Tryptych Angelus

Kolya Konstantinovic Kalinnikov did not know he was a musical genius until he was dying.  He had never appreciated life much before it was about to leave him and his musical awareness had been limited to irritation at the amusement that his alliterative name generated amongst his London neighbours.

His professed disbelief in the afterlife deserted him while he waited to be claimed by it and, despite there being very little pleasure in the process, he was unable to halt the involuntary dissection of his many failures. There being no-one to discuss his condition with besides the chirpily patronising palliative care nurse nurse who began visiting infrequently in November, he was unable to appreciate that the lack of joy in his memories was more indicative of terminal depression than true worthlessness, and he first picked up his daughter's abandoned violin in an effort to atone for his sins against his family.

He remembered that his mother played the violin during his early childhood, her usual remoteness lost as she swayed like a wind-bent sapling through Vivaldi's Spring.  If asked he could only have given a fleeting impression of the lessons in principle and basic tecnique that she had given him during his convalescence from a broken leg, but the unloved child he had been had unknowingly adsorbed her skill in those brief moments of warmth. He sawed away through December until he could separate the odd note from the steel strings and bought himself a random selection of instruction manuals, orchestral excerpts and jazz standards from a web auction site for Christmas, together with a set of covered gut strings that encouraged him to practice more because the sound was immediately better.

January, normally dismal, brought with her hot blooms of pain that turned sleep into delirium.  He chased gypsy rhythms through the dark and watched their women writhe in flaming firelight just beyond his reach, but in the morning he was unable to recall the notes even if his fingers could have shaped them.  Finally, in the daylight, he called his doctor, who called the palliative care team, who called the palliative care Sister.  She arrived on his doorstep in the rain and brought with her a prescription for morphine and a student nurse.

It took him ten minutes, almost, to answer the bell.  Simonie was already nervous at meeting her first officially-dying-person when she pressed it, and was really in no further need of time to consider what she might say to somebody who had no summer holiday to look forward to. When she heard shuffling, wheezing and the odd hitched breath of possible agony approaching, she would have turned tail and left, had she not been in the company of Sister Professional, otherwise known as Janine.  In compromise she took a step down and positioned herself in the shadow of the older woman's wider hips, relinquishing the responsibility for initiating the conversation.

"Good afternoon, Mr K.  I hear you're in a spot of discomfort.  Not to worry, we'll soon have you feeling better."  Even Janine looked a trifle disturbed by the scraggly old man's stare. Or maybe it was irritation at his failure to move out of her way.  "If you'll just let us in?"

He coughed. Winced. Coughed again. Spoke in a fractured voice, just above a whisper.  "Who ... the bloody hell ... are you?"

"I'm sorry, sir, I thought you'd remember me.  I visited you at the end of last year, yes? Janine Duff. I'm your MacMillan nurse. Yes? You remember?"  She took a step forward, aiming for the threshold, but he remained upright against the doorpost and
continued to glare.

"Mr Kalinov. You understand we can't help you unless you let us in. Sir. Sir?"

Simonie had realised that she didn't like her new mentor almost from the moment of introduction and a morning spent listening to her officious conduct of a hospice staff meeting hadn't improved her opinion.  On the car journey from South West to South East London, Janine had spoken more naturally about her "personal nursing philosophy" and even with some enthusiasm about her visits to the "loved ones left behind" which she was committed to continue for "as long as is needed after the loss". Sim had dared to hope that she might not be so bad after all, once you got over the ridiculous way she talked about things.  Her trust was irrevocably broken at the realisation that Janine COULDN'T EVEN GET THE PATIENT'S NAME RIGHT.

Calling him Mr K had been an obvious attempt to avoid having to pronounce Kalinnikov, lazy but understandable. Calling him Mr Kalinov was an abject failure to prepare properly and inexcusable given that Janine had met him at least twice before.  She had noticed enough to surmise that he was "an old sweetheart in need of some tender loving care" but apparently hadn't bothered to ask him how to say his name properly.  Simonie Trevethick, who had spent a lot of time in her nineteen and a bit years explaining to people that she wasn't actually called Someone Terrific, took off one glove, stepped into the open and held out her hand.

"Hello Mr Kalinnikov.  We haven't met before. My name is Simonie and I'm a student nurse.  We had a message that you've got a problem with pain, is that right?"

He still didn't say anything, but reached out one dessicated hand towards her.  Janine flinched but Simonie stood still as he traced a finger down her hair.  "Fire. You bought fire here. I can hear it."  He cocked his head, listening a moment, and Sim could feel the crackle of static despite the damp.

"Do you believe in God?"

" I. I don't know. Do you?"

"I'm trying."  There was a slight click at the end of the word, a sign of his origins.  "The devil is much easier to see" His eyes were an unexpectedly clear grey and, when he looked straight at her, unexpectedly rational, despite his next pronouncement. "You should come in. Come in.  He's behind you."

Simonie whirled around to look but Janine was more steadfast and moved into the now open doorway before he could change his mind.

"Thank you, sir. January's such a miserable month don't you think?  All this cold and wet.  We'll all be glad when the summer gets here, won't we?"

Simonie was glad he replied before she had a chance to, because she would have been unable to speak so mildly to the stupid woman.

"I will be dead by summer.  However the wind blows, the only time is now."  He turned torturously on the rich red carpet of the hallway and stared at Sim again. "I must have the capacity to use it."

Her nod was uncertain and he kept his gaze on her a moment longer. She did not shiver again, she was sure of that, but the warm air between them shimmered and he nodded to himself in a much more decisive manner.  "You understand."

He did not wait for her agreement but continued into his living room, the hearth blazing with the artificial flames of a substantial gas fire.  The red carpet spread out beneath him and pooled under an equally sumptuous pair of gold-upholstered couches and dark wood occasional tables.  The room was larger than Simonie had expected, the furniture attesting to Kalinnikov's possession of money in the past, and the heat suggesting that he had money still unlike many other elderly patients she had visited in recent months.  There was little in the way of personal effects, no pictures of the attractive man he had been, just a small black and white print of a plain woman on the wall under a frankly ugly wooden clock.

He watched her eyes move as he perched on the edge of an incongrous kitchen chair in the curve of the bay window. "My wife. Miesha.  She was beautiful when she was in colour.  But now ... I don't know.  She is rotting."

Simonie had started to smile at his reminiscence, but took a step back in shock at his conclusion and only just missed putting her foot through the violin.  His mouth stretched in something approaching savagery as he lurched off the chair as if to save it but she had already staggered against the stocky couch arm, and he managed to transform it into a moue of averted loss that had Janine exclaiming at her charge to be more careful and patting the old man comfortingly on the shoulder.  Simonie was less profusively apologetic than she might have been if she hadn't sensed the stilling of the air around him and the now punitive flick of static against her cheek.

She was a stereotypical redhead, deep auburn hair streaked with ginger, freckles like cinnamon on her milky skin and possessed of a tendency to blush that made her face far more readable than she was comfortable with.  The old man watched her flush rise, settled back with a sound that was a cross between a grunt of satisfaction at her discomfort and an agonised groan on his own behalf, and drew in a deep breath to precede his attempt at less provocative conversation.

"Miesha accepted death more easily than I do.  She expected a better form of transformation than simple decay.  But it is difficult, yes?  The pain is ... I am no longer able to bear it with grace and my mind is ... I talk to myself in the nights and it is ... "

Simonie's burst of self-righteous self-confidence had deserted her and she could not think of a single thing to say; in her agnostic state, she was still able to conjure up clouds and angels and other reassuring phenomena to define the afterlife and had no idea how to discuss decay with someone to whom it was no longer an abstract concept.  Janine, although disconcerted by the lack of cosy chat by way of introduction, was more used to tackling the big issues.

"Don't you worry, Mr K.  We can certainly make the pain better.  That's often what helps people in your situation to gain a measure of peace.  You'll be able to think more clearly.  And it may help you to make some kind of plan so we have some idea what you want when the time comes."

"When ... the ... time .... comes.  When the time comes. When the time comes."  His voice became ruminative but his eyes flashed as he concentrated on the woman's face.  "You mean when my time has gone.  When it is ended."  He had not framed it as a question, but seemed to expect a reply. "Yes? This is what you mean?"

"Well, I suppose so, yes, Mr K.  I'm not just talking about planning your own funeral, of course, although as I say, many people find that helpful because their families are less worried that they might do something wrong.  But we can make plans for what you want as you become more ill, whether you wish to go into hospital or a hospice, for example.  Or if you wish to have a care package here at home ..." Janine stopped, as he flicked his hand at her and turned away.

"She is no good, she talks like a peasant. You must help me.  I have work to do. Work that I have left so late but it must be done.  I know how to stop him, but I must have the time to do it. You understand?” 

Simonie had only half listened to him, distracted by the thought that flashing eyes were supposed to be metaphorical, surely?  Nobody could actually change their eye colour in real life. And yet, Mr Kalinnikov now had irises the same colour as his lustrous upholstery, and he was staring straight at her.

“Oh. I’m. It’s.  I ‘m sorry.  I just. I don’t think I know what you mean, no. Sir.”

There was an unlikely silence.  Even on such short acquaintance, Simonie could not imagine that Janine would suffer such an insult without exploding, especially since her professional competence had been dismissed so lightly.  However, she remained motionless, almost ... frozen, with her mouth half open.

The old man, frustrated by her distraction, flicked his wrist again, and she turned back to face him.

“I’m just a student nurse, Mr Kallinnikov.  Janine’s the one with the expertise.  She knows about painkillers and stuff. “

He started to speak slowly, as if explaining reality to a five year old falling out of a fairytale.  Sim had some sympathy with the five year old.  Prior to their arrival, she had imagined grief, anger, denial, all those stages of coping with terminal illness that Elisabeth Kubler-Ross had turned into a theory however many years before, to become staple reading for apprehensive student nurses everywhere.  She had not imagined decay, devilry and apparent witchcraft.  Why else would Janine stay so quiet for so long?

“...drugs, yes.  But it can only be you who can make it possible for me to complete the work.”

Sim twitched a little, realising that she might have missed some key points about this reality.

“Er.  I’m not sure I’ll be here long enough to help you, Sir.  This is only a placement, not a proper job.  I hope I’ll have moved on by the time you ... Well, by the time you are ready to, erm, move on yourself.”

“I think you must learn to relax around death if you wish to do this job at all, hmm?”  He smiled at her for the first time, indulgently.  “I am dying. I know that and you know that, however much you lack experience.  I do not need you as a nurse.  I need you to become what you were born to be, before it is too late.  You cannot wait, like I have done, to realise that there are worse things than pain and disease to fight against.  You must learn to fight the evil, himself.”

Simonie had watched the Omen films by accident at the age of nine, when her older brother had smuggled them into the house to watch when he should have been babysitting.  She had avoided horror films ever since and as a teenager, had consciously developed her practical streak to overcome her disquiet at the possibility of supernatural elements floating around her.  She drew up her shoulders.

“OK. I’ve had enough.  Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?  I’m not anything other than a confused student and you seem to be a bit of a mad old man, who may or may not have taken too many paracetamol.  I’m sorry you’re sick, really I am, but don’t you think it might be better to concentrate on ... remembering the good, rather than thinking so morbidly about things?”