Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [45]
“Attention, please note! Attention, please note! The expansion committee announces that after the hundred and eightieth all twittering is to be treated as a sign of hopelessness.”
“Attention, please note! Attention, please note! The expansion committee announces that after the hundred and eightieth the sink will take no more softs. All helpless softs will be funnelled into the compression sluices under the main wards.”
But none of this urgency showed in the staff club unless it was displayed through increased jollity at mealtimes. People sat at tables smiling and talking loudly in groups of four. Ozenfant’s booming laughter sounded among them; he was always to be seen there wearing a light suit, talking hard and eating hugely. Only three people sat quiet and alone: himself, Monsignor Noakes, and a big, strikingly sullen girl wearing khaki overalls who ate almost as much as Ozenfant.
One evening Lanark had entered the restaurant and seated himself when Ozenfant sat down beside him saying cheerfully, “Twice today, at breakfast and at lunch, I beckon you to my table and you do not notice. And so”—he passed a hand down the yellow curve of his waistcoat—“the mountain comes to Mahomet. I want to tell you I am pleased, very pleased indeed.”
“Why?”
“I am a busy man, even at mealtimes I am working, so I have only had time to observe closely two of your sessions, but believe me, you do well.”
“You’re wrong, I do badly. She’s freezing, I don’t warm her and everything I talk about increases her pain.”
“Well, of course you are treating an impossible case, a case I would have judged hopeless had you not needed someone to practise on. But you have employed a tact, a tolerance, a patience which I never expected from a novice. So now I want you to withdraw from this case and start on someone more important.”
Lanark leaned forward over the table and said, “You mean those hours of reading that bloody book were for nothing?”
“No, no, no, my dear fellow, they have been very valuable; they have shown me the sort of doctor you are and the kind of patient you should treat. There are layers of stolid endurance in you which make you a perfect buffer for these tragic intelligent females whose imagination exceeds their strength. We have just such a patient in chamber thirty-nine who would, if cured, be a delightful addition to our staff, and her head and limbs are unarmoured. If you still wish to visit chamber one you can do so, but I want you to spend most of your time in chamber thirty-nine.”
“What if my first patient gets well and wants to leave with me? Do I simply abandon the second?”
Ozenfant made an impatient gesture. “Those are the scruples of a novice. Patient one will not get well, and you have no reason to leave. Suppose you did leave, and reached (which is unlikely) a more sunlit continent, how would you earn your bread? By picking up litter in the public parks?”
Lanark said in a low voice, “I shall visit my first patient, and nobody else, until she doesn’t want me.”
Ozenfant drummed his fingers on the tablecloth. His expression was blank. He said, “Dr. Lanark, what will you do when you have failed to reclaim your Eurydice?”
“I am too ignorant to understand your jokes, Professor Ozenfant,” said Lanark, rising and walking away.
He was angry and upset and felt that his patient’s rage against life would be a consolation. Instead of going to bed he entered the lift and said, “Ozenfant’s studio.”
“Professor Ozenfant is recording just now. If I were you I wouldn’t disturb him.”
Lanark seemed to recognize the voice. He said, “Is it you, Gloopy?”
The lift said, “No. Only part of me.”
“Which part?”
“The voice and feelings and sense of responsibility. I don’t know what they’ve done with the rest.”
This was said with a stoical dignity which filled Lanark with pity. He laid his hand against the lukewarm