Of all the literary genres, panegyric is easily the dullest. Yet I must now praise the Hitch. It was courage, and it was more than courage; it was honour, it was integrity, it was character. In any event, not one of the Johnsonian deficits was ever visible in him…And when you consider how swiftly even a routine illness – a potent flu, say – exhausts your reserves of patience, tolerance, civility, warmth, and imaginative sympathy, despite the tacit assurance that the miseries of the present will soon join the forgotten miseries of the past. Christopher knew no such assurance, and he had been immured in the land of the sick for seventeen months.
‘The blood squad’s due around now,’ he said.
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘is this for the catheter? Well I’ll go and get a coffee.’
‘No, Mart, you’ll need your book. Ten minutes, they claim. Or they used to. But it’ll take longer than that.’
Christopher was proud of his ‘very rare blood type’, and would often ‘give’, spontaneously, for the public weal (as he twice did in Vietnam, in 1967 and 2006). He used to find the process absurdly easy: the clasping squeeze of the tourniquet, the brisk little stab – and then the cup of tea and the ginger biscuit (in South East Asia he also got ‘a sustaining bowl of beef noodles’). It was different now.
That same month he described it in writing:
The phlebotomist would sit down, take my hand or wrist in his or her hand, and sigh. The welts of reddish and purple could already be seen, giving the arm a definite ‘junkie’ look. The veins themselves lay sunken in their beds, either hollow or crushed…I was recently scheduled for the inserion of a ‘PIC’ line, by means of which a permanent blood catheter is inserted in the upper arm…It can’t have been much less than two hours until, having tried and failed with both arms, I was lying between two bed-pads that were liberally laced with dried or clotting blood. The upset of the nurses was palpable.
When it was over, when the ‘life-giving thread’ had begun ‘to unspool in the syringe’ (‘Twelve times is the charm!’ cries a medic), and the smeared bed-pads had been cleared away, that’s what the half-conscious patient felt moved to think about: the upset of the nurses.
Susceptibility to emotion is not encouraged in a hospital dedicated to profit. In Britain we have the famous NHS; and despite its wartime feel (as everyone somehow bootstraps along with what they’ve got), you are always seeing the kind of vocational ardour that silently declares, This is my talent – the alleviation of suffering is what I’m good at. In America the ardour has been selected out. Hence that frostily elfin politeness that envelops you all the way from the reception desk to the intensive care unit…Invariably and effortlessly Christopher moved past the robotic spryness that surrounded him, and developed relationships that included sensitivity and humour and trust – with the oncologists, the blood-extraction teams, the caterers, and the cleaners, even as he took up the most difficult position of all.
So let me praise him, let us praise the Hitch: contra Dr Johnson, he seemed to find it the easiest thing in the world to be the very opposite of a scoundrel. In the gloom of the sick chamber, all the distinctions that set one man apart from another were unforgettably perceived; he kept hold of his gaiety and his sagacity, his wit was unclouded, his reason unperplexed. His human glory was not obliterated, and the hero was unsubdued.
I do so want to die well…But how is it done?
That is how it is done.
The occasion of sin – 1
But of course we didn’t accept that that was what he was doing – dying.
And I myself was no doubt exorbitantly encouraged by a fresh development. During the last month or so, in our hours together, Christopher wanted to talk about – and to hear about – sex. And this was new; indeed, the subject had gone unmentioned for over a year…Very early on in his medical exile (it comes on page 8 of Mortality), Christopher owned up to a sudden and sweeping indifference to feminine allure. ‘If Penelope Cruz had been one of my nurses, I wouldn’t even have noticed. In the war against Thanatos, the immediate loss of Eros is a huge initial sacrifice.’ And now here it was again, eros, nature’s strongest – and most ineffable – force: the one that peoples the earth.
‘I’ve got a good one for you, Hitch,’ I began. ‘And one you’ve never heard before. When Phoebe stripteased my cock plum off in the bathroom at the flat…Actually she didn’t tease it off, not this time. She tempted it off. Gaw, she –’
A knock, then a nurse. Who acknowledged my presence, and indulgently withdrew.
‘Late summer 1981. Thirty years ago to the month, and you were packing your bags for America. I was too ashamed to tell you at the time.’
‘Too ashamed? You? This sounds very promising. So in your prenuptial period.’
‘Exactly. And you were giving me those pep talks about monogamy. You were very serious and very impressive.’
‘Well it’s vitally important, monogamy, when you’re squaring up to wedlock. Or else you lose the moral glow. Christ. I mean, is this or is this not an exception?’
‘Perfectly true, Hitch. And I needed to hear it.’
‘You did. Steeped in promiscuity as you were. You were a right little slag, Mart, if you’ll forgive me for saying so. And now you had before you a shining prize. Julia.’
‘Yes, and I was grateful, and I listened. You said a lot of good things. Avoid the occasion of sin, Little Keith…What’s that from?’
‘It’s a Catholic teaching, strange to say. Insultingly obvious, really, but nicely phrased. Avoid the things you know will tempt you. Avoid being alone with ex-girlfriends – that’s what it comes down
