Mantissa Read online

  “That’s the third time this week.”

  “It did work, doctor.”

  “It’s not a question of what works. I’m talking about ward rules. It’s for your own protection, nurse. As I keep telling you, overstimulation just doubles our work load. That’s why we insist on Hopkins-Sezscholsky. You know that.” She added, not without a touch of the sanctimoniousness of those who like to pull rank, “I don’t want to have to speak to Sister.”

  Nurse Cory looked across the bed in horror. “Oh please don’t, Dr. Delfie. Please. I got the old cow up to here already.”

  “Nurse, you also do not speak like that about senior staff in front of patients.”

  The nurse bowed her head again. “It’s only what most of them say.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Honest, I’ll never do it again, doctor. Cross my heart.”

  Dr. Delfie softened a little. “Very well. But I don’t want to have to speak to you again.” At last she diverted her look back and down to their patient, with a very thin smile of token apology. “Do forgive me, Mr. Green. Nurse is still under training here.” Then she looked down at the middle of his body. “Now. Let’s see how the sensible part of you is doing.”

  He felt her weigh and assess the size and rigidity of the sensible part. He closed his eyes.

  “See if you can’t make it a shade bolder still. Just another centimeter.” The part was tapped underneath. “Splendid. Again. Again. Once more. Fine.” Her voice had acquired a new tone: it was almost one of praise, with even a hint of surprise. She stood over him again. “I’ll complete treatment myself today, as it is our first session. But generally it will be done by the nurses. I shall of course come and check progress from time to time. All right?”

  He opened his eyes, but he was beyond words, and could answer only with a baleful stare; which she ignored. Without warning, her left knee was on the bed and then, with an easy athletic movement, she had straddled across him on all fours.

  “Nurse will perform the insertion.”

  Still he could only stare, unbelieving of what was happening, even as it happened. He felt the doctor, suspended on her arms, expertly lower her loins, camber, arch, adjust herself. Insertion. He was cased, sunk, buried deep.

  “I hope that’s not too uncomfortable?”

  Still he stared. She seemed to have gained yet another personality. There was no irritation or impatience now, merely a quiet concentration. She spoke again, oblivious of his look and all it tried to express. “Your hands on my breasts, please.”

  He closed his eyes. Something made his hands rise and find the breasts.

  “That’s the spirit. Try and delay your orgasm. Purely for your own sake. I shan’t have one.” She began to rock slowly up and down, still suspended on her arms. The pubis lingered a moment, held down against his own. “I wish to retain you as long as possible, so please say if you find this motion overstimulating.” He pressed his lips together, determined not to speak. There passed half a minute or so of a slow lumbar rising and falling. “That’s very good. Nicely sustained.”

  He opened his eyes, driven beyond endurance.

  “I don’t know how you can even think of doing a thing like this.”

  She gave him a condescending and cursory smile down. “I expect that’s because you’re not scientifically trained, Mr. Green.”

  “Like a woman of the streets.”

  “I’m afraid you’d find very few modern sociologists who did not see prostitutes as serving a most useful function.” Again the pubis pressed and lingered before it withdrew. “For a start, the incidence of rape would be much higher without them. There is also abundant evidence that they relieve a great deal of personal and therefore community stress in other ways.” She stopped the movement at their loins. “Now we’ll rest for a moment.”

  He let his hands drop.

  “That’s exactly what this is. Rape. The other way around.”

  “Oh come now, Mr. Green. You’re not going to suggest that just because I have temporary possession of a few medically and biologically already obsolescent inches of your anatomy… I thought that childish old male phobia was confined now to only the most primitive societies.” He closed his eyes. “I’m not half your physical strength. A mere naked woman, Mr. Green.”

  “I had realized that.”

  “I think you would realize it better if you opened your eyes and put your hands to more effective use. I should like you to see and feel my defenselessness. How small and weak I am, compared to you – how rapable, as it were.” He did not budge. “Mr. Green, I don’t wish to sound vain of my skills, but I’ve worked long enough in this ward to know that your reluctance to give way to perfectly natural instincts is most unusual. One reason I can already detect is that you are overattached to the verbalization of feeling, instead of to the direct act of feeling itself, which in turn means that –”

  “For God’s sake – who’s doing all the talking?”

  Now her voice assumed a tone of intolerably prim – were the adjective not so ill-descriptive of physical circumstances – knowingness.

  “I talk only to explain. Also to see if your erection confirms with your hostile verbal attitude. I am glad to note that it does not.”

  “It would if I had anything to do with the accursed thing.”

  She smiled.

  “You really are quite a case, Mr. Green. Castration anxiety. Now fear of pleasure. I think we shall have to have you stuffed and put in a museum.”

  “I can tell you one pleasure I look forward to immensely – not paying your bill.”

  “Mr. Green, there’s no need for all this – unless of course your threats make you feel even more sexually excited than you already are, in which case do please continue. We are well aware here that for some men the notion of copulation is inseparable from the notion of defilement, owing to an unresolved –”

  “I can tell you another thing. That nurse knows a damned sight more about the handling of patients than you do. At least she did her bit with some warmth. You’re the one who needs a few lessons.”

  He had hoped to ruffle the doctor, but when she spoke it was in the same insufferably official, detached, superior voice.

  “I have already explained why I can show no feelings whatever for you, Mr. Green. I’m afraid you must get used to that. So, incidentally, must Nurse Cory. That is why I spoke to her. Our sole function is to provide you with a source of erotic arousal. In anything in that area – in the domain of coital technique – you have only, within reason and depending on the availability of staff, to ask, and we will do our best. If you would prefer some other position, we can offer most of those in the Kama Sutra, Aretino, the Hokuwata Monosaki, Kinsey, Sjöstrom – that is, except the Brazilian fork, as already mentioned – Masters and –”

  “You know something? You’re about as erotic as a bloody iceberg.”

  “Thank you for mentioning that, Mr. Green. I’m a great believer in full patient participation in therapy. I see some balancing oral treatment is indicated.”

  Before he could answer, her arms bent and she sank on him. He did make a last-moment attempt to push her away, but it was too late. Half a minute later she propped herself up on her elbows, just over his face. His eyes now had something obscurely stunned and patently puzzled about them. He tried to plumb the dark-brown irises above, but without success.

  “There, Mr. Green. I hope that shows our clinical method does not preclude at least some mutual concession to erogenous reality.” She glanced down at his mouth, then bent and gave it a last small kiss. “I think you’re going to be one of my best patients.” She pushed up on her arms again. “Now let’s see if we can provide a climax to match. Nurse, are you ready?”

  “Yes, doctor.”

  He glanced sideways, and saw the now uniformed Nurse Cory rise from the chair by the table in the corner where she had been sitting, and come towards them. He felt Dr. Delfie contract her vaginal muscles.

  “T
hat’s excellent, Mr. Green. Well done. Now I shall increase the tempo slightly. If you’d put your hands on my hips. Good. Grip me as firmly as you like. I want you to set the rhythm.” The increased tempo began. “Don’t try to force it. Just time the thrusts. Delay as long as you can.” Her hanging head bent farther, as she looked down to where their bodies were joined. “Lovely. Relax… thrust. All you have, Mr. Green. Relax, thrust. Again. A good steady rhythm, that’s the secret. Super. And again. A little faster. From deep as you can. Splendid. Push with your whole body. Keep the rhythm. It’s better for you, it’s better for your baby.”

  “My baby!”

  But the doctor seemed too absorbed in her therapy to answer now. He looked desperately at Nurse Cory, standing beside the bedhead.

  “What does she mean – baby?”

  The nurse raised a finger to the lips. “You jus’ concentrate, Mr. Green. Won’t be long now.”

  “But I’m a man, for God’s sake!”

  The nurse winked. “So enjoy it.”

  “But –”

  Dr. Delfie’s voice cut in.

  “Please stop verbalizing, Mr. Green.” She was beginning to breathe deeply, and had to pause after each sentence. “Now. One last effort. I can feel it coming. Good. Good. Splendid. With the hips. Hard as you can.” Her head remained bowed, apparently intent on the ever more forceful and accelerating movement of their loins. “There we are… there we are… perfect. Perfect. Safe as houses. Keep going, don’t stop. Right to the very last syllable. Nurse!”

  He was vaguely aware of Nurse Cory moving to the end of the bed – out of his sight, since the energetic doctor, still suspended on her arms, blocked his view.

  “One last push. One more. One more. One last one.”

  There was a little gasp from her, as if she were the one who had really given birth; then an abrupt cessation of movement. A silence. He was conscious of Nurse Cory moving back to the corner of the room. The doctor’s head remained bowed, the ends of her scarf hanging down. She was taking urgent breaths, like someone who has dived too deep. Then she slumped down on him. Her skin was damp with perspiration, he could feel her heart pounding. But the collapse was clearly an aftermath of physical effort, not emotion, since she averted her head.

  For half a minute or so he stared at the ceiling, in a state of delayed shock. He had not managed, at the end, to stay as fully objective as he would have wished, but he had not been so far gone as not to remark some strange words, or misconceptions… the terrible thought swept over him that despite her denial he was indeed in a lunatic asylum, a mental institution, and had somehow fallen into the hands of two other patients through some oversight of the proper medical staff. But what on earth would he be doing in such a place? And how could it be left so slackly superintended?

  He looked surreptitiously across the room at the nurse. She sat with her back half turned away from him, bent over something at the table, papers, no doubt the file of his case. She did not suggest madness at all; if anything, so intently did she now stop and read some passage of a report, she revealed an unexpectedly studious side. Nor did the body under whose weight he lay seem anything but unmistakably normal. There was no sobbing, no wild cackles of glee. In some odd way he found the doctor’s silence, her obvious exhaustion, rather touching; and as one might want to comfort a woman miler who has run her heart out, even though she has failed to win (since recall of anything beyond his profession – and even that, he felt, had to rest a high probability rather than certainty – remained tantalizingly out of his reach), he let his arms come belatedly around her back and held her lightly embraced.

  He reflected, in the comparative peace, and ticking silence. Perhaps there was, behind the Freudian jargon, some truth in what the doctor had said, some clinical backing. On second thought, he might do better not to be too quick with a Parliamentary speech of denunciation and exposure. Further research was clearly advisable. After all, a decent modern politician’s prime duty is not to expose the wrong, but never in any circumstances to be caught in it.

  His eyes once more drifted across the room to where Nurse Cory’s neatly uniformed body still sat busied over his file. Her delicate brown hands, the slim dark calves and ankles beneath the hem of the starch-blue skirt… if his did prove to be a difficult case, as he began to have a presentiment that it was, then he must accept the likelihood of a long course of treatment, and take it like a man. He experienced an anomalous desire to murmur something to that effect into the hair beside his cheek, but somehow it seemed a shade premature. One had to consider one’s future position. However, he patted the doctor’s moist back in mildly fraternal sort of style, by way of a tacit and at least partial apology – to say that he acknowledged she had done her best, even though she had lost.

  The doctor did not respond. He had a suspicion that she had momentarily dozed off. He did not mind; if anything he was further, if still somewhat reluctantly, touched. The weight of her slim and well-shaped body, almost as well shaped as that of Nurse Cory, was not disagreeable. One could hardly say one had, in the circumstances, landed on one’s feet; but one might, it began to dawn, have done worse. One felt rather pleasantly exhausted oneself, now one came to think of it, and distinctly less worried about the loss of memory.

  He closed his eyes, but a sound made him open them again. Nurse Cory had risen from the table, and was knocking and shuffling her papers together. She turned, gay and jauncy, recovered from her dressing-down, and came back towards the bed; her eyes on him, cradling the papers she had been sorting.

  “Hey, Mr. Green, who’s a clever boy? Who’s in luck?”

  “What luck?”

  She came a step or two closer, beside the bed, and gazed down at the small sheaf of paper crooked in her right arm; then smiled coyly and roguishly up at him.

  “It’s a lovely little story. And you made it all by yourself.”

  He stared uncomprehendingly at her inanely sentimental grin down at him. The doubts he had dismissed flooded back. He was in a psychiatric hospital, the girl was mad, they were both mad. They must know he was a person of importance, almost certainly a Member of Parliament. Now she seemed to be hinting that he was some scribbler, a mere novelist or something. It was too absurd; and very soon became absurder still, for suddenly the nurse, taking advantage of the doctor’s seeming obliviousness and once again breaking all proper rules of nursing practice, sat on the edge of the bed.

  “Look, Mr. Green. Listen.” She bent her pretty capped head to read the top page, using a finger to trace the words, as she might have touched a newborn nose or tiny wrinkled lips. “ ‘It was conscious of a luminous and infinite haze, as if it were floating, godlike, alpha and o-me-ga…’ ” She flashed him a vivacious smile. “Is that how you pronounce it, Mr. Green? It’s Greek, isn’t it?” She did not wait for a reply, but went back to her reading. “ ‘… over a sea of vapor and looking – ’ ”

  CRASH!

  II

  MNEMOSYNE, a daughter of Coelus and Terra, mother of the nine Muses, by Jupiter, who assumed the form of a shepherd to enjoy her company; the word signifies memory. To Mnemosyne is ascribed the art of reasoning and giving suitable names to everything, so that we can describe them, and converse about them without seeing them.

  – Lemprière, under Mnemosyne

  ERATO, presided over lyric, tender and amorous poetry; represented as crowned with roses and myrtle, holding a lyre in her hand, with a thoughtful, sometimes a gay and animated look; invoked by lovers, especially in April.

  – Lemprière, under Erato

  THE door of the hospital room has been kicked open with savage violence. There stands an infinitely malevolent apparition straight out of a nightmare; or more accurately, straight out of a punk rock festival… black boots, black jeans, black leather jacket. Its gender is not immediately apparent; hermaphroditism appears most probable. The only certain thing is that it is in a towering rage. Beneath the black jacket, which is festooned with outsize safety-pins (another han
gs from the left earlobe) and swastika badges, can be glimpsed a white T-shirt with a pointing pistol printed on it. The splintered shocks of hair above are also white, a staring albino white; whether by dye or bleach or in sheer horror at the face below, it is impossible to say.

  The eyes are alarmingly haloed with kohl, giving an effect less cosmetic than as if their owner has recently been the loser in a fistfight; and they match the mouth below, whose lips have seemingly been painted with the same black polish as that on the boots which have just kicked the door in. A left fist lies clenched on a hip, while the right hand grips the neck of an almost bodiless electric guitar. From it trails a short length of splay-ended flex, torn from the amplifier with such force that it has snapped in half.

  But the ultimate horror is reserved for the last. Incredible though it may seem, there is, despite the hideous disguise, something familiar about the stance and facial bone-structure of the ghastly intruder. It is, after all, no hermaphrodite, but a she; and not any she, but the very twin of Dr. Delfie on the bed. One can tell by the black-ringed eyes. One can also tell by the reaction of the target of this macabre clone’s venomously accusing stare. Though he is evidently shocked, there are immediate signs that the would-be Member of Parliament is not entirely surprised. Pushing himself free with a speed and vigor markedly absent from his previous behavior, he sits up on one arm and throws a frantic glance down at his still procumbent partner; then back again at the gallows figure in the doorway; and finally speaks to it.

  “You…” he swallows. “I…” he swallows again.

  The satanic Doppelgänger’s only response to that is to march into the room and abruptly halt, legs astride. The neck of the guitar is thrust violently forward, as if it were a submachine gun, at poor defenseless Dr. Delfie. A black-fingernailed hand rises and slashes down across the strings as a cutthroat razor might slash across a face in Glasgow. There is an indescribable clang of tortured arpeggio. A moment later there is no longer a Dr. Delfie on the bed, only a faint depression where her head lay on the pillow.