The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides [166]
By this time it was after ten o’clock. Too early to serve lunch. Too early to leave. Most of the other volunteers were bathing the patients, or stripping the dirty linens off their beds, or wiping down the rubber mats protecting the mattresses—doing, that is, the dirty, smelly jobs that Mitchell should have been doing also. For a moment, he resolved to start right now, right this minute. But then he saw the beekeeper coming his way, his arms full of soiled linens, and with an involuntary reflex Mitchell backed through the arch and climbed the stairs straight to the roof.
He told himself he was just going up to the roof for a minute or two, to get away from the disinfectant smell of the ward. He had come back today for a reason, and that reason was to get over his squeamishness, but before doing that, he needed a little air.
On the roof, two female volunteers were hanging wet laundry on the line. One of them, who sounded American, was saying, “I told Mother I was thinking of taking a vacation. Maybe go to Thailand and lie on the beach for a week or two. I’ve been here almost six months.”
“What did she say?”
“She said the only thing important in life is charity.”
“That’s why she’s a saint,” the other woman said.
“Can’t I become a saint and go to the beach, too?” the American woman said, and they both started laughing.
While they were talking, Mitchell went to the far end of the roof. Peering over the edge, he was surprised to find himself looking down into the inner courtyard of the Kali temple next door. On a stone altar, six goats’ heads, freshly slaughtered, were neatly lined up, their shaggy necks bright with blood. Mitchell tried his best to be ecumenical, but when it came to animal sacrifice he had to draw the line. He stared down at the goats’ heads awhile longer, and then, with sudden resolve, he went back down the stairs and found the beekeeper.
“I’m back,” he said.
“Good man,” the beekeeper said. “Just in time. I need a hand.”
He led Mitchell to a bed in the middle of the room. Lying on it was a man who, even among the other old men at Kalighat, was especially emaciated. Wrapped in his sheet he looked as ancient and brown-skinned as an Egyptian mummy, a resemblance that his sunken cheeks and curving, blade-like nose emphasized. Unlike a mummy, however, the man had his eyes wide open. They were blue and terrified and seemed to be staring up at something only he could see. The incessant quaking of his limbs added to the impression of extreme terror on his face.
“This gentleman needs a bath,” the beekeeper said in his deep voice. “Somebody’s got the stretcher, so we’ll have to carry him.”
It was unclear how they were going to manage this. Mitchell went down to the foot of the bed, waiting while the beekeeper pulled off the old man’s sheet. Thus exposed, the man looked even more skeletal. The beekeeper grabbed him under his arms, Mitchell took hold of his ankles, and in this indelicate fashion, they lifted him off the mattress and into the aisle.
They soon realized they should have waited for the stretcher. The old man was heavier than they’d expected, and unwieldy. He sagged between them like an animal carcass. They tried to be as careful as possible, but once they were moving down the aisle there was nowhere to set the old man down. The best thing seemed to be to get him to the lavatory as soon as possible, and in their haste, they began to treat the old man less like a person they were carrying and more like an object. That he didn’t seem aware of what