Patrick White - The Vivisector

Rhoda had the indergestion by whispers. Got the hiccups.

‘I’m only— hpp — tiring you, Hurtle.’

Didn’t believe it anything about him her cat her buried brother she was Rhoda only only why had she come clean.

‘There’s nothing I can — nothing I was ever able to do for you.’

God’s sake another crying sister. A hiccupping handkerchief.

‘This is Dr Westmacott, Miss Courtney. Miss Courtney is Mr Duffield’s sister. ’

‘Distinguished brother.’

‘Smy brother. Never think of him as anything— hpp. ’

Professionally kind man with all sisters floating backward through zese why wires trapeze or tram tram trampoline slipping with new wax.

When he could walk, or shuffle, say a few words, if not compose a sentence, or not more than to refuse the mauve blancmange, they said he might go home. Rhoda came. She didn’t bring a taxi; regardless of expense she engaged a hire car. He wondered what the patients watching from the balconies would think. He would have liked to look less conspicuous; but that was not possible: he couldn’t answer for his right side. For that matter, his whole tingling body was only nominally his.

‘The tinkling,’ he complained.

‘The what?’ Rhoda tried to smile what she understood as a sweet smile.

He was too busy shuffling to the car in the way the therapists had tried to teach him. He had never been good at ‘learning’ things: he had functioned intermittently by painful vibrations followed by illumination. But now that he vibrated all the time, the light wouldn’t switch on.

‘Why the hire?’

‘Well, it’s a big occasion, isn’t it? And you have the money. Miss Harkness told me you’ve got pots of it. So we decided to spend some of it on you.’ Rhoda was sitting as upright as she knew how, her legs dangling. ‘Doesn’t a car like this make you feel “diplomatic”?’

Rhoda and him the dips!

She had meant it as a joke, and thought he was enjoying it, whereas he was searching for a lost word.

‘Few — near — real.’ he said at last. ‘My own funeral!’

It was going to be difficult for them both: not only because of words; there was noise too. He couldn’t protect his ears, except with his left hand, and often he couldn’t be bothered. It might be better to get it over quickly: to die of the explosions of glass and clashing of cymbals.

‘Isn’t it very noisy?’ What might have been a protest, wasn’t really: they had told him he should develop the habit of conversing; and the nice little girls would have been pleased to think he was trying.

‘Not particularly,’ Rhoda said. ‘In fact, this is rather a quiet bit. Don’t you remember Centennial Park? And there’s a golf course over there. You’re probably still a bit sensitive to noise.’

He was at the molten core of it. Himself the noise perpetually disintegrating.

He would have liked to cry; but his handkerchief was on the wrong side. Wouldn’t ask bloody Rhoda. Cursed with a dwarf. She, cured with him. When there were comfortable upholstered normal people walking throwing bread to ducks in parks.

And Rhoda said: ‘I hope you’re not going to be unkind, Hurtle, because all that anybody wants is your recovery and happiness. ’

He wondered whether their thoughts and remarks were inflicting themselves on the hire-car driver’s blackheaded neck.

Rhoda had got one of her her her minions to carry down a bed and set it up in the living-room — as though she was preparing to nurse you into a state of dependence. When it was from just that sort of thing that he had to run away. Was already beginning.

‘But how can I look after you?’ she moaned.

Rhoda!

‘The stairs are what. Sister and Miss Therap told me exercise.’ He was already beginning to drag himself up, kneel whenever, there was all evening: to escape from Rhoda. ‘Just the job.’

It was of the utmost importance that he return into himself: find out what was left.

‘Nobody stops the cats’ meat.’ He was too exhausted, but attempted to explain. ‘Take away — I don’t steal your knife.’ He was kaput at three stairs below the up landing. ‘Eh? Rhoda?’ It went ricocheting down, unlike anything he had ever used. It was the new, incalculable self.

‘But what am I to do? Up and down stairs! Who will take care of you?’

‘Don Lethbridge,’ he remembered and gasped.

The door shuddered open on the dust of his cold closed belonging room. He burrowed like a screw into an old instinctive screwhole. At its kindest the smell was sawdust, at its blackest burning rubber.

Don Lethbridge was his luckiest bet yet.

Rhoda said: ‘He’s willing to come. He’ll come morning and evening. But the times will vary depending on the classes he has to attend. He can help you learn to wash and dress yourself. And things of that nature.’

Rhoda blushed, but not enough: her flesh remained a pale veil barely covering her thoughts as she visualized necessities of the body. Imagine how he would lay on the fine gauze of paint for Rhoda the bride surrounded by her straddling strongbacked men. Safe, safe enough. He wouldn’t paint. Except in blacks, in Chinese.

‘What else?’ he asked.

‘There was the question of payment. We discussed that.’

Good old Rhoda couldn’t guess at Ron Cuppaidge’s real role. Weren’t sure yourself, only that something vast was painfully vaguely forming.

‘I told him that of course you were going to pay him for his help. A student can always find uses for a little extra money.’

‘Heaps of money.’

Because without this Cup Lethbridge he couldn’t hope to entertain? a secret existence so necessary to the un -reason.

‘Well, I didn’t want to raise the poor fellow’s hopes too high, because you know you are mean, Hurtle.’

He wanted to try out a laugh, and dared. ‘Mean as old bacon yourself.’

However his laughter sounded, Rhoda appeared to enjoy it: she laughed back. They were enjoying it together. He felt better.

Rhoda, remembering, got her prim serious look. ‘Actually he said he’d be only too glad to do it for nothing — if he might look at the paintings when he comes.’

Were Rhoda and the young man conspired?

‘What did you?’

‘I said it was a matter I wasn’t in a position to decide. You would have to talk it over together. I had no idea how you’d react. You’re such a peculiar man.’

‘But not mean. Generous when — when necessary.’

She went down the stairs in gigantic clopping salt-boxes sighing for her respiratory system and things peculiar. Herself included, he imagined.

‘No stinge!’ his lopsided voice roared after her.

Then sinking back he began sweetly deeply sleeping because of what had been arranged. And woke up trying to see what he had dreamt about. He never dreamed now, though. His dreams had been withered in one stroke. Even if his thoughts were beginning again. Would somebody new hold open the right door?

‘Sir? Mr Duffield?’

The lad at the door had yellow lank hair, and by that light a look of something else. Of a spotty downy archangel. On Hero’s island. Only there they were black, on blue sky.

‘Miss Courtney told me to come up.’

What to ask him to do? Hadn’t thought enough about it yet.

‘What was it?’ His own voice sounded pitiful. ‘Have to remember, ’ he said at last. ‘Only beginning to find my way about.’ Not through a new mind, through the wreckage of an old one. ‘A vandal broke in!’ He tried another of his new laughs.

But his servitor wasn’t as tough as Rhoda. Or hadn’t lived with deformity. Lethbridge looked away. Blotches of embarrassment came in his cheeks nourished in milk bars and on greasy twists of limp chips. Long yellow hair, visible pelvis and saucered buttocks were a mod re reen — Renaissance!