‘Hmm.’ Edman bent to his notepad. ‘Tell me, Ms Verret. Do you like Donnell?’ He cocked an eye toward her, continuing to write. ‘You must have some personal reaction.’
Jocundra was startled by the question. ‘I think he’s brilliant,’ she said. ‘You’ve seen his work.’
‘It seems quite competent, but that’s not what I’m driving at. Suppose Donnell wasn’t your patient, would you be attracted to him?’
‘I don’t believe that’s relevant,’ she said defensively. ‘Not to the project or…’
‘You’re right, of course. Sorry.’ Edman took another note and favored her with a paternal smile. ‘I’m just an old snoop.’
‘I’m concerned for him, I’m not happy he’s going to die.’
‘Please! Your private concerns are just that. Sorry.’
Edman opened a file drawer and rummaged through it, leaving Jocundra a little flustered. The sun was going down, staining the faceted panes to ruby, empurpling the shadows along the wall, and these decaying colors -augmented by the glutinous sound of Edman’s breath as he bent over the file, taxed by even this slight exertion - congealed into a perverse atmosphere. She felt soiled. His question had not been idle curiosity; he was constantly prying, hinting, insinuating. Her opinion of him had always been low, but never so low as now. She pictured him alone in the office, entertaining fantasies about the therapists, fondling himself while watching videos of the patients, feeding upon the potential for sickness which the project incorporated.
At last he unbent, his pale face mooning above the desk. ‘The microbiology people think Magnusson’s the key…’ He paused, his attention commanded by a clipping in a manila folder; he clucked to himself and closed it. ‘Did you know they’ve been letting him work on material related to the bacterial process?’
‘Yes, Laura told me.’
‘Ah! Well, he is important. But because of Donnell’s youth, his human focus, it’s possible he’s going to give us a clearer look into the basis of consciousness than even Magnusson. Now that he’s in harness it’s time to lay off the whip and break out the sugar, although’ - Edman fussed with papers - ‘although I wonder if it isn’t time for another forced interaction.’
‘He’s working so smoothly now, I’d hate to disrupt him… and besides, he didn’t react well to Richmond.’
‘None of them react well to Richmond!’ Edman laughed. ‘But I keep thinking if we could override this fear reaction of theirs, we might proceed by leaps and bounds. Even Richmond seems reluctant for intimate confrontation. He enjoys facing down his own fear, but his contacts are kept on the level of ritual aggression.’
Edman rambled off onto other matters, talking mainly to himself as he dealt with his files; he admitted to using his sessions with the therapists as a means to order his thoughts, and Jocundra knew her active participation was not required. She wondered how he would wed his latest theory to his previous one: that of cellular wish-fulfilment. He considered Richmond weighty evidence in support of the latter because, unlike the rest of the slow-burners -all of whom had murky backgrounds - the body had a thoroughly documented past. Richmond, born Eliot Vuillemont, had been the heir of a prominent New Orleans family, disinherited for reasons of drug abuse. This young man, Edman argued, who had lived a life of ineffectual rebellion, whose college psychiatric records reflected a history of cowardice and repressed violence, had chosen as his posthumous role the antihero, the apocalyptic lone wolf; the new personality was a triumphant expression of the feebly manifested drives which had led to his death by overdose. Edman posited that the workings of memory chemically changed portions of the RNA - those portions containing the bioform of our most secret and complex wish, ‘the deepest reason we have made for being’ - and intensified their capacity for survival. It was, Jocundra thought, a more viable theory than his latest, but she had no doubt both would soon appear in published form, welded together into a rickety construct studded with bits of glitter: a Rube Goldberg theory of the personality.
‘I believe I’ll bring it up in staff tonight.’ Edman reached inside his lab coat and pulled forth a red memorandum book. “The seventeenth looks free.’
Jocundra looked at him questioningly, realizing she must have missed something. Edman smiled; he slipped the book back into his pocket, and it seemed to her he had reached deep within his body and fed his heart a piece of red candy.
‘I won’t take any more of your time, Ms Verret. I was saying that I thought this fear reaction needed to be examined under group conditions, and I proposed we have a party for our green-eyed friends. Invite the staff from Tulane, arrange for some sort of music, and just see if we can’t get the patients to pass off their fear as another side effect of the process. At the very least it should be a memorable social occasion.’
The main hall was thronged with doctors, technicians, students and administration people wearing sport jackets and summer dresses, most gathered around the groupings of sofas which roughly divided the room into thirds; and scattered throughout the crowd were the five patients -Richmond had not yet arrived. A three piece band played cocktail jazz on the patio, and several couples were dancing. The room was huge. Carved angels flowed from the molding, spreading their wings in the corners of the ceiling, and the space whose sanctity they guaranteed was the size of a country church, filled with the relics of bygone years. Gilt chairs and statuettes and filigreed tables occupied every spare nook, and every flat surface was cluttered with objets d’art, the emphasis being upon ceramic figurines of bewigged lords and ladies. The French doors were flanked by curio cabinets, except for those beside which stood a grand piano, its finish holding a blaze of sunlight. Paintings and prints and photographs hung in rows to the ceiling, presenting scenes of the countryside, historical personages, hunts, groups of shabbily dressed blacks. One print depicted a masque whose participants were costumed as demons, beasts, and fanciful birds. Passing it on the way to the punch bowl, Jocundra decided that this masque had much in common with Edman’s party: though the mix of music and conversation suggested a trivial assemblage, most eyes were fixed on the patients and most talk concerned them, and there was an underlying air of anticipation, as if the partygoers were awaiting a moment of unmasking so they could determine which of them was not masked, which was truly a demon, a beast, or a fanciful bird.
Knots of people were clumped along the refreshment table, and Jocundra eavesdropped as she ladled punch.
‘… the greater their verbal capacity, the more credibly they fabricate a past reality.’ A fruity male voice.
Jocundra moved down the table, examining the sandwich trays, hoping for some less Edmanesque commentary.
‘… and Monroe looked like the devil had asked her to tango!’ Laughter, a babble of voices.
‘Listen to this!’ The click and whirr of a tape recorder, and then the tiny, cornpone-accented voice of Kline French:
‘… Ah’m quite an afficionado of the dance, though of course Ah’ve only been exposed to its regional privations.’
Clarice Monroe had been sketching scenes for a ballet on one of the sofas, and French had been maneuvred into approach by his therapist and had asked to see her sketch.
FRENCH: ‘This appears to be an illumination of an African myth… Am Ah correct?’
MONROE (tremulously): ‘It’s the Anansi, the Ashanti god of lies and deceit.’
FRENCH: ‘And this young lady has fallen into his clutches?’