The Mind of Mr Soames (4 page)

Takaito shrugged modestly. ‘We shall see.’

‘And now, how about some food after your long journey? We’ve arranged a very special dish which I feel sure...’

‘Thank you, but no,’ Takaito said, holding up a declining hand. ‘I enjoyed an excellent lunch on the plane.’

‘But that must have been hours ago.’

‘I rarely eat just before an important operation. I prefer to drink. It aids precise judgement and quenches nervousness.’

Breuer smiled in open disbelief. ‘You—nervous? I find that hard to imagine.’

‘I am always nervous when handling a sharp knife,’ Takaito said solemnly. ‘There is the danger that if it were to slip I might cut myself.’

Breuer exchanged uncertain glances with his colleagues, unable to decide whether he ought to smile politely or make sympathetic sounds. At that moment the internal telephone on the desk rang shrilly. He lifted the receiver with an air of relief.

‘Dr Breuer,’ he announced, then: ‘Yes. Who?’ A terse groan. ‘About time, too. I’ll send Bennett down to escort him to my office.’

He replaced the receiver irascibly.

‘Gentlemen,’ he announced, in a slightly too formal voice, ‘the Under-Secretary of State for the Ministry of Health has arrived at last. Bennett, would you mind?’

Bennett nodded obediently and left the room.

Takaito glanced at a slim gold wristwatch. ‘It was kind of the Minister to come after all,’ he murmured, ‘but I must not spend too much time in pleasant conversation. If you are agreeable, Dr Breuer, I shall operate in forty minutes.’

‘As you wish,’ Breuer agreed.

❖

The lecture hall was filled to capacity, and they were standing behind the tiered seats at the rear of the room. Invitations to attend the demonstration had been issued on a block basis to a number of hospitals and medical schools within reasonable distance of the Institute, even though, as had been pointed out, it was not fully certain to what extent Dr Takaito would agree to external scrutiny of his operating procedure by means of television and cine cameras. In the event, the Japanese psychoneurologist proved to be completely co-operative, and even displayed a certain inherent showmanship in the way he conducted the experiment and delivered his commentary. There was, in his manner and movements, a casual but knowledgeable quality, rather like a philatelist sticking new stamps in an old album, as if he were pursuing a favourite hobby rather than discharging a professional responsibility.

The television equipment was comprehensive and effective. It had been installed for the occasion by one of the big electronics manufacturers and comprised an eight by six foot screen suspended over the stage on which an enormous colour television image was projected, together with ten monitor sets positioned at convenient points around the side of the room for the benefit of those whose view might be obscured, or who preferred the superior definition and brightness of the images displayed on the smaller cathode-ray tubes.

Although Conway had arrived in the lecture hall quite early while seats were still available, he had chosen to stand at the back, principally in deference to the visitors who, he decided, should be allowed to sit as a matter of courteous priority. He lounged idly against the rear wall of the room, silently cursing the non-smoking rule.

In the darkness a figure moved in alongside him during the trepanning.

‘Hi, Dave,’ a familiar voice said quietly.

He peered sidewise in the gloom and recognised the lanky red-haired shape of Dr Blarney, one of the youngest internes on the establishment and not long out of medical school. Conway and Blarney got along quite well together, despite a certain opposition of temperament.

‘Hi, Terry,’ Conway responded.

Blarney eyed the screen in a jaundiced manner, ‘When does Donald Duck come on?’ he inquired.

Conway made no reply; he was watching the trepanning jadedly and thinking how much more colourful colour television looked than the reality. Those traces of blood were too red to be true.

‘No dancing girls?’ Blarney persisted.

‘The best you can hope for is a troupe of Japanese performing dogs,’ Conway said sourly, ‘all exhibiting their ultra-paradoxical syndromes a la Takaito.’

‘Don’t be obscene,’ Blarney said flippantly. ‘I’m sure Takky isn’t like that, anyway, though you never can tell with these Nips.’ As an afterthought he added: ‘You sound bloody fed up. Girl friend had a hysterectomy, or something?’

‘Don’t mention girl friends. For a number of reasons I’m off women at present.’

‘Next best thing to being on them, that’s what I say. You weren’t at Morry’s party?’

‘No.’

Blarney sighed. ‘Quite a beat-up. I managed three hours sleep this afternoon, after I’d swamped too much dexedrine with too much amytal. Why I don’t abreact all over you I can’t imagine.’

Conway put one hand into his jacket pocket and touched the rectangular outline of a packet of cigarettes. Subconscious motivation, he thought. Never resist the prompting of the buried mind if you want to stay nice to know.

‘I’ve got a good idea,’ he said quietly. ‘The way Takaito’s progressing, he’ll still be drilling Soames’s skull in half an hour from now. I’m in favour of ten minutes fresh air and a cigarette.’

‘Anything’s better than television,’ Blarney agreed, ‘so long as we get back in time for the commercials. I’m crazy about that jingle that goes “Takaito brainwashes whiter, whiter, whiter—not only white, but brighter than white...”’

‘Ssshhh!’ hissed a number of indignantly resentful voices as they thrust their way through the standing audience towards the door. Outside the building they stood in the shelter of the massive stone porch, looking across the flower beds and lawn to the distant plane trees bordering the wall. The sky was overcast now, and fine rain filtered half-heartedly through the still air. They lit their cigarettes and smoked them in a routine fashion with no great show of satisfaction. Neither spoke for fully a minute.

‘I heard something of the story of your wife and Morry,’ Blarney said presently. ‘I haven’t said anything before, but I thought it might be better if you realised that I knew—and others, too.’

‘It’s old hat,’ Conway said without interest.

‘Not that I knew her at all,’ Blarney went on apologetically. ‘At least, I saw her around a few times when she was working here. That would be about three or four months ago.’ He hesitated for a moment. ‘Now that Morry has gone, is she likely to come back?’

‘I doubt it.’

Blarney shook his head sadly. ‘Seems a pity. Mind you, the Institute is a hell of a place for a woman to have to live—a married woman, anyway, with a husband preoccupied and bogged down in clinical routine...’

‘You may be right,’ Conway admitted vaguely, ‘but what are you trying to prove?’

‘Nothing at all,’ Blarney said hastily. ‘I know you’ve never discussed your personal affairs with anyone, and I’d be the last to attempt to prove anything. It’s just that Morry got rather tight last night and said a few things out of turn. I think he’s a bit worried in case you should cite him as co-respondent now that he’s married.’

‘Co-respondent?’

‘In the event of your divorcing Penelope.’

Conway considered for a while, frowning a little with a bemused air.

‘He thought it might be better for everyone concerned if you let her divorce you,’ Blarney went on.

Conway threw the unfinished cigarette away with distaste, grinding the stub slowly under his heel. ‘On what grounds?’ he inquired.

‘Ann Henderson, perhaps?’

Conway smiled. ‘I’m afraid Morry has a lurid imagination. Did he put you up to this?’

‘Well, yes and no. The point is, he started a hare, and I thought you ought to know about it before it gets back to you in a roundabout way, perhaps through Ann herself.’

‘Thanks,’ Conway said tersely. ‘I’m afraid Morry’s going to be disappointed either way.’

He glanced at his wristwatch. ‘Let’s get back to the Takaito television service.’

They returned to the lecture hall and spent the next ninety minutes watching slim yellow hands performing a highly skilled and almost bloodless cortical by-pass.

Later
in the evening an informal reception was held in the staff library and recreation room of the Institute, at which a number of the visiting medicos were given an opportunity to meet small Dr Takaito, who, never without his glass of whisky, tactfully and taciturnly answered hundreds of questions and fended off enquiries about his experiments in vivisection.

Conway, in a morose and rather dejected mood, sipping at nothing more ambitious than a glass of light ale, was eventually introduced to the Japanese surgeon by Dr Basil Mortimer, Head of the Psychiatric Division and his own immediate superior. Mortimer was a prim, stubby man dressed in sombre grey, and his pink shiny face was wearing a slightly pained expression, as if he resented the glass of orange squash which he held in one hand. This was his normal demeanour, Conway recognised, and it did not necessarily imply displeasure.

‘You saw the operation, of course, Dr Conway,’ Mortimer said, after introducing him to Takaito.

‘Yes,’ Conway confirmed. ‘Most interesting, though it didn’t mean a great deal to me—not in physical terms, that is.’

Takaito appeared to smile shrewdly behind his glasses. ‘It will mean more and more to you as time goes on, after they move Mr Soames from the psychoneural to the psychiatric wards.’

‘How soon shall we know if the operation is a success?’ Conway asked.

‘First we must wait for the effects of the anaesthetic to wear off,’ Takaito explained. ‘That will take an hour or two. Even then it might not be possible to detect any positive change for a few days One can hardly predict how a brain which has been dormant for thirty years will react to consciousness.’

‘Yes, I see what you mean. It seems a little strange that they should anaesthetise a man already in a coma—on the other hand...’

‘On the other hand, the purpose of the operation was to restore consciousness,’ Takaito put in quickly. ‘It would no doubt seem even stranger to the outside world and the press if Mr Soames recovered his wits while I was still operating on his exposed brain.’

Conway acknowledged the point with a brief nod. ‘I was about to say that...’ he began, when Takaito went on:

‘I take it you are one of the psychiatrists who will be responsible for Mr Soames in due course, Dr Conway?’

‘Yes.’

‘Interesting. I have met most of them, I think—Dr Hoff, Dr Wilson, Dr Bird... and Dr Mortimer himself, of course.’

Dr Mortimer had already disappeared, clutching his glass of orange squash. Glancing round, Conway estimated that there were nearly one hundred people in the room, and the formal buzz of conversation and shop talk was gradually giving way to a more rippling cross-chatter of gaiety under the influence of alcoholic refreshment. Scanning the crowded faces, he found himself unconsciously seeking the dark beauty of Ann Henderson, but of course she was many miles away, finding out what little girls were made of in the company of Dr McCabe. He suppressed a feeling of disconsolate resentment and concentrated his attention on Dr Takaito, who was still talking.

‘The psychiatric team which will look after Mr Soames is of great intrinsic importance,’ Takaito was saying. ‘Not as doctors or psychologists, but simply as human beings. They will be his first real contacts with the outside world of human beings—in the semantic sense.’

Conway realised abruptly that his expression was rather blank.

‘They are the people he will communicate with, when he has learned to communicate,’ Takaito continued. ‘They will represent the limits of his society. I think it would be a great mistake if he were to believe that the world—humanity as a whole—consisted only of male psychiatrists in white coats.’

‘Yes, I see what you mean,’ Conway admitted. ‘On the other hand, for a few months at least, he is going to be in the position of a hospitalised patient.’

Takaito seemed to purse his thin lips fractionally. ‘Do you regard a newly born baby as a hospitalised patient, Dr Conway?’

‘Obviously not, but Mr Soames is by no means a newly born baby.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well...’ Conway paused, striving to co-ordinate his thoughts on a subject he had hardly as yet considered in any detail. ‘What I mean is, Mr Soames is really a fully grown adult. Assuming the operation is completely successful, he can be regarded as a man with total amnesia rather than a baby... or don’t you agree?’

Takaito’s eyes were dark orbs of cynical wisdom, shrunken and screened by the concave lenses of his glasses. ‘How can a man have amnesia who has nothing to forget?’ he inquired.

‘The condition is parallel.’

‘Parallel to what?’

Conway rubbed his ear in some confusion. Takaito’s line of thought, though superfically logical, seemed to be evading the fundamental issues. Or could it be the other way round, he wondered abruptly, that Takaito was dealing with basic essentials which he and Breuer and Mortimer had not yet paused to analyse or consider?

‘I mean,’ Conway said, carefully choosing his words, ‘that in Mr Soames we have an adult with a mind which, for all practical purposes, is virtually identical with that of a total amnesiac.’

‘Do you mean the conscious or the subconscious mind?’

Again Conway hesitated; it was a point which he had not even thought about as yet.

‘I mean the mind generally,’ he said tentatively. ‘If Mr Soames achieves consciousness he will have a blank mind which will need to be re-educated in much the same way as one might deal psychotherapeutically with a total amnesia case.’

‘Educated—not re-educated,’ Takaito pointed out, ‘and with this difference. Mr Soames will have no pre-established habits whatever. Even your total amnesiac can usually walk and talk and control the peristaltic functions of the body, but Mr Soames will be starting from scratch, as you say—just like a newly born baby,’

Conway shrugged amiably. ‘You may well be right, Dr Takaito, in the long term. The position at the moment is that you have performed a brilliant cortical by-pass operation which may well give Mr Soames consciousness for the first time in his life. What will happen then depends to a considerable extent on the nature of his consciousness. He may prove to be subnormal, perhaps a moron, incapable of being educated at all. On the other hand he may possess an extremely high IQ—he may be a potential genius. I really think we must wait and see.’