‘Promoli,’ I repeated, tasting the word, careful to use the same intonation that the man had used.
‘Promoli,’ he said again, but this time it was the beginning of a question: Beethoven’s ‘must it be?’ He frowned at me, waiting for an answer. His fingers let go of mine and drifted up to land on his chest.
I panicked as I felt the world slide away again from the language that anchors it and began to sweat as though I were standing before a professor in an oral examination. The man towered over me. Promoli, I thought to myself. Promoli. What is the reply? I stared at the man’s massive fingers where they brushed against his robe, level with my eyes. They were like carved objects, hewn from stone. Promoli. What was the meaning? I tried to attach it to a thing in the world, but it just hung like a loose string.
I had been silent too long and I said again, desperately, ‘Promoli,’ though I knew it was the wrong answer. My head dropped in shame and I looked down at my bare feet. I caught at the name for my two feet with relief and began to run through as many words for things as I could in order to anchor myself. I closed my eyes.
‘My friend,’ the man’s voice rumbled at me, ‘Promoli is my name. Your name is not that. At least, I have never yet met another Promoli, and I have lived a long time. Your name is…’
I still had my eyes closed and could feel the air shift as he stepped past me towards my bed to peer at the little white card. I held my breath as I waited for him to tell me my name, like waiting for a doctor’s diagnosis.
‘Brod,’ came his voice, through the dark of my lowered lids.
The word was familiar to me, but carried with it an unpleasant, musty odour of discomfort, of lack. I disliked its squareness, the way that the sound plopped from the lips straight to the floor, like a tasteless mouthful of food; chewed at slightly and then rejected. Another word scuttled about behind a screen in my mind; another, better name. I could not quite catch hold of it. It was a sharp one, mysterious, one that could take flight with clicks in the back of the throat.
And besides, brod: bread. Had I heard him correctly? I wanted to go and look at the card myself, but I was too ashamed. To be named after a food, the blandest, most basic food. It seemed an insult.
‘Brod,’ I said, watching him through my eyelashes, testing to see if it was right.
‘A good name.’ His face had a kindly expression and he nodded.
‘But Promoli, this is your name only, and not the name for any other thing in the world?’
‘I am the only Promoli.’
‘But brod. To eat?’ I mimed eating, moving my fingers to my lips, in case he did not understand. The other name came to me in a rush at that moment, it was the name too of a thing; of the jackdaw, kavka, Kafka. The k’s clicked like closing beaks, I saw it printed on a white page, the word took flight and became a bird in the tree outside, its whirring call. Kafka. A thief of a bird.
Brod and kavka are names for more than one thing in the world. My thoughts moved slowly, feeling their way. And I; I am a thing in the world connected to more than one name. There was no connection between bread and jackdaws except myself and some ink marks made on paper. I felt dizzy and sat on the edge of the nearest bed.
‘Yes, of course. Forgive me: Brod. I have been in this room for such a long time alone.’
Brod. Kafka. I let Kafka fly away. I offered Promoli my hand again, and he took it in both of his and held it for a long time.
26.
PROMOLI BECAME MY GUIDE IN THE HOSPITAL. HE SEEMED TO know and be liked by everyone. He showed me around and introduced me everywhere, to people I had seen a hundred times: the nurses; the silent guards whose stony faces Promoli transformed as if by magic into smiling ones; and also to other patients in rooms behind that row of closed doors in the corridor.
Promoli was on close terms with Professor Pick and claimed to be his assistant, which I did not quite believe. Yet from time to time I would see him from the long windows walking out on the lawns with Pick, their heads bent together in conversation. And at other times I saw him standing with the little group of medical students as they discussed something with Pick. It seemed inconceivable that he could be doing these things and at the same time be here in the ward with me, wearing a robe and being ordered about by the nurses.
I started to become suspicious of Promoli, worried that he was a spy of Pick’s, sent to observe the patients when Pick himself was not in the ward and then report back to him. What else would they be discussing on their rambles over the grounds? But I felt guilty about these suspicious thoughts; despite the grain of mistrust, I had immediately felt a strong sense of kinship with Promoli. Nevertheless, I observed Promoli closely for signs of illness, but could never discern any. He was always happy and energetic and never lay all day silent in the bed, brooding, as I still sometimes did.
What was he doing here in the hospital if he was not ill? I considered challenging him about it, and intended to do so many times, but at the last moment my resolve always failed me; it seemed rude and ungrateful. I had learned that the code of politeness of that place dictated that prying into the illnesses of others was taboo, and it was a topic only discussed when first raised by the sufferer himself.
There was a vast array of illness to be found in the hospital, which seemed to be populated only by men. There were those who were mute and watchful, who had retreated behind their eyes and hid themselves from you, deep in their bodies. There was a man known as The Owl, whose every second word was a hoot. Other men laughed and sang, or there were those who gave off an electrical charge of violence. There were also among the patients several holy men, who tolerated each other benevolently in their various holinesses, even those who were, or claimed to be, the same man.
There was a man who believed himself to be Saint Methodius, and was called this by other patients. When I first met him, he bowed down before me and insisted on walking backwards around me, facing me all the time as though I were a pagan king. Promoli explained to me that Methodius could see into the future and was living out his two years of imprisonment in Ellwangen, waiting for the arrival of the bishop whom he knew was coming to free him under orders of the pope.
Methodius was convinced that I was the bishop, and it took me a long time to prove to his satisfaction that I was not. I later saw him doing the same with each new arrival at the hospital and I tried to explain to him that the bishop, when he came, would not be dressed like we patients; surely he would be instantly recognisable in his robes.
‘Well of course the bishop must travel in disguise, to protect himself from his enemies,’ Methodius said. He then pulled me aside and whispered, ‘Just like I am in disguise here as a patient in a madhouse. How did you recognise me?’
One night, a commotion in the ward filtered through the heavy veil of my sleep and became absorbed into my dreams. When I woke in the morning, I looked over and saw that Promoli’s bed was empty. The bedclothes were stripped away and the mattress and pillows were folded and stacked neatly. The name-card was gone from the little holder on the bedframe. I asked the nurses about it, and the patients in the other wards, but no one could tell me. Some of the patients told me, with grisly relish, tales about experiments or operations done on the patients. Methodius gave dark hints about certain orders given by the pope, to which only he was privy. I decided to wait for Pick’s next visit and ask him about it, but days passed and he never appeared.