Briefing for a Descent Into Hell - Doris May Lessing [105]
“I heard Doctor X say that Doctor Y favoured you unfairly.”
“Yes, Doctor Y told me that too.”
“And Doctor X said to Nurse Black that he thought it was possible you are shamming.”
“That I do remember?”
“That you remember more than you let on.”
“What I remember they won’t have at any price, that’s my trouble.”
“Doctor X said there was a case last year when a man went on pretending he couldn’t remember his wife, but then Doctor X caught him out and he had to go home.”
“I don’t remember my wife or my mistress. I am very attractive to women, that’s clear enough. They both hate my guts.”
“I don’t think that is very funny, if you do.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“No, but you aren’t a woman.”
“No. Oh no, I’m not. Oh no, no.”
“You look very like my girl, the one that was killed in Yugoslavia.”
“You never were in Yugoslavia.”
“But I—oh very well. I don’t see why you should mind that.”
“But I do mind. They know you weren’t in Yugoslavia.”
“All the same, you do look like her.”
“Perhaps I am the first person that belongs to your new memory. I mean, the people in the ward and me and Doctor Y and Doctor X, we are what you’ve made your new memory out of?”
“Not Doctor X!”
“Oh, I don’t know, I suppose he’s not as bad as that. I mean, why do we all hate Doctor X? They aren’t all that different, are they?”
“Yes. Oh yes, they are.”
“Well all right, I’m sorry, oh, please don’t get upset.”
“All right.”
“But when you do start remembering all the people in your life, what will happen to me? I mean, I was thinking last night, now I’m an important person in your mind …”
“You are, you are, I promise you, Violet.”
“But when it all comes back, I’ll be one of—hundreds?”
“Perhaps it won’t come back.”
“When it does, will you want to be my friend?”
“I am sure I will.”
“But she won’t.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Yes. I saw her both of the times she came to see you. I was the one who took her in to you, and showed her the way and everything. That was when I was being co-operative and amenable.”
“She is very attractive. He has good taste, the Professor has.”
“Is she what you would choose now, do you think?”
“I wouldn’t mind. I wouldn’t mind at all if I could just go off with her as if I had just met her.”
“But you have only just met her.”
“I know when I’m with her that she is telling me the truth. She hates me, you see.”
“Yes, she does. But it’s not you she hates so much. She hates her life.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Yes. I saw her face. I took a good close look, both times. I knew what she was feeling.”
“Tell me then.”
“She’s like my mother.”
“But perhaps everyone is?”
“No. Because if that is true it means you are like my father, and you aren’t, you aren’t, you aren’t.”
“Don’t cry then.”
“I don’t cry. Never. Or if I do, it isn’t me that’s crying. I can watch myself cry—it’s not worth anything, not like real sorrow … she was crying like anything last time.”
“They say I lost my memory because I feel guilty.”
“Do you?”
“I think I feel guilty because I lost my memory. I do feel very deeply indeed that it is irresponsible to lose one’s memory.”
“If you feel that, you haven’t lost your memory, but you have only lost some facts, some events.”
“Oh yes, I do tell myself that. But there’s something else. Yes. There’s something I have to remember. I have to.”
“But don’t get excited, it makes it worse.”
“I’ve been here over two months, Violet.”
“Don’t let them send you to that place. Don’t.”
“But if I refuse to go, they say I’ll have to have shock.”
Both of them, the middle-aged man and the pretty girl, turned to look at a person, a woman, who sat in a chair a few feet away, watching the television. The programme had at last started. Then they looked at another person, a middle-aged man, and then at another, and so on, around the room. The people their glances