The Triple Goddess (113 page)

Contemplating this happy event, every Friday night Bonvilian entertained himself in the privacy of the study off his office by reciting the Hippocratic Oath:

I swear by Apollo the physician, and Asclepius, and Health, and All-heal,
and all the gods and goddesses, that, according to my ability and judgement,
I will keep this Oath and this stipulation: to reckon him who taught me
this Art equally dear to me as my parents, to share my substance with him,
and relieve his necessities if required; to look upon his offspring in
the same footing as my own brothers, and to teach them this Art, if they
shall wish to learn it, without fee or stipulation; and that by precept,
lecture, and every other mode of instruction, I will impart a knowledge
of the Art to my own sons, and those of my teachers, and to disciples bound
by a stipulation and oath according to the law of medicine, but to none
others. I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability
and judgement, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from
whatever is deleterious and mischievous. I will give no deadly medicine
to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I
will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion. With purity and
with holiness I will pass my life and practice my Art. I will not cut persons
labouring under the stone, but will leave this to be done by men who are
practitioners of this work. Into whatever houses I enter, I will go into
them for the benefit of the sick, and will abstain from every voluntary
act of mischief and corruption; and, further from the seduction of females
or males, of freemen and slaves. Whatever, in connection with my professional
practice or not, in connection with it, I see or hear, in the life of men,
which ought not to be spoken of abroad, I will not divulge, as reckoning
that all such should be kept secret. While I continue to keep this Oath
unviolated, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and the practice of the
Art, respected by all men, in all times! But should I trespass and violate
this Oath, may the reverse be my lot!

It never failed to give him a good laugh; as did a stipulation in the earliest reference 4285D could find to the healing arts: under the Mesopotamian Code of Hammurabi, a Babylonian king of the eighth century BCE, if a doctor were to kill the patient under his care, he (the doctor) had his hands chopped off.

However, if the person was a slave, he was simply obliged to supply another slave; and, last time Hugo Bonvilian checked, there were more where they came from.

Chapter Four

Hugo Bonvilian, or plain unlettered 4285 as he had been registered at birth, had come a long way from a poor background. At the age of seven his parents had, as was required of them, presented their only child for evaluation at the Party’s local branch, which occupied the former Lions Club premises.

In recognition of his demonstration of precocious promise, young Bonvilian was removed from the custody of his parents and installed in a male-only boarding school. The authorities were insensitive to the youngsters’ misery at being torn from home and family at such a tender age, and the teachers were under orders to do all they could to make their charges forget their origins as soon as possible.

At The Academy for Gifted Boys, pupils were allowed only as many personal possessions as would fit in a wooden tuck box large enough to store a few precious personal items, and the occasional food parcel from relatives to supplement the inadequate and unappetizing refectory diet. Within the cold knapped-flinten walls of the institution that was to house him for the next ten years, a boy’s tuck-box was the only space he could call his own.

Even the bullies respected others’ right to visit, unmolested, the room where the plywood crates with names stencilled on the lids were stacked like coffins in a crypt. To a homesick youth, that room was a weakly sealed vacuum of the most intimate and cherished parts of his self, the memory of his upbringing figuratively condensed into letters and postcards—of which one of either was permitted to be received per week, and one sent in return—little packets of Sunmaid raisins, Jaffa Cakes, small-size jars of Marmite, and the sweet smell of overripe fruit, all sent by mothers wondering whether they would ever see their children again and be recognized or remembered by them.

Although alphabetical classifications were not normally assigned until the age of fourteen, five years later Bonvilian was given probationary status in the Q category. Ratings were reassessed annually, and raised or lowered according to how that individual performed and developed, or under-achieved. Hugo Bonvilian 4285Q(Prob.) excelled at everything that was put to him, and much that was not, owing to a wide-ranging and relentless inquisitiveness.

His progress through the forms was swift, and by his early teens he was attending classes with youths who were three, four, and five years older than himself. After commencing a new subject, he mastered its principles in an astonishingly short time, and left behind a trail of teachers whom he had exhausted of knowledge, and embarrassed by pointing out errors and gaps in their own education.

No one was surprised when, at the age of fourteen, Hugo Bonvilian’s probationary status as a Q was removed.

Still, these were very difficult years for him. Bonvilian was at the mercy of his surly and sadistic tutor, Doctor Stölwiesel 2739J, a man known to generations of boys as Hitler. Stölwiesel was a hatchet-faced individual with metal heels to his shoes that struck sparks from the stone-floored corridors. He was also the headmaster, and one had only to rub him the wrong way once to be singled out for vindictive treatment as long as one remained in his custody. He bore deep grudges and preyed upon the weak; a single glance from a boy with what he considered to be an insolent expression was enough to enrage him.

As is common with individuals who spend their lives in such places, Dr Stölwiesel 2739J worked hard to inculcate in his charges the belief that the only real world was that which lay within the grim walls of the institution where his rule was absolute. He wanted to sear each of them with the brand of the years that they spent there. What made the situation worse was that Stölwiesel himself had nightmares, for he was as much a prisoner of the Academy as those in his clutches, and every time he passed through his own infernal gates to go to Central to report he experienced acute feelings of inferiority and stress that he internalized and visited upon his pupils as anger.

4285Q antagonized his tutor by demonstrating that he was easily the cleverest boy in class, smarter by far than Stölwiesel had been at the same age. Hitler was constantly reminded of how he had failed to advance higher than a J in his career, and been condemned to teaching the same curriculum year after year; while his pupils left school and began to ascend the alphabetical ladder, in many cases to levels superior to his own.

Nonetheless, being under constant pressure from Central to deliver results, Dr Stölwiesel and his star pupil were bound by a common agony six days a week, for there was a half day’s lessons on Saturdays: the boy was driven by a desire to impress a father-figure with his progress; and Stölwiesel, who was unmarried and childless, was obliged to turn in a performance that would meet with the acceptance if not the approbation of his own controller. For the State was intolerant of failure, and Central’s Department of Educational Furtherment, under the direction of Tony Urban-Fox 5554C, would not hesitate to demote the headmaster to a menial teaching position elsewhere if he failed to deliver his quota of promising candidates for State service.

Every time that Stölwiesel wrote the weekly lists showing pupils’ marks and positions in each subject, and overall class ranking, he ground his teeth at having always to put Bonvilian at the top. Sometimes he would stick the drawing pin through his name as he posted the long strips of paper on the notice board. 4285Q came to dread seeing them go up, and having envious groups form around him as he approached the board. He had to go and look, because if he did not the others would hate him even more for his arrogance. When in despair he deliberately produced substandard work nobody was taken in, and it made no difference because it was still better than anyone else’s. Not that that was obvious from Hitler’s sneers, as he returned Bonvilian’s exercise books—he skimmed them accurately to each student from behind his desk, though in this cack-handed recipient’s case he never managed to catch them—containing his alpha-, alpha-double, and alpha-treble plus grades.

Doing everything he could to deprecate 4285’s accomplishments, the doctor seized upon the least falling-off or mistake, heaped exaggerated praise upon those who gained distant second and third places on the lists, and coached them in private in the hope that they might have a shot at overtaking Bonvilian.

But even in the classroom not everything was easy for the adolescent. Despite his genius, 4285Q was so lacking in confidence that, the first time he was called to stand up front and address the others on a prepared subject, his voice failed and he burst into tears. The boys ragged him about it, and Stölwiesel, greatly cheered, resolved to give him many more such assignments.

To further dull the brilliant Bonvilian’s reputation, Stölwiesel had another infallible and gratifying means of torturing him, and that was on the sports field. Every day irrespective of the weather there were compulsory team games, which varied according to the season. 4285Q hated all of them, as well as the track and field events that he was obliged to participate in during the summer: the hurdle, the relay, and the hundred, two hundred, and four hundred yard races; the high jump, and the discus- and javelin-throwing contests. Only in the long jump did he do tolerably well, as he imagined launching himself as far away as possible into another place where there was no school, no sports, and no Stölwiesel.

Perhaps worst of all, if it were possible to make a distinction between them, was the horrifying gymnasium class, which involved such impossible disciplines as shinnying up a rope, climbing wall bars, and launching oneself from a springboard to vault off a horse whose worn leather top seemed seventeen hands high and Trojan in length.

Because it was not in Bonvilian’s nature to be a team player, and because he had no eye for a ball, the prospect of the humiliation that he had no choice but to endure every weekday afternoon, in full view of his peers and teacher referees, cast a pall over any enjoyment he might have taken in his classroom advantages. The dim-witted athletes amongst his colleagues, inevitably, made a special effort to avenge themselves on the boy who trounced them in their studies, and they laughed hugely at his clumsiness with balls both oval and round, and with cricket bat and hockey stick.

They were egged on in this by Referee Stölwiesel, who squirmed with delight every time that he ignored a foul on his detested student. He had once been athletic himself, and favoured those who were similarly gifted; if only his sporting and academic achievements could somehow have been added together, he thought bitterly, he might have had chance to be something greater than he was.

Not being good enough to be included in Saturday matches with other schools did nothing to diminish Bonvilian’s pain, because the non-participants were required to watch the home games from the touch- and side-lines.

One sport Bonvilian did excel at, to his own as much as anyone else’s surprise: that of fencing; specifically, using the steam foil, for the sabre and épée weapons frightened him with their stronger, slashing and clashing blades. The aura that surrounded the aloof personage of the masked swordsman; the fierce mental and physical instinct of self-preservation in matching one’s wits and reflexes against a single equally dedicated opponent bent on one’s destruction; the imaginative pretence of lethal sharpness to the point of the blade in place of rubber-tipped flexibility: the combination appealed greatly to the frustrated 4285Q, and guided him to an uncanny speed and precision in deflecting his adversary’s foil, and pinpointing a spot on his opponent’s target area with the prejudice of one delivering a mortal puncture wound.

As a result, 4285Q was never overwhelmed by the powerful contestants who tried to use their greater body mass to batter aside his defence and claim victory. With the slightest invisible kink and pressure of wrist and hand behind the guard on the handle of his weapon, and fingers through the martingale strap, Bonvilian was able to finesse their clumsy energy with neatly executed parries, and ripostes, and counter-disengagements. He was tireless, and his concentration was total. His simple and compound attacks following appels or feints, beats, beats and disengagements, and cut-overs, with his blade left his opponents sweating and ill tempered and disoriented and off-balance and discomfited...and exposed.

Then with a flicker of steel and a lightning lunge, they found themselves with the point of Bonvilian’s weapon arced over their hearts, or dispatched by the occasional dramatic
flèche
as he passed them down the side of the piste.

Fencing, with its all-white uniform and breeches, was considered a sport for sissies by the team players; but even the lithest and most muscular and naturally talented of football captains, who had been bribed with the promise of bogus academic grades by Dr Stölwiesel if they could win a fencing match against the undefeated 4285Q, soon revised their opinion.

Bonvilian’s favourite foil, an old and much less flexible weapon than the expensive tempered blades that were used at the Salle Paul salon, was crooked and tipped with a rubber button that had perished enough to allow a painful jab from the barely concealed steel. Although Stölwiesel knew of the infraction, he gave Bonvilian a rare break as he presided over a match; and to enhance the impact of the contestants’ lunges he issued them with the thinnest of plastrons, the protective garment that by law was worn under the canvas duck fencing jackets.