Nude Men

above the screaming siren: “Don’t tell her mother there was any hope, okay? Tell her there was no hope.”
    “I’ll do my best.”
    Now I am screaming, not just because of the noise but out of anger: “No, you must tell her there wasn’t any hope. Tell her there was no hope at all and that Sara was going to suffer terribly from her brain tumor, okay?"
    “I won’t call Sara’s mother, but if she calls me, I won’t lie to her either. She deserves to know the truth.”
     
    A t the hospital, I call Lady Henrietta.
    ‘‘That took long” is the first thing she says when she answers the phone. Then, almost breathless, she asks, “Is there any hope?”
    “No.”
    Silence. And then she says, very softly, “You see, I knew it.”
    “Yes, I know.”
    I hear her crying. And then she says, “Well, come home. It’s getting late.”
    I am silent now. I want to say “okay.” It is on the tip of my tongue. I can hear it in the air, already.
    “Okay?” she says. “Can you please bring Sara home now?”
    “No.”
    “Why not?” she asks, annoyed and curious, not at all alarmed, because people who are dying of a disease simply don’t die, on top of it, of an accident.
    “You should turn on your tape recorder,” I tell her.
    “It’s already on.”
    “You should come to the hospital. There was an accident. It’s Sara.”
    I tell her that her daughter is already dead.
    Not only is there no hope, but your daughter is already dead.
     
    I am appalled by the parrot, who, as soon as we return to the apartment from the hospital, says, “Is it time yet?”
    I am surprised that Lady Henrietta, very seriously, answers the parrot: “Yes, it happened. She’s dead.”
    “And yet? And yet?” says the poor dumb parrot, as though mocking her answer. He raves on a bit: “Is it almost time yet? Death and dying?”
     
    T he parrot didn’t kill Sara. What nonsense. It was the street. Nude men and that street were responsible. No parrot of mine. No parrot of Sara’s. I take the parrot’s droppings and deposit them on the street where the accident happened, to punish the street.
     
    I feel as though I have been a spectator at a circus, and now the show is over. There was a talking parrot who belonged to a bearded lady who wore a dress the color of the sun, flew through the air on a hang glider, flipped coins, and killed fishes (cruelty to animals). It was a grotesque show with strong smells, blinding colors, and loud noises. Come to think of it, I was not only a spectator, I was also a performer: the elephant master. And I messed up the show. The elephant disobeyed me and trampled on the bearded lady.
     
    O ne night I have a strange dream, or rather a nightmare. I dream that Lady Henrietta and I are at the doctor’s office, and the doctor—Sara’s original doctor—is telling us that Sara did not die of an accident.
    “Do you mean she was murdered?” I ask, because of movies. “No. She died of her brain tumor, as was expected,” says the doctor in my dream.
    “So what was the car accident? Was that her brain tumor?” asks Henrietta sarcastically.
    “Exactly,” says the doctor. “It was a new symptom: a cancer.”
    “Cancer of what?”
    “Cancer of her space.”
    “What?”
    “Cancer of the space, or place, her body fills in the universe. It is also called cancer of her air, but generally it is called cancer of one’s space, place, or air, not her or his space, place, or air. In this case, however, since we are talking about a very specific person whom we knew, we may say her.”
    “Was it some sort of psychological problem, this ‘cancer’?” one of us asks.
    “Far from it. Cancer of one’s place means that the place one’s body occupies in the universe has become cancerous.”
    “We really don’t understand what you’re talking about,” we say.
    “When your place is cancerous, it means it’s always at the wrong time. Accidents happen to you.”
    “Do you mean like being at the wrong place at the wrong time?”
    “No. Your place cannot be wrong, but when it is sick or cancerous it becomes at the wrong time, just as a watch can become at the wrong time, except that with your place it’s far worse than merely the wrong time; it’s the bad time, the tragic time; accidents keep occurring in your place. With Sara, the first accident was the last.”
    “How do you know all this?”
    “I knew it the first day you brought her to me, when I saw the nature of her brain tumor. You may