But on the grand old yaller wall, crowding in upon his left hand, a pillar of higher tone,
representing
the sun, was spinning out its placid deiseal.
Samuel Beckett
He waked with it now in his mind, as though it had been there all the time he slept, holding that fragile place against dreams.
The nurse brought a pot of tea and a glass of strong salts on a tray.
"Pfui! " exclaimed Belacqua.
But the callous girl preferred to disregard this.
"When are they doing me? " he asked.
"You are down for twelve" she said.
Down . . . !
She took herself off.
He drank the salts and two cups of tea and be damned
to the whole of them. Then of course he was wide awake, poor fellow. But what cared he, what cared saucy Bel-
158
acqua? He switched off the lamp and lay back on his back in this the darkest hour, smoking.
Carry it off as he might, he was in a dreadful situation. At twelve sharp he would be sliced open—zeep! —with a bistoury. This was the idea that his mind for the moment was in no fit state to entertain. If this Hunnish idea once got a foothold in his little psyche in its present unready condition, topsy-turvy after yesterday's debauch of anxi- ety and then the good night's sleep coming on top of that, it would be annihilated. The psyche, not the idea, which was precisely the reverse of what he wished. For himself, to do him justice, he did not care. His mind might cave in for all he cared, he was tired of the old bastardo. But the unfortunate part of it was that this would appear in his behaviour, he would scream and kick and bite and scratch when they came for him, beg for execution to be stayed and perhaps even wet the bed, and what a reflection on his late family that would be! The grand old family Huguenot guts, he could not do the dirty on them like that. (To say nothing of his natural anxiety to be put to rights with as little fuss as possible.
My sufferings under the anaesthetic, he reflected, will be exquisite, but I shall not remember them.
He dashed out his cigarette and put on the lamp, this not so much for the company of the light as in order to postpone daybreak until he should feel a little more sure of himself. Daybreak, with its suggestion of a nasty birth, he could not bear. Downright and all as he was, he could not bear the sight of this punctilious and almost, he some- times felt, superfluous delivery. This was mere folly and well he knew it. He tried hard to cure himself, to frighten or laugh himself out of this weakness, but to no avail. He would grow tired and say to himself: I am what I am
)
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That was the end of all his meditations and endeavours: I am what I am. He had read the phrase somewhere and liked it and made it his own.
But God at least was good, as He usually is if we only know how to take Him, in this way, that six hours sep- arated him (Belacqua) from the ordeal, six hours were allotted to him in which to make up his mind, as a pretty drab her face for an enemy. His getting the fleam in the neck, his suffering the tortures of the damned while seem- ing to slumber as peacefully as a little child, were of no consequence, as hope saved they were not, so long as his mind were master of the thought of them. What he had to do, and had with typical slackness put off doing till the last moment, was to arrange a hot reception in his mind for the thought of all the little acts of kindness that he was to endure before the day was out. Then he would be able
to put a good face on it. Otherwise not. Otherwise he would bite, scratch, etc. , when they came for him. Now the good face was all that concerned him, the bold devil- may-care expression. (Except of course that he was also anxioustobemadewellwiththeleastpossibleado. ) He did not pause to consider himself in this matter, the light that the coming ordeal would shed on his irrevocable self, because he really was tired of that old bastardo. No, his whole concern was with other people, the lift-boy, nurses and sisters, the local doc coming to put him off, the emi- nent surgeon, the handy man at hand to clean up and put the bits into the incinerator, and all the friends of his late family, who would ferret out the whole truth. It did not matter about him, he was what he was. But these out- siders, the family guts and so on and so forth, all these things had to be considered.
An asthmatic in the room overhead was coughing his heart up. God bless you, thought Belacqua, you make
things easier for me. But when did the unfortunate sleep? During the day, the livelong day, through the stress of the day. At twelve sharp he would be sound, or, better again, just dozing off. Meantime he coughed, as Crusoe laboured to bring his gear ashore, the snugger to be.
Belacqua made a long arm and switched off the lamp. It threw shadows. He would close his eyes, he would bilk the dawn in that way. What were the eyes anyway? The posterns of the mind. They were safer closed.
If only he were well-bred or, failing that, plucky. Blue blood or game-cock! Even if he lived in his mind as much as was his boast. Then he need not be at all this pains to make himself ready. Then it would only be a question of finding a comfortable position in the strange bed, trying to sleep or reading a book, waiting calmly for the angelus. But he was an indolent bourgeois poltroon, very talented up to a point, but not fitted for private life in the best and brightest sense, in the sense to which he referred when he bragged of how he furnished his mind and lived there, because it was the last ditch when all was said and done. But he preferred not to wait till then, he fancied it might be wiser to settle down there straight away and not wait till he was kicked into it by the world, just at the moment maybe when he was beginning to feel at home in the world. He could no more go back into his heart in that way than he could keep out of it altogether. So now there was noth- ing for it but to lie on his back in the dark and exercise his talent. Unless of course he chose to distress the friends of his late family ( to say nothing of perhaps jeopardising the cure for which the friends of his late family were pay- ing ) . But he had too much of the grocer's sense of honour for that. Rather than have that happen he would persist with his psyche, he would ginger up his little psyche for the occasion.
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Poor Belacqua, he seems to be having a very dull, irk- some morning, preparing for the fray in this manner. But he will make up for it later on, there is a good time com- ing for him later on, when the doctors have given him a new lease of apathy.
What were his tactics in this crisis?
In a less tight corner he might have been content to barricade his mind against the idea. But this was at the best a slipshod method, since the idea, how blatant an enemy soever and despite the strictest guard, was almost certain to sidle in sooner or later under the skirts of a friend, and then the game was up. Still, in the ordinary run of adversity, he would doubtless have bowed to his natural indolence and adopted such a course, he would have been content merely to think of other things and hope for the best. But this was no common or garden fix,
he was properly up against it this time, there could be no question of half-measures on this melancholy occasion.
His plan therefore was not to refuse admission to the idea, but to keep it at bay until his mind was ready to receive it. Then let it in and pulverise it. Obliterate the bastard. He ground his teeth in the bed. Flitter the fucker, tear it into pieces like a priest. So far so good. But by what means. Belacqua ransacked his mind for a suitable engine of destruction.
At this crucial point the good God came to his assist- ance with a phrase from a paradox of Donne : Now among our wise men, I doubt not but many would be found, who would laugh at Heraclitus weeping, none which would weep at Democritus laughing. This was a godsend and no error. Not the phrase as a judgment, but its terms, the ex- tremes of wisdom that it tendered to Belacqua. It is true that he did not care for these black and white alternatives as a rule. Indeed he even went so far as to hazard a little
paradox on his own account, to the effect that between contraries no alternation was possible. But was it the mo- ment for a man to be nice? Belacqua snatched eagerly at the issue. Was it to be laughter or tears? It came to the same thing in the end, but which was it to be now? It was too late to arrange for the luxury of both. Now in a mo- ment he would fill his mind with one or other of these two orders of rays, shall we say ultra-red and ultra-violet, and prepare to perforate his adversary.
Really, thought Belacqua, I cannot remember having ever spent a more dreary morning; but needs must, that was a true saying, when the devil drives.
At this all-important juncture of his delirium Belacqua found himself blinking his eyes rapidly, a regular nicta- tion, so that little flaws of dawn gushed into his mind. This had not been done with intent, but when he found that it seemed to be benefiting him in some curious way he kept it up, until gradually the inside of his skull began to feel sore. Then he desisted and went back to the dilemma.
Here, as indeed at every crux of the enterprise, he sacri- ficed sense of what was personal and proper to himself to the desirability of making a certain impression on other people, an impression almost of gallantry. He must efface himself altogether and do the little soldier. It was this paramount consideration that made him de- cide in favour of Bim and Bom, Grock, Democritus, whatever you are pleased to call it, and postpone its dark converse to a less public occasion. This was an abnegation if you like, for Belacqua could not resist a lachrymose philosopher and still less when, as was the case with Heraclitus, he was obscure at the same time. He was in his element in dingy tears and luxuriously so when these were furnished by a pre-Socratic man of acknowledged
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distinction. How often had he not exclaimed, skies being grey: "Another minute of this and I consecrate the rem- nant of my life to Heraclitus of Ephesus, I shall be that Delian diver who, after the third or fourth submersion, returns no more to the surface! "
But weeping in this charnel-house would be miscon- strued. All the staff, from matron to lift-boy, would make the mistake of ascribing his tears, or, perhaps better, his tragic demeanor, not to the follies of humanity at large which of course covered themselves, but rather to the tumour the size of a brick that he had on the back of his neck. This would be a very natural mistake and Belacqua was not blaming them. No blame attached to any living person in this matter. But the news would get round that Belacqua, so far from grinning and bearing, had piped his eye, or had been on the point of doing so. Then he would be disgraced and, by extension, his late family also.
So now his course was clear. He would arm his mind with laughter, laughter is not quite the word but it will have to serve, at every point, then he would admit the idea and blow it to pieces. Smears, as after a gorge of blackberries, of hilarity, which is not quite the word either, would be adhering to his lips as he stepped smartly, ohne Hast obex ohne Rast, into the torture-chamber. His fortitude would be generally commended.
How did he proceed to put this plan into execution? He has forgotten, he has no use for it any more.
The night-nurse broke in upon him at seven with an-
other pot of tea and two cuts of toast.
"That's all you'll get now" she said.
The impertinent slut! Belacqua very nearly told her to
work it up.
"Did the salts talk to you? " she said.
The sick man appraised her as she took his temperature and pulse. She was a tight trim little bit.
"They whispered to me" he said.
When she was gone he thought what an all but flawless brunette, so spick and span too after having been on the go all night, at the beck and call of the first lousy old squaw who let fall her book or could not sleep for the roar of the traffic in Merrion Row. What the hell did anything matter anyway!
Pale wales in the east beyond the Land Commission. The day was going along nicely.
The night-nurse came back for the tray. That made her third appearance, if he was not mistaken. She would very shortly be relieved, she would eat her supper and go to bed. But not to sleep. The place was too full of noise and light at that hour, her bed a refrigerator. She could not get used to this night-duty, she really could not. She lost weight and her face became cavernous. Also it was very difficult to arrange anything with her fiance. What a life!
"See you later" she said.
There was no controverting this. Belacqua cast about wildly for a reply that would please her and do him jus- tice at the same time. Au plaisir was of course the very thing, but the wrong language. Finally he settled on / suppose so and discharged it at her in a very half-hearted manner, when she was more than half out of the door. He would have been very much better advised to let it alone and say nothing.
While he was still wasting his valuable time cursing himself for a fool the door burst open and the day-nurse came in with a mighty rushing sound of starched apron. She was to have charge of him by day. She just missed being beautiful, this Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Aber- deen!
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After a little conversation obiter Belacqua let fall casu- ally, as though the idea had only just occurred to him, whereas in fact it had been tormenting him insidiously for some little time:
"Oh nurse the W. C. perhaps it might be as well to know. "
Like that, all in a rush, without any punctuation.
When she had finished telling him he knew roughly where the place was. But he stupidly elected to linger on in the bed with his uneasy load, codding himself that it would be more decent not to act incontinent on intelli- gence of so intimate a kind. In his anxiety to give colour to this pause he asked Miranda when he was being done.
"Didn't the night-nurse tell you" she said sharply, "at twelve. "
So the night-nurse had split. The treacherous darling!
He got up and set out, leaving Miranda at work on the bed. When he got back she was gone. He got back into the made bed.
Now the sun, that creature of habit, shone in through the window.
A little Aschenputtel, gummy and pert, skipped in with sticks and coal for the fire.
"Morning" she said.
"Yes" said Belacqua. But he retrieved himself at once. "What a lovely room" he exclaimed "all the morning sun. "
No more was needed to give Aschenputtel his measure.
"Very lovely" she said bitterly "right on me fire. " She tore down the blind. "Putting out me good fire" she said.
That was certainly one way of looking at it.
"I had one old one in here" she said "and he might be snoring but he wouldn't let the blind down. "
Some old put had crossed her, that was patent.
"Not for God" she said "so what did I do? " She screwed round on her knees from building the fire. Belacqua obliged her.
"What was that? " he said.
She turned back with a chuckle to her task.
"I block it with a chair" she said "and his shirt over the
back. "
"Ha" exclaimed Belacqua.
"Again he'd be up" she exulted "don't you know. " She
laughed happily at the memory of this little deception. "I kep it off all right" she said.
She talked and talked and poor Belacqua, with his mind unfinished, had to keep his end up. Somehow he managed to create a very favourable impression.
"Well" she said at last, in an indescribable sing-song "g'bye now. See you later. "
"That's right" said Belacqua.
Aschenputtel was engaged to be married to handy Andy, she had been for years. Meantime she gave him a dog's life.
Soon the fire was roaring up the chimney and Belacqua could not resist the temptation to get up and sit before it, clad only in his thin blue 100,000 Chemises pyjamas. The coughing aloft had greatly abated since he first heard it. The man was gradually settling down, it did not require a Sherlock Holmes to realise that.
But on the grand old yaller wall, crowding in upon his left hand, a pillar of higher tone, representing the sun, was spinning out its placid deiseal. This dribble of time, thought Belacqua, like sanies into a bucket, the world wants a new washer. He would draw the blind, both blinds.
But he was foiled by the entry of the matron with the morning paper, this, save the mark, by way of taking his
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mind off it. It is impossible to describe the matron. She was all right. She made him nervous the way she flung herself about.
Belacqua turned on the flow:
"What a lovely morning" he gushed "a lovely room, all the morning sun. "
The matron simply disappeared, there is no other word for it. The woman was there one moment and gone the next. It was extraordinary.
The theatre sister came in. What a number of women there seemed to be in this place! She was a great raw chateaubriant of a woman, like the one on the Wincarnis bottle. She took a quick look at his neck.
"Pah" she scoffed "that's nothing. "
"Not at all" said Belacqua.
"Is that the lot? "
Belacqua did not altogether care for her tone.
"And a toe" he said "to come off, or rather portion of a
toe.
"Top" she guffawed "and bottom. "
There was no controverting this. But he had learnt his
lesson. He let it pass.
This woman was found to improve on acquaintance.
She had a coarse manner, but she was exceedingly gentle. She taught all her more likely patients to wind bandages. To do this well with the crazy little hand-windlass that she provided was no easy matter. The roll would become fusiform. But when one got to know the humours of the apparatus, then it could be coaxed into yielding the hard slender spools, perfect cylinders, that delighted her. All these willing slaves that passed through her hands, she blandished each one in turn. "I never had such tight straight bandages" she would say. Then, just as the friend- ship established on this basis seemed about to develop
into something more—how shall I say? —substantial, the patient would all of a sudden be well enough to go home. Some malignant destiny pursued this splendid woman. Years later, when the rest of the staff was forgotten, she would drift into the mind. She marked down Belacqua for the bandages.
Miranda came back, this time with the dressing-tray. That voluptuous undershot cast of mouth, the clenched lips, almost bocca romana, how had he failed to notice it before? Was it the same woman?
"Now" she said.
She lashed into the part with picric and ether. It beat him to understand why she should be so severe on his little bump of amativeness. It was not septic to the best of his knowledge. Then why this severity? Merely on the off chance of its coming in for the fag-end of a dig? It was very strange. It had not even been shaved. It jutted out under the short hairs like a cuckoo's bill. He trusted it would come to no harm. Really he could not afford to have it curtailed. His little bump of amativeness.
When his entire nape was as a bride's adorned (bating the obscene stain of the picric) and so tightly bandaged that he felt his eyes bulging, she transferred her compas- sion to the toes. She scoured the whole phalanx, top and bottom. Suddenly she began to titter. Belacqua nearly kicked her in the eye, he got such a shock. How dared she trespass on his programme! He refusing to be tickled in this petty local way, trying with his teeth to reach his under-lip and gouging his palms, and she forgetting her- self, there was no other word for it. There were limits, he felt, to Democritus.
"Such a lang tootsy" she giggled.
Heavenly father, the creature was bilingual. A lang tootsy! Belacqua swallowed his choler.
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"Soon to be syne" he said in a loud voice. What his repartee lacked in wit it made up for in style. But it was lost on this granite Medusa.
"A long foot" he said agreeably "I know, or a long nose. But a long toe, what does that denote? "
No answer. Was the woman then altogether cretinous? Or did she not hear him? Belting away there with her urinous picric and cooling her porridge in advance. He would try her again.
"I say" he roared "that that toe you like so much will soon be only a memory. " He could not put it plainer than that.
Her voice after his was scarcely audible. It went as fol- lows:
— "Yes"—the word died away and was repeated "yes,
his troubles are nearly over. "
Belacqua broke down completely, he could not help it.
This distant voice, like a cor anglais coming through the evening, and then the his, the his was the last straw. He buried his face in his hands, he did not care who saw him.
"I would like" he sobbed "the cat to have it, if I might. "
She would never have done with her bandage, it cannot have measured less than a furlong. But of course it would never do to leave anything to chance, Belacqua could ap- preciate that. Still it seemed somehow disproportioned to the length of even his toe. At last she made all fast round his shin. Then she packed her tray and left. Some people go, others leave. Belacqua felt like the rejected of those two that night in a bed. He felt he had set Miranda some- how against him. Was this then the haporth of paint? Miranda on whom so much depended. Merde!
It was all Lister's fault. Those damned happy Vic- torians.
His heart gave a great leap in its box with a fulminat- ing sense that he was all wrong, that anger would stand by him better than the other thing, the laugh seemed so feeble, so like a whinge in the end. But on second thoughts no, anger would turn aside when it came to the point, leaving him like a sheep. Anyhow it was too late to turn back. He tried cautiously what it felt like to have the idea in his mind. . . . Nothing happened, he felt no shock. So at least he had spiked the brute, that was something.
At this point he went downstairs and had a truly mili- tary evacuation, Army Service Corps. Coming back he did not doubt that all would yet be well. He whistled a snatch outside the duty-room. There was nothing left of his room when he got back but Miranda, Miranda more prognathous than ever, loading a syringe. Belacqua tried to make light of this.
"What now? " he said.
But she had the weapon into his bottom and discharged before he realised what was happening. Not a cry escaped him.
"Did you hear what I said? " he said. "I insist, it is my right, on knowing the meaning of this, the purpose of this injection, do you hear me? "
"It is what every patient gets" she said "before going down to the theatre. "
Down to the theatre! Was there a conspiracy in this place to destroy him, body and soul? His tongue clave to his palate. They had desiccated his secretions. First blood to the profession!
The theatre-socks were the next little bit of excitement. Really the theatre seemed to take itself very seriously. To hell with your socks, he thought, it's your mind I want.
Now events began to move more rapidly. First of all an angel of the Lord came to his assistance with a funny
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story, really very funny indeed, it always made Belacqua laugh till he cried, about the parson who was invited to take a small part in an amateur production. All he had to do was to snatch at his heart when the revolver went off, cry "By God! I'm shot! " and drop dead. The parson said certainly, he would be most happy, if they would have no objection to his drawing the line at "By God! " on such a secular occasion. He would replace it, if they had no ob- jection, by "Mercy! " or "Upon my word! " or something of that kind. "Oh my! I'm shot! " how would that be?
But the production was so amateur that the revolver went off indeed and the man of God was transfixed.
"Oh! " he cried "oh . . . ! . . . By Christ! I am Shot! "
It was a mercy that Belacqua was a dirty lowdown Low Church Protestant high-brow and able to laugh at this sot- tish jest. Laugh! How he did laugh, to be sure. Till he cried.
He got up and began to titivate himself. Now he could hear the asthmatic breathing if he listened hard. The day was out of danger, any fool could see that. A little sealed cardboard box lying on the mantelpiece caught his eye. He read the inscription: Fraisse's Ferruginous Ampoules for the Intensive Treatment of Anaemia by Intramuscular Squirtation. Registered Trademark—Mozart. The little Hexenmeister of Don Giovanni, now in his narrow cell for ever mislaid, dragged into bloodlessness! How very amus- ing. Really the world was in great form this morning.
Now two further women, there was no end to them, the one of a certain age, the other not, entered, ripping off their regulation cuffs as they advanced. They pounced on the bed. The precautionary oil-sheet, the cradle . . . Belac- qua padded up and down before the fire, the ends of his pyjamas tucked like a cyclist's into the sinister socks. He would smoke one more cigarette, nor count the cost. It was
astonishing, when he came to think of it, how the entire routine of this place, down to the meanest detail, was cal- culated to a cow's toe to promote a single end, the relief of suffering in the long run. Observe how he dots his i's now and crucifies his t's to the top of his bent. He was being put to his trumps.
Surreptitiously they searched his yellow face for signs of discomposure. In vain. It was a mask. But perhaps his voice would tremble. One, she whose life had changed, took it upon herself to say in a peevish tone:
"Sister Beamish won't bless you for soiling her good socks. "
Sister Beamish would not bless him.
The voice of this person was in ruins, but she abused it further.
"Would you not stand on the mat? "
His mind was made up in a flash: he would stand on the mat. He would meet them in this matter. If he refused to stand on the mat he was lost in the eyes of these two women.
"Anything" he said "to oblige Sister Beamish. "
Miranda was having a busy morning. Now she appeared for the fourth or fifth time, he had lost count, complete with shadowy assistants. The room seemed full of grey women. It was like a dream.
"If you have any false teeth" she said "you may remove them. "
His hour was at hand, there was no blinking at the fact.
Going down in the lift with Miranda he felt his glasses under his hand. This was a blessed accident if you like, just when the silence was becoming awkward.
"Can I trust you with these? " he said.
She put them into her bosom. The divine creature! He would assault her in another minute.
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"No smoking" she said "in the operating-theatre. "
The surgeon was washing his invaluable hands as Belac- qua swaggered through the antechamber. He that hath clean hands shall be stronger. Belacqua cut the surgeon. But he flashed a dazzling smile at the Wincarnis.
The nurse brought a pot of tea and a glass of strong salts on a tray.
"Pfui! " exclaimed Belacqua.
But the callous girl preferred to disregard this.
"When are they doing me? " he asked.
"You are down for twelve" she said.
Down . . . !
She took herself off.
He drank the salts and two cups of tea and be damned
to the whole of them. Then of course he was wide awake, poor fellow. But what cared he, what cared saucy Bel-
158
acqua? He switched off the lamp and lay back on his back in this the darkest hour, smoking.
Carry it off as he might, he was in a dreadful situation. At twelve sharp he would be sliced open—zeep! —with a bistoury. This was the idea that his mind for the moment was in no fit state to entertain. If this Hunnish idea once got a foothold in his little psyche in its present unready condition, topsy-turvy after yesterday's debauch of anxi- ety and then the good night's sleep coming on top of that, it would be annihilated. The psyche, not the idea, which was precisely the reverse of what he wished. For himself, to do him justice, he did not care. His mind might cave in for all he cared, he was tired of the old bastardo. But the unfortunate part of it was that this would appear in his behaviour, he would scream and kick and bite and scratch when they came for him, beg for execution to be stayed and perhaps even wet the bed, and what a reflection on his late family that would be! The grand old family Huguenot guts, he could not do the dirty on them like that. (To say nothing of his natural anxiety to be put to rights with as little fuss as possible.
My sufferings under the anaesthetic, he reflected, will be exquisite, but I shall not remember them.
He dashed out his cigarette and put on the lamp, this not so much for the company of the light as in order to postpone daybreak until he should feel a little more sure of himself. Daybreak, with its suggestion of a nasty birth, he could not bear. Downright and all as he was, he could not bear the sight of this punctilious and almost, he some- times felt, superfluous delivery. This was mere folly and well he knew it. He tried hard to cure himself, to frighten or laugh himself out of this weakness, but to no avail. He would grow tired and say to himself: I am what I am
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That was the end of all his meditations and endeavours: I am what I am. He had read the phrase somewhere and liked it and made it his own.
But God at least was good, as He usually is if we only know how to take Him, in this way, that six hours sep- arated him (Belacqua) from the ordeal, six hours were allotted to him in which to make up his mind, as a pretty drab her face for an enemy. His getting the fleam in the neck, his suffering the tortures of the damned while seem- ing to slumber as peacefully as a little child, were of no consequence, as hope saved they were not, so long as his mind were master of the thought of them. What he had to do, and had with typical slackness put off doing till the last moment, was to arrange a hot reception in his mind for the thought of all the little acts of kindness that he was to endure before the day was out. Then he would be able
to put a good face on it. Otherwise not. Otherwise he would bite, scratch, etc. , when they came for him. Now the good face was all that concerned him, the bold devil- may-care expression. (Except of course that he was also anxioustobemadewellwiththeleastpossibleado. ) He did not pause to consider himself in this matter, the light that the coming ordeal would shed on his irrevocable self, because he really was tired of that old bastardo. No, his whole concern was with other people, the lift-boy, nurses and sisters, the local doc coming to put him off, the emi- nent surgeon, the handy man at hand to clean up and put the bits into the incinerator, and all the friends of his late family, who would ferret out the whole truth. It did not matter about him, he was what he was. But these out- siders, the family guts and so on and so forth, all these things had to be considered.
An asthmatic in the room overhead was coughing his heart up. God bless you, thought Belacqua, you make
things easier for me. But when did the unfortunate sleep? During the day, the livelong day, through the stress of the day. At twelve sharp he would be sound, or, better again, just dozing off. Meantime he coughed, as Crusoe laboured to bring his gear ashore, the snugger to be.
Belacqua made a long arm and switched off the lamp. It threw shadows. He would close his eyes, he would bilk the dawn in that way. What were the eyes anyway? The posterns of the mind. They were safer closed.
If only he were well-bred or, failing that, plucky. Blue blood or game-cock! Even if he lived in his mind as much as was his boast. Then he need not be at all this pains to make himself ready. Then it would only be a question of finding a comfortable position in the strange bed, trying to sleep or reading a book, waiting calmly for the angelus. But he was an indolent bourgeois poltroon, very talented up to a point, but not fitted for private life in the best and brightest sense, in the sense to which he referred when he bragged of how he furnished his mind and lived there, because it was the last ditch when all was said and done. But he preferred not to wait till then, he fancied it might be wiser to settle down there straight away and not wait till he was kicked into it by the world, just at the moment maybe when he was beginning to feel at home in the world. He could no more go back into his heart in that way than he could keep out of it altogether. So now there was noth- ing for it but to lie on his back in the dark and exercise his talent. Unless of course he chose to distress the friends of his late family ( to say nothing of perhaps jeopardising the cure for which the friends of his late family were pay- ing ) . But he had too much of the grocer's sense of honour for that. Rather than have that happen he would persist with his psyche, he would ginger up his little psyche for the occasion.
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Poor Belacqua, he seems to be having a very dull, irk- some morning, preparing for the fray in this manner. But he will make up for it later on, there is a good time com- ing for him later on, when the doctors have given him a new lease of apathy.
What were his tactics in this crisis?
In a less tight corner he might have been content to barricade his mind against the idea. But this was at the best a slipshod method, since the idea, how blatant an enemy soever and despite the strictest guard, was almost certain to sidle in sooner or later under the skirts of a friend, and then the game was up. Still, in the ordinary run of adversity, he would doubtless have bowed to his natural indolence and adopted such a course, he would have been content merely to think of other things and hope for the best. But this was no common or garden fix,
he was properly up against it this time, there could be no question of half-measures on this melancholy occasion.
His plan therefore was not to refuse admission to the idea, but to keep it at bay until his mind was ready to receive it. Then let it in and pulverise it. Obliterate the bastard. He ground his teeth in the bed. Flitter the fucker, tear it into pieces like a priest. So far so good. But by what means. Belacqua ransacked his mind for a suitable engine of destruction.
At this crucial point the good God came to his assist- ance with a phrase from a paradox of Donne : Now among our wise men, I doubt not but many would be found, who would laugh at Heraclitus weeping, none which would weep at Democritus laughing. This was a godsend and no error. Not the phrase as a judgment, but its terms, the ex- tremes of wisdom that it tendered to Belacqua. It is true that he did not care for these black and white alternatives as a rule. Indeed he even went so far as to hazard a little
paradox on his own account, to the effect that between contraries no alternation was possible. But was it the mo- ment for a man to be nice? Belacqua snatched eagerly at the issue. Was it to be laughter or tears? It came to the same thing in the end, but which was it to be now? It was too late to arrange for the luxury of both. Now in a mo- ment he would fill his mind with one or other of these two orders of rays, shall we say ultra-red and ultra-violet, and prepare to perforate his adversary.
Really, thought Belacqua, I cannot remember having ever spent a more dreary morning; but needs must, that was a true saying, when the devil drives.
At this all-important juncture of his delirium Belacqua found himself blinking his eyes rapidly, a regular nicta- tion, so that little flaws of dawn gushed into his mind. This had not been done with intent, but when he found that it seemed to be benefiting him in some curious way he kept it up, until gradually the inside of his skull began to feel sore. Then he desisted and went back to the dilemma.
Here, as indeed at every crux of the enterprise, he sacri- ficed sense of what was personal and proper to himself to the desirability of making a certain impression on other people, an impression almost of gallantry. He must efface himself altogether and do the little soldier. It was this paramount consideration that made him de- cide in favour of Bim and Bom, Grock, Democritus, whatever you are pleased to call it, and postpone its dark converse to a less public occasion. This was an abnegation if you like, for Belacqua could not resist a lachrymose philosopher and still less when, as was the case with Heraclitus, he was obscure at the same time. He was in his element in dingy tears and luxuriously so when these were furnished by a pre-Socratic man of acknowledged
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distinction. How often had he not exclaimed, skies being grey: "Another minute of this and I consecrate the rem- nant of my life to Heraclitus of Ephesus, I shall be that Delian diver who, after the third or fourth submersion, returns no more to the surface! "
But weeping in this charnel-house would be miscon- strued. All the staff, from matron to lift-boy, would make the mistake of ascribing his tears, or, perhaps better, his tragic demeanor, not to the follies of humanity at large which of course covered themselves, but rather to the tumour the size of a brick that he had on the back of his neck. This would be a very natural mistake and Belacqua was not blaming them. No blame attached to any living person in this matter. But the news would get round that Belacqua, so far from grinning and bearing, had piped his eye, or had been on the point of doing so. Then he would be disgraced and, by extension, his late family also.
So now his course was clear. He would arm his mind with laughter, laughter is not quite the word but it will have to serve, at every point, then he would admit the idea and blow it to pieces. Smears, as after a gorge of blackberries, of hilarity, which is not quite the word either, would be adhering to his lips as he stepped smartly, ohne Hast obex ohne Rast, into the torture-chamber. His fortitude would be generally commended.
How did he proceed to put this plan into execution? He has forgotten, he has no use for it any more.
The night-nurse broke in upon him at seven with an-
other pot of tea and two cuts of toast.
"That's all you'll get now" she said.
The impertinent slut! Belacqua very nearly told her to
work it up.
"Did the salts talk to you? " she said.
The sick man appraised her as she took his temperature and pulse. She was a tight trim little bit.
"They whispered to me" he said.
When she was gone he thought what an all but flawless brunette, so spick and span too after having been on the go all night, at the beck and call of the first lousy old squaw who let fall her book or could not sleep for the roar of the traffic in Merrion Row. What the hell did anything matter anyway!
Pale wales in the east beyond the Land Commission. The day was going along nicely.
The night-nurse came back for the tray. That made her third appearance, if he was not mistaken. She would very shortly be relieved, she would eat her supper and go to bed. But not to sleep. The place was too full of noise and light at that hour, her bed a refrigerator. She could not get used to this night-duty, she really could not. She lost weight and her face became cavernous. Also it was very difficult to arrange anything with her fiance. What a life!
"See you later" she said.
There was no controverting this. Belacqua cast about wildly for a reply that would please her and do him jus- tice at the same time. Au plaisir was of course the very thing, but the wrong language. Finally he settled on / suppose so and discharged it at her in a very half-hearted manner, when she was more than half out of the door. He would have been very much better advised to let it alone and say nothing.
While he was still wasting his valuable time cursing himself for a fool the door burst open and the day-nurse came in with a mighty rushing sound of starched apron. She was to have charge of him by day. She just missed being beautiful, this Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Aber- deen!
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After a little conversation obiter Belacqua let fall casu- ally, as though the idea had only just occurred to him, whereas in fact it had been tormenting him insidiously for some little time:
"Oh nurse the W. C. perhaps it might be as well to know. "
Like that, all in a rush, without any punctuation.
When she had finished telling him he knew roughly where the place was. But he stupidly elected to linger on in the bed with his uneasy load, codding himself that it would be more decent not to act incontinent on intelli- gence of so intimate a kind. In his anxiety to give colour to this pause he asked Miranda when he was being done.
"Didn't the night-nurse tell you" she said sharply, "at twelve. "
So the night-nurse had split. The treacherous darling!
He got up and set out, leaving Miranda at work on the bed. When he got back she was gone. He got back into the made bed.
Now the sun, that creature of habit, shone in through the window.
A little Aschenputtel, gummy and pert, skipped in with sticks and coal for the fire.
"Morning" she said.
"Yes" said Belacqua. But he retrieved himself at once. "What a lovely room" he exclaimed "all the morning sun. "
No more was needed to give Aschenputtel his measure.
"Very lovely" she said bitterly "right on me fire. " She tore down the blind. "Putting out me good fire" she said.
That was certainly one way of looking at it.
"I had one old one in here" she said "and he might be snoring but he wouldn't let the blind down. "
Some old put had crossed her, that was patent.
"Not for God" she said "so what did I do? " She screwed round on her knees from building the fire. Belacqua obliged her.
"What was that? " he said.
She turned back with a chuckle to her task.
"I block it with a chair" she said "and his shirt over the
back. "
"Ha" exclaimed Belacqua.
"Again he'd be up" she exulted "don't you know. " She
laughed happily at the memory of this little deception. "I kep it off all right" she said.
She talked and talked and poor Belacqua, with his mind unfinished, had to keep his end up. Somehow he managed to create a very favourable impression.
"Well" she said at last, in an indescribable sing-song "g'bye now. See you later. "
"That's right" said Belacqua.
Aschenputtel was engaged to be married to handy Andy, she had been for years. Meantime she gave him a dog's life.
Soon the fire was roaring up the chimney and Belacqua could not resist the temptation to get up and sit before it, clad only in his thin blue 100,000 Chemises pyjamas. The coughing aloft had greatly abated since he first heard it. The man was gradually settling down, it did not require a Sherlock Holmes to realise that.
But on the grand old yaller wall, crowding in upon his left hand, a pillar of higher tone, representing the sun, was spinning out its placid deiseal. This dribble of time, thought Belacqua, like sanies into a bucket, the world wants a new washer. He would draw the blind, both blinds.
But he was foiled by the entry of the matron with the morning paper, this, save the mark, by way of taking his
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mind off it. It is impossible to describe the matron. She was all right. She made him nervous the way she flung herself about.
Belacqua turned on the flow:
"What a lovely morning" he gushed "a lovely room, all the morning sun. "
The matron simply disappeared, there is no other word for it. The woman was there one moment and gone the next. It was extraordinary.
The theatre sister came in. What a number of women there seemed to be in this place! She was a great raw chateaubriant of a woman, like the one on the Wincarnis bottle. She took a quick look at his neck.
"Pah" she scoffed "that's nothing. "
"Not at all" said Belacqua.
"Is that the lot? "
Belacqua did not altogether care for her tone.
"And a toe" he said "to come off, or rather portion of a
toe.
"Top" she guffawed "and bottom. "
There was no controverting this. But he had learnt his
lesson. He let it pass.
This woman was found to improve on acquaintance.
She had a coarse manner, but she was exceedingly gentle. She taught all her more likely patients to wind bandages. To do this well with the crazy little hand-windlass that she provided was no easy matter. The roll would become fusiform. But when one got to know the humours of the apparatus, then it could be coaxed into yielding the hard slender spools, perfect cylinders, that delighted her. All these willing slaves that passed through her hands, she blandished each one in turn. "I never had such tight straight bandages" she would say. Then, just as the friend- ship established on this basis seemed about to develop
into something more—how shall I say? —substantial, the patient would all of a sudden be well enough to go home. Some malignant destiny pursued this splendid woman. Years later, when the rest of the staff was forgotten, she would drift into the mind. She marked down Belacqua for the bandages.
Miranda came back, this time with the dressing-tray. That voluptuous undershot cast of mouth, the clenched lips, almost bocca romana, how had he failed to notice it before? Was it the same woman?
"Now" she said.
She lashed into the part with picric and ether. It beat him to understand why she should be so severe on his little bump of amativeness. It was not septic to the best of his knowledge. Then why this severity? Merely on the off chance of its coming in for the fag-end of a dig? It was very strange. It had not even been shaved. It jutted out under the short hairs like a cuckoo's bill. He trusted it would come to no harm. Really he could not afford to have it curtailed. His little bump of amativeness.
When his entire nape was as a bride's adorned (bating the obscene stain of the picric) and so tightly bandaged that he felt his eyes bulging, she transferred her compas- sion to the toes. She scoured the whole phalanx, top and bottom. Suddenly she began to titter. Belacqua nearly kicked her in the eye, he got such a shock. How dared she trespass on his programme! He refusing to be tickled in this petty local way, trying with his teeth to reach his under-lip and gouging his palms, and she forgetting her- self, there was no other word for it. There were limits, he felt, to Democritus.
"Such a lang tootsy" she giggled.
Heavenly father, the creature was bilingual. A lang tootsy! Belacqua swallowed his choler.
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"Soon to be syne" he said in a loud voice. What his repartee lacked in wit it made up for in style. But it was lost on this granite Medusa.
"A long foot" he said agreeably "I know, or a long nose. But a long toe, what does that denote? "
No answer. Was the woman then altogether cretinous? Or did she not hear him? Belting away there with her urinous picric and cooling her porridge in advance. He would try her again.
"I say" he roared "that that toe you like so much will soon be only a memory. " He could not put it plainer than that.
Her voice after his was scarcely audible. It went as fol- lows:
— "Yes"—the word died away and was repeated "yes,
his troubles are nearly over. "
Belacqua broke down completely, he could not help it.
This distant voice, like a cor anglais coming through the evening, and then the his, the his was the last straw. He buried his face in his hands, he did not care who saw him.
"I would like" he sobbed "the cat to have it, if I might. "
She would never have done with her bandage, it cannot have measured less than a furlong. But of course it would never do to leave anything to chance, Belacqua could ap- preciate that. Still it seemed somehow disproportioned to the length of even his toe. At last she made all fast round his shin. Then she packed her tray and left. Some people go, others leave. Belacqua felt like the rejected of those two that night in a bed. He felt he had set Miranda some- how against him. Was this then the haporth of paint? Miranda on whom so much depended. Merde!
It was all Lister's fault. Those damned happy Vic- torians.
His heart gave a great leap in its box with a fulminat- ing sense that he was all wrong, that anger would stand by him better than the other thing, the laugh seemed so feeble, so like a whinge in the end. But on second thoughts no, anger would turn aside when it came to the point, leaving him like a sheep. Anyhow it was too late to turn back. He tried cautiously what it felt like to have the idea in his mind. . . . Nothing happened, he felt no shock. So at least he had spiked the brute, that was something.
At this point he went downstairs and had a truly mili- tary evacuation, Army Service Corps. Coming back he did not doubt that all would yet be well. He whistled a snatch outside the duty-room. There was nothing left of his room when he got back but Miranda, Miranda more prognathous than ever, loading a syringe. Belacqua tried to make light of this.
"What now? " he said.
But she had the weapon into his bottom and discharged before he realised what was happening. Not a cry escaped him.
"Did you hear what I said? " he said. "I insist, it is my right, on knowing the meaning of this, the purpose of this injection, do you hear me? "
"It is what every patient gets" she said "before going down to the theatre. "
Down to the theatre! Was there a conspiracy in this place to destroy him, body and soul? His tongue clave to his palate. They had desiccated his secretions. First blood to the profession!
The theatre-socks were the next little bit of excitement. Really the theatre seemed to take itself very seriously. To hell with your socks, he thought, it's your mind I want.
Now events began to move more rapidly. First of all an angel of the Lord came to his assistance with a funny
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story, really very funny indeed, it always made Belacqua laugh till he cried, about the parson who was invited to take a small part in an amateur production. All he had to do was to snatch at his heart when the revolver went off, cry "By God! I'm shot! " and drop dead. The parson said certainly, he would be most happy, if they would have no objection to his drawing the line at "By God! " on such a secular occasion. He would replace it, if they had no ob- jection, by "Mercy! " or "Upon my word! " or something of that kind. "Oh my! I'm shot! " how would that be?
But the production was so amateur that the revolver went off indeed and the man of God was transfixed.
"Oh! " he cried "oh . . . ! . . . By Christ! I am Shot! "
It was a mercy that Belacqua was a dirty lowdown Low Church Protestant high-brow and able to laugh at this sot- tish jest. Laugh! How he did laugh, to be sure. Till he cried.
He got up and began to titivate himself. Now he could hear the asthmatic breathing if he listened hard. The day was out of danger, any fool could see that. A little sealed cardboard box lying on the mantelpiece caught his eye. He read the inscription: Fraisse's Ferruginous Ampoules for the Intensive Treatment of Anaemia by Intramuscular Squirtation. Registered Trademark—Mozart. The little Hexenmeister of Don Giovanni, now in his narrow cell for ever mislaid, dragged into bloodlessness! How very amus- ing. Really the world was in great form this morning.
Now two further women, there was no end to them, the one of a certain age, the other not, entered, ripping off their regulation cuffs as they advanced. They pounced on the bed. The precautionary oil-sheet, the cradle . . . Belac- qua padded up and down before the fire, the ends of his pyjamas tucked like a cyclist's into the sinister socks. He would smoke one more cigarette, nor count the cost. It was
astonishing, when he came to think of it, how the entire routine of this place, down to the meanest detail, was cal- culated to a cow's toe to promote a single end, the relief of suffering in the long run. Observe how he dots his i's now and crucifies his t's to the top of his bent. He was being put to his trumps.
Surreptitiously they searched his yellow face for signs of discomposure. In vain. It was a mask. But perhaps his voice would tremble. One, she whose life had changed, took it upon herself to say in a peevish tone:
"Sister Beamish won't bless you for soiling her good socks. "
Sister Beamish would not bless him.
The voice of this person was in ruins, but she abused it further.
"Would you not stand on the mat? "
His mind was made up in a flash: he would stand on the mat. He would meet them in this matter. If he refused to stand on the mat he was lost in the eyes of these two women.
"Anything" he said "to oblige Sister Beamish. "
Miranda was having a busy morning. Now she appeared for the fourth or fifth time, he had lost count, complete with shadowy assistants. The room seemed full of grey women. It was like a dream.
"If you have any false teeth" she said "you may remove them. "
His hour was at hand, there was no blinking at the fact.
Going down in the lift with Miranda he felt his glasses under his hand. This was a blessed accident if you like, just when the silence was becoming awkward.
"Can I trust you with these? " he said.
She put them into her bosom. The divine creature! He would assault her in another minute.
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"No smoking" she said "in the operating-theatre. "
The surgeon was washing his invaluable hands as Belac- qua swaggered through the antechamber. He that hath clean hands shall be stronger. Belacqua cut the surgeon. But he flashed a dazzling smile at the Wincarnis.
