The Doctor Is Sick

by Anthony Burgess

  It was in the bag. The gap between the two teams was never narrower than five. Les filled the bottom bed, put two in the bed immediately above - all with insolent skill. It was up to Edwin to deliver the coup de grace, somewhere in the middle. He faltered; he failed. The gap now narrowed dangerously. Both needed one only. A young voice behind Edwin said:

  'Look here, whose is this hat?'

  'Not now,' said Les. 'Just a minute, please.'

  Edwin failed with three coins. He got the fourth in a good lay. 'Tickle it,' said Les. 'Just tickle it, that's all.' Edwin's heart beat fast. He touched the fourth coin with the fifth. The fourth slid in. Les was exultant.

  'Bit tight for a last one,' said Fred.

  'Tight?' said Les. 'Tight?' He appealed to Albert. 'You could drive a bloody coach and horses through it, man.' Albert said it was not tight. Larry and Fred ceded victory to Les and Edwin, whom they now asked what they would have. A light mit bitter and a gold watch. 'Look here,' said the young man, smart and citified, 'whose is this hat?' The Times had slipped away, leaving the coke sitting in curl-brimmed nakedness.

  'It's mine,' said Edwin, 'more or less.'

  'Lend it me,' said the young man, 'just for the afternoon. It's important.'

  'I would,' said Edwin, 'but----'

  'You shouldn't have said it was important,' said Les, 'because that puts the charge up. We'll say a quid deposit, returnable on return of the hat, and a straight charge of an Oxford for the loan. Right?'

  'Right.' The young man handed over his Oxford scholar. 'And now perhaps you gentlemen----' A pound deposit; a pound on the counter.

  'We'll have the same again,' said Les to the landlady, a handsome humorous woman. To Edwin he said: 'What did I tell you? Ten minutes ago you were worried about having no money to buy a drink with. Look at you now -you're double-barrelled. And you've got something in your pocket.'

  'I ought to buy a shirt,' said Edwin.

  'Shirt? What do you want a shirt for? I never wear a shirt.' He plucked at his close-fitting striped garment. 'Not, that is, a real shirt that you have to wear a tie with. That you've got on is like a new fashion. Saves a lot of time in the morning. If you sleep in pyjamas, that is. And must save a lot of time at night. Here,' said Les, 'come the two erbs. They might know something about your missis.' But all Edwin saw was the dog Nigger. This dog put his paws up to the bar-counter and was given a pub sausage. 'You'd better pay,' said Les to Edwin. 'You've got the money.'

  By the time Nigger had finished his sausage the Stone twins had entered the public bar. 'Look oo's 'ere,' said Harry Stone sadly. 'It's ve perfesser. 'At on an' all. If she was my missis, I can tell you, I'd 'ave 'er across my knee. You seen vat yobbo what she's been wiv? I wouldn't 'ave it.'

  'Where is she now?' asked Edwin.

  'I'll return it this evening without fail,' said the smart young man, waving Chasper's hat with grace. 'And thank you again.'

  'No hurry,' said Les. The young man left, cramming the hat on to his head. It was a fair fit.

  'She was in yesterday,' said Harry Stone, 'and she said she might be in again today. 'Arfa bitter, please, Leo.' Leo Stone was looking intently at Edwin. He began to speak what sounded like gibberish, rapid, rhythmical. Edwin was a philologist and knew that this was one of the trompel'oreille auxiliaries of old London. Syllables of genuine words were separated from each other by the vocable 'boro'. It was much too fast to follow, however. Harry Stone answered in the same lingo, looked at Edwin, made comments of his own. The twins grew Jewishly excited.

  'What 'e wants to know,' said Harry Stone, 'is what you've got under vat 'at.'

  'Not hair,' said Edwin. 'Not at present. Bald as a coot for clinical reasons.'

  'Does it look 'orrible?' asked Harry Stone. 'What I mean is, is it sort of deformed an' 'orrible? I mean, is it sort of full of scars and cuts and fings what'd turn ve stomach of an ordinary person?' It was tacitly assumed, then, that nobody there was quite ordinary.

  'No,' said Edwin. Two whiskies and a couple of pints inside him, he was losing his inhibitions. 'Look.' He whipped off his cap. Leo Stone said: 'Aaaaah. Bloody wonderful.'

  'It's a nice 'un, right enough,' said Harry Stone. 'I fink we can use it.'

  'I'il get on the blower right away,' said Leo Stone. Excited, he began to search for coppers. 'Lend us a couple of clods,' he said to his twin. Armed with fourpence, he ran off.

  'What is this?' said Edwin. 'What's going on?' Harry Stone had started examining his nude scalp from all angles. 'If you think,' said Edwin, 'that anybody's going to start using me as a thing again - I've had enough of that, I tell you.' He put his cap on with dignity.

  'Manny,' said Harry Stone with passion. 'It means manny. Everyfink means manny if you go abaht it ve right way. Vat bald 'ead means manny.' He struck Edwin with flailing arms in his excitement. 'Manny,' he repeated. Edwin admired that stressed vowel. 'Manny.' Centralised, lengthened, spread, so that Harry's mouth seemed to open greedily and yet contemptuously as to snatch at flies of money floating in the London air.

  Leo Stone rushed in. 'You are under forty, aren't you?' he panted at Edwin. Edwin nodded, wondering what -'And what name do you usually go under?' panted Leo.

  'My own,' said Edwin. 'Spindrift. But what----'

  'Spindryer,' said Leo. 'That's a gimmick, too.' He was off again, back to the blower.

  'It's only right,' said Larry in the corner, 'that we should have us revenge,' He finished his pint and got flatly up.

  'Sright,' said thin Fred. 'Albert take chalk again,' Albert was still sitting by the board, chalk in hand, mouth open.

  Les nodded vigorous acceptance of the return challenge and began to sing disconcertingly the sailor's song which begins Tristan und Isolde. He sang it in a strange and apocryphal translation:

  'The wind's fresh airs

  Blow landward now.

  Get up them stairs,

  You Irish cow.'

  He won the toss and got his three in. Chalk, chalk, chalk. Fred got four. Edwin filled a middle bed and got two in the Scotchman. 'Lovely opera, that is,' said Les. 'This bloke goes to Ireland and brings this richard back for his uncle. Then they take a fancy to each other. What happens after that, you say? Tragedy. Stark horrible tragedy. He gets seen off and she dies on top of him. Sings before she snuffs it, of course. Takes hours to die.' It was his turn to play. Five coins found top beds without trouble. Edwin was aware of the Stone brothers breathing on his baldness.

  'Bit of nap comin' up already,' said Harry Stone. 'Electric razor might be best. Needs careful tendin' till Fursday night.'

  'What exactly----' began Edwin.

  'Manny,' said Harry Stone, almost shaking Edwin. 'You're goin' to win lolly for us all.'

  'I'm not, you know. If you think I'm going to be exploited in some bloody sideshow or other----' He settled his cap with dignity.

  'Language, language.' There were shocked tut-tuts.

  'It'd be a cryin' shame,' said passionate Harry Stone, 'for us to miss an opportunity like vis one. It's a competition, vat's all it is.'

  'Your turn.' said Fred, nudging Edwin. Angry, Edwin scored four with dreadful ease. Larry managed three. Les placed the lot. Harry Stone said:

  'A competition for bald 'eads.Best unnatural bald 'ead under forty.A special shaved bald 'ead, vat is. 'Andsomeness vey're lookin' for, too.' He shook Edwin. 'Judged by some of vem glamorous richards on ve telly.' Edwin was shaken from the other side: his turn. Zeds of chalk were coming up fast on the mark-beds: it was a rapid game. Les sang: 'Your tiny----is frozen; let me----it into life,' but gently, so that few could hear. He scored four with little trouble. Edwin said:

  'That word you used has a most interesting history. You find the Middle English form coynte. Earlier forms have a more definite initial kw. Cognate with quim, of course and also, not perhaps as surprisingly as you might think, with queen. The quimtessence of womanliness, you might say.' He was pleased with his pun, but nobody seemed either edified or amused. Harry and Leo Stone were l
istening intently to a voice outside the public-bar door.

  'She's comin' in,' said Harry Stone to his twin. 'She's after you.'

  'You be me for today, for God's sake,' pleaded Leo. 'I'm just not in the mood. Honest, I just can't face it.' The woman outside the door was now to be seen on the lintel, nodding to some one off-stage, finishing her share of the colloquy, with 'Ja, ja, ganz schrecklich.' A monstrous lorry swerved and thrust at the narrow alleyway to the right of the pub, dislodging brick-fragments and medieval stone. She stood for an instant in the doorway, looking in fiercely, a clanging of mudguards behind her. 'One of vese days,' prayed Harry Stone, 'let 'er be knocked dahn and seen off by one of vem lorries. Let it be so, O Gawd.' The woman was a stem tubby Hanseatic, well-corseted, in electric blue wool and low shoes, carrying a tapestry handbag. She looked from one to the other of the twins, deciding. She nodded, then waddled straight up to Leo Stone. 'Doppel gin,' she demanded.

  Les and Edwin had three to get; their opponents five. Les missed a nice lay, cursed, scored two. Again it was up to Edwin to finish. Larry got four out of the five needed. Fred had only the easy bottom bed to complete, but Edwin had an awkward one in the middle. He had to get it this time. There was heavy breathing over the board, as over a pornographic portfolio. Edwin's first coin went nowhere. The second shot right to the end of the board, into the out-of-play area. 'Don't be nervous,' said Les. 'Take it easy now. Nice and slow. All the time in the world.' The third travelled to the bed above the one that needed filling. The fourth pushed the third up, but was itself too far down to make a nice lay. Edwin remembered that he had money in his pocket and it didn't matter whether they won or lost. He slammed his last coin. The fourth coin checked it just at the right point and the fifth lay in the dead middle of the wanted bed. 'Oh, lovely, lovely, lovely,' rejoiced Les. 'Done it again.' And he sang Herod seeing the seventh veil fall: 'Wonderful! Wonderful!'

  A light mit bitter and a gold watch. Edwin was feeling that he had something to give to this little community, though not philology. Harry Stone said quietly: 'Listen to 'er, givin' 'im 'ell. She be'aves like she was married to 'im, instead of bein' what she really is. Too much oot altogevver.' The woman was scolding Leo Stone monotonously while Leo Stone made an endless meal of his lower lip. 'Doppel gin,' she said twice. Edwin said, not quite sober:

  'If the idea is to use my bald head in order to feed that woman there with an endless succession of double gins, you've got another think coming.'

  'Naaah,' snarled Harry Stone. 'Not all ve mannv in ve world could make vat woman 'appy. Vis what you're goin' to win is only chicken-feed, not worf mentionin' to 'er. Need a fortune to keep vat woman in gin. Don't know why 'e puts up wiv 'er. I do, vough, in a way.'

  'Why?'

  'Guilt,' said Harry Stone surprisingly. 'Ve Germans gave ve Jews a bleedin' rotten time. So, when ve war was over, Leo over vere gave six or seven of vese German richards a bleedin' rotten time. You just 'ave no idea what a bleedin' rotten time 'e gave vem. It makes 'im shudder sometimes just to fink abaht it. So 'e puts up wiv 'er now. She's one what 'e wanted to give a bleedin' rotten time to, but she never gave 'im a proper chance to get rahnd to it. An' ven 'e started gettin' a bit guilty. Just you listen to vat moufful.' The woman was well-launched into a foul tirade in the language of Goethe. Leo Stone seemed to be replying in the same tongue. After a few phrases Edwin realised it was Yiddish. All the sorrows of his wandering, restless, tormented race were in Harry Stone's eyes as he said to the landlord: ' 'Ere, Jack, 'ere.'

  'What is it?' The landlord was a compact man of good presence, kind shrewd eyes over a strong nose and a sardonic mouth.

  'Give us a bottle of Gordon's,' said Harry Stone, 'and a bottle of Scotch. And 'arf a dozen tonics and a siphon.' He turned to Edwin while the landlord turned to his shelves. 'We've got to open up vis afternoon because we need ve couple of bob profit it makes. I 'ate ve place, but I'm tied 'and an' foot to it. But,' said Harry Stone, 'I'm not luggin' no beer over vere. Vey'll 'ave to drink shorts.' To the landlord he said: 'We'll settle up on Friday mornin'.' He looked up at Edwin's hidden baldness, nodding. 'Should be able to settle a few debts vat are ahtstandin' after Fursday night.'

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Closing-time and the prosaic street; a dull afternoon, broody with rain to come. They walked to the club - Les and the Stone twins in front, Edwin and the German mistress behind. The dog Nigger staggered in a course of his own, lurching from one delightful street-smell to another - merds, garlic, mutton-fat, urine, food-tins, dirty children. One dirty child adenoided something glottal at Harry Stone and Harry Stone squirted the child gently with the soda-siphon. The German mistress was called Renate. She waddled along beside Edwin and said:

  'If you to him money going to give, don't give no money, my darling. Every pfennig I him give, so he spend. I come over here to England rich woman, now very poor. You think I to Germany can back get? Not on your nelly can I not. You think twice, you think a pair of times, before you money to him give. Not air-fare, my darling, no, not sea-fare save I can. Here,' she said, and she paused for much breath, stopping in her walk, stopping Edwin in his walk with a brown-wool-gloved hand, 'here am I without underclothes to my body, slave to a smutty Jewish man become.'

  'Yes,' said Edwin, 'the eternal womanly us upward leads. I'm hungry,' he said, feeling little winds whine in various parts of his body, cramps creep, a heartburn with a spirituous taste ram at his breast-bone. 'I must eat something.'

  'Eat, you say? Eat? No money for eat I in five days, a week, get. You have gold? Money you have? Eat shall we together now, give them three men the bloody slip already.' Saliva appeared at her mouth-corners. She could surely, thought Edwin, have asked for a pub sausage or two instead of doppel gins all the time. Perhaps, being of a famous sausage-land, she despised English pub sausages. 'Round the corner,' said Renate, 'is a small shop where man can swine-flesh and calf and ox with sour cabbage and black bread get.' It sounded delicious.

  'The trouble is,' said Edwin, 'that the pound is a deposit, really, returnable when the man who has borrowed the hat I myself borrowed returns it,' He shook his head: he was becoming Teutonic and unintelligible. 'It is, you see, not my hat. If I cannot return the pound deposit I shall have to allow the man to keep that hat which is, after all, not my hat. That will be tantamount to stealing. Steal,' said Edwin, 'I cannot.'

  Renate seemed to have absorbed the Christian philosophy of the public bar. 'Tomorrow you worry,' she said. 'If he the hat not back brings, then who is the thief? Not you, my darling. Perhaps when he it back brings you will money have.'

  'Yes,' said Edwin, 'my wife. This afternoon. In the club. But eat first I must,' he said. That word-order was, surely, idiomatic?

  Renate took him by the arm and walked him briskly across the street, away from the club. The Stone twins and Les had already opened up and entered: Harry Stone cursing and lamenting could be heard muffled within. Renate walked Edwin round the corner to a row of low shops, from one of which a powerful smell of violets was exuded. Edwin made the usual allowances for his sick olfactory epithelium and interpreted the spring odour as heavy hot fat. 'Or,' said Edwin, 'if I avoided the man, so that I was never present when he brought back the hat, how could that be called stealing?'

  'You come inside, my darling,' said Renate, pulling Edwin along eagerly. 'Eat, eat, my kid.'

  The eating-shop was called, to Edwin's pleasure, JUNG. It had a counter and a coffee-machine and various archetypal, though non-Teutonic-looking, layabouts at with-white-cloths-unbedecked tables. A cross fat woman with hair, once blonde, still Gretchen-plaited, presided. There was a harsh exchange of greetings between her and Renate. From the colloquy that followed Edwin gathered that his woollen cap was not considered respectable. Renate explained, making scissor-noises and cut-throat razor movements. Mollified, the Gretchen woman nodded, giving Edwin a smile of brief honey and vinegar. Renate ordered, with articulation that sounded like a meal in itself, a meal.

  It proved, wh
en it came, to be a not very good meal -very fat pork chops with white salt cabbage, cheese and pumpernickel on the side. But there was a lot of it, and Edwin tore at his plateful like a dog. Renate shovelled in white cabbage, saying, 'Fabelhaft' and clenched her teeth on the black bread like one testing a coin, like one auditioned for the film part of Medea. Then Harry Stone stumbled in, panting. He grasped Edwin and tugged at him, as though he were imprisoned in quicksand. 'Quick,' he said, 'you've got to come quick. It's ve law. Ve law's comin'. Ve law's been spotted. You're to come and make a speech. It's ve law, I tell you.' His mobile face was agonised, his eyes were the eyes of every trapped animal in the world.

  'A speech? The law? What do you mean?'

  'You'll know when you get vere. You can ask questions ven.' Edwin rose and was dragged by desperate Harry Stone. Renate said: 'You pay, my darling. You leave money. Change will I bring when the meal ended is.' Edwin responded to Harry Stone's urgency, threw his crumpled pound on the table, and ran out. 'Vere vey are,' said Harry Stone. 'At ve end of ve street. Don't run. Walk sedate, like you was really a perfesser.'

  'But I am.'

  'Don't argue. Vis was Leo's bleedin' idea. Vat bleedin' club. If Jesus Christ 'ad kept a club 'e couldn't 'ave 'ad no more agonies. Walk nice and slow, now. Like you was what you say you are.'

  'How did you know I was in there?'

  'You kiddin'? In vere on ve old sauerkraut ten times a bleedin' day she is. Knew she'd gone vere, fought she must 'ave taken you with 'er, you 'avin' ve odd quid to flash arahnd. 'Ere we are. 'Ere come vem two bastards.' As they reached the street door of the club Edwin saw two large men with heavy boots, wearing mufti as though it were a uniform, fifty yards off. 'After you, perfesser,' said Harry Stone. Once past the outer door, they scudded, disturbing old filth and newspapers, to the cellar steps, and Edwin was yanked, stumbling, down them. Then came the damp cellar with its two bulbs of low wattage, the club, but a club no longer. On the counter, resting against an empty mineral-water crate, was a child's blackboard. Facing the blackboard were a dozen or so disreputables, seated meekly in two rows of chairs. The juke-box had been covered with an old billiards-table cloth. There was not a drink in sight. Leo Stone clapped loudly at the appearance of Edwin and said, in his superior salesman's voice: 'So glad you could make it, Doctor. Your audience awaits you, all agog.' On the ceiling drummed clumping big crass boots. 'Cobblers to them,' said Leo Stone, looking up. To his audience he now said, seriously, in loud cultured tones: 'We have the inestimable and detestable honour' - it was evident that he had, at one time, been on the stage - 'of welcoming Doctor Livingstone I. Presume into our midst. That is to say, Doctor Spindryer of sacred memory. And he, my beloved brethren, is no pox-doctor, even though I do smell like a pox-doctor's clerk today.' He sniffed elaborately at his left lapel. 'Chance would be a fine thing, wouldn't it?' he leered. 'The doc,' he said, more seriously, 'is going to undress you, that is to say, address you, and I bet he's got some good addresses, too. He's performed his world-famous act before the Duke of Connaught, the Prince of Wales, and other public houses. A little applause of both hands, or three if you've got them, for the doc' A clumsy booted quadruped was now coming down the stairs, heavily hoofing. Edwin looked at his audience, recognising the warted smiling Carmen, a loose-mouthed tow-headed girl who looked like a whore, a bemused lout or so, various carious mouths he seemed to recognise, an Alsatian dog, others whom one would not normally expect to attend a lecture on philology.