Candy (7 page)

“Yes?” said Candy, eager to learn.

“. . . to—well, you’ve heard the title of his book, haven’t you?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t,” said Candy.

“It’s called . . .
Masturbation Now!”
the nurse said, forming each syllable slowly with her lips and making almost no sound. Then she sucked in her cheeks appraisingly.

“That certainly
is
an unconventional idea,” Candy admitted.

“He
claims that
normal
sex relations,” the nurse went on, “cause all these mental disorders so many people have, and he says that
his
way would stop War!”

Candy thought of Dr. Krankeit’s earnest young face, the evident sincerity of his dark beseeching eyes. . . . Surely he was honest! . . . and dedicated too, and—and sweet and kind. . . . “Well,” she said philosophically, “maybe the world
needs
some shocking new notion like that to make men stop fighting with each other.”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” the squat little nurse said shrugging, and with that she turned on her heel and started to walk away. “‘Reception’ is down that way,” she called back, “turn right at the end of the corridor,” and she pointed to the way from which she herself had come.

Candy followed these instructions and soon found herself in a waiting room for visitors and “out-patients.”

The several people sitting about all put down their magazines and ceased their whispered conversations to stare at the newcomer; and Candy, feeling quite self-conscious, went straight to the reception desk and presented to the woman there the telegram she’d received. The receptionist was a small, birdlike woman whose name, according to a sign on the desk, was Mrs. Prippet.

“Have a seat,” she said, having scarcely glanced at the telegram and regarding Candy fixedly as if there were something extremely curious about the lovely young girl standing before her.

Candy hesitated. “This came this morning,” she said, indicating the telegram. She paused, and Mrs. Prippet and the people seated about looked at her expectantly. “I wonder if you could tell me . . .” her voice trailed off uncertainly—everyone in the room was listening with great interest and she was especially intimidated by the receptionist, Mrs. Prippet, who was looking at her with a pained expression as if Candy were speaking some sort of grotesquely broken English.

“You
are
Candy Christian?”

“Why yes, I—”

“Then
please
sit down,” Mrs. Prippet said icily. “Dr. Dunlap will see you as soon as he’s free.”

Candy turned only to face a barrage of silent eyes.

Not until she had found a seat did they leave off and, with a rustle of pages and dry whispers, go back to their previous occupations. And now that she was safely ensconced, Candy, in turn, began to look at
them,
stealing furtive glimpses and turning quickly away whenever another pair of exploring eyes clashed with her own. . . .

Sitting opposite was a fat girl about her own age, and her throat was horribly distended with goiter. Candy looked at it for five seconds in fascination before realizing that she was “staring.” She turned then, angry with herself. For heaven’s sake, she thought, a thing like that is merely an accidental glandular condition; it has nothing whatsoever to do with what the girl’s
really
like. She might be someone with a great awareness of Beauty . . . a sculptress perhaps, or a magnificent contralto . . . well no, not a contralto . . .

She continued taking inventory. There were two nuns; one old, one young, but both pale and wearing eyeglasses with silver rims. From time to time the younger one hissed something to her companion who would give no sign of having heard anything. Near them a young couple, the woman pregnant, whispered together. And finally, a man wearing Bermuda shorts and a sport jacket whose face she couldn’t see since he was holding a copy of
National Geographic
in front of it. Candy’s gaze lingered on the man’s knees and calves, which were a bit plump she thought, and then she realized with a start that
he
was looking at
her—
peeping, that is, through the fingers that held the magazine, and, presumably, watching her reaction to his plump knees. . . .

She looked hastily away and her eyes were drawn to the goiter again; but this time its owner caught her in the act, and stared fiercely back at her. Candy didn’t know
which
way to turn and was considering just shutting her eyes when a man with snow-white hair and a goatee strode into the waiting room.

There was a distinct elegance about this man, Candy thought, something chivalric—a natural grace in the way his body bent from the waist almost as if he were bowing.

Suddenly he straightened bolt upright and stared at
her,
at Candy! Then he bent down quickly again, whispered something. . . . Mrs. Prippet was eying her too now and was nodding “yes” with her head. . . .

“Miss Christian,” she called.

Candy sprang up and came to the desk. Once again all eyes focused on her, and a warm blush welled up, darkening her pretty face. It was like being the point of interest in a stadium, she thought, as she gracefully took her position before the man with the snowy hair.

Mrs. Prippet cleared her throat, and said, in a whisper everyone in the room could hear, “Dr. Dunlap would like to ask you a few questions, Miss Christian,” and then added ominously, “Dr. Dunlap is the
Director
of our hospital.”

Candy expected that the courtly gentleman would invite her to his office at this point, but such an idea didn’t seem to occur to him. He was staring at her in an extraordinarily blunt fashion.

“Yes,” he said in a rasping whisper, spacing each word slowly and distinctly, “I most certainly
would
like to ask Miss Christian ‘a few questions!’”

Needless to say, his vehemence discomforted Candy still further.

There followed a pause now, during which the distinguished-looking doctor glared sternly at Candy as if to see whether she dared say anything. The suspense increased by the second; everyone in the waiting room leaned forward, hardly breathing, and shamelessly attentive. . . .

This would have been a good moment for Candy herself to suggest that they retire to Dr. Dunlap’s private office, but she discovered she was incapable of speaking. Helplessly she glanced about at the audience with their bulging eyes, then, mutely entreating, she turned again to the director. . . .

Either Dr. Dunlap didn’t understand this plea, or else he simply didn’t care. He held his hands clasped behind his back and stood with his feet spaced well apart, and now, just before he addressed her, he rose up and down on his toes several times in a terrifying imitation of Charles Laughton in
Mutiny on the Bounty.

“Miss Christian,”
he snarled in an ear-splitting whisper, “your father was admitted to this hospital two nights ago with an extremely grave head injury, suffering from shock, loss of blood, and possible concussion. . . . He had been dealt a violent blow to the frontal lobe of his brain—a blow, which, if by some miracle does not prove fatal, will nevertheless probably leave him mentally impaired for the rest of his life!” Dr. Dunlap paused, carefully breathed three times, rising up and down on his toes as he did, then went on even more slowly and pompously than before. “Last night, Miss Christian, at a time when your father was hovering so closely to death that the slightest disturbance might have sealed his fate, one of our nurses, hearing a noise, entered the room and found you . . .
stark naked, writhing, wallowing
and—and—and—COPULATING ON THE FLOOR OF THAT SICKROOM!”

A gasp of triumph—almost of relief—burst from the crowd at this revelation. The girl with the goiter slapped herself on the thigh as if she had somehow guessed what was coming all along.

Dr. Dunlap had actually shouted the last few words of his terrible accusation and now stood with his jowls trembling from the intensity of his emotions.

Mrs. Prippet, the receptionist, smiled proudly, and as for poor Candy, her knees suddenly sagged and she felt as though she were going to swoon.

“No,” she moaned. “No . . . no . . .”

“What!”
the director demanded indignantly. “I say that you were
seen,
you and some man, having wanton intercourse on the floor under your father’s bed!
Seen—
do you hear me? Seen going at it like a pair of HOT WART HOGS!!!” (He had begun to shout again, carried away like a holy-roller preacher.) “HORSING ON THE FLOOR! HUMPING UNDER THE BED! GROUSING IN THE GOODIE!”

“No, no,” Candy sobbed, “oh please . . . please, please. PLEASE! You don’t understand . . .”

“DON’T UNDERSTAND?” roared the director.

“Don’t
understand?”
echoed the girl with the goiter, who had suddenly gotten to her feet in the excitement.

“No!” Candy cried. “You don’t! . . . It isn’t what you think!”

“Why the nerve of her!” the pregnant woman exclaimed.

“She could have killed her own father—doing a thing like that right there under his nose,” interjected the man in the Bermuda shorts.

“I’ll have you know that this is a hospital, and not a . . .
house of ill-repute!”
Dr. Dunlap proclaimed.

“This is no place for a common young harlot to—”

“Oh!” Candy whimpered, flinching at every word.

“Another thing,” volunteered the younger nun, “how did her father
get
hurt? Who was it that struck him down . . . and
why?”

Mrs. Prippet nodded her head vigorously in agreement and said:

“That’s right! We haven’t heard about
that
part yet.”

“Probably did it herself,” the young husband muttered.
“Or
had her
boyfriend
do it,” added his wife, giving him a dark look.

“I say that nobody in their right mind would come into their own father’s sickroom and—and,” said Dr. Dunlap, trying to develop his theory calmly and with scientific objectivity, but as he started to grope for words he lost control and was soon bellowing again: “TROLLOP! SLUT! FLOOSIE!”

“Could you sit down, please?” the young nun said to the girl with the goiter. “She can’t see,” she explained, indicating the old nun who was straining forward in her chair and trying to look around the others, but who was evidently too weak to stand up.

The plump girl did not sit down, but rather stepped to the side, considerately looking back to ascertain that she no longer obstructed the view.

For Candy, overwhelmed with embarrassment, it happened with the economy and the faultless logic of a dream: the girl stepping aside and looking back . . . moving her slablike arm out of the way . . . and finally, the toothless old nun revealed, leaning forward with visible relish to drink in what she’d been missing. . . .

“Good Grief!” Candy said aloud. “This is worse than a nightmare!” Then she fainted.

A
S
C
ANDY FELL,
a dark-haired young man who had been standing in the doorway entered the room and hurried to her side. It was Dr. Krankeit, who, hearing the sound of raised and angry voices, had stepped out of his office and come to the waiting room to investigate.

He had just time to understand that the girl, object and brunt of Dr. Dunlap’s awful accusations, was the daughter of the recently admitted Mr. Christian—one of his patients—and then Candy slumped to the floor. . . .

In a moment he was on his knees next to her, taking her pulse and making sure that this collapse was not of a grave nature. Then, still kneeling, he raised his head and regarded Dr. Dunlap thoughtfully.

Ordinarily, Krankeit had such consummate control of his feelings that he often appeared to his patients and colleagues as emotionless; but now there was an angry glint in his expressive brown eyes when he addressed the director:

“Really, J. D., this is . . .” he paused, shaking his head incredulously as he sought to encompass the magnitude of it all, “. . . I mean were you
trying
to get this girl to faint? It’s—it’s simply
astonishing!”

Suddenly Mrs. Prippet hurried from her desk and knelt beside him. “Here, dear,” she said to Candy, whose eyes were fluttering open, “breathe in deeply—this will bring you round in a jiffy,” and she held a small bottle under Candy’s nose. Candy inhaled obediently several times before her eyes closed once more and her head slumped limply against Krankeit’s shoulder. He regarded her for a moment, then snatched the flask from Mrs. Prippet and whiffed the contents.

“This isn’t smelling-salts, you imbecile,” he hissed, thrusting the bottle at her, “it’s
ether!”

Dr. Dunlap was quite silent now—as were all the others in the room—and visibly taken aback by what had occurred. It was not so much concern for Candy’s welfare that distressed him as it was his embarrassment before the onlookers—the incident had taken an unfortunate turn and was clearly showing an aptitude for becoming a small scandal. Worst of all, Krankeit had witnessed the thing, and might utilize it to undermine his (Dunlap’s) position at the hospital.

“You’re quite right, Krankeit,” he muttered suddenly, “I completely lost my head and behaved like an idiot—here, give me a hand. Let’s get her into my office. She can lie on the couch till she comes around.”

“No. Let’s take her to my office. There are some questions I’d like to ask her,” Krankeit said.

“Questions?” Dr. Dunlap’s eyes widened and his jaw stiffened.

“About her father,” explained Krankeit. “And I’d like to have her come with me when I examine him. That is,” he added sarcastically, “if she’s in any condition to do so.”

Dr. Dunlap acquiesced. The sooner this whole affair could be transported behind a closed door the better. He took Candy under the arms and Krankeit took her legs and together they lifted her. At a frown from Dr. Krankeit, Dr. Dunlap shifted his grip—he had clasped his hands over Candy’s shapely breasts—and held her by the armpits, which was much more awkward. Then they carried her off.