He touched himself, stroked himself, trying to get past the noise. Dropped a glass syringe on the floor and barely heard it shatter as he grappled with images. Doctor's smug, puffy face:
Well, I finally found a place for you. Not much of a med school, but a med school. Cost me a fortune to convince them to take you. If you manage somehow to g't? through four years and pass the foreign graduate exam, you might be able to find an internship somewhere.
Fucking smugsmile. Translate: You'll never do it, stupid.
Showed how much he knew, the lame fuck. For all practical purposes, he was already a doctor; all that was left was to make it legal by matching his Dr. Terrific hands-on experience with boring books, paper formalities. Then, claim his birthright:
Dieter Schwann, II., M.D., Ph.D., Aryan conqueror of the welcome hole. Mengele-magician-artisan, painting the visceral mural.
The seed preserved!
He'd filled out the application forms with a sense of joy and purpose, readied himself for the adventure, masturbating to happy graduation pictures: himself ten feet tall, in black satin doctor's robes collared with velvet, a satin mortarboard tilted with just the right cockiness. Collecting certificates of honor, delivering the valedictory, then dedicating the Dieter Schwann, M.D., Chair in Surgical Pathology and Visceral Exploration at the University of Berlin.
Bravo.
Living off those pictures for two butt-numbing days of air travel to Djakarta, only to feel the joy die inside of him as the rattling shuttle prop landed on that putrid, humid shithole of an island.
A lumpy brown patch. Water all around, like some cartoon. Sand and mud and droopy trees.
Where are we?
The pilot, a rotten-toothed half-breed, had turned off the engine, opened the door, and tossed his luggage out onto the landing strip.
Welcome to Sumbok, Doc.
Reality: mosquitoes and swamps and grass huts and pockmarked Gauguin-scum hobbling around in loincloths and T-shirts. Pigs and goats and ducks living in the huts, mounds of shit everywhere. On the south side of the island, a muck-filled stagnant bay, jellyfish and sea slugs and other disgusting things washing up on the beach, putrefying, sliming the sand. The rest of it jungle: snakes, nightmare bugs as big as rats, rats as big as dogs, hairy things that gibbered and shrieked in the night.
The so-called schooclass="underline" a bunch of rusting Quonset huts, cement-floored wooden cabins for dormitories, the bunks hooded with mosquito netting. One big, crumbling stucco building for classrooms. In the basement, the Gross Anatomy Lab.
A hand-painted tin sign over the front door: The Grand Medical Facility of St. Ignatius.
Big joke, ha ha.
Except that he was living it.
The so-called students: a bunch of losers. Morons, dopers, chronic complainers, perverts of sullied ethnic origin. The faculty: slant creeps with M.D.'s from dubious places. Delivering their lectures in pidgin accents no normal person could understand, taking delight in insulting the students, insisting on being addressed as Professor. He felt like hate-beaming into their slant-eyes, smiling:
Heavy starch in the shirts, One Hung Low.
Total scam, no one gave a shit. Most of the students gave up and went home after a few months, forfeiting two years' tuition paid in advance. The others got the energy leeched out of them and turned into bums-pissing away days sunning themselves on the beach, nights given over to smoking dope, jerking off under the mosquito netting, wandering the island trying to seduce twelve-year-old Gauguin-girls.
Depraved. He knew if he let himself be sucked into their apathy, he'd be sidetracked from the Schwann mission. Wondered how to insulate himself, decided an identity change was in order-identity changes always cleansed the mind, renewed the spirit.
And he knew which identity to assume, the only one that would enable him to float above it all.
He went and talked to the dean. Slantiest slant of all, nasty little shit with greasy Dracula hair, oily yellow skin, pig eyes, pencil-line mustache, potbelly as if he'd swallowed a melon. But with a fancy Dutch name: Professor Anton Bromet Van der Veering, M.D., D.Sc.
Pretentious little scrotebag.
Sitting behind a big, messy desk, surrounded by books he never read. Smoking a meerschaum pipe carved in the shape of a naked woman.
Slant took a long time to light the pipe, made him stand there for a while before acknowledging his presence. He filled the time by visualizing smashing the scrote's face, meerschaum chips atop the bloody yellow pulp like confectioners' sugar on a lemon tart
Yes, what is it?
I want to change my name, Dean.
What? What are you talking about?
I want to change my name.
Surely this is a legal matter, to be taken up with-
Legal matters don't concern me. Dean. This is a personal issue.
Talking low and serious, one doctor to another, the way he'd seen Doctor confer with his associates while discussing a case.
Scrote was confused. Dense. I really don't see what-
From now on I want to be known as Dieter Terrif.
Spelling it.
Confusion in the pig eyes: This your real name? Terrif?
In a manner of speaking.
I don't-
It's my real name.
Then why did you enroll as-
A long story, Dean.
Charming smile: And for our purposes, irrelevant. The important thing is from now on I want to be known as Dieter Terrif. When I graduate, the diploma will say Dieter Terrif, M.D.,Ph.D.
A slip. The scrote caught it, pounced on it:
We don't grant Ph. D.'s, Mister-
I realize that. I'm planning on continuing my studies past the M.D. Surgical pathology, histological research.
Scrote was definitely confused. That was the problem with dealing with inferior types.
Really, now, this is highly irregular.
Scrote fondled the breasts of the meerschaum lady, pig eyes widening as he watched the money land on his desk.
One, two, three, four, five hundred-dollar bills, fanned out like a green poker hand.
Will this help regularize it?
A greedy hand reaching out. Then, hesitation. More greed.
Five hundred more landed on the desk.
What do you say, Dean?
Well, I suppose
Little shit held a grudge against him after that, looked at him strangely every time they passed each other.
No matter. His new identity cleansed him. Six months of medical studies went by fast, despite tropical storms and heavy rains that brought more mosquitoes to the island; a plague of hairy spiders, spiny lizards, and other creepy-crawlies making their way into the dormitories, scuttling across night sheets, melding bad dreams with reality.
His fellow students woke up screaming. More morons started dropping out, talking about pharmacy school, chiropractic.