Briefing for a Descent Into Hell - Doris May Lessing [12]
NURSE: One big swallow, that will do it, that’s done it.
PATIENT: You wake me and you sleep me. You wake me and then you push me under. I’ll wake up now. I want to wake.
NURSE: Sit up then.
PATIENT: But what is this stuff, what are these pills, how can I wake when you … who is that man who pushes me under, who makes me sink as drowned man sinks and …
NURSE: Doctor X thinks this treatment will do you good.
PATIENT: Where’s the other, the fighting man?
NURSE: If you mean Doctor Y, he’ll be back soon.
PATIENT: I must come up from the sea’s floor. I must brave the surface of the sea, storms or no, because They will never find me down there. Bad enough to expect Them to come into our heavy air, all smoky and fouled as it is, but to expect them down at the bottom of the sea with all the drowned ships, no that’s not reasonable. No I must come up and give them a chance to see me there, hollowed in hot rock.
NURSE: Yes, well, all right. But don’t thrash about like that … for goodness’ sake.
PATIENT: Goodness is another thing. I must wake up. I must. I must keep watch. Or I’ll never get out and away.
NURSE: Well I don’t know really. Perhaps that treatment isn’t right for you? But you’d better lie down then. That’s right. Turn over. Curl up. There. Hush. Hushhhhhhh. Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
PATIENT: Hushabye baby
lulled by the storm
if you don’t harm her
she’ll do you no harm
I’ve been robbed of sense. I’ve been made without resource. I have become inflexible in a flux. When I was on the Good Ship Lollipop, I was held there by wind and sea. When I was on the raft, there was nobody there but me. On this rock I’m fast. Held. I can’t do more than hold on. And wait. Or plunge like a diver to the ocean floor where it is as dark as a fish’s gut and there’s nowhere to go but up. But I do have an alternative, yes. I can beg a lift can’t I? cling on to the coattails of a bird or a fish. If dogs are the friends of man, what are a sailor’s friends? Porpoises. They love us. Like to like they say, though when has a porpoise killed a man, and we have killed so many and for curiosity, not even for food’s or killing’s sake. A porpoise will take me to my love. A sleek-backed singing shiny black porpoise with loving eyes and a long whistler’s beak. Hold on there porpoise, poor porpoise in your poisoned sea, filled with stinking effluent from the bowels of man, and waste from the murderous mind of man, don’t die yet, hold on, hold me, and take me out of this frozen grinding Northern circuit down and across into the tender Southern-running current and the longed-for shores. There now. Undersea if you have to, I can breathe wet if I must, but above sea if you can, in case I may hail a passing friend who has taken the shape of a shaft of fire or a dapple of light. There, porpoise, am I true weight? A kind creature? Kith and Kind? Just take me South, lead me to the warmer current, oh now it is rough, we toss and heave as it was in the Great Storm, when my raft fell apart like straw, but I know now this is a good cross patch, it is creative, oh what a frightful stress, what a strain, and now out, yes out, we’re well out, and still swimming West, but South West, but anti-clock Wise, whereas before it was West with the clock and no destination but the West Indies and Florida and past the Sargasso Sea and the Gulf Stream and the West Wind Drift and the Canaries Current and around and around and around and around but now, oh porpoise, on this delicate soap bubble our earth, spinning all blue and green and iridescent, where Northwards air and water swirl in time’s direction left to right, great spirals of breath and light and water, now oh porpoise, singing friend, we are on the other track, and I’ll hold on, I’ll clasp and clutch to the last breath of your patience, being patient, till you land me on that beach at last, for oh porpoise, you must be sure and take me there, you must land me fairly at last, you must not let me cycle South too far, dragging in the Brazil current of my mind, no, but let me gently step