The Doctor Is Sick

by Anthony Burgess

  'We consider now,' said Edwin, finding it hard to focus, 'what is known to philologists as folk etymology. I will write those words on the blackboard.' A piece of tailor's chalk was thrown at him. He failed to catch it, stooped and scooped it up from the floor. He felt faint and wondered why this should be somehow appropriate. He held on to the bar-counter an instant, then felt better. Somebody had scrawled a rude word on the child's blackboard. He rubbed this off with his sleeve. Then he wrote, clearly and carefully, FOLK ETYMOLOGY.

  'Etymology,' said Edwin, 'is concerned with the origin of words, the true origin, that is, the Greek etymos meaning "true". By folk etymology we mean the attempt made by the unlearned to absorb a foreign or unusual word into colloquial speech by changing what is exotic in the word into something more familiar-looking. The unlearned thus try to convince themselves that what is really foreign is not foreign at all: they explain the foreign element away by imagining it to be cognate with something already well-known. There are various stock examples of folk etymology. Let us take, for instance, the word penthouse.' As he wrote this on the blackboard the booted quadruped could be heard again. As he turned to face his audience he saw all their eyes blearily turn upwards to the ceiling. The four heavy feet spondeed to the head of the cellar-stairs. 'Penthouse,' said Edwin, 'contains a familiar element - bouse. But the original form was pentice, derived from the French appentis, itself derived from the Latin appendicium, which means "something added on, an appendage". The -ice ending was changed to house, so that the word should look more familiar.'

  The feet clomped down steadily. Again on the threshold stood the heavy two in mufti-uniform, imaginary-chin-strap-chewing. 'In the same way,' said Edwin, 'the Middle English primerole was rejected in favour of primrose, because the second element of the word already existed in its own right as a flower-name.' The junior policeman laboriously copied in his notebook FOLK ETYMOLOGY, PENTHOUSE, PRIMROSE. Suspicious, this, suggesting call-girls. 'And,' said Edwin, 'we mustn't, of course, forget Jerusalem Artichoke. The Jerusalem is a folk-corruption of the Italian girasole, which means "turning towards the sun". The plant is, in fact, of the same genus as the common sunflower.' He paused. At this point something should happen, something important. 'And there is also causeway, which is the Old French caucie, derived from the Latin calx, meaning chalk. Meaning chalk,' he repeated, 'meaning chalk.'

  'Right,' said the sergeant. 'I think we've had about enough of this. We've been on to the L.C.C. and they say they've heard nothing about a class of this kind being run. I thought it was fishy.'

  'Oh, shut up,' said Edwin. He sank neatly to the ground into sheer restful blackness. He came to to find faces bending over him, not delicate brown Burmese but hard London white. 'Let us praise while we can,' he quoted, 'the vertical man.' Then he passed out again.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Edwins consciousness flickered on and off. He was carried up the stairs by the two policemen, the serge of whose suits had a smell of rain-wet mushrooms. There were voices and people pushing. He was laid on the door-step and saw, to his surprise, that the pavement was rain-wet. Then they were talking about where to and how, cars, ambulances, hospital. Edwin came fully awake at that last word, feeling much better than he had felt since his escape, as if some deep process of healing had been accomplished while he was off his guard. The two policemen were considering using Bob's car, Bob was moving from its back to its front a big box from which a toffee-golden French loaf protruded, eyes were away an instant, Harry Stone was just coming down the passage to the street door. Edwin quietly and swiftly rose and raced round the corner. 'What ve bleedin' 'ell 'ave you done wiv 'im?' wailed Harry Stone, his voice approaching. Edwin found an alleyway. ' 'E was your bleedin' responsibility, woznee?' DAN LOVES BRENDA SHERRIFF said a chalk graffito. A chalk man was hanging from a chalk gallows. Chalk, chalk, calx. There were dustbins in the alleyway. Edwin hid behind one, crouching very low. 'Maybe,' said the voice of Harry Stone, ' 'e's 'idin' be'ind one of vem dustbins.' Edwin shot up and ran. At the end of the alleyway the street sounded with newspaper calls, people were going home from work, the blue of the Underground sign shone. The alleyway had a left turn - more dustbins and graffiti - and down this Edwin ran, arriving back on the street he had left, but this time opposite the Anchor. 'Oi!' he heard, and 'Come back 'ere, you bleedin' fool!' The lights of the Anchor were on but the doors not yet open. The alleyway to the left of the Anchor led, Edwin saw, to the disordered yard of a timber company. He hesitated, found himself closely followed by Harry Stone in duplicate, but more closely still by a lorry. This had just turned from the street of crowds and newspapers and now proposed to enter the yard. 'Arf a minute,' yelled Harry Stone to the driver. 'All right, mate,' said the driver. 'I've been this way before.' And he negotiated, with dislodging of bricks and torturing of mudguards, the alleyway entrance. Then he found himself stuck. Edwin was now protected from his pursuers for a space. He tried the saloon-bar door, but it was still shut. The lorry was finding more success: amid shouts from Edwin's hunters, the fall of masonry and the clang of metal, it was straightening up, was almost ready to enter cleanly. Edwin ran into the timber yard and looked around desperately. To his left a circular saw, planks, raw logs, an overalled workman with cap and Woodbine. 'Yes, mate?' he said to Edwin. Edwin looked right: a wooden hut as office, a light within showing clips of curling bills hung on the walls, an elderly man sitting at a table laboriously extracting an upper denture, then looking at it seriously, then fitting it back in again with a head-shake of resignation. To the right of this office was a yard-wall, low enough to scale. Edwin ran to it, fitted his toe into a shallow jagged hole, and heard the workman say: 'You can't do that, mate, not here you can't.' Edwin raised himself by his hands, kneed the wall-top, found an overgrown garden on the other side, then swung himself over. He rested a second or two against the wall. Ahead was a house of four storeys and a basement, one of a row. Dusk had almost become dark. He stumbled through rank grass and bindweed, nearly fell over an unaccountable coil of barbed wire, clinked several bottles together like a glockenspiel solo, then came to an open back door, a scullery with a very bright light bulb. A pale young man with very oily black hair was leaning over the sink, wearing a woman's apron with frills. He was peeling onions under water but blinded with crying. Edwin stole across the scullery, through a dark kitchen, into a hallway. From a room to the left of the hallway a voice called: 'Is that you, Mr Dollimore?' Edwin passed a card showing times of church services, another with the legend SINNERS OF THE STREETS(X), a map of London, a wall telephone, opened the front door on which a card - HOUSE FULL - was hanging from a tin-tack.

  The street was far from empty - the tube station had just released a liftful of passengers - but nobody seemed to be looking particularly for an escaped patient in woolly cap and pyjamas and - Edwin saw clearly in the street lamp - a very long tear in his trouser leg. He felt in his right trouser pocket and found only twopence. That German bitch had spent the change from his pound on doppel gins. Where was Sheila? Edwin felt the fear and self-pity of the lost traveller who feels night not as a cloak but as hands waiting to strangle. And now across the street was a uniformed policeman who paused in his patrol to look at Edwin. Edwin walked sharply towards the Underground station, entered its hall, which was sharp with light and the clink of pennies, then followed ticket-holders towards the lift. Opposite the lift was a rank of telephone-boxes. One of these was empty.

  Edwin entered, saw on either hand silent talkers fishily gobbling into mouth-pieces, made sure that his glass door was tightly shut, then paused to think. Automatically he pressed Button B, but its mechanism gave a dry barren click, and, turning an instant, he saw a queue already beginning to form - a middle-aged woman, a rabbity man behind her. This was strange. There was nobody waiting outside the other boxes. What was that rabbity man after? Edwin picked up the telephone, dialled - remembering his James Joyce - EDEnville oooo, and asked for Adam. He gave nobody a chance to speak. 'You,' he said, 'got
me into this. If you hadn't existed I wouldn't exist. How is the apple-woman your wife? How are your incestuous sons? Give my hate to everybody back there.' The dialling-tone purred away. Edwin asked to be put through to various other Biblical characters. The middle-aged woman rapped on the glass with her dog-head umbrella-handle. Edwin saw this, saw the rabbity man snatch her handbag and run, saw the woman's instant of surprise, saw her cry and stagger off, brandishing her umbrella, then saw that the head of the queue was now Bob, mad-eyed kettle-mobster, ready to wait long.

  Edwin said a few words successively to Ezra, Habbakuk, Elijah, Jeremiah and Isaiah, then felt weak, hungry and tired. Bob banged hard on the glass. Edwin opened up. 'Yes?' he said.

  'You'd better come with me. I've got the car outside.'

  'I don't want to come with you.'

  'You better had. It's either me or the law.'

  'What's the law got to do with it?'

  'The law thinks you're crackers. I know you're not crackers. I think you're kinky, just like I am. You'd better come with me.'

  'Why, what do you want? What are you going to do?'

  'I've got two whole smoked salmons in the car. Cost a nicker each. I don't think that's too dear, on the whole.'

  'I don't much care for smoked salmon.'

  'I've got one or two other things in the fridge. But smoked salmon's what they call a delicacy.'

  'Look here,' said an irritable voice behind Bob. 'Go and talk about smoked salmon somewhere else. I want to get through to my wife, I do.' Bob turned in the lazy-eyed style of a mobster, saying:

  'You go and get stuffed.' Then he gripped Edwin's right wrist and led him from the threshold of the telephone-box. Edwin saw that his best chance of escape was to follow unresisting. The station vestibule was crowded now, and the ticket machines were merry with the song of coin. Just coming into the station was the young city man who had borrowed Chasper's curly bowler. He was wearing it, but, on seeing Edwin, he doffed it, saying: 'There you are.'

  'I'm awfully sorry,' said Edwin, 'but I just haven't got your pound deposit. I spent it, I'm afraid. Perhaps you could return the hat tomorrow.'

  'Oh,' said the young man. 'I particularly wanted that pound. Not for tonight, it's true, but certainly for tomorrow morning. I got the job, you see. This hat was a great help. I looked in the pub but you weren't there. I was going to come back later.'

  'All right, all right,' said Bob impatiently. 'If it's a question of paying out one solitary nicker.' He loosed Edwin's wrist to get his wallet out. Edwin saw his opportunity and dashed. He pierced a slow-moving slobber of youths who were about to enter a Ristorante Italiano. These then became a curtain, indignant when Bob tried to part them. Edwin ran past the DISCBAR, a shop proclaiming TEENJEANS, and turned the corner into a sloping side street with a pub. A taxi stopped, and its passenger opened the door. 'In, quick,' said Les. 'Come on, in, quick. I'm late already. Bloody curtain's gone up.' Edwin mounted, panting thankfully.

  'The less you see of that bugger, the better,' said Les. 'I know what he was after. Where do you want to be dropped?'

  'Take me along with you,' said Edwin, 'for God's sake.'

  'You weren't too well, were you?' said Les. 'You passed out earlier on, remember. Tight, that was your trouble. You shouldn't drink like that when you're just out of hospital. Do you think you could do a job or are you still incapable?'

  'When? Tonight? What sort of a job?'

  'Crowd scene. End of the third act. Where they lynch this poor bugger. Sings all the time he does, while they're lynching him. See,' said Les, glancing out of the rear window, 'that's his car. He sticks to it, I'll say that for him. When he wants a thing he goes for it. If he doesn't get you it won't be his fault.' Edwin looked too, seeing only headlights. 'It's him all right,' said Les. 'That's his number. Right,' he instructed Edwin. 'You just dash in when you get there. You'll get in all right if you say you're from the University. That's where they're getting the crowds from. And I'll hold off this geezer. Bob Courage, his name is. Courage, eh? Don't make me laugh. That's the name of a good beer.' He dug in his pocket and extracted a mound of copper for the fare. 'Got this from the cardboard box under the bar,' he said. 'While the rest was following your corpse upstairs. Only a loan, of course. Pay it back tomorrow or the next day.'

  The taxi had stopped among smells which, Edwin knew, should be of chrysanthemums and cabbage-stumps but which his nose swore were of mint-drops. The taxi was throbbing waiting while Les leisurely told the coppers in his hand. The following car seemed to have been delayed, probably by traffic-lights. 'You get in there now,' said Les. Edwin got in, explained his provenance and mission, and was thumbed uninterestedly onwards to stairs that led apparently to a cellar. Cellars were playing a big part in his life. Edwin looked about him, open-mouthed at the vast mechanics of opera. Men fly-walked high above on the grid; there were wheels being turned and cohorts of switches being touched. In the distance an orchestra played all out and a tenor yelled above it. An offstage choir waited to sing, its conductor squinting anxiously at the score, and a man sat, waiting, at an organ. 'Down there,' said someone peremptory to Edwin, pointing, and Edwin walked, it seemed, a mile, past huge walls of scenic flats to the cellar stairs.

  Deep in the earth was a great cold tomb full of people and property-baskets. The people were young and arrogant-looking; evidently students. 'You're late,' said a willowy man to Edwin. 'Come on now, everything off.'

  'Everything?' Edwin looked anxiously about, but could see no women. They, perhaps, were herded together in a different tomb.

  'Everything. Including that little woolly cap.' And, with a delicate pincering of thumb and finger, the man himself lifted off the cap, then started back on seeing Edwin's nude scalp. 'But,' he said, 'that really is marvellous. There was no need to go to all that trouble, you know, but that is something that really can be used. You must certainly go right at the very front. The trouble,' he said, glancing round disdainfully at the students, 'is that all these people have too much hair. That looks unnatural in a crowd.' The students began to titter, with students' bad manners, at Edwin's baldness, but the willowy man rebuked them in a schoolmasterly way. 'You,' he said, 'have nothing whatsoever to laugh about. You all look far, far too young. A lot of stupid callow youngsters pretending to be a mob.' The students pouted sulkily. They were all dressed, Edwin now had time to notice, in a variety of Victorian garments. Some wore artificial whiskers whose adhesive strength they ever and anon tested gingerly; some had Karl Marx beards; a few even had watch-chains across their waistcoats. All had hats.

  'I don't see that about the hair,' said Edwin. 'I mean, they all cover it up anyway, don't they?'

  'Yes, they do,' said the willowy man testily. 'But they have to uncover right at the end, don't they? When the news of the death comes through. But you,' he said, dressing Edwin skilfully, 'are going to be uncovered all the time. That head is much too good to be blotted out with a hat,' Edwin did not like to ask what the opera was called or what it was about. The music had sounded contemporary and, in a vague way, British - Elgarian themes wrestling with discords. He would ask one of the students. Soon Edwin found himself in a gaffer's smock with a clay pipe and a crook and heavy boots that fitted ill. It worried him that his woollen cap had been tossed away somewhere. Apart from anything else, that cap was the hospital's property, not his. He was stroked with grease paint and liners and given white whiskers to stick on. Now he looked vaguely aged: he would, literally, pass as such in a crowd.

  Edwin asked an Indian student what it was all about. This Indian had also been cast as a lowly farm operative and Edwin could see that he resented it as colour prejudice. 'It is called,' he said with some distaste, 'Presbury Newton, and it is written by an English musician called Emery Turnbull.' He paused an instant. 'Or,' he said, 'it may be the other way round. It may be Emery Turnbull or even Turnbull Emery written by Newton Presbury.' He paused again, seeing other possible permutations, but went on to say: 'It is of no consequence, anyway. I
t is not very good. It is a piece of fictitious American history in which a state governor falls in love with the wife of another man. The other man is jealous and angry and he takes a shot at the governor while the governor is travelling in a train to make a speech somewhere. The governor's life is despaired of, and the mob, which is us, drags his - as it proves assassin from the jail and lynches him to loud music. Then the governor dies, but a new railroad is opened up, and a treaty of perpetual peace is made with some Red Indians. The Red Indians also provide a sort of ballet. It is very dull.'

  'But, surely,' said Edwin, 'peasants didn't dress like this in America, did they? I mean, America's never had any real peasantry, has it?' He brandished his crook and wondered if there had ever been sheep in America.

  'The negroes, yes,' hissed the Indian. 'A slavery, not a peasantry. And the frivolousness of the whole approach to the subject is shown by these costumes that we have to wear - costumes which have never, at any time, been worn in America. Frivolousness,' he said, in a more resigned tone, 'will be the death of Western art, such as it is. Then perhaps it will learn the sweetness and strength of Indian monody in music and of stylisation in the representative arts that avoids the vulgarity of overmuch naturalism and the mistakes attendant on it. Like this,' he added, and he indicated his own peasant's smock, lifting his brown Aryan head disdainfully.

  Edwin looked round at the discarded clothes of the lynch mob, which was about fifty strong. He licked his lips at the sight of all those shirts and socks and ties. There was even a soft hat or two. His imagination luxuriated at the thought of all the money that must be in those trouser pockets, the pounds and silver of fat student grants. With a shock he found himself no longer squeamish at the thought of stealing. Then he had a vision of wigs. This theatre must be full of them. He salivated with a profound hunger for, at least, the appearance of normality.