Выбрать главу

— Too.

The well-living and the redying easily merge their atoms since both hasten towards death regardless, the one from genial ignorance the other from some nebulous memory of something, surely, behind the eyes that ache and then what will you do?

— I beg your pardon?

— When we’ve got you through this — er — unfortunate business.

— Oh, that. Yes. If I relive that long.

— Come, my dear friend. We mustn’t make a habit of talking in that way. Emotional blackmail, your wife, if I remember, called it. She said she couldn’t stand it, in a statement, at least, to her solicitors, Winnie & Winnie, an excellent firm, not a cause at law of course, but it has gone down as a contributing factor. And of course, as we all know, emotional blackmail only works where emotion remains.

— Did she?

— Did she what?

— Say that?

— Indeed she did. She said, now where did I put the book of rules? Now where did I put that file? Ah, here. From that day on, she says, I think she means your recovery, ah yes, up here, we must place it in context, mustn’t we, from that day on we ceased to communicate in any way whatsoever.

— I thought we communicated a great deal.

— Oh well, my dear Larry, women always say these things. Afterwards. They never loved from the start, it never worked, they always knew it wouldn’t, though they tried, by every means, and so forth, to play it our way. They forget the good moments. If any. Sometimes of course, these don’t occur, but on the whole… And then, during the good moments, or else much later, years later, they see only those, how good, after all and so forth.

— We all do that.

— Yes, yes, indeed. However, this won’t suffice in a court of law, as perhaps you know. We must exclude collusion of course, but had you agreed at all, on a cause, desertion, or something else, a little quicker, very quick in fact. The Post Office ought to deal with undefended divorce cases, they clutter the courts. But you must, of course, provide a cause, and the waves begin again, first round the horn-rimmed glasses that glaze the soft Levantine eyes of Wilfred Edwin Mellek, Solicitor, then out in trembling undulations on a map of ocean depths. Or perhaps they only pretend to emit, like actors, filling the space immediately around him as he sits at his mahogany desk, no more, held still in tremulous space by the well-living flesh in loose black jacket, pin-stripe and wide white collar, for we mustn’t make a habit of dying, must we, I mean once, I admit, impresses people, with such an amazing recovery thrown in for good measure but twice, well, nobody would take you seriously, a yogi trick, they’d say, some medical hoax or error, as you of all people should know. And why, they might not bury you.

— My wife told me she would have had me cremated. We communicated that much, I believe. She cried when she said that.

— And besides, it might not happen.

— Which? Death or recovery?

— Ha! My dear Larry, you always had a sense of humour, even at Cambridge, thank God you didn’t lose it somewhere or should I say some time in that bit of eternity. Though your wife says — ah well, it doesn’t matter. Of course, death happens to us all, indeed it does. I totally accept the fact, though seldom think of it, if at all. Tell me, I suppose everyone asks you that, don’t you remember anything?

— I remember … something. A little.

The waves expand into a spiralling query from a small unstable nucleus of fear hidden like the square root of minus one deep inside the charm, the well-living swarthy flesh, the soft Levantine eyes and labyrinthine knowledge of law that makes up what you as a psychiatrist should know, I mean what happens to that thing you chaps call the unconscious when the body lies in the lowest state of life, if at all, well, they may put people on ice for years, I mean, what ought to happen, you must know the theory at least, does it tick on at a low imaginative level or what, did you dream, for instance?

— No. I never dream. At least –

— So you really remember nothing?

— I remember … a sort of enmeshment.

The waves retract a little to form an island round the word like a stone thrown that widens them again to lasso some concept at an infinite distance where we can expect, I mean, something.

— My dear Edwin, I don’t know. I have no way of verifying that, don’t let it worry you. To every man his own afterlife if any.

— You mean according to his expectations? If any.

— Or deserts. Which comes to the same thing.

The pain behind the eyes resolves the optical image of the widening rings back to the gentle undulations as before, around the horn-rimmed glasses to the space immediately around him at his red-leather topped mahogany desk, no more, held still in tremulous space again by the well-living flesh and easy tolerance of labyrinthine ways, which of course as a scientist you would need to verify, before they could have any validity as experience.

— Oh, experience.

— You speak like a true sceptic, my dear Larry, not I rejoice to see, like an empiricist. As if every proof had its alternative. And so it has, and so it has, in your line of country I expect, and certainly in mine. Which brings us back, I fear, to the business in hand. Yes, yes indeed.

He emanates the same sense of irrelevance that fills the room as to the business in hand of his strange profession built on the failures of men to live together in love and amity, despite the labyrinthine knowledge and interest still clinging to the gold-rimmed books and pushed back against the walls. He has a small free electron of fear that can suddenly accelerate in the field of the calm proton in parabolic orbit that emits thermally on a short wave-length filling half the room, no more, bursting no walls no city boundaries no frontiers no galactic fields but held in tremulous space by a certain mellow strength somewhere in that well-living softness and that kindly flesh the presence of which comforts, reassures as to the existence of neural cells, muscle spindles, blood vessels and such, behaving not, if I may say so, like a gentleman, she wants the alimony and full costs despite your possible agreement to give her cause –

— It doesn’t matter.

— Hence, you see, my first question about your future plans. Your letter alarmed me somewhat.

— My letter?

— Yes, your letter. Don’t look as if you had forgotten writing it, or wrote it in a trance or something. Though it wouldn’t surprise me. I can catch a glimpse of what your wife means when she says — but never mind, where did I put that letter, ah, here.

— No, no. I remember it. I wrote it. I meant it.

The small and nervous handwriting fills the page at wide impersonal intervals like an equation worked down to the very end and frozen there in resolution as if x could really equal the square root of minus one in the unfamiliar context of the lawyer’s file. All this about retiring, all right, withdrawing, to the simple life, close to the soil, the sun, the stars, why, my dear Larry, I know the state of your affairs, besides, what will your patients do, go mad or something?

— I lost most of them when I died. They can’t do without someone for so long, they went elsewhere.

— But they’ll come back.

— No. I’d. lost them before. I couldn’t help them.

— Others will come. You’ll build up a new practice, you’ve fully recovered now.

— For a long time I’ve had no future as a spy. The great failure of our century. We give names to sicknesses, but we don’t heal, merely create new dependencies.

— All right, do something else. Research or something. What happens to the unconscious when the body lies in a low state of life, for instance. Do they know? Doesn’t that require looking into, with qualifications like yours?

— No.

— But you can’t retire at your age, what, pushing fifty, I guess, like me, forty-eight? Besides, what will you live on, in Bermuda of all places, all right, inland, in the mountain wilderness, but even so, have you any idea of the prices, Mexico, you say now? Why even the poorest village wouldn’t do it, with your commitments.