Doris Lessing: Briefing for a Descent into Hell

NURSE:

Wake up. Wake up there’s a dear. Come on,

no

that’s it. Sit up, all right I’m holding you.

PATIENT:

Why? What for?

NURSE:

You must have something to eat. All right you can go back to sleep in a minute. But you certainly can sleep, can’t you?

PATIENT:

Why make me sleep if you keep waking me up?

NURSE:

You aren’t really supposed to be sleeping quite so much. You are supposed to be relaxed and quiet, but you do sleep.

PATIENT:

Who supposes? Who gave me the pills?

NURSE:

Yes but — well never mind. Drink this.

PATIENT:

That’s foul.

NURSE:

It’s soup. Good hot soup.

PATIENT:

Let me alone. You give me pills and then you keep waking me up.

NURSE:

Keep waking you? I don’t. It’s like trying to wake a rock. Are you warm?

PATIENT:

The sun’s out, the sun …

Who has not lain hollowed in hot rock,

Leaned to the loose and lazy sound of water,

Sunk into sound as one who hears the boom

Of tides pouring in a shell, or blood

Along the inner caverns of the flesh,

Yet clinging like sinking man to sight of sun, Clinging to distant sun or voices calling?

NURSE:

A little more, please.

PATIENT:

I’m not hungry. I’ve learned to breathe water. It’s full of plankton you know. You can feed your lungs as you feed your stomach.

NURSE:

Is that so dear? Well, don’t go too far with it, you’ll have to breathe air again.

PATIENT:

I’m breathing air

now

I’m on the rock you see.

See him then as the bird might see

Who rocks like pinioned ship on warm rough air,

Coming from windspaced fields to ocean swells

That rearing fling gigantic mass on mass

Patient and slow against the stubborn land,

Striving to achieve what strange reversal

Of that monstrous birth when through long ages

Labouring, appeared a weed-stained limb,

A head, at last the body of the land,

Fretted and worn for ever by a mothering sea

A jealous sea that loves her ancient pain.

NURSE:

Why don’t you go and sit for a bit in the day room? Aren’t you tired of being in bed all the time?

PATIENT:

A jealousy that loves. Her pain.

NURSE:

Have you got a pain? Where?

PATIENT:

Not me. You. Jealously loving and nursing pain.

NURSE:

I haven’t got a pain I assure you.

PATIENT:

He floats on lazy wings down miles of foam,

And there, below, the small spreadeagled shape

Clinging to black rock like drowning man,

Who feels the great bird overhead and knows

That he may keep no voices, wings or winds

Who follows hypnotised down glassy gulfs,

His roaring ears extinguished by the flood.

NURSE:

Take these pills dear, that’s it.

PATIENT:

Who has not sunk as drowned man sinks,

Through sunshot layers where still the under-curve

Of lolling wave holds light like light in glass,

Where still a jewelled fish slides by like bird,

And then the middle depths where all is dim

Diffusing light like depths of forest floor.

He falls, he falls, past apprehensive arms

And spiny jaws and treacherous pools of death,

Till finally he rests on ocean bed.

Here rocks are tufted with lit fern, and fish

Swim shimmering phosphorescent through the weed,

And shoals of light float blinking past like eyes,

Here all the curious logic of the night.

Is this sweet drowned woman floating in her hair?

The sea-lice hop on pale rock scalp like toads.

And this a gleam of opalescent flesh?

The great valves shut like white doors folding close.

Stretching and quavering like the face of one

Enhanced through chloroform, the smiling face

Of her long half-forgotten, her once loved,

Rises like thin moon through watery swathes,

And passes wall-eyed as the long dead moon.

He is armed with the indifference of deep-sea sleep

And floats immune through searoots fed with flesh,

Where skeletons are bunched against cave roofs

Like swarms of bleaching spiders quivering,

While crouching engines crusted with pale weed,

Their shafts and pistons rocking through the green…

NURSE:

Now do come on dear. Oh dear, you are upset, aren’t you? Everybody has bad times, every one gets upset from time to time. I do myself. Think of it like that.

PATIENT:

Not everyone has known these depths

The black uncalculated wells of sea,

Where any gleam of day dies far above,

And stagnant water slow and thick and foul …

NURSE:

It’s no good spitting your pills out.

PATIENT:

Foul, fouled, fouling, all fouled up …

NURSE:

One big swallow, that will do it, that’s done it.

PATIENT:

You wake me and you sleep me. You wake me and then you push me under. I’ll wake up now. I want to wake.

NURSE:

Sit up then.

PATIENT:

But what is this stuff, what are these pills, how can I wake when you … who is that man who pushes me under, who makes me sink as drowned man sinks and …

NURSE:

Doctor X thinks this treatment will do you good.

PATIENT:

Where’s the other, the fighting man?

NURSE:

If you mean Doctor Y, he’ll be back soon.

PATIENT:

I must come up from the sea’s floor. I must brave the surface of the sea, storms or no, because They will never find me down there. Bad enough to expect Them to come into our heavy air, all smoky and fouled as it is, but to expect them down at the bottom of the sea with all the drowned ships, no that’s not reasonable. No I must come up and give them a chance to see me there, hollowed in hot rock.

NURSE:

Yes, well, all right. But don’t thrash about like that … for goodness’ sake.

PATIENT:

Goodness is another thing. I must wake up. I must. I must keep watch. Or I’ll never get out and away.

NURSE:

Well I don’t know really. Perhaps that treatment isn’t right for you? But you’d better lie down

then. That’s right. Turn over. Curl up. There. Hush. Hushhhhhhh. Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

PATIENT

:

Hushabye baby

lulled by the storm

if you don’t harm her

she’ll do you no harm

I’ve been robbed of sense. I’ve been made without resource. I have become inflexible in a flux. When I was on the Good Ship Lollipop, I was held there by wind and sea. When I was on the raft, there was nobody there but me. On this rock I’m fast. Held. I can’t do more than hold on. And wait. Or plunge like a diver to the ocean floor where it is as dark as a fish’s gut and there’s nowhere to go but up. But I do have an alternative, yes. I can beg a lift can’t I? cling on to the coattails of a bird or a fish. If dogs are the friends of man, what are a sailor’s friends? Porpoises. They love us. Like to like they say, though when has a porpoise killed a man, and we have killed so many and for curiosity, not even for food’s or killing’s sake. A porpoise will take me to my love. A sleek-backed singing shiny black porpoise with loving eyes and a long whistler’s beak. Hold on there porpoise, poor porpoise in your poisoned sea, filled with stinking effluent from the bowels of man, and waste from the murderous mind of man, don’t die yet, hold on, hold me, and take me out of this frozen grinding Northern circuit down and across into the tender Southern-running current and the longed-for shores. There now. Undersea if you have to, I can breathe wet if I must, but above sea if you can, in case I may hail a passing friend who has taken the shape of a shaft of fire or a dapple of light. There, porpoise, am I true weight? A kind creature? Kith and Kind? Just take me South, lead me to the warmer current, oh now it is rough, we toss and heave as it was in the Great Storm, when my raft fell apart like straw, but I know now this is a good cross patch, it is creative, oh what a frightful stress, what a strain, and now out, yes out, we’re well out, and still swimming West, but South West, but anti-clock Wise, whereas before it was West with the clock and no destination but the West Indies and Florida and past the Sargasso Sea and the Gulf Stream and the West Wind Drift and the Canaries Current and around and around and around and around but now, oh porpoise, on this delicate soap bubble our earth, spinning all blue and green and iridescent, where Northwards air and water swirl in time’s direction left to right, great spirals of breath and light and water, now oh porpoise, singing friend, we are on the other track, and I’ll hold on, I’ll clasp and clutch to the last breath of your patience, being patient, till you land me on that beach at last, for oh porpoise, you must be sure and take me there, you must land me fairly at last, you must not let me cycle South too far, dragging in the Brazil current of my mind, no, but let me gently step off your slippery back on to the silver sand of the Brazilian coast where, lifting your eyes, rise the blue and green heights of the Brazilian Highlands. There, there, is my true destination and my love, so, purpose, be sure to hold your course.