Sunstroke: And Other Stories

by Ian Watson

  “The Pump Room,” smiled Mrs Elliot nostalgically; “a truly delightful building, in a delightful city. How can she see anything vile in that?”

  “But is that not where she was disappointed? Or so I understood. Did you not tell me yourself, Madam, how she fainted in the Pump Room? I believe a wound was dealt to her tender soul, that day …”

  He unlocked the door at the end of the corridor; soon they were by Jane’s room.

  “No, no, dear Doctor Hood,” insisted Mrs Elliot. “You are mistaken. The circumstances were otherwise; the fault, on Jane’s side. She, alas, was the instrument of disappointing a most excellent suitor who had all my blessing. She was already mad, I fear.”

  Mrs Elliot lingered outside Jane’s room. In truth, she had no wish to enter.

  “Everything was perfect for the match, Dr Hood, till that fearful morning when she and I, with Captain Wentworth and the late Mr Elliot (who was taking a glass of the waters for reasons of health) foregathered in the Pump Room. A perfect and amusing morning; all was happiness. Mr Elliot, after drinking his glass of water, joined some other gentlemen to discuss the political situation; whilst we ladies walked about with the Captain, noticing every new face and new bonnet in the room. Captain Wentworth escorted Jane with great solicitude, talking to her of the sea and a sailor’s life; when quite abruptly Jane blanched and cried out—to the horror and discomfiture of all—“I see it as it is!”; and promptly fell down in a faint. Captain Wentworth, who had caught her up, knelt with her in his arms, looking on her in an agony of silence with a face as pallid as her own. But when poor Jane opened her eyes a few moments later, it was not on this world nor on his face that she opened them. To say that she broke the engagement wilfully, is to ascribe too much lucidity to inexplicable behaviour. Yet to imply that he disappointed her in any way would be the gravest injustice to a gallant gentleman. So inexplicable, indeed, were my daughter’s actions that day, that far from the waters of Bath doing dear Mr Elliot any good,” Mrs Elliot stifled a sob, and Dr Hood pressed her arm comfortingly, “he languished and died, of very shame I believe!”

  “Thus she fell after she cried out,” asserted Dr Hood. “The fall was therefore not the cause of injury. Perhaps she suffered some fit prior to her fall that wounded her brain. I cannot tell. Maybe a century or more from now, medical science may be able to explore the brain. Yet, piecing together Miss Elliot’s scattered thoughts, one almost disbelieves in the possibility of such, or any, progress!”

  He opened Jane’s door; Mother and Physician stepped into the room.

  Jane sat hunched and haggard, wearing a torn, soiled gown, her hair tumbling in untidy strings about her ruined features. Sunlight fell upon her face, etching all the wrinkles of irrational worry.

  “We tidied her only this morning; yet she untidies herself. We gave her a fresh gown; yet she soils it instantly. We combed her hair; yet—”

  “Do not say anything, dear Doctor. There is no need. I understand that your solicitude for her equals my own.”

  Jane stared at her visitors in exhausted reverie.

  “I am thirsty, Mother,” she cried; “such heat and crowds!”

  “There are no more than three people in this room, Jane,” Mrs Elliot rebuked her. “That hardly constitutes a crowd, despite the proverb; and my landaulette was driven through almost empty streets, to visit you.”

  “I am thirsty, Mother.”

  “Yet she will not drink; resists drinking,” whispered Dr Hood, “except upon extreme persuasion—”

  He poured a cup of water from the ewer on the table; proffered it to Jane who held it for a moment, gazing into it; before suddenly inverting the cup and spilling every last drop of water deliberately on to the paved floor.

  “I am thirsty, Mother,” her thin voice complained. “The crowds! The heat!”

  Flame and the Healer

  A RUTTED RED dirt road cuts clear through the scrub to the horizon. Grey phallic sausages dangle from the branches of a few gourd trees. Euphorbias rise here and there like enormous candelabra. The sun burns fiercely in a cloudless sky …

  This is Africa. The African bush.

  A solitary dung beetle is toiling its way across the murram road, up on its hind legs pushing its ball of treasured filth …

  I know that beetle. I stopped somewhere on the road between Lungalunga and Kwale, twenty years ago, to watch it! When I was working in East Africa.

  I know that this is a dream. And I’m awake. The dream has become ‘lucid’.

  I blink my eyes rapidly to tell Miss Noguchi this as she sits by my bedside in the lab, watching my sleeping face, whilst keeping an eye on the cathode screen of the encephalograph.

  “If the afterlife is an endless dream,” Dr Richter has said to us, “if Heaven and Hell are dreams that we dream when we die, based on what we did in life, then obviously we should learn to direct our dreams the way we want them to go—while we still have the chance. Otherwise we may suffer Hell forever, hunted by our own beasts and demons, tormented by our guilts and hang-ups, burnt by unconsuming fire.”

  Dr Richter would teach everyone how to dream creatively, in full awareness that we’re dreaming, in full control of the landscape and the events. He would teach us all how to reach Heaven, and remain there.

  The murram road is red: the colour of lust. It is deeply rutted. So am I, too, in rut? Is my penis horny as I sleep naked in the lab, near to naked Angela, and Tony, and Sam, and Fox, and Max and Donna?

  Angela! If I wish it, a waterhole will open in the dry bush. She will be bathing there. If I wish it. Or perhaps she will be waiting for me by an isolated thatched hut.

  Her. Yet not her. She will be a creature conjured by my mind—what the people of the Middle Ages called a succubus, a spirit that mates with sleeping men. She will be randy, as she never is in life. Or at least obedient.

  What stops me from summoning her? Is it shyness, at being observed in the act? At my body being watched by Noguchi? At being overheard by her?

  Dr Richter has taught us how to talk in our sleep, so that we can report back lucidly about the dream state to the observers in the lab. Yet his watchword is: “Do exactly what you want to do. I want to know if there are limits to our powers in the dream state. I want to know what they are.”

  No. My doubts spring from a different source. If Richter is right about the afterlife being composed of dreams, and if we must take over responsibility for our dreams, then shouldn’t my dreams be ‘responsible’ ones? Shouldn’t I use the dream power in a kindly, non-exploitative way? Otherwise. …

  But if I was a Mohammedan, then I would believe that Paradise was full of houris: of voluptuous, seductive women, to take my pleasure with. Surely a Mohammedan can dream of houris and enjoy them in perfect safety? So why shouldn’t I dream of Angela, and enjoy her exactly as I wish? Forever.

  “Do exactly as you wish …”

  Yet on the other hand: “Thou shalt not exploit the creatures of thy mind …”

  (But perhaps not tonight? Perhaps not yet?)

  And, of course, this tension may spoil the dream entirely for me. Angela may change into a rotting corpse in my arms, or into my own mother, shocking me back into the ordinary, zombie-dreaming state. Or a lion may leap out—out of my mind—to maul me.

  Yet it isn’t the real Angela that I will thrust myself upon. The real Angela will be dreaming her own dream, behind her own screen in the big room where we all sleep for the experiment. She won’t be hurt. Or offended.

  The African sun beats down. The air hums. Cicadas throb.

  I decree a tiny, Rundi-style house of grass thatch, looking like a golden beehive. It stands alone in a small bush clearing fifty yards from the empty road.

  Its reed door opens.

  Angela stands there, wearing jeans and a tartan shirt. Now, that’s a nuisance. I visualised her as wearing a loose Java-print cloth wrapped round her body, leaving her shoulders bare.

  It doesn’t matter. I’m still lucid. Still awake i
n the dream. I still rule it. Her clothes are a matter of fine tuning which somehow, because of some trick of my subconscious, I can’t correct.

  I skip down the track to her, whipped by a few thorns.

  “I’m in Africa,” I whisper to Noguchi, for the benefit of her tape recorder. “Alone in the bush with Angela. She isn’t dressed the way I wanted. Everything else is under control. I created a thatched hut for us. There’ll be a dry grass bed inside. The next bit’s personal.”

  Gently, I press my Angela back into the African house.

  Oddly, she resists.

  “I’ll be in your dream,” she says, “if you’ll let yourself be in mine.” It sounds like a line from a Bob Dylan song, but it isn’t quite. She smiles, teasing me.

  “I am in your dream, Paul. This time I am. I’ve never been to Africa—it is Africa, isn’t it? Couldn’t we do some sight-seeing?”

  “Listen here, this is a lucid dream. It’s my dream. My own. People can’t share dreams.” Why should I bother explaining—to my succubus?

  “They can share dreams, when they’re dead. If they dream lucidly.”

  “You’re a succubus. A houri. Hell, why am I telling you? You’re mine.”

  “Oh yes, it’s your dream, all right—but I’m dressed as I please, or hadn’t you noticed?”

  This must be on account of the tension between guilt and pleasure. Id and Superego: that’s it.

  “I think I’ve come up against a ‘limit’, Noguchi,” I whisper. “I’m still in control of the scene. But the events are going wrong. Are you listening, Noguchi?”

  “You listen, Paul. Listen clearly, for your own sake. The dreams you dream alone and unconsciously, when you’re dead, are Hell. Hell is being locked up in your own unconscious dreams. It doesn’t matter how many slaves or whores or victims you create. They’ll get you in the end. They’ll cheat you and torment you. But if you’re lucid in your dreaming—if you’re fully aware—you can share your dreams. That’s Heaven.”

  “Are you trying to say you aren’t a houri? Do you mean we’re in telepathic contact or something, back there in the lab?”

  “Telepathic contact in the lab? In the lab!” Angela laughs. “Dear me.”

  “She’s being disobedient, Noguchi. Or maybe she’s a part of my subconscious that’s trying to tell me something about the dream world? Or even something about Dr Richter’s theory of the afterlife!”

  “You can think of the afterlife as a honeycomb, Paul,” replies Angela, reacting (of course) to my question. “Separate cells, but the same honey: of the collective dream unconscious, gathered from the flowers of life. But the lucid dreamers leave their cells. Whereas the unconscious dreamers are all locked up. And their honey tastes bitter.”

  I decree us both naked. And, lo, next moment I am naked; but she isn’t. I’ll have to undress my houri by hand; but maybe that’s part of the inner logic of this.

  Angela looks around her, unperturbed by my sudden nudity.

  “This dream’s better than my old sick dream. Mine was of an empty house, with a dark and empty cellar and a hole at the bottom of the cellar, with nothingness in it. You’ve got more scenery, Paul, and it’s brighter.”

  My rage is rising. Why should I have to defend my dream—to her?

  “Even if it’s dry as dust, it’s bright,” she says.

  I almost slap her. But instead, I decide to try a different tack. Perhaps I need to seduce my succubus, to satisfy myself.

  “Look, Angela, if a heavenly dream is a question of sharing things, will you kindly share yourself with me? Right now! Besides, if you really think you’re in my dream, what a fine joke it’ll be on them if we can make love here, while our bodies are lying a couple of metres apart! It’s the last word in sexual mischief. Just imagine lying in bed with your spouse, and carrying on a genuine sexual affair in your dreams!”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “You won’t, really. Your real body stays virgin pure.” Hell, this is absurd. I’m treating her like a real person.

  “Paul, I am the real Angela. This is my mind’s body, here.”

  Oh God, it’s the most realistic she’s ever been in any dream. She tortures me.

  So why should I let myself be frustrated?

  No reason at all.

  “Let’s take a walk, instead. I want to explore, Paul. I want to show you something—”

  “You do. Want to. I want you. To.”

  She shakes her head.

  “That isn’t the same thing.”

  “Yes it is.”

  I push her back into the thatched hut, so that we both end up sprawling on the grass bed.

  “You can rape me, I suppose. You’re stronger. Here. You’re in charge of the scenery. I’m just in charge of me.”

  I unbutton her shirt and unzip her jeans. Damn it all, you can’t ‘rape’ a succubus! Our flesh rubs hotly together on the bed of dry grass. Such sweet, inflamed friction!

  What the hell’s that I can smell?

  It’s smoke. I can smell smoke.

  Fire! Bush fire. The fire that burns unconsumingly …

  And suddenly the walls of the golden beehive burst into flames.

  It’s all a trick of my subconscious, designed to frustrate me—designed to frighten me back into the zombie dreaming state!

  I’m still lucid, though. I still know I’m dreaming. But I can’t wish the fire away. Because the fire is burning in me. There’s only one way to quench that fire. And now it’s too late for that.

  “Get out of here!”

  I drag her with me, she holding her open jeans together. No, I shan’t let Angela vanish in the confusion.

  Outside, the bush crackles with tongues of flame. Hand in hand, we run along the track to the road. The fire closes in behind us, leaping the path. Hastily I decree some clothes for myself: shorts and sandals and a bush shirt. Angela tidies her own disarrayed shirt and jeans.

  Flame creeps along both sides of the road now. Creeps? No, it leaps. Now it’s racing through the scrub. A fire-wind is rising, fanning it. We start to run. Behind, flame joins hands across the road. We’re running along a tunnel of fire.

  Black smoke blocks our escape route. Solid smoke. It’s like … a building in dark fog at night. A black wall, with a grey door in it.

  “Into it!” cries Angela. “It’s mine! We’ll use it to escape. Come on!”

  I don’t want to go into that blackness. But I’ve little choice.

  We dash through a door of smoke, into a dark, empty house that I don’t know at all. There’s no furniture. Steps lead down into a black cellar. Somehow I’ve entered her dream—but that’s impossible.

  Angela, the lovely and desirable, is … this blankness and emptiness and darkness inside, you?

  “What’s down those steps, did you say?”

  “I called the place down there Catatonia.” She shrugs. “Sounds lovely, doesn’t it? Like a sleepy little Italian town, where nothing moves during the siesta, not even a dog. And the siesta goes on and on for ever. That was where I lived. Where I wanted to live. Not now, though.”

  Flames leap up the windows. Fire, from my own burning landscape, writhes up the outside of her walls. These begin to crisp and crackle, as though made of paper.

  “The house is on fire!”

  “We’ll have to shelter down in the cellar, Paul. Till the flames pass.”

  The cardboard rafters are beginning to char.

  Firelight illuminates the cellar steps. As we descend these, the firelight flushes out the blackness, conquering it. And there’s no dark pit in the centre of the cellar. The floor is firm.

  Above, the house collapses in on itself, darkening us.

  “Stay awake,” orders Angela. “Stay lucid. That’s very important. You’re almost there.”

  “Where?”

  She doesn’t answer me.

  We wait.

  And presently, a sudden wind whisks all the blackened paper away from overhead. At the top of the cellar steps i
s blue sky. Sunshine floods every crack and cranny.

  The dark cellar has cracked open like a seed which only fire can germinate. Flame has consumed the empty house; the empty house has soaked up all the flame. I feel somehow … easier.

  Angela grins at me.

  “Now you’re really in my dream, for good. In my later, better dream. Let’s go up and meet the others.”

  “Others? What others?” A cloud passes over the sun; a chill breeze touches me.

  “This isn’t just my dream. Come along!” Nimbly she runs up the steps to the surface, pulling me with her.

  The land around the former house is flat, burnt black. Yet already seeds are sprouting. Seedlings are writhing up like green flames. In the distance stands fresh, open woodland. A river wends its way. On an island in the river rises a Germanic fairy castle, with flags fluttering gaily from the turrets. It reminds me of one of mad Ludwig of Bavaria’s castles. It’s smaller, though, and the river parts to flow around it like a moat.

  My burnt patch of Africa is barely half an acre now. Healingly it seals itself on to the other terrain, like tissue regenerating. The sun is bright but gentle, unlike the African sun. Pleasantly warm, not searing hot.

  We set out for the river, and the castle.

  “But how—?”

  “You’re dead, Paul. Don’t you realise? You’ve been dead a while.”

  “Dead?”

  “Of course you’re dead! So am I. Welcome to Heaven. You’ve finally made it here.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  The ground we tread is turfed and mossy. The remaining blackness is rich loam, not ash.

  “Dr Richter was quite right. We’re his graduates: you and me, and Sam and Tony and Fox.”

  And now I remember something else about the ‘experiment’ …