Dr. Dunlap fingered his goatee in meditation. “Let’s examine her,” he said brightly.
Krankeit, with revulsion, pictured the two of them poring over the naked girl like a couple of scholars with a rare manuscript.
“What the hell, she’s only a shicker,” Dunlap said with a conniving wink. “Only a what?”
“A shicksy? I’m not sure I’m pronouncing it right—it’s Jewish, means a Gentile girl . . .”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Krankeit coldly. Dunlap’s vernacularism—intended to invoke a hot gush of friendship—had the contrary result. And there had been that remark about the ghetto, Krankeit thought. Dunlap was beginning to harp on the subject.
Subject was hardly the word to describe Krankeit’s feelings about his Jewmanship—a muscle with the outer skin flayed off, twitching violently in the air, gives a more accurate idea. For someone to say something to him—as Dunlap had just done—which referred in any way to Jewishness, was like poking a finger in his eye.
This time it had come in mirthful form, which was the most familiar pattern—the Gentile, in a mood of alcoholic joviality, shows off the Jewish term (usually vulgar) which he has learned. To his mind, this ought to please and flatter the Jew, witnessing as it does his knowledge and appreciation of the latter’s culture. Instead, the Jew-jumpy as an eyeball—feels such a remark is patronizing and disrespectful.
At any rate, that was how Krankeit himself reacted. The idea, so touching in itself, of Dunlap’s spiritual paternity was summarily dismissed from his mind. The director became like some unknown figure passed in the street—a stranger, and therefore, an enemy.
Krankeit retreated into the depths of the room and sat behind his desk. Fussing with a packet of papers, he said: “I wonder if you could drop back this afternoon, Doctor. I’ve got some work here I’d like to wrench off.”
He kept his eyes fixed on the surface of his desk all the time that Dunlap stood hesitating and clearing his throat . . . and for several minutes after the door had clicked shut. Then he got up, moving like a serpent, and quickly crossed the room.
8
CANDY WAS COMING TO. Before her eyes reality swirled effulgently, then resolved itself into a sharp, pricking sensation in her backside. She was half lying, half standing against some sort of board or table, and her wrists were attached to it. She couldn’t see very well what was going on behind her, but in the next instant she felt again as if someone were sticking a pin into her buttocks.
“Hey!” she said. “Stop that!”
“Ah,” said a rich masculine voice behind her. “Good . . . it worked!”
Straining her neck, she turned and found herself staring into the tragic brown eyes of the young man into whose office she had stumbled earlier that afternoon.
“I was just using a bit of acupuncture, the ancient Chinese pin-therapy, to see if I couldn’t bring you back to consciousness,” he said. “Now just hold still while I take them, out.”
Candy looked over her shoulder and was startled to see a number of silver pins projecting from her marvelously round derriere. Surprisingly, she hardly felt them, but a dark blush colored her face at the idea that this young man, sitting inches behind her, was extracting pins from her bare bottom.
“. . . you were out for quite a while,” he was saying, chatting calmly, “. . . partly an accident . . . someone gave you ether to inhale by mistake . . . so I decided to try the pins. . . . I wasn’t sure I was getting the ‘points’ correctly.”
“‘Points?’” Candy said. She was still quite dazed and couldn’t think what had led up to this incredible awakening.
“Oh yes! It wouldn’t do to stick them in any old place, you know. There are important neural points in the body—418 in all—and by placing the pins in certain combinations of the points it’s possible to speed up, or slow down, the functioning of the various internal organs.”
Candy wondered whether all the points were located in such incongruous areas, but she said nothing, being much too absorbed in a rapid inspection of the room to locate her skirt and panties.
Krankeit had detached her hands from the metal rings that held them—she had been on some sort of tilted operating table—and now, as she crossed the room to retrieve her clothes, she suppressed an impulse to cover her adorable pubes. But, she thought, after all he was a doctor, and accustomed to seeing naked women—mightn’t it look terribly bête for her to try and hide herself like that?
“Was I unconscious for very long?” she asked, trying to sound calm and assured.
“For about a half hour. But are you feeling all right now? Because I’d like you to assist me. I’m about to examine your father, and your presence could be very helpful. He hasn’t been able to recall his identity yet and, when he sees you, perhaps it will aid him to overcome his amnesia,”
“Do you—do you think my father’s mind has been permanently impaired?” Candy asked, half afraid to hear what the answer would be.
“It’s hard to say. I don’t know yet which of his mental faculties have been affected, or how severely. That’s the purpose of this examination. We’ll do our very best, of course, but only time will reveal the full extent of his injury. But are you sure you’re feeling well enough to assist at the examination? It may be upsetting, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” said Candy, slipping into her panties and skirt—and she very nearly added that she was already feeling much better, simply from being dressed again, but she could see that such matters were of no concern to him. There was a moment of silence during which she looked deeply into Krankeit’s troubled brown eyes, and thought crossly to herself, Good heavens, it’s Daddy’s condition we’re concerned with—not mine!
And making a final adjustment to her sweet little blouse, Candy spoke decisively: “I’m ready, Dr. Krankeit.”
9
LENGTHENING HER PACE to accord with his, Candy stole a glance at Krankeit as he strode determinedly through the white halls, bent slightly forward, and with his hawklike nose cleaving the air before him like the cone of a medium-range guided missile.
She wondered, couldn’t this striding along together of theirs be a symbol of all that was to come? In the bright triumphs of his medical career, and also in the moments of anguish and doubt when it seemed to him that all his efforts were to end in ignominious failure—she would be at his side, marching along, as at present, to the next encounter with the Enemy, and lending him the soft assuring warmth of her femininity.
Candy Krankeit, she thought with a bittersweet thrill—so that was how it was to be! All those dreamy-girl hours spent wondering whom her fate would bring . . . what the forceful male presence would be like that would provide her with the key to fling open the gates of her womanhood—and then, on a day like the others, she opened a door and there was the man that put an end to all her games of reverie. As simple as that.
And this meant that she, in turn, must be the instrument of his release, though he hadn’t as yet sensed it of course. This fact, that Krankeit was still unaware of their looming, destined love, only endeared him to her the more. The poor darling ninny, she thought, little did he realize the stark, aching need he had for her. She almost laughed aloud thinking of this obtuseness of his—so like a man too. There he was, all wrapped up in thoughts of his work, never dreaming what his heart held in store for him. She felt like pinching him, or playfully giving him a push, just to break through his absurd masculine numbness; but it was too soon, she knew, and it wouldn’t do to disconcert him just now when he needed all his calmness and lucidity for the examination of her father.
Poor Daddy, she thought, and it’s all my fault too! Well, I’ll make it up to him somehow. I’ll—
Just then Krankeit turned sharply and entered a short, vaulted hallway, and Candy’s speculations were broken off as sharply by what she saw there. . . .
The hall they were in terminated in a flight of stairs leading down, and, halfway to the stairs, was a middle-aged, brick-shaped woman lying on her stomach on the
floor.
Hearing Candy and Krankeit approaching, she raised herself heavily to her knees and began to scrub the floor with a wet and soapy brush. Evidently she had been taking a break from her work when they had entered the hall. Then, as they got closer, the woman looked up at Candy with an expression of such fierce hostility that the girl almost stopped in her tracks. But Krankeit kept on walking and even said, “Good afternoon, Audrey,” to the scrubwoman, who lowered her head, as if refusing to answer or even look at them, and muttered angrily under her breath as they passed. She did not stop her scrubbing to let them by and Candy actually had to step over her arm. But, a second after they had passed, the thickset woman impulsively tipped a bucket of soapy water she was using, and sent a good-size puddle of it flowing swiftly under Candy’s high heels . . .
Candy was looking at Krankeit at that moment, trying to determine what his reaction was to this disagreeable person. She had just the time to see that he seemed completely oblivious—and then the treacherous liquid reached her feet and she began to slip. She realized with horror that she was in danger of tumbling down the flight of stairs, which was very close now, and, in that instant, the silence of the hospital corridor was shattered by a bloodcurdling roar of laughter!
Startled from his bemusement, Krankeit finally saw what was happening and managed to grab Candy’s arm just as she was about to launch into space; then, having steadied her, he glanced back with a long look of revulsion at “Audrey,” the scrubwoman, who was making no attempt to conceal her joy at the near-accident, or to still the laughter that echoed so diabolically in the hall.
“Gosh!” said Candy, when they had descended the stairs and were out of earshot of the husky scrubwoman. “Who was that?”
“Hmm?” Krankeit seemed to have already forgotten the incident.
“That woman—the woman who was washing the floor. Who was she?”
“Who was she? Why, she was a woman washing the floor.” He said this in the soothing manner of a psychoanalyst addressing a nervous patient.
“Yes, but you called her ‘Audrey.’”
“Well, why shouldn’t I have? It’s her name, you see,” said Krankeit a bit brusquely.
“That’s what I mean. You seemed to know her . . . know about her, that is. She seemed so strange, so—”
“I fail to see anything remarkable about her, or about the fact that I know her name: I happen to know the names of many people who work in the hospital.”
He seemed to be getting a little angry and Candy diplomatically dropped the subject. Cranky old darling, she thought, but it was easy to see how the enormous strain of his work had gotten him on edge.
Uncle Jack, his head and a good bit of his face swathed in bandages, sat propped against pillows like an Oriental pasha and regarded his young visitors with a gentle smile.
“I’ve brought Candy to visit you,” the young man had said.
“Candy? I knew a girl named Candy,” Uncle Jack reminisced. “Looked just like this girl too . . . Could be her twin sister.”
Just before coming in, Krankeit had explained the patient’s condition to Candy, pointing out that he had become a more or less “disembodied intelligence,” and could be expected to lack the most elementary knowledge about himself or even the ordinary details of existence. His id and his ego—both so central to rational conduct—had suffered near obliteration; and consequently, though he might be quite conscious of what was going on about him, it was like the awareness of a camera or a microphone, for he had practically no feeling of self.
Despite this briefing, Candy couldn’t restrain a sigh of distress when Uncle Jack told her she reminded him of herself.
“But Daddy,” she said, fighting hard to keep her voice steady, “it’s me, it’s Candy!”
Apparently Uncle Jack didn’t feel this statement was intended for him, for he looked at Krankeit smilingly as if expecting him to answer.
Krankeit had taken out pad and pencil, and now jotted down the words “agonic id.” He too was smiling, but in a different way than the patient. He was happy because this was his work, his element; he was like an expert operator seated before some fantastically complex switchboard, and he was about to determine which of its circuits were clear and which had been interrupted. Silently, he took Uncle Jack’s hand and placed it, fingers spread apart, on the blanket. “Where is your thumb?” he asked.
Uncle Jack’s angelic smile slowly froze on his face.
“Which one of your fingers is your thumb?” the young doctor repeated patiently.
Uncle Jack looked at his hand, perplexed. After a while, the middle finger raised up.
“Which is the middle finger then?”
This time the little finger lifted hesitantly.
“Ring finger?”
Nothing happened.
“Little finger?”
Uncle Jack’s middle finger bobbed up again.
Krankeit reached over and lifted Uncle Jack’s thumb. “What’s that?” he inquired.
Uncle Jack smiled with relief. “You knew it all the time,” he said admiringly.
Krankeit took hold of the little finger and held it up. “Which is that?”
“Pinky!” the patient said delightedly. “I’m pretty sure, pretty sure of that.”
Candy was barely able to suppress a sob at this. Oh, poor dear Daddy, she thought, and it’s all my fault, every last bit of it. . . .
“Which is your right hand?” Krankeit said, continuing his examination.
“I’ll have to guess on that one. I get all mixed up,” Uncle Jack explained, presenting his left hand.
“Which is your left hand?”
Uncle Jack looked intently at his hand, but said nothing.
“Which is your left foot?”
He presented his left little finger.
“Are you sure that’s your left foot?”
He offered his right little finger.
“Which is your right thumb?”
“I’m all mixed up,” said Uncle Jack, pointing to his left hand, then to his right hand, then to Krankeit’s left foot. “I’m kind of mixed up on them,” he confessed. “I never could get them straight.”
Krankeit now took a number of heterogeneous objects from his pockets, humming cheerfully the while, and placed them on the patient’s night table. Then he pointed to each one and carefully named it.
Uncle Jack’s attention was apparently focused on this procedure: however, when asked to pick up the matches he picked up a pencil; asked to pick up the lighter he picked up a penknife; asked to pick up the chewing gum he did so and hurriedly chewed it; asked to pick up the pencil he picked up the gum again. . . .
“Is my arm up or down?” asked Krankeit, holding his left hand up and jotting busily on his pad with his right hand.
“I believe it’s . . . up; not too positive though.”
“Where is the ceiling?”
Uncle Jack looked up at the ceiling.
“Is it up?” Krankeit prompted.
“I’m gonna say up.”
“Where is the floor?”
“It’s down there.”
“Is it up or down?”
Uncle Jack was silent for a few seconds, and then he said, “I’m gonna give up.”
Krankeit pursed his lips reflectively as he framed the proper reply to bring the patient back into a more responsive syndrome, but before he could speak, the door sprang open and a chubby little man, followed by two women, entered the room.
Candy stood up from her chair in astonishment—it was Aunt Ida and her husband Luther, and with them, gaily waving a bunch of tulips, was Livia herself!
“Greetings, Gates!” Livia screamed merrily, laying the flowers on Uncle Jack’s chest and friskily pinching his cheek. “We’ve come to cheer up our little sick boy!”
Ida and Luther, obviously wishing to disassociate themselves from this riotous entrance, hung back decorously at first, then stepped forward.
“Everything all right, Sidney?” aske
d Luther. “Not too bad?”
Aunt Ida, pale and gaunt, and grimly dressed in black, stared silently at her brother, her eyes glistening lugubriously.
Uncle Jack smiled sweetly in greeting. Not a bit of resistance from him if people wanted to call him “Sidney” or “Daddy,” or anything else. And since in their minds he was “Sidney” and “Daddy,” and since the real Sidney Christian was in a lost state similar to his own and in no condition to dispute the title, “Uncle Jack” became “Sidney” and “Daddy,” and that was the end of it.
Livia had turned to wave hello to Candy, and now, for the first time, noticed the silent Krankeit. “Ah!” she said, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume.”
A dark flush of annoyance clouded Krankeit’s features. Ignoring Livia’s brashness, he glanced quickly at his watch. “I have a consultation now,” he informed Candy in a low voice. “I’ll try and stop back here when I’m finished.” Then, with a last look at Uncle Jack, he murmured, “Pity . . . We didn’t even get to sounds and colors.”
“Who’s that Hebe doctor?” Livia said loudly before Krankeit was well out the door.
“Good Grief, Aunt Livia!” Candy flared. “Can’t you ever . . . keep still?”
“Keep still?” Livia asked in genuine puzzlement.
“Candy’s right,” said Luther. “That was a tactless remark, and he couldn’t possibly not have heard it. Couldn’t you have waited till he was out of the room?”
“Oh my God!” Livia snorted in exasperation. “You’ve got to watch every damn little word with you people. Do you think that’s going to help cheer up Sid, if we all sit around like that mopey Hebe doctor and don’t say anything?”
Aunt Ida, who was arranging the tulips in a vase, sighed and exchanged looks of patient resignation with Candy and her husband—since Jack’s disappearance, Livia had become worse than ever. . . .
“Poor old Sid,” Livia went on. “Nothing to do but lie in bed and look at the four walls. He must be bored stiff.” She was fumbling with a Pan American Airways satchel which she’d brought. “Well, we’ll see if we can’t cheer him up a little bit.”
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