deposited me in one of the open areas that form a natural reception concourse for each floor. Instead, it has thrown me off to one side, into the hinterland of the hospital, added to which I’m not on the mezzanine floor, I’m on the lower ground floor. I recognise where I am. I’m somewhere along the route Simon took me on my first day. I’m on the way to see the giant obsolete machine. I am in the same wetly shining concrete corridor. In either direction the naked neon tubes dash away; even they are hurrying off from this crushing place.
Which way? Whoever entered the stairwell while I was coming down is now on their way up. I can hear the cold slap of feet ascending and this hastens my decision. I turn to the left and start off down the corridor, trusting to my intuition to find my way to casualty and out of the hospital. As I walk I am aware that I’m positioned chemically at the eye of the storm. I no longer feel muzzy; I know that my body is saturated with Parstelin, but I’ve swum into a bubble of clarity. Nevertheless, I still don’t seem able to gain a definitive view of Busner and his ward. What has been happening? Those patients – with their madness – as stylised as a ballet. Were they the logical result of Busner’s philosophy? Were theirs the performances of madmen-as-idealists? Or just idealists? Their symptoms … was it true that they genuinely caricatured the recorded pathologies, all of them, not just Tom, or was my perception of them a function of the Parstelin?
These speculations give me heart. I feel my old self. I pause and look in a stainless steel panel screwed to a door. My reflection, dimpled here and there by the metal, looks back at me, amused, diffident. I feel cosy with my self-observation and immensely reassured by this moment of ordinary, unthinking vanity.
But where am I? No nearer casualty. The corridor has not swapped its concrete floor for tiling, there is no paint on the walls. I have turned the wrong way. Twenty feet ahead I can see the two swing-doors that lead to the conservatory. What the hell. I’ll pop in and have a look; it will be the last time I come near the hospital for a while. The doors whicker apart on their rusty rails and as I turn and pull them shut behind me they cut out the steady undertow of thrum that powers the hospital. The light in the high-domed room is the same as before and the obscure machine with its cream bakelite surfaces projects up above me, inviolate.
Tom and Jim step out from behind its flanged base, they move quite unaffectedly into my sight, as if expecting no particular reaction. I am very frightened.
‘Misha, where are you going?’ says Tom. Jim is casting his eyes about with rapid jerks of his head. He keeps flexing and rolling his arms back and forth, opening the palm forwards to disclose plastic mouth tubes – the kind used to stop people who are fitting from biting their tongues off – which he has adapted to some manual exercise routine.
‘I’m going off for the rest of the day, Tom, I came here by accident. I was looking for casualty.’
Tom listens to me, nodding, and then gestures for me to join him and Jim. The three of us then squat down between the outstretched paws of the great instrument,which are bolted heavily to the floor. We are like Africans under some fat-trunked tree, timelessly talking, until Jim drops his adapted muscle expanders on to the cracked tiles of the floor with a clatter.
‘I’m glad you listened to my advice, Misha. You’re leaving, aren’t you?’
‘Just for a couple of days. I … I need a rest. The atmosphere on the ward is quite overwhelming.’
‘Yes, it can be, can’t it. That’s why Jim and I like to come down here and play with the machine, it’s peaceful down here, quiet. Do you think I’m mad, Misha?’
‘What about me, am I mad too?’ Jim chimes in as well. I find myself embarrassed, which is absurd. To be frightened seems right, but to be embarrassed as well,
Which way? Whoever entered the stairwell while I was coming down is now on their way up. I can hear the cold slap of feet ascending and this hastens my decision. I turn to the left and start off down the corridor, trusting to my intuition to find my way to casualty and out of the hospital. As I walk I am aware that I’m positioned chemically at the eye of the storm. I no longer feel muzzy; I know that my body is saturated with Parstelin, but I’ve swum into a bubble of clarity. Nevertheless, I still don’t seem able to gain a definitive view of Busner and his ward. What has been happening? Those patients – with their madness – as stylised as a ballet. Were they the logical result of Busner’s philosophy? Were theirs the performances of madmen-as-idealists? Or just idealists? Their symptoms … was it true that they genuinely caricatured the recorded pathologies, all of them, not just Tom, or was my perception of them a function of the Parstelin?
These speculations give me heart. I feel my old self. I pause and look in a stainless steel panel screwed to a door. My reflection, dimpled here and there by the metal, looks back at me, amused, diffident. I feel cosy with my self-observation and immensely reassured by this moment of ordinary, unthinking vanity.
But where am I? No nearer casualty. The corridor has not swapped its concrete floor for tiling, there is no paint on the walls. I have turned the wrong way. Twenty feet ahead I can see the two swing-doors that lead to the conservatory. What the hell. I’ll pop in and have a look; it will be the last time I come near the hospital for a while. The doors whicker apart on their rusty rails and as I turn and pull them shut behind me they cut out the steady undertow of thrum that powers the hospital. The light in the high-domed room is the same as before and the obscure machine with its cream bakelite surfaces projects up above me, inviolate.
Tom and Jim step out from behind its flanged base, they move quite unaffectedly into my sight, as if expecting no particular reaction. I am very frightened.
‘Misha, where are you going?’ says Tom. Jim is casting his eyes about with rapid jerks of his head. He keeps flexing and rolling his arms back and forth, opening the palm forwards to disclose plastic mouth tubes – the kind used to stop people who are fitting from biting their tongues off – which he has adapted to some manual exercise routine.
‘I’m going off for the rest of the day, Tom, I came here by accident. I was looking for casualty.’
Tom listens to me, nodding, and then gestures for me to join him and Jim. The three of us then squat down between the outstretched paws of the great instrument,which are bolted heavily to the floor. We are like Africans under some fat-trunked tree, timelessly talking, until Jim drops his adapted muscle expanders on to the cracked tiles of the floor with a clatter.
‘I’m glad you listened to my advice, Misha. You’re leaving, aren’t you?’
‘Just for a couple of days. I … I need a rest. The atmosphere on the ward is quite overwhelming.’
‘Yes, it can be, can’t it. That’s why Jim and I like to come down here and play with the machine, it’s peaceful down here, quiet. Do you think I’m mad, Misha?’
‘What about me, am I mad too?’ Jim chimes in as well. I find myself embarrassed, which is absurd. To be frightened seems right, but to be embarrassed as well,
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