Джон Ирвинг – The Cider House Rules / Правила виноделов (страница 5)

If one of those women spent the night, it was never in the room with the mothers. Homer Wells saw that the expressions on their faces were troubled when they were sleeping. Homer Wells tried to imagine his own mother among the women. Where did she go after the childbirth? Or was there no place she wanted to go? And what, when she was lying there, was his father thinking – if he even knew he was a father? If she even knew who he was.

These are the things the women usually asked him:

“Are you a medical student?”

“Are you going to be a doctor when you grow up?”

“Are you one of the orphans?”

“How old are you? Hasn't anyone adopted you yet?”

“Do you like it here?”

And he usually answered:

“Maybe I will become a doctor.”

“Of course Doctor Larch is a good teacher.”

“That's right: I am one of the orphans.”

“I am almost sixteen.”

“Adoption wasn't for me. I wanted to come back.”

“Of course I like it here!”

One of the women with a huge belly asked him, “Do you mean if someone wanted to adopt you, you wouldn't go?”

“I wouldn't go,” said Homer Wells. “Right.”

“You wouldn't even think about it?” the woman asked.

“Well, I guess I'd think about it,” Homer Wells said. “But I'd probably decide to stay, as long as I can be of use here.”

The pregnant woman began to cry. “Be of use,” she said. She put her hands on her great belly. “Look at that,” she whispered, “Do you want to be of use?”

“Right,” said Homer Wells, who held his breath.

“No one wanted to put his ear against my belly and listen,” the woman said. “You shouldn't have a baby if there's no one who wants to feel the baby, or listen to it.”

“I don't know,” said Homer Wells.

“Don't you want to touch it or put your ear down to it?” the woman asked him.

“Okay,” said Homer Wells, putting his hand on the woman's hot, hard belly.

“Put your ear down against it, too,” the woman advised him.

“Right,” Homer said. He touched his ear very lightly to her stomach but she strongly pressed his face against her; she was like a drum. She was a warm engine.

“No one should have a baby if there's no one who wants to sleep with his head right there,” the woman whispered, patting the place where she held Homer's face. Right where? Homer wondered, because there was no comfortable place to put his head. He found it hard to imagine that the woman was carrying only one baby.

“Do you want to be of use?” the woman asked him, crying gently now.

“Yes. Be of use,” he said.

“Sleep right here,” the woman told him. He pretended to sleep with his face against the noisy belly, where she held him.

Nurse Angela called Homer Wells “angelic,” and Nurse Edna spoke of the boy's “perfection” and of his “innocence,” but Dr Larch worried about Homer's contact with the damaged women who needed the services of St. Cloud's. What impression did they make on the boy?

Homer Wells had a good, open face; it was not a face that could hide feelings and thoughts. He had strong hands and kind eyes; Dr Larch was worried about the life stories Homer had to hear. He was worried not about the dirty details, but about the dirty philosophy.

There were no curtains at St. Cloud's. The hospital dispensary was a corner room; it had a south window and an east window. Nurse Edna thought that the east window made Dr Larch such an early riser. The white hospital bed always looked untouched; Dr Larch was the last one who went to bed and the first one who rose, so there was a rumor that he never slept at all. If he slept, he slept in the dispensary. He did his writing at night, at the typewriter in Nurse Angela's office. The nurses had long ago forgotten why this room was called Nurse Angela's office; Dr Larch had always used it for his writing. Since the dispensary was where he slept, perhaps Dr Larch felt the need to say that the office belonged to someone else.

The dispensary had two doors (one leading to a toilet and shower). With a window on the south end and on the east wall, and a door on the north and on the west, there was no wall one could put anything against; the bed was under the east window. The closed and locked cupboards with their glass doors formed a strange labyrinth in the middle of the room. The labyrinth of cabinets blocked the bed from view of the hall door, which, like all the doors in the orphanage, had no lock.

The dispensary afforded Larch some privacy for his ether tricks. He was not always conscious of the moment when his fingers lost their grip on the mask and the cone fell from his face. He could usually hear voices outside the dispensary, calling him. He was sure that he always had time to recover.

“Doctor Larch?” Nurse Angela or Nurse Edna, or Homer Wells, called, which was all Larch needed to return from his ether voyage.

“I'm coming!” Larch answered. “I was just resting.”

It was the dispensary, after all; the dispensaries of surgeons always smell of ether. And for a man who worked so hard and slept so little (if he slept at all), it was natural that sometimes he needed a nap. But Melony suggested to Homer Wells that Dr Larch had a bad habit.

“What's the strange smell he has?” Melony asked.

“It's ether,” said Homer Wells. “He's a doctor. He smells like ether.”

“Are you saying this is normal?” Melony asked him.

“Right,” said Homer Wells.

“Wrong,” Melony said. “Your favorite doctor smells like he's got ether inside him – like he's got ether instead of blood.”

One day in the spring Melony said to Homer Wells, “Your favorite doctor knows more about you than you know. And he knows more about me than I know, maybe.”

Homer didn't say anything.

“Do you ever think about your mother?” Melony asked, looking at the sky. “Do you want to know who she was, why she didn't keep you, who your father was?”

“Right,” said Homer Wells.

“I was told I was left at the door,” Melony said. “Maybe it is so, maybe not.”

“I was born here,” said Homer Wells.

“So you were told,” Melony said.

“Nurse Angela named me,” Homer answered.

“Homer,” Melony said. “Just think about it: if you were born here in Saint Cloud's, they must have a record of it.

Your favorite doctor must know who your mother is. He knows her name. It is written down, on paper. It's a law.”

“A law,” Homer Wells said.

“It's a law that there must be a record of you,” Melony said. “They must have your history.”

“History,” said Homer Wells. He imagined Dr Larch sitting at the typewriter in Nurse Angela's office; if there were records, they were in the office.

“If you want to know who your mother is,” Melony said, “find your file. And find my file, too. I'm sure they are more interesting than Jane Eyre.”

In fact, Dr Larch's papers included family histories – but only of the families who adopted the orphans. Contrary to Melony's belief, no records were kept of the orphans' actual mothers and fathers. An orphan's history began with its date of birth – its sex, its length in inches, its weight in pounds, its name. Then there was a record of the orphans' sicknesses. That was all. A much thicker file was kept on the orphans' adoptive families – any information about those families was important to Dr Larch.

“Here in St. Cloud's,” he wrote, “my first priority is an orphan's future. It is for his or her future, for example, that I destroy any record of the identity of his or her natural mother. The unfortunate women who give birth here have made a very difficult decision; they should not, later in their lives, make this decision again. And in almost every case the orphans should not look for the biological parents.

“I am thinking only of the orphans! Of course one day they will want to know. But how does it help anyone to look forward to the past? Orphans, especially, must look ahead to their futures. And what if his or her biological parent, in later years, feels sorry for the decision to give birth here? If there were records, it would always be possible for the real parents to trace their children. That is the storytelling business. That is not for the orphans. So that is not for me.”

That is the passage from A Brief History of St. Cloud's that Wilbur Larch showed to Homer Wells, when he caught Homer in Nurse Angela's office studying his papers.

“I was just looking for something, and I couldn't find it,” Homer said to Dr Larch.

“I know what you were looking for, Homer,” Dr Larch told him, “and it can't be found. I don't remember your mother. I don't even remember you when you were born; you didn't become you until later.”

“I thought there was a law,” Homer said. He meant a law of records, or written history – but Wilbur Larch was the only historian and the only law at St. Cloud's. It was an orphanage law: an orphan's life began when Wilbur Larch remembered it. That was Larch's law.

Homer knew that his simple note written to Melony “Cannot Be Found” would never satisfy her, although Homer had believed Dr Larch.