Doris Lessing - Briefing for a Descent into Hell

What you say is only what you know. You tell me it is so. But if I tell you what I know, you disagree.

Then tell me what you know. Now then, why are you laughing? Do you realise you haven’t laughed before? This is the first time I have seen you laugh.

Doctor, I can’t talk to you. Do you understand that? All these words you say, they fall into a gulf, they’re not me or you. Not you at all. I can see you. You are a small light. But a good one. God is in you doctor. You aren’t these words.

Well, well. Rest then. Lie down and rest. But before you go off to sleep try and remember: You are Charles Watkins. You have been living and working in Cambridge for years now. You teach the Classics. You give lectures. And you don’t live alone — not by any means. I’ll see you tomorrow.

And how are you today? Oh — steady now, you’ve been dreaming, have you?

I am dreaming now.

No, you are awake now. You are talking to me, Doctor Y.

This is no different. A dream, like that.

Oh yes it is different. This is reality. The other is a dream.

How do you know?

You’ll have to take my word for it, I’m afraid.

If I did have to, I’d be afraid. I can’t take words for anything. Words come out of your mouth and fall on the floor. Words in exchange for? Is that it? Your dreams or your life. But it is not or , that is the point. It is an and . Everything is. Your dreams and your life. You can talk there, talk. I dream whatever I do, lying or waking.

Well, well, Professor. I’ll see you tomorrow. Perhaps we may have to try a new treatment.

This patient is no better than when I left last week. I do not see what alternate we have to E.C.T .

DOCTOR X.

I suggest confronting him with his wife, or if we can locate some, friends .

DOCTOR Y.

If no change in the next two or three days, we must transfer him to Higgin-hill. Would remind you this is for Intake .

DOCTOR X.

It is not unusual to extend the routine six weeks, for another three weeks. I suggest we do so .

DOCTOR Y.

Only if we can agree on E.C.T. Which would be a reason for extension .

DOCTOR X.

I am not against E.C.T. But as an interim proposal: withdraw all drugs, including sleepers, and see what happens .

DOCTOR Y.

Very well .

DOCTOR X.

How are you today Professor?

As you see.

You are looking very much brighter.

I haven’t been given any drugs for twenty-four hours.

We thought it might help you to remember.

Nurse told me I have been drugged ever since I came in.

I told you, we sedated you in various ways. Then we tried a treatment which you reacted to in a very personal way — you slept almost continually, so we stopped the treatment before we normally would have done with that particular drug.

I am thinking more clearly. Doctor Y?

Professor!

I have to ask you a serious question.

Please do.

Your attitude to me is this. I’ve got to make him remember what I know to be true about him.

Yes it is. Of course.

But that means that you don’t take me seriously. You haven’t once taken me seriously.

In reply to that I can only say that you have had more of my personal time and care than any patient I’ve had in months.

No, I don’t mean that. I say to you, I’m not what you say I am. I know that. I’m not Professor Charles What’s-his-name. Or if I am nominally that, it isn’t the point. But you just go on and on and on, sticking to that one point.

Go on, explain. I am listening.

I might be anything else. I could be.…

What? God perhaps?

Who said that?

You did.

I might have died in the war.

Oh, you were in the war then.

So was everyone.

Some more than others.

We were all there.

What were you doing in the war?

If you know what it is I profess, don’t you know who it was I fought?

No, your wife didn’t mention it. I must ask her.

I have a wife?

Yes. Her name is Felicity … is that funny?

Ha, ha, ha, I have absented myself from Felicity. Ha, ha, ha.

I’m a married man, myself.

Felicity.

And you have two boys.

If I am a professor I can have a wife, but my knowledge is, I am just as well a sailor with a wife in the West Indies. Her name is Nancy.

Ah, so you are a sailor again, are you? Were you a sailor in the war?

No, I was an onlooker and then the Crystal came. They fought. They ate each other.

Ah. Now I want you to help me with this. If you aren’t Charles Watkins, who are you?

I think I am my friends. And they are — in the name of the Crystal. Yes. A unit. Unity.

Your name is Crystal?

That’s crystal clear. Ha, ha, ha, ha.

You’re very jolly this morning.

Words are so funny . Felicitously funny.

I see. Well, I’ll drop in for a chat tomorrow. We aren’t going to give you any more sedatives or drugs. Not for a time anyway. You’ll probably find it harder to sleep. But try and stick it out. And perhaps you could try and see if you remember anything about your family. Two sons. Two boys.

My son is dead.

I can assure you that none of them are dead. Very much alive. I’ve seen their photograph. Would you like to see? I’ll bring it tomorrow.

DEAR DOCTOR Y,

Thank you for your letter.

I have decided to send you two letters I found in the jacket my husband was wearing just before he lost his memory. I don’t know if they will be of any help. One is by him, but he didn’t post it for some reason. I don’t think my husband ever had a breakdown. But I don’t really know what a breakdown is. I think he is the opposite of the kind of person who has a breakdown. He has always been very energetic and gets a lot of things done. He always sleeps much less than most people. When we were first married I used to worry but I got used to it. He sometimes sleeps four or five hours a night for weeks at a time, sometimes only two or three. But that is in summer. In winter he sleeps a bit more. He says it is because animals need to hibernate. I don’t think he has been working harder than usual this year. He always works hard. It is his nature. He was rather bad-tempered and crotchetty earlier this year but at the beginning of summer he always gets difficult, but it is because it is examination time. He was stammering quite badly in the spring, a new thing for him, but our family doctor gave him some sedatives and the stammering stopped, but it was bad enough for a time to make him cancel some lectures he was going to give.

Yours sincerely,

FELICITY WATKINS

DEAR PROFESSOR WATKINS,

It has been agreed that I should write to you. You won’t know me — or rather, won’t know my name. Yet, we did meet briefly after your lecture. I hope you will remember because it was what you said that started it off. Was a catalyst, touched a spring, something like that. What? Well, nothing common or obvious and that is my trouble in writing to you. It is all intangibles. If you don’t remember, then it will still be true that your saying what you did that night began a remarkable process in me and this coincided with a similar process in a close friend of mine — and as we are beginning to see, in more than one of the people closest to us. Yet it is hard indeed to define it. For me, it was definitely listening to you talk. We have wondered if it is possible for you not to remember? Can a yeast not know it is a yeast? I suppose so. Or perhaps it is not like that at all — it might be that a man talking on a platform in a particularly inspired frame of mind may match up to, or coincide with someone listening, and who has gone to listen with no particular expectation, in ways we know very little about. But in writing to you, this act of sitting down to put words together, in the hope that the words will be as strong as those used by you that night, it is like the spreading of a yeast or some sort of chemical that has started working in one place, and then moved out, feeding and inciting, then curved back again to where it began. This letter is like a snake swallowing its tail. By now you will see that it does not matter that you do not know me, because I am not important individually. Nor of course are you. I am writing because I have more time than my friends. I am retired. My children are grown up and I am a widow. Perhaps it had to be me because of my having been there that evening and coming back as if I’d been slapped out of a daydream. We have been wondering too, about the others who were there that night. Did some of them go away feeling as if they had been infused with a new sort of intelligence? Or was I the only one. You probably don’t know. But I find it hard to believe. I have heard very many lectures in my time — alas. And even given them. It is not a new thought for me that the quality of a lecture or lecturer need not have much to do with the actual words used. No, I do not mean that I admire the demagogue and the inspirational speaker, not at all. But there is another quality. It is one you had that night. It is possible to imagine what you said that night being heard quite dully. The words were interesting, yes. But that is not the point. The essence of what happened in the room that night, and of what I’ve been learning since is that words spoken casually in the next room, familiar music heard with a particularly close attention, a passage in a book one would normally class as commonplace — even the sound of rain on branches, or lightning cracking across a night sky, sounds and sights as ordinary as an every day may hold that very quality I now understand to be that most valuable to me. And to others.