Quicksand (23 page)

 

 

"Good gracious, young fellow, she's your patient!" Alsop said
sharply. "But why not try it both ways and compare the results?"

 

 

 

 

Somewhat to Paul's dismay, when he followed up Alsop's suggestion that
he read some texts on hypnosis, he found there were only two volumes on
the subject in the hospital library, and one of those was a paperback
for the curious layman. None of his colleagues, moreover, had taken more
than a passing interest in hypnosis, so he had to make the best of what
there was.

 

 

The university lecturer who had demonstrated the technique for his
curious students had claimed, approximately, that it was so easy it would
have been universally adopted if it had been more than intermittently
useful. He was right about that; Paul was almost alarmed to find how
simple the known methods were.

 

 

Satisfied that he had extracted the key material from both books,
he diffidently tested it on Urchin at her next interview. She knew
perfectly well what he was trying to do the moment he started the
induction, and jumped to her feet, looking wildly about her as though
intending to run away.

 

 

Abruptly her manner changed. She let her tense arms fall limp to her sides,
hesitated, then slumped back into her seat with an expression of total
resignation. Paul, watching warily from his own chair, interpreted the
actions into words.

 

 

-- What the hell?

 

 

Once she had made the decision not to resist, she went into trance within
minutes, and he began to scrape away at the barrier of secrecy she had
erected around herself.

 

 

Progress was encouraging, if fitful. At first she tended to answer
absent-mindedly in her own language, but repeated reminders that he
didn't speak it gradually eased her into English. Sometimes she laughed
for no apparent reason, and once she burst into such violent tears that
he had to cut the session short and give her a tranquilliser from the
stock in his desk.

 

 

That, and the hope of resolving Urchin's case, were the only two props
sustaining him at the moment. The days were leaking away, and he still
had not plucked up the courage to tackle Iris about her pregnancy. It was
beyond question now, yet the words for an open challenge eluded him.
Tranquillisčrs muted the problem to the point where he could cope with
his work, and Urchin's step-by-step yielding of answers to his questions
convinced him that the work was worth doing.

 

 

But what he really wanted was a miracle.

 

 

He could see in her eyes the minute back-and-forth tremor that matched
the rhythm of the scythe; thinking of all the tranquillisers he had
swallowed in the past few days, he wondered what would happen if he
increased his own susceptibility and wound up hypnotising himself.

 

 

-- Here comes a candle to light you to bed, here comes a chopper to open
your head and show me what's inside. . . .

 

 

Though his every nerve screamed with impatience, he put off the most
direct questions until he had methodically completed word-association
tests as Alsop had advised, and satisfied himself that the pattern of
random hesitations which emerged could equally well be explained by
pretended ignorance or genuine ignorance.

 

 

-- Bloody waste of time. Still, I suppose it had to be done.

 

 

At last, however, he felt she was sufficiently cooperative to make
a frontal attack worthwhile. He began the crucial session with a
recapitulation of some previous material, for he had early fallen
into a trap through excessive eagerness. Inquiring obliquely about her
background, he had sketched in a sort of verbal impression of a horrible
childhood, in some sort of vast institution with guards like jailers,
as a result of which she regarded the whole world as a prison and its
people as being divided into warders and inmates.

 

 

Perhaps because he so often felt walled in by the bowl of hills in which
Chent stood, Paul had been on the point of accepting that this material
connected to an orphanage, which to a child might serve as model for the
world, when he suddenly realised she was talking about this hospital. He
had avoided by the skin of his teeth the classic Freudian error of
projecting his own anxieties into the admissions of a patient.

 

 

Accordingly, he preceded the day's main task with some general questions.

 

 

"Urchin! Do you know who's talking to you?"

 

 

"Doctor Paul."

 

 

"That's right, Urchin. Listen carefully to what I say. Who are you?"

 

 

"Arrzheen." A pause; then a burst of her own language. That had happened
the last time he asked the same thing.

 

 

"Talk to me in English, Urchin. Talk in my language."

 

 

"Yes, I will."

 

 

"Do you know where you are, Urchin?"

 

 

"In Doctor Paul's office."

 

 

"Yes, but what is the place where we both are, the place where you live
and I work? What do people call it?"

 

 

"Many names. Chent. Chent Hospital. The crazy house, the madhouse,
the nut-house, the looney bin, the asylum, the old people's home,
the stitchatution!"

 

 

-- She's obviously been collecting all the descriptions she can find.
Old Mrs Webber never could pronounce "institution" properly!

 

 

"What sort of place is Chent, Urchin?"

 

 

"Where they put crazy people to get them out of the way." She was grasping
the arms of her chair hard enough to whiten her knuckles, but although
this was a loaded subject her voice was steady.

 

 

"Are all the people here crazy?"

 

 

"Not you, not Dr Bakshad, not Sister Wells, not Nurse Kirk."

 

 

-- Has she got the distinction, or . . .?

 

 

Paul cogitated. "How about . . . let's see . . . Nurse Woodside?"

 

 

"She's a
little
crazy."

 

 

He was inclined to be amused at that; you could make out an excellent
case for Urchin being right. He took a deep breath and advanced the
interrogation another key step.

 

 

"Why are you here, Urchin?"

 

 

"Because you -- No, you're not sure. Because somebody believes I'm
crazy too."

 

 

-- Interesting!

 

 

"Why do they think that, Urchin?"

 

 

"Because I have to learn English. Because I don't know about many things,
this kind of clothes, knife-and-forks, tell the time with clocks like that."
She pointed past him at the statuette of Time, and the gesture turned into
a groping motion as though she was trying to pick words out of the air.
"Everything is so different!"

 

 

The last word peaked on a cry of despair. He waited for her to calm down;
then he set about putting the remark into context.

 

 

"Where's your home, Urchin?"

 

 

She looked momentarily blank. "Here!"

 

 

-- Funny. Wouldn't think "home" was a difficult concept. The patients talk
all the time about the homes they've left, or hope to go back to. . . .

 

 

"Where did you live before you came here?"

 

 

A hesitation. "Not . . . not far away."

 

 

"What did you call your home?"

 

 

That produced an incomprehensible sound, apparently a word of her own
language. Paul sighed and made one last attempt.

 

 

"The first time I saw you, in the woods: where had you come from then?"

 

 

"There!"

 

 

Paul made a resigned note consisting in the single word
Topsy
.

 

 

-- I'spect I just growed!

 

 

"What do you find so different, Urchin?" he pursued.

 

 

"People are different -- look different, dress different. Different-ly.
The way they talk the way they do things. Everything everything."

 

 

"And you're here because you find everything is different."

 

 

"No!" She jerked upright as though annoyed at his lack of perception.
Is because --
it's
because -- it's because you think me different."

 

 

Paul cocked an eyebrow. This was a nutshell analysis of the status of
the insane implying considerable insight on Urchin's part. Before he
could frame his next question, however, she burst out in a way that
suggested weeks of pent-up frustration about to let go.

 

 

"I was so frightened you would think me crazy because I don't know all that!"

 

 

"But you said I didn't think you were crazy," he murmured.

 

 

"Not!"

 

 

'Then why should 'somebody' think you are?"

 

 

"Because I can't explain what I am."

 

 

Paul hardly dared draw the breath to utter the next question; he sensed
he was on the verge of a breakthrough. "What are you, then?"

 

 

"I -- " An enormous painful swallow; her whole body was racked with
conflicting tensions. "I can't tell you," she said finally.

 

 

"Why not?"

 

 

"They made me not to tell."

 

 

"Who are
they
?"

 

 

Another phrase in her own language. A repetition produced no clearer answer.
He tried an oblique approach.

 

 

"Are 'they' telling you not to talk to me now?" he suggested, thinking
of paranoiac voices.

 

 

"No. They
told
me not to."

 

 

"Long ago?"

 

 

"Yes . . . no . . . long for me, long ago for me."

 

 

"Can they reach you here at Chent? Can they talk to you now, or can you
talk to them?"

 

 

"No." The word quavered between pale lips, and she linked her fingers
and worked them nervously back and forth.

 

 

"Then if they can't reach you, they can't hurt you, can they? So you can
answer my question."

 

 

Silence. Inwardly seething, Paul preserved an expression of calm while
he cast about for yet another argument.

 

 

-- So near and yet . . . In the woods where I first found her: talks as
if she sprang from the ground! What was it she said to me then? I can
bear it in memory, I think.
Ti
-something?

 

 

Aloud, he said on the spur of the moment, "Urchin, what does
tirake-no
mean?"

 

 

Faintly she answered, "Like you would say, 'how do you do?' Except it means
-- it means exactly 'who are you?'"

 

 

Paul jolted upright. "Is that what you say when you meet somebody,
where you come from? Instead of 'hello?'"

 

 

"Yes, when you meet somebody, ask who you are."

 

 

"Arrzheen!
Tiriak-no?
Tell me! Tell me in English --
tiriak- no
?"

 

 

"Visitor," Urchin said. No voice carried the word, only a hiss of breath.
"Person from other. . ."

 

 

"Other . . . what?"

 

 

"Other time!"

 

 

Paul was shaking so much he could hardly hold his pen; his clothes were
clammy with tension-induced sweat. But by force of will he overcame the
excitement of his triumph and inscribed on his memo pad his final note
for the day.

 

 

And in a fit-of uncontrollable exuberance he added to it six exclamation
marks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

*28*

 

 

For once the visions that his imagination conjured up to distract him
from his work for the rest of the afternoon were not of disaster but of
impending achievement. He wanted to share his good news with somebody,
but there was no one available: Alsop could not be reached, Natalie had
gone to Birmingham again with Roshman, and Mirza was away at an interview
for another post he'd applied for.

 

 

This last, which Paul hadn't heard about, brought him back to earth with
a jolt.

 

 

-- The so-and-so! He never told me he was thinking of moving on. Chent
without Mirza would be intolerable. But I can hardly wish a good friend
bad luck, can I?

 

 

Short of Holinshed, that meant Iris would be the first person he could
tell about his breakthrough. At first the idea was unattractive; bit by
bit, though, he began to warm to it.

 

 

-- She won't understand the full implications, of course, but I can
make it clear enough to impress her, and . . . Yes, I can suggest going
out to dinner to celebrate (I think I have enough cash in my pocket)
and talk about how much it'll mean to my career to publish an account
of Urchin's case and then I can work the conversation around from
professional advancement to the subject of starting our family!

 

 

It all seemed so straightforward in the heat of the moment that he hummed
a cheerful tune as he rushed through the rest of the work awaiting him.
Counterpointing the thoughts in the forefront of his mind, phrases and
sentences occurred to him which would be useful in the paper he was now
definitely going to prepare.

 

 

-- The influence of changing environment on the content of the dreams and
waking fantasies of psychiatric patients has become a subject of great
concern in recent years. Since the archetypal symbol of charging horses
was first found to have been supplanted by the image of a thundering
steam locomotive . . .