A nurse opened the door and called him and he got up and stepped forward, and looking past her along the wall of the corridor thought, How many stones there are in this place; so many faces and stones: and lost the thought before it meant anything and went into the room.
‘I want you to lie on the couch.’ Dr. Pope told him. ‘We're going to give you a shot of something that will make you feel a bit sleepy. Quite a pleasant feeling. It won't hurt at all.’
Obedient, null, with that unnatural stiffness, Kling laid himself down.
Lying on the high couch he looked at the exuberant ceiling without surprise. The flowers and the crowding cherubic faces did not seem any more strange to him than anything else. The ceiling did not concern him any more than the doctor concerned him. Nothing concerned him except the heaviness in his breast. He waited, looking at the doctor as if he had never seen him before, the nurse busy with swab and spirit and tourniquet, and he felt far off on his arm the tourniquet tightening, the bursting pressure of flesh against tightening fabric, and then the small sharp sting as the needle entered the vein.
‘Just try to relax,’ the doctor said, watching, while the fluid in the hypodermic went down, the blank waiting face with wide-open extremely dilated eyes.
He smiled his professional smile of encouragement, and looked from the face to the chest and the massive shoulders bulked rigid under the white shirt that they stretched tight, at the clenched strong hands, the rough blue cloth strained on the tensed thighs, the stiffly upthrust boots not neatly laced, and back to the blank face again. He noticed on the face how the deep tan of the outdoor years was starting to turn yellowish as it slowly faded inside hospital walls.
‘Well, how do you feel now?’ he asked, smiling, the man who stared up at him without answering.
‘I want you to talk, Kling,’ he said. ‘I want you to tell me what's worrying you.’
Kling, his patient, looked away from him and up at the ceiling.
‘What is it you've got on your mind?’ asked the doctor.
Kling stared upwards without speaking and now his limbs started twitching a little.
‘You'll feel better after you've talked,’ Dr. Pope said.
The nurse finished the long injection and withdrew the syringe adroitly. A single drop of blood oozed from the pierced vein and she dabbed a shred of cotton wool on to it and silently carried her paraphernalia into the background and stood watching.
‘You've got to tell me what's making you miserable,’ the doctor said, speaking loud. He bent down and put his hand on Kling's shoulder and said loudly and very distinctly, close to his ear, ‘You are very miserable, aren't you?’
Kling looked at him with his wide, black, lost animal's eyes and felt the hand on his shoulder. His shoulder twitched and something inside him seemed to be loosening, he felt sick in his stomach, and a sleepy strangeness was coming up at him out of nowhere, turning him tired, or sick.
‘Why are you miserable?’ he heard the question. ‘Something happened to you, didn't it? Something you can't forget. What was that thing?’
Kling saw the doctor standing far too close, bending down almost on top of him. The hand that had hold of his shoulder gripped hard like a trap, the distorted face looked monstrous, foreshortened and suspended beneath painted faces, the eyes glaring, the threat of the mouth opening and shutting. Kling groaned, turning his head from one side to the other to escape from the eyes, but the eyes would not let him go. He felt the strangeness of sleep or sickness or death moving up on him, and then something gave way in his chest, the stone shifted, and sleep came forward to the foot of the couch, and he groaned again, louder, clutching his chest, crumpling the shirt and the red tie over his breastbone.
‘Was it something bad that was done to you?’ he heard the doctor's voice shout in his ear.
He felt himself turning and twisting on the hard bed, twisting away from the eyes and the voice and the gripping hand that was shaking him now. He shut his eyes to escape, but a salt prick of tears or sweat forced them open, he did not know where he was or what was happening to him, and he was afraid. He was very frightened with the strange sleep so near him, he wanted to call for help, it was hard for him to keep silent. But somewhere in the midst of fear existed the thought, They've taken everything; let them not take my silence. And the queer thing was that Williams was somehow a part of this, his smile, the cigarette, and what he had spoken.
‘Was it something bad that you did?’ Kling heard.
He did not feel the hand that was shaking his shoulder. He only felt his face wet, and on the other side of sleep a voice kept on moaning while another voice shouted. But he could not listen because, just then, the stone moved quite away from his breast and sleep came up and laid its languid head on his breast in place of the stone.
He tried to look at the strange sleep, to know it, but it had no form, it simply rested sluggishly on him, like gas, and all he could see above was a cloud of faces, the entire earth was no graveyard great enough for so many, nor was there room to remember a smile or a cigarette or a voice any more.
The old man was there and had been for some time, not sprawled in leaves now but standing, bent forward, listening; and Kling knew that this time something must pass between them, there was something which must be said by him, in extenuation, or in entreaty, to which the old man must reply: though what it was that had to be said, or what words would be found to express it, did not appear yet.
The old man bent over him and blood dripped on to his face and he could not move because of what lay on his breast, and when the old man saw he could not move he bent lower still and Kling could see the tufts of bristly hairs in his father's nostrils. He knew he would have to speak soon, and, staring wildly, with the old man's face almost on his, he could see the side of the face that was only a bloodied hole and he heard a sudden frantic gasp and gush of words in his own language and that was all he heard because at that moment sleep reached up and covered over his face.
Dr. Pope and the nurse had both seen that Kling was going to start talking. The doctor had seen it coming for about half a minute and waited intently. The nurse looked expectant. When the first sounds came both of them had moved forward at once and the doctor had bent lower over his patient but now they stepped back from the couch.
‘I was afraid that might happen,’ Dr. Pope said in his impatient voice. ‘Damned annoying. I suppose there's no one in the place who could translate?’
‘I'm afraid not,’ the nurse said.
‘Exasperating,’ the doctor said. ‘So we shan't get anything out of him after all.’
‘I'm afraid not,’ the nurse said again.
‘Most frustrating and disappointing,’ said Dr. Pope. ‘Oh, well, it's no good trying to work on him now.’
THE HEAVENLY ADVERSARY
… ‘in a culture which is completely disordered, prince and servant are enemies, old age and youth kill eachother, father and son bear cold hearts, brothers accuse eachother, the most intimate friends work against eachother, man and wife deceive eachother, … day after day the danger increases … the bonds of society are loosened … the spirit becomes bestial … the greed for gain grows … duty and common sense arc forgotten. …
Clouds appear in the shape of dogs, horses, white swans and columns of carriages … Or they have the shape of a man in a blue garment and red head who does not move. His name is: the Heavenly Adversary … or they have the shape of a host of horses fighting: those are called the Slaying Horses … snakes crawl through the town from West to East … horses and cattle begin to talk, dogs and pigs mate, wolves come into the city. Men fall from the sky … When such signs appear in the land and its master does not better his ways in his fear, God shall send misfortune, sorrow and plague … all kinds of death, annihilation, earthquake, destruction and grief shall arrive … all this is caused by disorder in the state. …’