Jachin-Boaz stood on the empty lawn with his fists clenched. I might have known, he thought. I was there, I was ready, high on a great cresting wave. Gone. The chance missed. He’s gone. I won’t see him again.
He went slowly back inside. The men who had laughed by the door looked at him warily from a distance.
‘How’re we feeling?’ said one of the male nurses, laying a heavy hand on his shoulder. ‘We’re not going to be acting up any more this evening, are we? We don’t want to be plugged into the wall, do we? Because a little E.C.T.-time is just the ticket for smoothing out the wrinkles in our brow and settling us down nicely.’
‘Feeling fine,’ said Jachin-Boaz. ‘No more acting up. All settled down. Don’t know why I made such a fuss.’
‘Lovely,’ said the nurse, squeezing the back of Jachin-Boaz’s neck. ‘Good boy.’
Jachin-Boaz walked slowly back to his bed, sat down. ‘What’s E.C.T.?’ he asked the letter writer.
‘Electro-convulsion therapy. Shock treatment. It’s lovely. From time to time when the faces get too many for me I act up and they let me have it. Ever so soothing.’
‘You like it?’ said Jachin-Boaz.
‘Can’t really afford any other kind of a holiday, you know,’ said the letter writer. ‘It scrambles the brain nicely. One forgets a good deal. Sometimes it takes months for everything to come back. Everyone ought to have a portable E.C.T. box, like a transistor radio. It isn’t fair to leave a chap all alone and unprotected at the mercy of a brain. Brains don’t care about you, you know. They do just as they like, and there you are.’
‘Transistor, transbrothers, transfathers, transmothers,’ said the tightly furled man. ‘Real rock. Groovy. “No motion has she now, no force; She neither hears nor sees; Roll’d round in earth’s diurnal course, With rocks, and stones, and trees.” Sometimes there’s nothing but Sundays for weeks on end. Why can’t they move Sunday to the middle of the week so you could put it in the OUT tray on your desk? No. Bloody bastards. Let the shadow cabinet work on that for a while, and the substance cabinet too. Man is a product of his Sundays. Don’t talk to me about heredity. Darwin went to the Galapagos to get away from the Sunday drive with his parents. Mendel pea’d. Everybody tells a boy about sex but nobody tells him the facts of Sunday. Home is where the heart is, that’s why pubs stay in business. Forgive us our Sundays as we forgive those who Sunday against us. Parent or child, no difference. Lend me a Monday, for Christ’s sake.’ He began to cry.
‘Today isn’t Sunday,’ said Jachin-Boaz.
‘Yes it is,’ said the tightly furled man. ‘It’s always Sunday. That’s why business was invented — to give people offices to hide in five days a week. Give us a seven-day week, I say. It’s getting worse all the time. Inhuman bastards. Where’d your lion go?’
‘Away,’ said Jachin-Boaz. ‘He won’t come back. He only shows up on weekdays, and it’s always Sunday here.’ He smiled cruelly, and the tightly furled man cried harder and burrowed into the blankets and covered up his head.
There would be no more lion for him here, Jachin-Boaz knew. The great cresting wave of rage had not been honestly earned, had been artificially forced up in him by the sly teasing of those who had no lion of their own. He would have to be good, be quiet, muffle his terror and wait for his rage until he was out of here. He would have to hide the clanging in him when it came again, would have to wear his terror like quiet grey prison garb, let everything flow through him indifferently.
From that time on his walk became like that of many other patients. Even when wearing shoes he seemed to go barefoot, ungirded, disarmed. The smell of cooking sang defeat. He nodded, humbled.
‘How’s it ticking?’ said the doctor when his feet brought him around to Jachin-Boaz again.
‘Very well, thank you,’ said Jachin-Boaz. From now on he would remember to answer as if the doctor were speaking real words.
‘Tockly,’ said the doctor. ‘I told you ticks would tock themselves out, didn’t I?’
‘Indeed you did,’ said Jachin-Boaz. ‘And you were right.’
‘Someticks all it tocks is a little tick,’ said the doctor. ‘My tockness, ticks get to be too tock for all of us someticks.’
‘They do,’ said Jachin-Boaz.
‘Tick,’ said the doctor. ‘That’s when a good tock and some tick and tocket will tick tockers, and then a fellow can tick himtock toticker.’
‘Right,’ said Jachin-Boaz. ‘Peace and quiet will work wonders, and I am pulling myself together.’
‘That’s the ticket,’ said the doctor. ‘We’ll tick you out of tock in no tick.’
‘The sooner the better,’ said Jachin-Boaz.
‘What’s all this about lions then?’ said the doctor with every word clear and distinct.
‘Who said anything about lions?’ said Jachin-Boaz.
‘It’s difficult to have any secrets in a place like this,’ said the doctor. ‘Word gets around pretty quickly.’
‘I may very well have said something about a lion at one time or another,’ said Jachin-Boaz. ‘But if I did I was speaking metaphorically. It’s very easy to be misunderstood, you know. Especially in a place like this.’
‘Quite,’ said the doctor. ‘Nothing easier. But what about the bites and the claw-marks?’
‘Well,’ said Jachin-Boaz, ‘everyone’s entitled to his own sex life, I think. Some people fancy black rubber clothes. Consenting adults and all that is how I feel about it.’
‘Quite,’ said the doctor. ‘The thing is to keep it in the privacy of one’s own home, you know. I’m as modern as anyone else, but it’s got to be kept off the streets.’
‘You’re right of course,’ said Jachin-Boaz. ‘Things get out of hand sometimes.’
‘But the claw-marks and the bites,’ said the doctor. ‘They certainly weren’t made by any human partner.’
‘Animal skins’, said Jachin-Boaz, ‘can be got with claws and teeth, you know. It’s been disposed of since. Really, I’m terribly ashamed of the whole thing. I just want to get back to my job and settle down to a normal life again.’
‘Good,’ said the doctor. ‘That’s the way to talk. It won’t be long now.’
Gretel came to visit Jachin-Boaz. He had scarcely thought of her since being admitted to the hospital and would have preferred not to have to think about her just now. He was amazed at how young and pretty she was. My woman, he thought. How did it happen? It’s dangerous to have balls but there’s something nice about it.
‘They’re letting me out tomorrow,’ she said.
‘What did you tell them?’ said Jachin-Boaz.
‘I said that it was all sex. You know how it is with us hot-blooded foreigners. I said that I thought you were running around with other women and that my jealousy had driven me wild and that somehow I found myself in the street with a knife in my hand.’
‘And they’re willing to let you go?’
‘Well, I said that I mightn’t have been so upset ordinarily, but being pregnant as I was it was all too much for me. And the doctor said oh well, of course, poor dear and unwed mother and all that. And the doctor said what about the father, and I said not to worry, that everything was all right but we couldn’t get married until you had a divorce. And he patted my hand and wished me all the best and said he hoped I’d not be going about with knives any more and I said certainly not and they’re letting me out tomorrow.’
‘That was a very good touch, the pregnancy,’ said Jachin-Boaz.
‘Yes,’ said Gretel. ‘It was. I am.’
‘Am what?’
‘Pregnant.’
‘Pregnant,’ said Jachin-Boaz.
‘That’s right. I was two weeks overdue and had a test just before coming to the loony bin. I never found an opportune moment to tell you about it the day they brought us in. Are you happy about it?’