Briefing for a Descent Into Hell - Doris May Lessing [9]
I think he may very well have reverted to age eleven or twelve. That was the age I enjoyed sea stories. He is much worse in my opinion. The fact is, he never acknowledges my presence at all. Doctor Y claims he reacts to him.
DOCTOR X. 24TH AUGUST.
DOCTOR Y: What is your name today?
PATIENT: It could be Odysseus?
DOCTOR Y: The Atlantic was surely not his sea?
PATIENT: But it could be now, surely, couldn’t it?
DOCTOR Y: Well now, what’s next?
PATIENT: Perhaps Jamaica. I’m a bit further South than usual.
DOCTOR Y: You’ve been talking practically non-stop for days. Did you know that?
PATIENT: You told me to talk. I don’t mind thinking instead.
DOCTOR Y: Well, whatever you do, remember this: you aren’t on a raft on the Atlantic. You did not lose your friends into the arms of a flying saucer. You were never a sailor.
PATIENT: Then why do I think I’m one?
DOCTOR Y: What’s your real name?
PATIENT: Crafty.
DOCTOR Y: Where do you live?
PATIENT: Here.
DOCTOR Y: What’s your wife’s name?
PATIENT: Have I got a wife? What is she called?
DOCTOR Y: Tell me, why won’t you ever talk to Doctor X? He’s rather hurt about it. I would be too.
PATIENT: I’ve told you already, I can’t see him.
DOCTOR Y: Well, we are getting rather worried. We don’t know what to do. It’s nearly two weeks since you came in. The police don’t know who you are. There’s only one thing we are fairly certain about: and that is that you aren’t any sort of a sailor, professional or amateur. Tell me, did you read a lot of sailing stories as a boy?
PATIENT: Man and boy.
DOCTOR Y: What’s George’s surname? And Charlie’s surname?
PATIENT: Funny, I can’t think of them … yes of course, we all had the same name. The name of the ship.
DOCTOR Y: What was the name of the ship?
PATIENT: I can’t remember. And she’s foundered or wrecked long ago. And the raft never had a name. You don’t call a raft as you call a person.
DOCTOR Y: Why shouldn’t you name the raft? Give your raft a name now?
PATIENT: How can I name the raft when I don’t know my own name. I’m called … what? Who calls me? What? Why? You are Doctor Why, and I am called Why—that’s it, it was the good ship Why that foundered in the Guinea Current, leaving Who on the slippery raft and …
DOCTOR Y: Just a minute. I’ll be away for four or five days. Doctor X will be looking after you till I get back. I’ll be in to see you the moment I’m back again.
PATIENT: In and out, out and in, in and out …
New treatment. Librium. 3 Tofronil 3 t.a.d.
DOCTOR X. 29TH AUGUST.
The sea is rougher than it was. As the raft tilts up the side of a wave I see fishes curling above my head, and when the wave comes crashing over me fishes and weed slide slithering over my face, to rejoin the sea. As my raft climbs up up up to the crest the fishes look eye to eye with me out of the wall of water. There’s that air creature, they think, just before they go slop over my face and shoulders, while I think as they touch and slide, they are water creatures, they belong to wet. The wave curls and furls in its perfect whirls holding in it three deep sea fish that have come up to see the sky, a tiddler fit for ponds or jam jars, and the crispy sparkle of plankton, which is neither visible nor invisible, but a bright crunch in the imagination. If men are creatures of air, and fishes whether big or small creatures of sea, what then are the creatures of fire? Ah yes, I know, but you did not see me, you overlooked me, you snatched up my comrades and let me lie squeaking inside my fold of smelly blanket. Where are they, my friends? Administering justice, are they, from the folds of fire, looking at me eye to eye out of the silkily waving fronds of fire. Look, there’s a man, that’s an air creature, they think, breathing yellow flame as we breathe H2O. There’s something about that gasping gape, they think—George? poor Charlie?—that merits recognition. But they are beyond air now, and the inhabitants of it. They are flame throwers. They are fire storms. You think justice is a kindly commodity? No, it razes, it throws down, it cuts swathes.