Bob Shaw - Vertigo

The party went on all about him, forming and dissolving different centres of activity, gradually growing louder in proportion to the amount of alcohol consumed. Al Werry, apparently feeling he had discharged all his obligations to Hasson, circulated continuously among his friends, never staying more than a few seconds with any one group, looking healthy, spruce and competent — and totally out of place — in his chocolate-brown uniform. May Carpenter spent most of the time surrounded by at least three men, seeming to be fully absorbed in responding to their attention and yet always managing to intercept his gaze when he looked in her direction. It came to him that Werry and May had one thing in common in that their characters were completely impenetrable as far as he was concerned. In each case the physical presence was so overwhelming as to obscure the inner being. May, for example, was behaving exactly as if she found Hasson interesting, in spite of the fact that he had virtually ceased to exist as far as women were concerned. Perhaps she had a strong maternal instinct: perhaps she met all men on the same terms — Hasson had no way to tell. He toyed with the problem at odd moments between bouts of conversation with men and women who took it in turns to relieve his solitude. The noise level in the room continued to increase. Hasson persevered with his drinking until he had finished the half-bottle of scotch and was obliged to try the rye, which he found bland but reasonably acceptable.

At one stage in the evening, when the lights had been turned down and a number of people were dancing, he made the discovery that the chubby, apple-cheeked young man talking to him was not a farmer, as his appearance suggested, but was actually a physician called Drew Collins. A memory which Hasson had suppressed — that of Theo Werry sitting alone in his room with the table lamp held close to his eyes — sprang to the forefront of his consciousness.

“I’d like to ask you something,” he said, uncertain about the ethics involved. “I know it’s the wrong time and all that…”

“Don’t worry about all that crap,” Drew said comfortably. “I’d write you a prescription on a beer mat.”

“It isn’t about myself- I was wondering if you were Theo’s doctor.”

“Yeah, I look after young Theo.”

“Well…” Hasson swirled his drink, creating a conical depression in its surface. “Is it true that he’ll get his sight back in two years?”

“Perfectly true. Slightly less than two years, in fact.”

“Why does the operation have to wait so long?”

“It isn’t an operation as such,” Drew explained, apparently happy to talk shop. “It’s the culmination of a three-year course of treatment. The condition Theo suffers from is known as complicated cataract, which doesn’t mean the cataract itself is complicated — just that there were other factors involved in his getting it so young. Until about twenty years ago there was only one possible treatment — removal of the opaque lenses — which would have left him with highly abnormal vision for life, but now we can restore the transparency of the lens capsule. It involves putting drops in the eyes every day for three years, but at the end of that time the simple injection of a tailored enzyme into the lenses will make them like new. It’s a genuine medical advance.”

“It certainly sounds that way,” Hasson said. “Except…”

“Except what?”

“Three years is a long time to be left in the dark.”

Unexpectedly, Drew moved closer to Hasson and lowered his voice. “Did Sybil rope you in, as well?”

Hasson stared at him in silence for a moment, tying to hide his confusion. “Sybil? No, she didn’t rope me in.”

“I thought she might have done,” Drew said in confidential tones. “She contacted some of Al’s relations and got them to lean on him, but Al’s the only one who is legally responsible for the boy, and it had to be his own private, personal decision.”

Hasson searched his memory and dredged up a vague recollection of Werry mentioning that his former wife’s name was Sybil. A glimmer of partial understanding appeared in his mind.

“Well,” he said guardedly, “there are things for and against this new treatment.”

Drew shook his head. “The only thing against it is the three- year delay, but — especially for a youngster — that’s a small price to pay for perfect vision.

“Is it?”

“Of course it is. AJ made the decision, anyway, and Sybil should have stuck with him over it and backed him up, if only for Theo’s sake. Personally, taking everything into consideration, I think he made the right decision.”

“I suppose …” Hasson, recognising dangerous conversational waters ahead, cast around for a change of subject and for no reason he could explain his mind fastened on the man he had encountered in the downtown health food shop. “Do you get much competition from alternative medicine around here?”

“Practically none.” Drew glanced sideways and raised his eyebrows as he was joined by Ginny Carpenter. “Albertan law is pretty strict about that son of thing, Why do you ask?”

“It’s nothing much. I bumped into an interesting character today — an Asian who runs a health food shop. He said his name was Oliver.”

“Oliver?” Drew looked blank.

“That’s Oily Fan,” Ginny put in, cackling like a Disney witch. “You wanna stay away from him, boy. You wanna stay away from all those Chinks. They can live where white folks would die off “cause all they ever think about is how to make money.” She swayed for a moment, glass in hand, her triangular face flushed with alcohol. “Do you wanna know how those sons make money in their corner stores when there’s no customers in?”

“What I want is another drink,” Drew replied, moving off.

Ginny caught his arm. “I’ll tell you what they do. They can’t bear to let a minute pass without making money, so they just stand there at the cigar counter opening match boxes and taking one match out of each. I’ve looked in and seen them at it — just standing there! One match out of each box! Nobody would ever miss one, but when they’ve done it fifty times they’ve got an extra box to sell. White folks wouldn’t go to all that trouble, but the Chinks just stand there. . . One match out of each box!”

Hasson considered the story briefly, classified it under the heading of “Racist Apocryphal” and simultaneously picked our a flaw in its internal logic. “Hard to believe, isn’t it?”

Ginny mulled over his words and seemed to note their ambivalence. “Do you think I made all that up?”

“I didn’t mean to imply …” Hasson smiled apologetically, dreading a confrontation with the flinty little woman. “I think I need another drink, too.”

Ginny waved expansively in the direction of the table. “Go ahead and soak it up, friend.”

Hasson thought of a number of retorts ranging from the coldly sarcastic to the crudely obscene, but again in his mind there was a verbal log-jam complicated by undercurrents of embarrassment, exhaustion and fear. He found himself mumbling thanks to Ginny and backing away from her like a courtier excusing himself from a royal presence. He topped up his glass, aware that he was drinking too much, and decided to adopt Werry’s technique of continually moving from one locus to another until he could decently withdraw to the fortress of his room. In a short time the excess of strong drink combined with his tiredness to produce in him a trance-like state in which the room became an encompassing screen upon which human forms were flat and meaningless projections, like the patterns radiated by a guttering fire.

At one stage Hasson was dumbfounded to realise he had been drawn into some kind of inebriated game whose rules were never made clear to him, but which engendered a great deal of stumbling in darkness, whispering, laughing, and slamming of unseen doors. It came to him that his chance of escape had arrived, that with any luck at all he could be safe in bed before his absence was even noticed. He tried to take his bearings in the darkness and set out for the door which opened into the hall, but his progress was impeded by others who seemed to possess a magical ability to know exactly what they were doing and exactly where they were going in the absence of light. A door opened in front of him, revealing a dimly lit room, and several hands pushed Hasson forward. He heard the door slam behind him and in the same moment became aware that he was alone in the kitchen with May Carpenter. His heart began an unsteady pounding.