The English Patient

“I will use it to teach you to dance, Hana. Not what your young friend there knows. I have seen and turned my back on certain dances. But this tune, ‘How Long Has This Been Going On,’ is one of the great songs because the introduction’s melody is purer than the song it introduces. And only great jazzmen have acknowledged that. Now, we can have this party on the terrace, which would allow us to invite the dog, or we can invade the Englishman and have it in the bedroom upstairs. Your young friend who doesn’t drink managed to find bottles of wine yesterday in San Domenico. We have not just music. Give me your arm. No. First we must chalk the floor and practise. Three main steps—one-two-three—now give me your arm. What happened to you today?”

“He dismantled a large bomb, a difficult one. Let him tell you about it.”

The sapper shrugged, not modestly, but as if it was too complicated to explain. Night fell fast, night filled up the valley and then the mountains and they were left once more with lanterns.

   They were shuffling together in the corridors towards the English patient’s bedroom, Caravaggio carrying the gramophone, one hand holding its arm and needle.

“Now, before you begin on your histories,” he said to the static figure in the bed, “I will present you with ‘My Romance.’ ”

“Written in 1935 by Mr. Lorenz Hart, I believe,” muttered the Englishman. Kip was sitting at the window, and she said she wanted to dance with the sapper.

“Not until I’ve taught you, dear worm.”

She looked up at Caravaggio strangely; that was her father’s term of endearment for her. He pulled her into his thick grizzled embrace and said “dear worm” again, and began the dancing lesson.

She had put on a clean but unironed dress. Each time they spun she saw the sapper singing to himself, following the lyrics. If they had had electricity they could have had a radio, they could have had news of the war somewhere. All they had was the crystal set belonging to Kip, but he had courteously left it in his tent. The English patient was discussing the unfortunate life of Lorenz Hart. Some of his best lyrics to “Manhattan,” he claimed, had been changed and he now broke into those verses

“We’ll bathe at Brighton;

The fish well frighten

When we’re in.

Your bathing suit so thin

Will make the shellfish grin

Fin to fin.

“Splendid lines, and erotic, but Richard Rodgers, one suspects, wanted more dignity.”

“You must guess my moves, you see.”

“Why don’t you guess mine?”

“I will when you know what to do. At present I’m the only one who does.”

“I bet Kip knows.”

“He may know but he won’t do it.”

“I shall have some wine,” the English patient said, and the sapper picked up a glass of water, flung the contents through the window and poured wine for the Englishman.

“This is my first drink in a year.”

There was a muffled noise, and the sapper turned quickly and looked out of the window, into the darkness. The others froze. It could have been a mine. He turned back to the party and said, “It’s all right, it wasn’t a mine. That seemed to come from a cleared area.”

“Turn the record over, Kip. Now I will introduce you to ‘How Long Has This Been Going On,’ written by—” He left an opening for the English patient, who was stymied, shaking his head, grinning with the wine in his mouth.

“This alcohol will probably kill me.”

“Nothing will kill you, my friend. You are pure carbon.”

“Caravaggio!”

“George and Ira Gershwin. Listen.”

He and Hana were gliding to that sadness of the saxophone. He was right. The phrasing so slow, so drawn out, she could sense the musician did not wish to leave the small parlour of the introduction and enter the song, kept wanting to remain there, where the story had not yet begun, as if enamoured by a maid in the prologue. The Englishman murmured that the introductions to such songs were called “burdens.”

Her cheek rested against the muscles of Caravaggio’s shoulder. She could feel those terrible paws on her back against the clean frock, and they moved in the limited space between the bed and the wall, between bed and door, between the bed and the window alcove that Kip sat within. Every now and then as they turned she would see his face. His knees up and his arms resting on them. Or he would be looking out of the window into darkness.

“Do any of you know a dance called the Bosphorus hug?” the Englishman asked.

“No such thing.”

Kip watched the large shadows slide over the ceiling, over the painted wall. He struggled up and walked to the English patient to fill his empty glass, and touched the rim of his glass with the bottle in a toast. West wind coming into the room. And he turned suddenly, angry. A frail scent of cordite reaching him, a percentage of it in the air, and then he slipped out of the room, gesturing weariness, leaving Hana in the arms of Caravaggio.