The Explosionist (26 page)

A
FTER A HUMILIATING
and painful interlude in which two burly male nurses hauled Sophie out of the ward and down the corridors to the director’s office, Sophie found herself at the receiving end of a tirade from Great-aunt Tabitha.

The guards had confiscated Sophie’s film and returned the camera to her with contempt.

As phrases like “I’ll never trust you again” and “criminal trespass” rolled off Great-aunt Tabitha’s tongue, Sophie had a sudden horrifying revelation, something to do with Mr. Braid’s words about multiple selves.

“The J and H procedure—
J
and
H
don’t just stand for
joy
and
happiness
, do they?” she said, breaking in on Great-aunt
Tabitha’s speech. “The letters mean
Jekyll
and
Hyde
as well…. You split the girls off, into a good self and a bad one.”

Silence followed Sophie’s naming of the two selves in Robert Louis Stevenson’s tale.

“I suppose Sophie might as well hear the real explanation,” said Great-aunt Tabitha, exchanging a glance with Dr. Ferrier.

“Oh, yes, she might as well,” said Dr. Ferrier. “I don’t see how it can hurt
now
.”

They had dismissed the guards. Sophie wasn’t sure what her punishment would be, but she no longer thought she’d be thrown into prison.

“It began when I invented the machinery,” Great-aunt Tabitha said. “The machine is the Emotional Battery, its logical complement is the J and H procedure, and as you’ve guessed, the abbreviation stands for something more—something
other
than ‘joy and happiness.’ Jekyll and Hyde…it has often been said that men are more rational creatures than women. I believe that men and women alike suffer from having emotions, but IRYLNS trains women to become repositories for all of the destructive emotions experienced by the men they work for, many of whom are politicians and diplomats who quite simply cannot
afford
to have a bad day. Wives have always known that part of their job is to bear the things their husbands cannot. We have simply taken the process one step
further, fully modernized it, and put it on a technologically sound basis.”

Sophie was speechless. Aside from everything else, it seemed so terribly unfair that the women should pay such a high price for what was after all the men’s problem! Almost without knowing it, she put her hand up to her open mouth.

Now Dr. Ferrier took over. “Girls who undergo the surgical procedure must be regularly hooked up thereafter to the Emotional Battery,” she told Sophie, “or else they will be less than supremely fit to do their jobs. We install a conduit in the brain that works like the electrical equivalent of the tap one inserts into a maple tree to drain off the sap to make sugar. Purged regularly in this manner, all their emotions stored in the battery, the girls soon become quite incapable of experiencing negative feelings. They make perfect empty vessels, then, for the rage of the men they work for. To sustain their peace of mind, we hook them up to the battery twice a week at a local service center, where the treatment can be administered in a modern and fully hygienic setting.”

Sophie had a very vivid picture of Sheena’s devastated body; thinking about what had happened to Sheena’s mind was even worse.

“Sophie,” said Great-aunt Tabitha, her voice softer than before, “it’s pretty certainly going to come into law within the next few months that IRYLNS shall have every girl it asks for,
the minute she turns sixteen. At that point, there won’t be anything I can do to keep you out of it.”

“So I’m going to have to come to IRYLNS?” Sophie asked, feeling like the stupidest person in the world.

“I wish you’d never seen any of this,” said Great-aunt Tabitha, sighing and adjusting her body in her chair. “You’ve seen only the worst. There are wonderful aspects to the work we’ve done here too. Really wonderful! I’d have given anything to spare you this terrible foreknowledge.”

“Anything?” said Sophie. “Then why can’t you—”

Great-aunt Tabitha cut her off. “Anything but break the law,” she said. “At this point, just when we’re about to expand IRYLNS on a far grander scale than before, it would be a public relations disaster if anyone found out that one of the scheme’s originators had pulled strings to get an exemption for a relative. And there’s every reason to believe your conversion will go quite smoothly, without any negative impact on your health. It’s only a very few girls who don’t do well under our regime. Some of them even get married in the end—there’s no real reason they shouldn’t. You understand what I’m saying, don’t you, Sophie?”

Sophie understood.

“Susan, do you think we can handle this without the police?” asked Great-aunt Tabitha.

“Certainly,” said Dr. Ferrier. “No need for them now—I
can see Sophie quite understands what’s required of her. We won’t see any repetition of this little incident, will we, Sophie?”

Sophie shook her head.

“I’m going to take you back to school in a taxi,” Great-aunt Tabitha said. “Peggy will collect you after school tomorrow, and from now on, there won’t be a moment when you’ll be allowed out of sight of one or the other of us, except when you’re at school. I’ll notify your teachers that you need to be kept under close supervision because of a security threat. We’ll keep this up through the time when you actually get admitted to the program at IRYLNS. And within a week of coming here, you’ll no longer have the faintest desire to leave.”

No longer have the faintest desire
—Sophie thought her heart might actually stop beating, she was so frightened by her great-aunt’s calm certainty.

They sat together in silence until Great-aunt Tabitha moved to collect her things.

“Thank you, Susan,” she said, shaking the director’s hand.

“I’ll look forward to meeting you again under happier circumstances, Sophie,” said the director to Sophie.

Sophie muttered a few words in return, but nobody—not even herself—knew exactly what they were. The older women let the lapse in manners pass.

“I won’t be sixteen until December,” Sophie said in the car. The words sounded pitiful, even to her, but it was too late to take them back.

Great-aunt Tabitha just looked at her. Sophie hung her head. There was nothing more to say.

Sophie’s great-aunt dropped her back at school, coming in herself to make sure Sophie wouldn’t be able to skive off. What she said to the housemistress, Sophie would never know, but back in the girls’ bedroom, getting ready to lie down, Sophie thought she’d never survive the others’ idle chatter.

“Any more tales about the horrors of IRYLNS?” Priscilla even asked, laughing when Sophie shook her head and got into bed without saying good night.

As she lay in bed, trying and failing to fall asleep, dreading the prospect of Peggy arriving tomorrow to pick her up as if she were still a little girl, hardly knowing how to console herself at the prospect of months of virtual imprisonment followed by a transformation in which she would permanently lose herself, Sophie thought that perhaps she should overcome her scruples and run away with Mikael after all. Would she even be able to get away to meet him, though? And without a visa, how would she get onto the ship? Knowing what she did now about IRYLNS, she wondered whether that wasn’t the reason Scotland regulated travel visas so strictly, much
more strictly than any of the other Hanseatic states.

Sophie drifted through the day on Friday and met Peggy in the front of the school without saying a word. In her bedroom at home, she found the planchette she’d used as a toy when she was younger, and idly set it up on its little table. Resting her fingertips on the little rolling platform, she asked the spirits whether she should try to leave with Mikael.

But rather than moving to
yes
or
no
, or spelling out words by pointing to letters of the alphabet, the planchette simply meandered over the table.

In a dull stupor, Sophie went downstairs and put a telephone call through to Mikael.

The professor answered, and Sophie exchanged a few words with him before asking to speak to Mikael.

She thought Mikael might be able to tell something was wrong, to read her mind and somehow break her out of the cloud preventing her from exercising proper self-determination. If he would only say he
wanted
her, if he himself only felt about Sophie the way she felt about him, all her difficulties would vanish and she would go
joyfully
with him.

But when Mikael came on the line, he sounded distracted. After thanking her for calling, he fell silent. And then, even as Sophie cast about for a way to broach the topic of København—there
had
to be some fashion in which she could take him up on his offer without being a burden, there just
had
to be, and he had said himself that Mr. Petersen might find a way around the visa difficulty—Mikael cut her off.

“Look, I’m sorry, Sophie, but I’ve got something I must go and do now, something really important.”

It was as if he’d dug a skewer straight into her eye socket.
Something really important!
It wasn’t as though
Sophie
was important, of course, not even when her sanity—her life—was at stake. Some small part of her could smell the self-pity—the silliness—in the way she was handling all this, but she didn’t have the energy to change course.

“Best of luck, Sophie. I’m sure it will be all right. You’ll write me a letter as soon as anything happens about you-know-what, won’t you? And you know you can ask my brother for help at any time.”

Then Mikael put down the telephone before Sophie could even say good-bye.

Sophie had imagined
she’d
be the one to cut their conversation short, in an understated but noble gesture of self-sacrifice.

It must be more fun to be the person leaving than the person left behind. Who knew how much longer she would remain the person she was now, anyway?

Sophie had never felt so alone in her entire life.

Great-aunt Tabitha popped her head around the study door and gave Sophie a sharp look, making Sophie fear she
would never be allowed a moment of privacy again, but she kept her face still and submissive. There was no point seeming outwardly rebellious.

“You’ll be ready to go first thing in the morning, won’t you, Sophie?” said Great-aunt Tabitha.

“Go where?” Sophie said. Surely not to IRYLNS, not yet?

“It’s the annual outing of the New Town Women’s Spiritualist Association,” her great-aunt said. “I expect you to come with us so I can keep an eye on you.”

“No!” said Sophie, feeling for the first time as if she might break down and cry. She hadn’t been dragged on one of these trips since she was quite a small child; she always stayed at home with Peggy instead. Her great-aunt
knew
how self-conscious it made Sophie to trail around after the idealistic middle-aged ladies who made up the cohort. “Please, Great-aunt Tabitha, please don’t make me go….”

But Great-aunt Tabitha was adamant.

“You’ve forfeited the right to be treated like an adult,” she said. “How can I trust you, Sophie, after you broke your word not to pry? No, I want you under my own supervision when you’re not at school.”

Seeing there was no chance of her great-aunt relenting, Sophie went upstairs and packed her overnight bag. At first she put in just the bare essentials—toilet bag with toothbrush and flannel, pajamas, clean underclothes. But the valise
seemed to sit there and reproach her.

Something grew in her as she stood there in the middle of the room, a feeling so unfamiliar she wasn’t even sure at first what it was.

Sophie was furious.

She was absolutely enraged!

She felt like one of the avengers in a Greek tragedy. How dare Great-aunt Tabitha paper over the violence being done to hundreds of girls in the name of patriotism? Did she not care about them at all? How could she be willing to sacrifice
Sophie
?

It came to Sophie in a flash that she had to leave, she couldn’t
not
leave. She supposed she would honor Sheena’s wishes by not telling the others about IRYLNS. But she, Sophie, was not bound to immolate herself for the greater good.

She had the right to make her own choice. And she chose not to destroy herself.

It was amazing how much calmer Sophie felt now. She lay down on the bed and began to think about what to do.

She could slip out in the middle of the night, lie low somewhere until the late afternoon, and then meet Mikael at Leith. But she didn’t have a visa. Without one, they wouldn’t let her aboard. And Mikael was angry with her, or else why would he have cut short their conversation like that? The last thing she wanted was to force her company on an unwilling partner.

She had to find a way of getting an exit visa, and then make her own plans to escape. Mr. Petersen would help her. She would go and speak to him first thing Monday morning. With his Nobel connections, he would almost certainly be able to get her a visa and a safe place to go to, perhaps even in Stockholm rather than Købnhavn so that it wouldn’t look as though she were chasing after Mikael, and then everything would be all right.

Now that she’d come to a decision, the idea of waiting even until Monday seemed almost unbearable, but it wouldn’t do any good to fuss. Still, she added to her bag a few other things she felt funny about leaving behind, just in case she got a chance to escape this weekend after all: her passport, the beaten-up leather slippers that had once belonged to her father, a photograph of her parents on their wedding day, the small soapstone elephant named Horatio that usually lived on Sophie’s bedside table. She crammed all her money into her purse and tucked it out of sight at the bottom of the case. It would be silly not to have it with her if some opportunity for flight presented itself. As an afterthought, she tucked in her chemistry textbook.

She got a surprisingly good night’s sleep, the best one she’d had for ages. Decision-making as a remedy for insomnia—now, there was a thought. If only she could speak to Mr. Petersen right away!