Iain Banks: The Bridge

In the doctor's outer office we encounter the appalling young man who is the doctor's receptionist. He is a breezy and bright fellow, always ready with a joke or a quip, ever willing to provide coffee or tea and to help people on or off with their coats; never gloomy or morose, rude or unpleasant, and always interested in what Dr Joyce's patients have to say. He is slim, neatly dressed, well manicured; he wears a pleasantly unobtrusive scent applied sparingly but effectively, and his hair is neat and smart without looking artificial. Need I add that he is heartily despised by every one of Dr Joyce's patients I have ever spoken to?

'Doctor!' he says, 'so good to see you again! Did you enjoy your game?'

'Oh , yes,' the doctor says unenthusiastically, looking round the waiting area. There are only two other people in the room: a policeman and a thin, worried-looking man with bad dandruff. The worried-looking man is sitting, eyes closed, on one of the room's half-dozen or so seats. The policeman is sitting on top of him, sipping a cup of coffee. Dr Joyce takes in this arrangement without a second glance. 'Any calls?' he asks the Appalling Young Man, who is standing, slightly bowed, with his hands placed fingertip to fingertip.

'None urgent, sir; I've left a chronological list on your desk, with tentative prioritisations re the replies - in ascending order - in the left margin. Cup of tea, Dr Joyce? Coffee, maybe?'

'No, thank you.' Dr Joyce waves the Appalling Young Man to one side and escapes through to his office.

I hand the AYM my coat as he says, 'Good morning Mr Orr! Can I take your - oh, thank you ! Enjoy your game, Mr Orr?'

'No.'

The policeman continues to sit on top of the thin man with the dandruff. He looks away with an expression somewhere between surliness and embarrassment.

'Oh dear,' the young receptionist says, looking desolate. 'I am sorry to hear that, Mr Orr. Cup of something to cheer you up, perhaps?'

'No thanks.' I hurry through to join the doctor in his office. Dr Joyce is examining the prioritised list lying under a paperweight on the blotter of his impressively large desk.

'Dr Joyce,' I say, 'why is there a policeman sitting on top of a man in your outer office?'

He looks towards the door I have just closed.

'Oh,' he says, going back to the typed list, 'that's Mr Berkeley; he has a non-specific delusion. Keeps thinking he's an article of furniture.' He frowns, taps one finger on an item on the list. I sit down in an unoccupied chair.

'Really?'

'Yes; what he thinks he is varies from day to day. We tell whoever's guarding him just to humour him, where possible.'

'Oh. I thought perhaps they were some sort of minimalist radical theatre group. I take it Mr Berkeley thinks he's a seat at the moment.'

Dr Joyce frowns. 'Don't be stupid, Orr. You wouldn't put one seat on top of another, would you? He must think he's a cushion.'

'Of course.' I nod. 'Why the police guard?'

'Oh, it can get a bit tricky; every now and again he thinks he's a bidet in a ladies' toilet. He's not normally violent, just...' Dr Joyce stares vacantly at the pastel-pink ceiling of his office for a moment. He gropes for the right word, then dredges down '... insistent.' He goes back to the list.

I sit back. Dr Joyce's office is floored with teak, covered with occasional, delicately hued carpets of a banal abstract design. The imposing desk has a matching filing cabinet and brace of tome-stuffed bookcases, and there is a low table with tastefully bland chairs on one of which I am sitting. Half of one wall of the doctor's inner office is window, but the view is concealed by vertical blinds. Translucent, the sun-struck blinds glow in the morning light, providing our illumination.

The doctor crumples the neatly typed sheet into a ball and throws it into his waste-bin. He drags his seat round from behind his desk and positions it so that we can sit facing each other. He takes a notebook from the desk top and puts it on his lap, then removes a small silver propelling pencil from his jacket's breast pocket.

'Right, Orr, where were we?'

'I believe the last supposedly constructive thing you said was that the bridge might be a dream.'

Dr Joyce's mouth droops down at the corners. 'How would you know if it wasn't?'

'How would I know if this wasn't?'

The doctor sits back, a knowing look on his face. 'Quite.'

'Well, how do you know it isn't a dream, doctor?' I smile. The doctor shrugs.

'No point asking me that; I'd be part of the dream.' He leans forward in his seat; I do the same thing, so that we are almost nose to nose. 'What does the sealed carriage mean?' he asks.

'I guess it shows I'm frightened of something,' I snarl.

'Yes, but what ?' the doctor hisses from close range.

'I give in; you tell me.'

We stay eyeball to eyeball for a few moments longer. Then the doctor breaks off, sitting back and making a sighing noise like the air going out of a fake leather chair. He makes some notes.

'How are your investigations going?' he says matter-of-factly.

I sense a trap. I watch him through narrowed eyes.

'What investigations?' I ask.

'Before you left hospital, and until quite recently, you would always tell me about the investigations you were making; you told me you were trying to find out things about the bridge. It seemed quite important to you at the time.'

I sit back. 'I did try to find some things out. But-'

'But you gave up,' the good doctor nods, notes.

'I tried; I wrote letters to every office and bureau and department and library and college and paper I could find. I sat up into the night writing letters, I spent weeks sitting in antechambers and waiting rooms and reception areas and corridors. I ended up with writer's cramp, a bad cold and a summons to appear before the Hospital Out-Patients Living Allowance (Abuses) Committee; they couldn't believe the amount I was spending on postage.'

'What did you discover?' Dr Joyce is amused.

'That there is no point trying to discover anything worthwhile about the bridge.'

'What do you call worthwhile?'

'Where is it? What does it join? How old is it? That sort of thing.'

'No luck?'

'I don't think luck had much to do with it. I don't think anybody knows or cares. My letters all disappeared or were returned unopened, or with replies attached in languages I couldn't understand and nobody else I was able to contact could fathom.'

'Well,' the doctor makes a sort of balancing motion with one hand, 'you do have a problem with languages, don't you?'

I have a problem with languages, indeed. In any single section of the bridge there are anything up to a dozen different languages; specialised jargons originated by the various professions and skill-groups over the years and developed and added to, altered and refined to the point of mutual incomprehensibility so long ago that nobody can actually recall the process taking place or remember a time when it had not yet begun. I, it was discovered when I came out of my coma, speak the language of the Staff and Administrators: the bridge's official, ceremonial tongue. But whereas everybody else speaks at least one other language, usually in connection with their work or official position, I do not. When I am amongst the bustling crowds which inhabit the main thoroughfares of the bridge, at least half of the conversations going on are quite unintelligible to me. I find this redundancy of languages merely annoying, but I imagine that to the doctor's more paranoid clients the plethora of tongues must seem almost definitively conspiratorial.

'But it's not just that. I looked for records concerning the construction of the bridge and its original purpose; I looked for old books, newspapers, magazines, recordings, films; for anything which referred to any place off the bridge, or before it, or outside it; there's nothing. It's all gone. Lost, stolen, destroyed or just misfiled. Do you know that in this section alone they've managed to lose, to lose an entire library? A library! How the hell do you lose a library ?