Candy by Terry Southern Page B

her sight.)
    “Oh heavens no!” Krankeit assured her. “Perfectly okay. Best thing in the world for him.”
    “Dr. Krankeit feels that the way to clear up our mental problems is to . . . to masturbate, Aunt Ida,” Candy explained.
    Ida listened to this information calmly, but she had become rather green and was swallowing continuously.
    “AH!”
    Everyone turned and looked at Livia, who had suddenly staggered to her feet. She held her palm to her mouth as if to suppress a screech of fright, and, with the other hand, she pointed an accusing finger at Uncle Jack’s member. “JACK! . . . AH!” she gasped in certain recognition—and crumbled to the floor.
    Uncle Jack and Luther set to work immediately to mimic her—falling and getting up in a series of imitations of people passing out from drink.
    “Great Scott!” Krankeit exclaimed, looking at Livia lying motionless on the floor. “We’d better get her to the dispensary at once! I’m afraid she’s had a bit too much” and, signifying to the others to continue with their fun, he lifted the unconscious young woman onto the wheeling-table and rolled her smoothly away.
    Now that their audience was gone, and with Candy and Ida glaring at them, the two men finally stopped their cavorting and sat down exhausted on the bed.
    “Whew!” panted Luther, trying to make it seem as if their insensate exhibition had been an innocent lark, “I don’t know when I’ve had a workout like that in the last six years.” He chuckled and glanced sheepishly at the women, who looked back at him in grim silence. “Well, Sidney,” he said, getting up and retrieving his shirt from the floor, “this has been an awfully pleasant visit, and I hope—uh—I hope we’ve helped you get your mind off your troubles a bit—”
    “Wait a minute!” Uncle Jack said excitedly, and sprang from the bed. “I just thought of one we forgot to do!” and he began to hum the familiar strains of the Parisian “Apache Dance,” took several ominous strides, and froze ludicrously, having just knocked an imaginary Mademoiselle to the floor. “Right?” he said to Luther. “Come on!” he roared. “LET’S GO!” motioning for the chubby Luther to perform the painful role of the girl.
    “Now Sidney, maybe we’d better not get started again,” Luther observed apprehensively. “You know the doctor just told you to take it easy—”
    “COME ON!” Uncle Jack bellowed, and whether he was furious at his partner’s reluctance, or whether it was simply part of the dance, he stalked up to his brother-in-law and slapped him smartly in the face.
    This was too much for Ida, who finally passed to the attack and began pushing Uncle Jack vigorously toward his bed.
    “Hands off!” he shouted in astonished protest. “Hands off, you sow!”
    I can’t stand another minute of this, Candy thought. Good Grief! And she rushed blindly out of the room to find help.
    She flew down the hall, and with a little sob of despair, flung open the first door she came to, but was startled to find herself again in the service room, full of mops and buckets, where she’d made the acquaintance of Irving Krankeit’s mother.
    It seemed impossible . . . she could have sworn that the tiny room was whole floors and corridors distant, tucked away in some obscure corner of the colossal building. Hadn’t it taken her ten minutes to find her way back from it to Daddy’s room?
    She stepped to the shelf and moved aside some packages of detergent. . . . Yes, there was the little sliding panel!
    It was still partially open, and as she looked she heard someone in the amphitheater say something that sounded like “Ping!” Candy had an almost physical premonition warning her not to look; but some still louder inner force fiercely compelled her to peer into the vastness below. . . .
    “Chiang!”
    Aunt Livia—naked, unconscious, attached by the wrists to the vertical operating table—looked like a handsome animal offered for