so he couldn't see them either. He only knew that way out there in the darkness beyond the reach of his ears people were working over him and trying to help him.
They were taking part of his bandages off. He could feel the coolness, the sudden drying of sweat on his left side. They were working on his arm. He felt the pinch of a sharp little instrument grabbing something and getting a bit of his skin with each grab. He didn't jump. He simply lay there because he had to save his strength. He tried to figure out why they were pinching him. After each pinch there was a little pull in the flesh of his upper arm and an unpleasant point of heat like friction. The pulling kept on in short little jerks with his skin getting hot each time. It hurt. He wished they'd stop. It itched. He wished they'd scratch him.
He froze all over stiff and rigid like a dead cat. There was something wrong about this pricking and pulling and friction heat. He could feel the things they were doing to his arm and yet, he couldn't rightly feel his arm at all. It was like he felt inside his arm. It was like he felt through the end of his arm. The nearest thing he could think of to the end of his arm was the heel of his hand. But the heel of his hand, the end of his arm, was high as his shoulder. Jesus Christ, they'd cut his left arm off. They'd cut it right off at the shoulder, he could feel it plain now. Oh my god, why did they do a thing like that to him?
They couldn't do it, the dirty bastards, they couldn't do it. They had to have a paper signed or something. It was the law. You can't just go out and cut a man's arm off without asking him, without getting permission. Because a man's arm is his own and he needs it. Oh Jesus, I have to work with that arm. Why did you cut it off? Why did you cut my arm off? Answer me! Why did you cut my arm off? Why did you, why did you, why did you?
He went down into the water again and fought, and fought and then came up with his belly jumping and his throat aching. And all the time that he was under the water fighting with only one arm to get back, he was having conversation with himself about how this thing couldn't possibly happen to him. How am I going to work now? They don't think of that. They don't think of anything but doing it their own way. Just another guy with a hole in his arm. Let's cut it off, what do you say boys? Sure, cut the guy's arm off. It takes a lot of work and a lot of money to fix up a guy's arm. This is a war and war is hell and what the hell and so to hell with it. Come on boys, watch this. Pretty slick, hey? He's down in bed and can't say anything and it's his tough luck and we're tired and this is a stinking war, anyhow, so let's cut the damn thing off and be done with it.
My arm. My arm. They've cut my arm off. See that stump there? That used to be my arm. Oh sure, I had an arm, I was born with one I was normal just I like you and I could hear and I had a left arm like anybody else. But what do you think of those lazy bastards cutting it off?
How's that I can't hear either. I can't hear. Write it down. Put it on a piece of paper. I can read all right. But I can't hear, put it down on a piece of paper and hand the paper to my right arm because I have no left arm.
My left arm. I wonder what they've done with it. When you cut a man's arm off you have to do something with it. You can't just leave it lying around. Do you send it to hospitals so guys can pick it to pieces and see how an arm works? Do you wrap it up in an old newspaper and throw it onto the junk heap? Do you bury it? After all it's part of a man a very important part of a man and it should be treated respectfully. Do you take it out and bury it and say a little prayer? You should because it's human flesh and it died young and it deserves a good sendoff.
Then things quieted down all of a sudden. Everything went still inside his head. The lights before his eyes snapped out as quickly as if somebody had shut them off with a switch. The pain went away too. The only feeling he had was the strong throb of blood in his brain swelling and contracting his head. But it was peaceful. It was painless. It was such a relief that he came out of his drowning. He could think.
He thought, well, kid you're deaf as a post but there isn't the pain. You've got no arms but you don't hurt. You'll never burn your hand or cut your finger or smash a nail you lucky stiff. You're alive and you don't hurt and that's much better than being alive and hurting. There are lots of things a deaf guy without arms can do if he doesn't hurt so much he goes crazy from pain. He can get hooks or something for arms and he can learn to read lips and while that doesn't exactly put him on top of the world still he's not drowned in the bottom of a river with pain tearing his brain to pieces. He's still got air and he's not struggling and he's got willow trees and he can think and he's not in pain.
He couldn't understand why the nurses or whoever had charge of him wouldn't lay him out level. The lower half of him was light as a feather while his head and chest were dead weights. That was why he had thought he was drowning. His head was too low.
If he could move whatever was under his legs and bring his body to an even level he'd feel better. He wouldn't have that drowning dream any more.
He started to kick out with his feet to move what was under his legs. He only started because he didn't have any legs to kick with. Somewhere just below his hip joints they had cut both of his legs off.
No legs. No more running walking crawling if you have no legs. No more working. No legs you see. Never again to wiggle your toes. What a hell of a thing what a wonderful beautiful thing to wiggle your toes. No, no.
If he could only think of real things he would destroy this dream of having no legs. Steamships, loaves of bread, girls, Kareen, machine guns, books, chewing gum, pieces of wood. But thinking of real things didn't help because it wasn't a dream. It was the truth. That was why his head had seemed lower than his legs. Because he had no legs. Naturally they seemed light. Air is light too. Even a toenail is heavy compared to air. He had no arms and no legs.
He threw back his head and started to yell from fright. But he only started because he had no mouth to yell with. He was so surprised at not yelling when he tried that he began to work his jaws like a man who has found something interesting and wants to test it. He was so sure the idea of no mouth was a dream that he could investigate it calmly. He tried to work his jaws and he had no jaws. He tried to run his tongue around the inside of his teeth and over the roof of his mouth as if he were chasing a raspberry seed. But he didn't have any tongue and he hadn't any teeth. There was no roof to his mouth and there was no mouth. He tried to swallow but he couldn't because he had no palate and there weren't any muscles left to swallow with.
He began to smother and pant. It was as if someone had pushed a mattress over his face and was holding it there. He was breathing hard and fast now but he wasn't really breathing because there wasn't any air passing through his nose. He didn't have a nose. He could feel his chest rise and fall and quiver but not a breath of air was passing through the place where his nose used to be.
He got a wild panicky eagerness to die to kill himself. He tried to calm his breathing to stop breathing entirely so he would suffocate. He could feel the muscles at the bottom of his throat close tight against the air but the breathing in his chest kept right on. There wasn't any air in his throat to be stopped. His lungs were sucking it in somewhere below his throat. He knew now that he was surely lying but he was curious. He didn't want to die until he had found out everything. If a man has no nose, and no mouth, and no palate, and no tongue why it stands to reason he might be shy a few other parts as well? But that was nonsense because a man in that shape would be dead. You couldn't lose that much of yourself and still keep on living. Yet if you knew you had lost them and were thinking about it why then you must be alive because dead men don't think. Dead men aren't curious and he was sick with curiosity so he must not be dead yet.
He began to reach out with the nerves of his face. He began to strain to feel the nothingness that was there. Where his mouth and nose had been there must now be nothing but a hole covered with bandages. He was trying to find out how far up that hole went. He was trying to feel the edges of the hole. He was grasping with the nerves and pores of his face to follow the borders of that hole and see how far up they extended.
It was like staring into complete darkness with your eyes popping out of your head. It was a process of feeling with his skin of exploring with something that couldn't move where his mind told it to. The nerves and muscles of his face were crawling like snakes toward his forehead.
The hole began at the base of his throat just below where his jaw should be and went upward in a widening circle. He could feel his skin creeping around the rim of the circle. The hole was getting bigger and bigger. It widened out almost to the base of his ears if he had any and then narrowed again. It ended somewhere above the top of what used to be his nose. The hole went too high to have any eyes in it. He was blind.
It was funny how calm he was. He was quiet just like a storekeeper taking spring inventory and saying to himself: "I see I have no eyes better put that down in the order book". He had no legs, and no arms, and no eyes, and no ears, and no nose, and no mouth, and no tongue. What a hell of a dream. It must be a dream. Of course sweet God, it's a dream. He'd have to wake up or he'd go nuts. Nobody could live like that. A person in that condition would be dead and he wasn't dead so he wasn't in that condition. Just dreaming. But it wasn't a dream.
He could want it to be a dream forever and that wouldn't change things. Because he was alive, alive. He was nothing but a piece of meat like the chunks of cartilage old Prof. Vogel used to have in biology. Chunks of cartilage that didn't have anything except life so they grew on chemicals. But he was one up on the cartilage. He had a mind and it was thinking. That's more than Prof. Vogel could ever say of his cartilages. He was thinking and he was just a thing. Oh, no. No, no, no.
He couldn't live like this because he would go crazy. But he couldn't die because he couldn't kill himself. If he could only breathe he could die. That was funny but it was true. He could hold his breath and kill himself. That was the only way left. Except that he wasn't breathing. His lungs were pumping air, but he couldn't stop them from doing it. He couldn't live and he couldn't die. No, no. No that can't be right. No, no. Mother. Mother, where are you? Hurry mother, hurry, hurry, hurry and wake me up. I'm having a nightmare mother where are you? Hurry mother. I'm down here. Here mother. Here in the darkness. Pick me up. Rockabye baby. Now I lay me down to sleep. Oh mother hurry because I can't wake up. Over here mother. When the wind blows the cradle will rock. Hold me up high, high.
Mother you've gone away and forgotten me. Here I am. I can't wake up mother. Wake me up. I can't move. Hold me. I'm scared. Oh mother, mother sing to me and rub me and bathe me and comb my hair and wash out my ears and play with my toes and clap my hands together and blow my nose and kiss my eyes and mouth like I've seen you do with Elizabeth like you must have done with me. Then I'll wake up and I'll be with you and I'll never leave or be afraid or dream again. Oh no.
I can't. I can't stand it. Scream. Move. Shake something. Make a noise any noise. I can't stand it. Oh no, no, no. Please I can't. Please no. Somebody come. Help me. I can't lie here forever like this until maybe years from now I die. I can't. Nobody can. It isn't possible. I can't breathe but I'm breathing. I'm so scared I can't think but I'm thinking. Oh please, please no. No, no. It isn't me. Help me. It can't be me. Not me. No, no, no. Oh please, oh, oh please. No, no, no please, no. Please. Not me.
PART 2