The Magus, A Revised Version (93 page)

The woman laid down the paper and picked up another.

‘
This second note comes from Doctor Maxwell, who of course has had the closest personal contact with the subject. She says:

‘
In my view the subject
’
s selfishness and social inadequacy have been determined by his past, and any report which we communicate to him should make it clear that his personality deficiencies are due to circumstances outside his command. The subject may not understand that we are making clinical descriptions, and not, at least in my own case, with any association of moral blame. If anything our attitude should be one of pity towards a personality that has to cover its deficiencies under so many conscious and unconscious lies. We must always remember that the subject has been launched into the world with no training in self-analysis and self-orientation;
and that almost all the education he has received is positively harmful to him. He was, so to speak, born short-sighted by nature and has been further blinded by his environments. It is small wonder that he cannot find his way.
’

The American woman sat down. The old man in the white beard nodded, as if pleased with what had been said. He looked at me, then at Lily.

‘
I think, Doctor Maxwell, that it would be fair to the subject if you repeated what you said to me last night in connection with him.
’

Lily bowed her head, then stood up and spoke to the others. She glanced at me briefly, as if I was a diagram on a blackboard.
‘
During my relationship with the subject I experienced a certain degree of counter-transference. I have analysed this with the help of Doctor Marcus and we think that this emotional attachment can be broken into two components. One originated in a physical attraction for him, artificially exaggerated by the role I had to play. The second component was empathetic in nature. The subject
’
s self-pity is projected so strongly on his environment that one becomes contaminated by it. I thought this was of interest in view of Professor Ciardi
’
s comment.
’

The old man nodded.
‘
Thank you.
’
She sat down. He looked up at me.
‘
All this may seem cruel to you. But we wish to hide nothing.
’
He looked at Lily.
‘
As regards the first component of your attachment, sexual attraction, would you describe to the subject and to us your present feelings?
’

‘
I consider that the subject would make a very inadequate husband except as a sexual partner.
’
Ice-cold; she looked at me, then back to the old man. I had a dreadful, lancing memory of her standing against me; the night, the rain, the slow caress.

Dr Marcus intervened.
‘
He has basic marriage-destructive drives?
’

‘
Yes.
’

‘
Specifically?
’

‘
Infidelity. Selfishness. Inconsiderateness in everyday routines. Possibly, homosexual tendencies.
’

The old man:
‘
Would the situation be altered if he had analysis?
’

‘
In my opinion, no.
’

The old man turned.
‘
Maurice?
’

Conchis spoke, staring at me.
‘
I think we are all agreed that he has been an admirable subject for our purposes, but he has masochistic traits that will get pleasure even out of our discussion of his faults. In my opinion our further interest in him is now both harmful to him and unnecessary.
’

The old man looked up at me.
‘
Under narcosis it was discovered that you are still strongly attached to Doctor Maxwell. Some of us have also been concerned about the effect that the loss of the young Australian girl, for which, I must also tell you. you feel deeply guilty in your unconscious, and now the second loss of the mythical figure you know as
“
Julie
”
, may have on you. I refer to the possibility of suicide. Our conclusion has been this: that your attachment to self-gratification is too deep to make any other than a hysterical attempt at suicide likely. And against this we advise you to guard.
’

I gave a sarcastic bow of thanks. Dignity, keep some remnant of dignity.

‘
Now … does anyone wish to say anything more?
’
He looked both ways down the table. They all shook their heads.
‘
Very well. We have come to the end of our experiment.
’
He gestured for the
‘
board
’
to stand, which they did. The
‘
audience
’
remained sitting. He looked at me.
‘
We have not concealed our real opinion of you; and since this is a trial we have of course been acting as witnesses against ourselves. You are, I remind you once again, the judge, and the time has now come for you to judge us. We have, first of all, selected a
pharnmkos.
A scapegoat.
’

He looked to his left. Lily took
off
her glasses, stepped round the table and came and stood at the foot of the dais in front of me, with a bowed head; the white woollen dress, a penitential. Even then I was so stupid that I saw some fantastic new development; a mock wedding, some absurd happy ending … and I thought grimly what I would do if they dared try that on.

‘
She is your prisoner, but you cannot do what you like with her, because the code of medical justice under which we exist specifies a precise type of punishment for the crime of destroying all power of forgiveness in the subject of our experiments.
’
He turned round to Adam, who stood near the archway.
‘
The apparatus.
’

Adam called something. The other people behind the table stood to one side; in a compact group, facing the
‘
students
’
, with the old man at their head. Four black-uniformed men came in. They quickly moved the sedan-c
off
in and two of the tables, so that the centre of the room was left free. The third table was lifted in front of me, beside Lily. Then two of the men left and returned carrying a heavy wooden frame, like a door frame, on bracketed legs. Six or seven feet up, at the top of the uprights, were iron rings. Lily turned and walked to where they set it, some halfway down the room. She stood in front of it and held up her arms. Adam handcuffed her wrists to the rings, so that she was crucified against it, with her back to me. Then a kind of stiffened leather helmet, with a down-projecting back piece that covered the nape of her neck, was put on her head; a protector.

It was a flogging frame.

Adam then left; returned in two seconds.

I could not see what he was holding at first, but he swung it loose as he came towards me. And I understood the incredible last trick they were playing.

It was a stiff black handle ending in a long skein of knotted lashes. Adam unravelled two or three that were tangled, then laid the foul thing on the table, handle towards me. Then he went back to Lily -everything was carefully planned to be in this sequence
–
and pulled down the zip in the back of her dress to her waist. He even unhooked the bra, then folded it and the dress carefully aside, so that her bare back was fully exposed. I could see the pink lines on her skin where the strap had crossed.

I was the Eumenides, the merciless Furies.

My hands began to sweat. Once again I was plunged hopelessly out of my depth. Always with Conchis one went down, and it seemed one could go no farther; but at the end another way went even lower.

The Smuts-like old man came forward again and stood in front of me.

‘
You see the scapegoat and you see the instrument of punishment. You are now both judge and executioner. We are all here haters of unnecessary suffering; as you must try to understand when you come to think over these events. But we a
re all agreed that there
must be a point in our experiment when you, the subject, have absolute freedom to choose whether to inflict pain on us
–
and a pain abhorrent to all of us
–
in your turn. We have chosen Doctor Maxwell because she best symbolizes what we are to you. Now we ask you to do as the Roman emperors did and to raise or lower your right thumb. If you lower it, you will be released and free to carry out the punishment as severely and brutally as you wish, up to ten strokes. That is sufficient to ensure the most atrocious suffering, and permanent disfigurement. If you raise your thumb in the sign of mercy, you will, apart from one last short process of disintoxication, be free of us for evermore. You will equally be free if you choose to punish, which will also demonstrate the satisfactory completion of your disintoxication. Now I ask one last thing of you: that you think carefully, very carefully indeed, before you choose.
’

At some unseen signal the students all rose. Everyone in the room stared at me. I was aware that I wanted to make a right choice; something that would make them all remember me, that would prove them all wrong. I knew I was judge only in name. Like all judges, I was finally the judged; to be judged by my own judgment.

I saw at once that the choice they were
off
ering me was absurd. Everything was fixed to make it impossible for me to punish Lily. The only punishment I wanted to inflict on her was to make her cry forgiveness; not cry pain. In any case I knew that even if I put my thumb down, they would find some way of stopping me. The whole situation, with all its gratuitously sadistic undertones, was a trap; a false dilemma. Even then, through all my seething resentment and anger at being so mercilessly exposed in the village stocks, I had a feeling that was certainly not forgiveness of them, even less gratitude, but a recrudescence of that amazement I had felt so often before: that all this could be mounted just for me.

Not without hesitation, thinking, gauging whether I was free to choose, and feeling sure that this was not a preconditioning, I turned my thumb down.

The old man stared at me a long moment, then signed to the guards and went back to the group. My wrists were freed. I stood up and rubbed them, then tore the gag
off
. The tape ripped at the stubble on my chin, and for a moment all I co
uld do was blink foolishly with
pain. The guards made no move. I rubbed the skin round my mouth, and looked round the room.

Silence. They expected me to speak; so I would not speak.

I went down the wooden steps and picked up the cat. I had half expected it to be a stage property. But it was surprisingly heavy. The handle, of plaited leather over wood; a knop end. The thongs were worn, the knots as hard as bullets. The thing looked old, a genuine Royal Navy antique from the Napoleonic wars. As I handled it, I calculated. The most likely solution was that they would put the lights out; there would be a scuffle. The four men and Adam were by the door and it would be impossible to escape.

Without warning I picked up the cat and swung it down on the table. A savage hiss. The thrash of the lashes on the deal table-top sounded like a gun. It made one or two of the students jump. I saw one of them, a girl, look away. Yet no one moved nearer. I began to walk towards where Lily was. I did not expect to get to her.

But I did. Still no one moved, I was suddenly within hitting range and the nearest person was thirty feet away. I stood as if measuring my distance, with my left foot forward, turned to strike. I even gave the beastly thing a little testing reach, so that the thongs brushed the middle of her back. Her face was hidden by the head-protector. I swung the cat back over my shoulder, as if I was going to swing it down with all my force on that white back. I half expected a shout to ring out, to see or hear someone dash for me. But no one moved and I knew, as they must have known, that it would have been too late. Only a bullet could have stopped me. I looked round, half expecting to see a gun. But the eleven, the guards, the
‘
students
’
, all stood immobile.

I looked back at Lily. There was a very real devil in me, an evil marquis, that wanted to strike, to see the wet red weals traverse the delicate skin; not so much to hurt her as to shock them, to bring them to a sense of the enormity of what they were doing; almost of the enormity of making her risk so much.
‘
Anton
’
had said it:
Very brave.
I knew they must be absolutely certain of my decency, my stupid English decency; in spite of all they had said, all the
bandillera
they had planted in my self-esteem, absolutely sure that not once in a hundred thousand years would I bring that cat down. I did bring it down then, but very slowly, as if ma
king sure of my distance again,
then took it back. I tried to determine whether once again I was preconditioned not to do it, by Conchis; but I knew I had absolute freedom of choice. I could do it if I wanted.