Petra KuppersTHE NURSING HOME'Just like a puzzle box,' the old storyteller said, his hands accompanying this often-repeated tale with small intricate gestures, 'we saw it curving and folding in on itself. Such a noise. In the end, it slid right off the cliff, down into the sea. All were lost.' Three soaked campers experienced the story come to its peak, yet again, and shifted in their bamboo or merino clothes to keep the evening chill at bay. They had made camp on bare rock, somewhat flat, slightly hollow, a welcome secure perch after scrambling up through too many bramble patches and miles of squishy mud. Jonathan, beardless with grey chin shadows after a day in the field, was the first one to split away after another story of Shoreside's day of disaster. He headed out to the edge of the rock, and wordlessly began to strip off his damp outerwear before inserting himself into an equally damp sleeping bag. Marion followed soon, her mind's eye conjuring vortexes of rushing water. Her feet, half in love with gothic vertigo, reluctantly acknowledged the solid granite beneath her sandals. Only Sam remained with their local guide, the two of them putting their heads together to count the dead again, to resurrect ghosts and nightwalkers out of the deep sea. Eventually, the camp settled. The fire glowed for a while, and then their beacon out to sea extinguished itself, leaving only dark green folds of young mountains and rocky cliffs gleaming in the subtropical moon light.
* * * And up they crawled, wet and sucking, upward past limpets locked into their calcified homes. Soggy skin scraped against sharp ridges of rock and shell. Metal dragged, a high keen on the night wind where walkers and wheelchairs jostled up the vertical cliff. Some of these creatures of the deep left chalky marks on the cliff side: guiding lines wide enough for a car, or even, occasionally, for a wheelchair van with its unfolding flower of a side ramp. The wind howled over the tap tap tap of a white cane tentatively reaching upward, sensing finger holds beneath its nervous tip. Wind, rain and surf had carved braille patterns into the rock, enough to trace out an alternative history to the storyteller's tale of defeat and swallow. Upward they crawled, relentless, unstoppable, here to stay. * * * When the moon emerged from behind the clouds, they had assembled on the cliff's lip. For a while, they stood sentinel, Easter Island statues, expressionless and looking down on the four sleepers around the dead fire. Some of them presented short silhouettes, either widened by wheelchairs or else displaying limbs of unusual proportions. Others stood tall and swaying, a cane or guiding stick bristling out of their shadows. One had merged her lines with the ones of her dog, a two headed-beast now, continuous body undulating in the moon shadow. Some shivered with palsy or cold, the adrenaline of anticipation or the vibration of stimming fingers. Soft hooting drifted over the assembly, half-words, quiet commentary, a Greek chorus of long held back sounds. Marion stirred first. Somehow, a chant had settled in her bones, the whispering around her sleeping place worming its way into the warmth of her dream. She stretched in her sleeping bag, her fingerless arm bulging the down-filled bag outward. Startled awake by the continuation of her dream song in the night air, she sat up. Sam slowly opened his eyes. His neck began its oscillation where years of psychopharmaca had eaten away at his stillness, had overwhelmed his nervous system and set it into constant waking motion. He lay as still as he could, vibrating in his sleeping bag, and listened. Jonathan, always the most resolute of the trio, not only awoke, but pulled himself up onto his manual wheelchair, lower body still encased in the warm folds of the sleeping bag. As he swung himself powerfully upward, he took the measure of his surroundings. All around the rock place, their visitors stood side by side, encircling them. Prepared and ready to charge, he grabbed his steel guide wheels. Only the old guide and storyteller slept. He dreamt of the old days: the nursing home, secure jobs for the village, the idiots and cripples bused in from far afield and housed in echoing corridors. He dreamt of his wife, long dead now, who had emptied bedpans and had brought home the bacon. He remembered her walking toward his car when he picked her up from the old cliff-side nursing home. There was that spring in her step as she saw him and their well-polished car, her slight rush as she left behind the damp dark of the sad souls, as she walked past the poisonous conifers lining the long driveway. She hastened out into the sunlight, each day, ready to escape to their own cozy home, their private heaven, their garden and their fireplace. Each day at six, she had kissed him for his role in delivering her from the prisonhouse of madness and despair. Every night at eight, after dinner, she had told fragmented tales of her clients — always without names, without continuation, without closure: moments of bedwetting, of straps and cannulas, of feeding tubes and of taking away crayons from defectives before their silly scrabbling would mar the wall paint again. He slept, wrapped in old dreams of old lives. * * * Marion, Sam and Jonathan felt themselves melting, and hardly knew why. They looked out at the shadows surrounding them. What had smelt like piss and salt just a minute before, in the first haze of waking, registered now as the reassuring tang of tea and milky coffee. A hint of lavender and baby powder wafted from the secret places where amputated stumps meet leather. The three exchanged a look. Sam signed to Jonathan, reassuring him of his watchfulness, his listening, and the fact that no words had been exchanged yet with this circle of dripping visitors. Marion was smiling at her companions, her face wide and open, undefended, as she stretched in her skin, pushed against the skinsack that defined her, and felt it give. She rose, and stood before them, naked and without prosthesis, gleaming and breathing in the moonlight. Sam, vibrating gently, shuffled next to her, and faced out over the cliff, toward the semi-still dark figures. He breathed in, once, and felt his bones settle, his mind sending tendrils of peace to his beating heart. This is what they had come for. Jonathan shifted the powerful muscles of his neck and shoulders, moving his steel chariot next to his friends. His strength was his pride: it allowed him access to this high cliff, allowed him to maneuver up steamy trails impassable to the power differentials of electric chairs. His leathery hands were still capable of carrying him to every mountain top he wanted to conquer. But he felt wariness in his heart, the first fascia fibers giving notice of overwork, shoulder joints rasping in their no longer smooth hollows. The time was coming near. So he had come. * * * The morning sun pierced through colorful clouds. The guide sat up. He was no longer surprised. His guidees had vanished: the third group in so many months. If he had had a permit, it would have long been rescinded, but he provided his services well away from preying eyes. They always found him, the eager ones, ready to believe old fairy tales, and to pay well for a hike up to where the cliff had sheared away, that raucous night so many years ago. No one had ever followed up with him, had inquired after the disabled tourists who vanished from this tropical island paradise. The world might no longer call them defectives, fair enough. They were citizens now, and provided with ramps for their enjoyment, quiet rooms in conference centers, and talking elevators. But they still found their way to this island, now under their own steam, and they came, often in small groups, but rarely in couples, and vanished. No bodies were ever found, no tracks left behind. Who wouldn't want to dive under, lose oneself, leave the worries of the mainland behind? He didn't care, and asked for his guide money in advance. The waves whispered. Dolphins jumped out at the far horizon. The guide rolled up his bedding, cleaned up, and started down, descending through the coastal clouds.
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