Briefing for a Descent Into Hell (2 page)

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Authors: Doris Lessing

Tags: #Fiction, #Literary, #Psychological

BOOK: Briefing for a Descent Into Hell
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DOCTOR Y
.

DOCTOR Y:
Did you sleep well?
PATIENT:
I keep dropping off, but I mustn’t, I must not.
DOCTOR Y:
But why not? I want you to.
PATIENT:
I’d slide off into the deep sea swells.
DOCTOR Y:
No you won’t. That’s a very comfortable bed, and you’re in a nice quiet room.
PATIENT:
Bed of the sea. Deep sea bed.
DOCTOR Y:
You aren’t on a raft. You aren’t on the sea. You aren’t a sailor.
PATIENT:
I’m not a sailor?
DOCTOR Y:
You are in Central Intake Hospital, in bed, being looked after. You must rest. We want you to sleep.
PATIENT:
If I sleep I’ll die.
DOCTOR Y:
What’s your name? Will you tell me?
PATIENT:
Jonah.
DOCTOR Y:
Yesterday it was Jason. You can’t be either, you know.
PATIENT:
We are all sailors.
DOCTOR Y:
I am not. I’m a doctor in this hospital.
PATIENT:
If I’m not a sailor, then you aren’t a doctor.
DOCTOR Y:
Very well. But you are making yourself very tired, rocking about like that. Lie down. Take a rest. Try not to talk so much.
PATIENT:
I’m not talking to you, am I? Around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and …
NURSE:
You must be feeling giddy. You’ve been going around and around and around for hours now, did you know that?
PATIENT:
Hours?
NURSE:
I’ve been on duty since eight, and every time I drop in to see you, you are going round and round.
PATIENT:
The duty watch.
NURSE:
Around and around what? Where? There now, turn over.
PATIENT:
It’s very hot. I’m not far away from the Equator.
NURSE:
You’re still on the raft then?
PATIENT:
You
aren’t!
NURSE:
I can’t say that I am.
PATIENT:
Then how can you be talking to me?
NURSE:
Do try to lie easy. We don’t want you to get so terribly tired. We’re worried about you, do you know that?
PATIENT:
Well, it is in your hands, isn’t it?
NURSE:
My hands? How is that?
PATIENT:
You
. You said
We
. I know that We. It is the categorical collective. It would be so easy for you to do it.
NURSE:
But what do you want me to do?
PATIENT:
You
as
we
. Not you as
you
. Lift me, lift me, lift me. It must be easy enough for you. Obviously. Just use your—force, or whatever it is. Blast me there.
NURSE:
Where to?
PATIENT:
You know very well. Tip me South with your white wing.
NURSE:
My white wing! I like the sound of that.
PATIENT:
You can’t be one of them. If you were, you’d know. You are tricking me.
NURSE:
I’m sorry that you think that.
PATIENT:
Or perhaps you’re testing me. Yes, that’s a possibility.
NURSE:
Perhaps that is it.
PATIENT:
It’s just a question of getting out of the North Equatorial Current into the South Equatorial Current, from clockwise to anticlockwise. The wise anticlocks.
NURSE:
I see.
PATIENT:
Well, why don’t you?
NURSE:
I don’t know how.
PATIENT:
Is it a question of some sort of a password? Who was that man who was here yesterday?
NURSE:
Do you mean Doctor Y? He was in to see you.
PATIENT:
He’s behind this. He knows. A very kindly contumacious man.
NURSE:
He’s kind. But I wouldn’t say contumacious.
PATIENT:
I say it, so why shouldn’t you?
NURSE:
And Doctor X was in the day before that.
PATIENT:
I don’t remember any Doctor X.
NURSE:
Doctor X will be in later this afternoon.
PATIENT:
In what?
NURSE:
Do try and lie still. Try and sleep.
PATIENT:
If I do, I’m dead and done for. Surely you must know that, or you aren’t a maid mariner.
NURSE:
I’m Alice Kincaid. I told you that before. Do you remember? The night you came in?
PATIENT:
Whatever your name, if you sleep you die.
NURSE:
Well, never mind, hush. There, poor thing, you are in a state. Just lie and—there, there. Shhhhh, hush. No, lie still. Shhh … there, that’s it, that’s it, sleep. Sleeeeeeeep. Sle-e-ep.
Patient distressed, fatigued, anxious, deluded, hallucinated
.
Try Tofronil? Marplan? Tryptizol? Either that or Shock
.
DOCTOR X. 21ST AUGUST
.
DOCTOR Y:
Well now, nurse tells me you are Sinbad today?
PATIENT:
Sin bad. Sin bad. Bad sin.
DOCTOR Y:
Tell me about it? What’s it all about?
PATIENT:
I’m not telling you.
DOCTOR Y:
Why not?
PATIENT:
You aren’t one of Them.
DOCTOR Y:
Who?
PATIENT:
The Big Ones.
DOCTOR Y:
No, I’m just an ordinary sort of size, I’m afraid.
PATIENT:
Why are you afraid?
DOCTOR Y:
Who are they, The Big Ones?
PATIENT:
There were giants in those days.
DOCTOR Y:
Would you tell them?
PATIENT:
I wouldn’t need to tell them.
DOCTOR Y:
They know already?
PATIENT:
Of course.
DOCTOR Y:
I see. Well, would you tell Doctor X?
PATIENT:
Who is Doctor X?
DOCTOR Y:
He was in yesterday.
PATIENT:
In and Out. In and Out. In and Out.
DOCTOR Y:
We think it would help if you talked to someone. If I’m no use to you, there’s Doctor X, if you like him better.
PATIENT:
Like? Like what? I don’t know him. I don’t see him.
DOCTOR Y:
Do you see me?
PATIENT:
Of course. Because you are there.
DOCTOR Y:
And Doctor X isn’t here?
PATIENT:
I keep telling you, I don’t know who you mean.
DOCTOR Y:
Very well then. How about Nurse? Would you like to talk to her? We think you should try and talk. You see, we must find out more about you. You could help if you talked. But try to talk more clearly and slowly, so that we can hear you properly.
PATIENT:
Are you the secret police?
DOCTOR Y:
No. I’m a doctor. This is the Central Intake Hospital. You have been here nearly a week. You can’t tell us your name or where you live. We want to help you to remember.
PATIENT:
There’s no need. I don’t need you. I need Them. When I meet Them they’ll know my needs and there’ll be no need to tell Them. You are not my need. I don’t know who you are. A delusion, I expect. After so long on this raft and without real food and no sleep at all, I’m bound to be deluded. Voices. Visions.
DOCTOR Y:
You feel that—there. That’s my hand. Is that a delusion? It’s a good solid hand.
PATIENT:
Things aren’t what they seem. Hands have come up from the dark before and slid away again. Why not yours?
DOCTOR Y:
Now listen carefully. Nurse is going to sit here with you. She is going to stay with you. She is going to listen while you talk. And I want you to talk, tell her who you are and where you are and about the raft and the sea and about the giants. But you must talk more loudly and clearly. Because when you mutter like that, we can’t hear you. And it is very important that we hear what you are saying.
PATIENT:
Important to you.
DOCTOR Y:
Will you try?
PATIENT:
If I remember.
DOCTOR Y:
Good. Now here is Nurse Kincaid.
PATIENT:
Yes, I know. I know her well. She fills me full of dark. She darks me. She takes away my mind.
DOCTOR Y:
Nonsense. I’m sure she doesn’t. But if you don’t want Nurse Kincaid either, we’ll simply leave a tape-recorder here. You know what a tape-recorder is, don’t you?
PATIENT:
I did try and use one once but I found it inhibiting.
DOCTOR Y:
You did? What for?
PATIENT:
Oh some damned silly lecture or other.
DOCTOR Y:
You give lectures do you? What sort of lectures? What do you lecture about?
PATIENT:
Sinbad the sailor man. The blind leading the blind. Around and around and around and around and around and …
DOCTOR Y:
Stop it! Please. Don’t start that again. Please.
PATIENT:
Around and around and around and around and …
DOCTOR Y:
Around what? You are going around what? Where?
PATIENT:
I’m not going. I’m being taken. The current. The North Equatorial, from the North African Coast, across, past the West Indies to the Florida Current, past Florida around the Sargasso Sea and into the Gulf Stream and around with the West Wind Drift to the Canaries and around past the Cape Verde Islands around and around and around and around …
DOCTOR Y:
Very well then. But how are you going to get out?
PATIENT:
They. They will.
DOCTOR Y:
Go on now. Tell us about it. What happens when you meet them? Try and tell us.
He gives lectures. Schools, universities
,
radio, television, politics? Societies to
do with? Exploration, archeology
,
zoology? Sinbad. “Bad sin.” Suggest as a wild hypothesis that just this once patient may have committed a crime and this not just routine guilt?
DOCTOR Y
.
Accept hypothesis. What crime?
DOCTOR X
.

Setting off from the Diamond Coast, first there is the Southerly coastal current to get out of. Not once or twice or a dozen times, on leaving the Diamond Coast, the shore-hugging current has dragged us too far South and even within sight of that African curve which rounded would lead us in helpless to the Guinea current to who knows what unwanted landfalls. But we have always managed just in time to turn the ship out and pointing West with Trinidad our next stop. That is, unless this time we encountered Them. Around and Around. It is not a cycle without ports we long to reach. Nancy waits for poor Charlie in Puerto Rico, George has his old friend John on Cape Canaveral, and I when the ship has swung far enough inshore wait to see Conchita sitting on her high black rock and to hear her sing her song for me. But when greetings and farewells have been made so many times, they as well as we want the end of it all. And when the songs have been heard so often, the singers no longer are Nancy, alone, poor Charlie alone, or any of us. The last few journeys past the garden where Nancy waits, she was joined by all the girls in her town, and
they stood along the wall over the sea watching us sail past, and they sang together what had so often called poor Charlie and his crew in to them before.

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