puzzle, and flee in
dread that the wall would burst and release a flood of blackness
from which, this time, he would never emerge, as the other hadn’t
emerged.
What he retrieved, then, wasn’t an image of
the other’s face but curiously abstract and piece-meal knowledge of
a generous mouth, wide-pitched dark blue eyes with black flecks in
the irises, a faint constellation of freckles over the bridge of
his nose, tousled dark gold hair. When Lorz allowed the features to
coalesce into a face the wall came back and with it terror. The
director would return or be returned to the scene again,
endlessly.
Sometimes he didn’t know whether the image
of the boy was imposed on him or whether it was a temptation
irresistibly yielded to.
Some situations were safe. The image didn’t
come during Dr Silberman’s daily visits with their therapeutic
jokes. In the rehabilitation pool his mind was too busy coping with
nearly nude amputees and paralytics. In the physical-therapy room
there was the steady chatter of the buxom therapist while he
monotonously overcame the springs of the hand-exerciser or
statically pedaled. But other situations were predictably bad, sure
to trigger the syndrome: bare white walls and any brutal
extinguishing of light. Also clock-hands at 9:00, it didn’t matter
whether a.m. or p.m., with the minute hand right-angled to the
other like a wall.
The worst moment came on the seventh day of
his emergence, at the climax of a long tottering walk down the
fourth-floor corridor. It was his own idea. He was still unsteady
on his feet. Something would be proved, he felt, by reaching the
end of the corridor where the staircase and the elevators were. But
when he finally got there, gasping for breath, he saw on the wall
arrows pointing up and down next to the names of the various units
on the other floors. That’s how he learned that the Life Support
Unit – where he’d been, where the other still lay – was located on
the floor above.
The image started up. To break free he
turned to the other wall and began studying the ten maze-like floor
plans. Superimposing in his mind the fifth-floor chart on the
fourth-floor one, he saw that the Life Support Unit was situated
above his room (412). It might be that at night he lay directly
beneath the other, separated only by the thickness of the ceiling,
a horizontal wall.
Dizziness overcame him and he collapsed into
a chair. A nurse had to help him back to his room. She scolded him
like a child for overdoing things.
That night he dreamed that he undertook the
same long journey down the deserted corridor. He pulled himself up
the staircase to the fifth floor. He passed through the
leather-padded swinging-doors of the Life Support Unit into the
empty visitors’ lounge. It was painted a restful green and had
neutral paintings and big green plants. A second door opened on a
corridor with a succession of big windows. Behind them, tributary
to machines, patients were lying on wheeled stretchers. He was
approaching the last window when the nurse came again and scolded
him severely and then he opened his eyes on the ceiling in the
pallid early morning light of his room.
So day and night he was assailed by that
image. Sometimes he surprised himself trying to wring humor out of
his tribulations – a cosmopolite approach to suffering, he’d read –
by toting up his incredible accumulation of woes over the past few
weeks. There was his lacerated right sole (healed, true, during the
coma) with the attendant loss of his glasses; the intestinal fire
(for the moment back to latency); the wrecking of his office;
possible bankruptcy; the blasting of his brain; his half-paralyzed
left arm; and now hounded day and night by an image he couldn’t
cosmetize.
While waiting for Silberman’s pills to take
effect, he tried to fight the syndrome on his own. The trick, he
thought, was to concentrate on quantifiable worries. His assistant
brought over plenty of these in the form of
dread that the wall would burst and release a flood of blackness
from which, this time, he would never emerge, as the other hadn’t
emerged.
What he retrieved, then, wasn’t an image of
the other’s face but curiously abstract and piece-meal knowledge of
a generous mouth, wide-pitched dark blue eyes with black flecks in
the irises, a faint constellation of freckles over the bridge of
his nose, tousled dark gold hair. When Lorz allowed the features to
coalesce into a face the wall came back and with it terror. The
director would return or be returned to the scene again,
endlessly.
Sometimes he didn’t know whether the image
of the boy was imposed on him or whether it was a temptation
irresistibly yielded to.
Some situations were safe. The image didn’t
come during Dr Silberman’s daily visits with their therapeutic
jokes. In the rehabilitation pool his mind was too busy coping with
nearly nude amputees and paralytics. In the physical-therapy room
there was the steady chatter of the buxom therapist while he
monotonously overcame the springs of the hand-exerciser or
statically pedaled. But other situations were predictably bad, sure
to trigger the syndrome: bare white walls and any brutal
extinguishing of light. Also clock-hands at 9:00, it didn’t matter
whether a.m. or p.m., with the minute hand right-angled to the
other like a wall.
The worst moment came on the seventh day of
his emergence, at the climax of a long tottering walk down the
fourth-floor corridor. It was his own idea. He was still unsteady
on his feet. Something would be proved, he felt, by reaching the
end of the corridor where the staircase and the elevators were. But
when he finally got there, gasping for breath, he saw on the wall
arrows pointing up and down next to the names of the various units
on the other floors. That’s how he learned that the Life Support
Unit – where he’d been, where the other still lay – was located on
the floor above.
The image started up. To break free he
turned to the other wall and began studying the ten maze-like floor
plans. Superimposing in his mind the fifth-floor chart on the
fourth-floor one, he saw that the Life Support Unit was situated
above his room (412). It might be that at night he lay directly
beneath the other, separated only by the thickness of the ceiling,
a horizontal wall.
Dizziness overcame him and he collapsed into
a chair. A nurse had to help him back to his room. She scolded him
like a child for overdoing things.
That night he dreamed that he undertook the
same long journey down the deserted corridor. He pulled himself up
the staircase to the fifth floor. He passed through the
leather-padded swinging-doors of the Life Support Unit into the
empty visitors’ lounge. It was painted a restful green and had
neutral paintings and big green plants. A second door opened on a
corridor with a succession of big windows. Behind them, tributary
to machines, patients were lying on wheeled stretchers. He was
approaching the last window when the nurse came again and scolded
him severely and then he opened his eyes on the ceiling in the
pallid early morning light of his room.
So day and night he was assailed by that
image. Sometimes he surprised himself trying to wring humor out of
his tribulations – a cosmopolite approach to suffering, he’d read –
by toting up his incredible accumulation of woes over the past few
weeks. There was his lacerated right sole (healed, true, during the
coma) with the attendant loss of his glasses; the intestinal fire
(for the moment back to latency); the wrecking of his office;
possible bankruptcy; the blasting of his brain; his half-paralyzed
left arm; and now hounded day and night by an image he couldn’t
cosmetize.
While waiting for Silberman’s pills to take
effect, he tried to fight the syndrome on his own. The trick, he
thought, was to concentrate on quantifiable worries. His assistant
brought over plenty of these in the form of
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