Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [28]
“Yes, if I hold onto the beds and walls.”
“I suppose your sleep is still pretty troubled?”
“Not very.”
“You’re recovering fast. You would be running around already if you’d undressed properly and come head first. At present you are convalescing from severe shock, so take things easily. Is there anything special you would like?”
“Could you get me something to read?”
The doctor slid each hand up the opposite sleeve and stood for a moment with his lips pursed, looking like a mandarin. He said, “I’ll try, but I can’t promise much. Our institute has been isolated since the outbreak of the second world war. There is only one way of coming here and you’ve seen yourself how impossible it is to bring luggage.”
“But the nurses are young girls!”
“Well?”
“You said the place was isolated.”
“It is. We recruit our staff from among the patients. I expect you’ll be joining us soon.”
“When I get better I intend to leave.”
“Easier said than done. We’ll discuss it in a day or two, when you’re able to walk. Meanwhile I’ll hunt out some reading material.”
The nurses who brought the midday meal also brought a children’s cartoon book called Oor Wullie’s Annual for 1938, a crime novel with the covers missing called No Orchids for Miss Blandish, and a fat squat little book in good condition, The Holy War, in which the s was usually printed f and half the pages were uncut. Lanark began reading Oor Wullie. It made him smile in places but many pages had been spoiled by someone’s colouring them with a blunt brown crayon. He began No Orchids and was halfway through it that evening when the nurses hurried in and set screens around the bed beside him. They brought metal cylinders and trolleys of medical equipment and went out saying, “Here comes a friend for you, Bushybrows.”
A male nurse wheeled in a stretcher and the room was filled with the sound of hoarse guttural breathing. The figure on the stretcher was hidden by two doctors walking alongside, one of them Lanark’s doctor. They went behind the screens and the stretcher was taken away. Lanark could read no longer. He lay listening to the tinkle of instruments, the murmur of professional voices, the huge harsh breathing. His evening cup of tea was brought and the lights went out. Except for a lamp behind the screens the room was bathed in moving shadows cast by the corridor windows. The breathing became a couple of quietly repeated vocal sighs and then grew inaudible. Screens, trolley and instruments were wheeled out and everyone left except the doctor with the rimless glasses, who came to Lanark’s bed and sat heavily on the edge wiping his brow with a piece of tissue. He said, “He’s cured of his disease, poor sod. God knows how he’ll recover from the journey here.” Under the bed lamp, propped against a bank of pillows, was a face so shockingly like a yellow skull that the only indication of age and sex was a white moustache with drooping corners. The sockets were so deep that it was impossible to see the eyes. A skeletal arm lay on the coverlet, and a rubber tube carried fluid from a suspended bottle to a bandage round the biceps.
The doctor sighed and said, “We did what we could, and he should be comfortable for eight hours at least. I wish you would do us a favour. You still sleep pretty lightly, I suppose?”
“Yes.”
“He may gain consciousness and feel like talking. I could leave a nurse here but their damned professional cheerfulness depresses introspective men. Talk to him, if he feels like it, and if he wants a doctor call me on this.”
He took from his pocket a white plastic radio the size of a cigarette packet. There was a circular mesh on one surface and a red switch at the side. The doctor pressed the switch, and a small clear frantic voice asked Dr. Bannerjee to come to delivery room Q. The doctor switched it off and slid it under Lanark’s pillow. He said, “It works two ways. If you speak