Chapter 18
He [the artifex] must have a most subtle mind and an adequate knowledge of metals and minerals. But he must not have a coarse or rigid mind, nor should he be greedy and avaricious, nor irresolute and vacillating. Further, he must not be hasty or vain. On the contrary, he must be firm in purpose, persevering, patient, mild, long-suffering, and good-tempered. Geber: Liber perfecti magisterii
One day in late spring I looked up from my desk to see Sarah Enright in the doorway, looking a little uncomfortable.
“Principal Cataloguer and Head of the Cataloguing Department,” she read the name plate on my door. “What a title! It beats most of the ones we have in the hospital.”
“True power is never measured by the length of one’s title. Come in, Sarah. I never thought I’d have a chance to welcome you to my domain.”
“I wouldn’t have come, except I’m going to be away on a week’s leave soon, and there’s something I have to talk to you about.”
For some reason, I suspected that the thing Sarah wanted to talk to me about concerned West. Gossip is an irresistible commodity to most people and, as far as I knew, that handy listening post by the shelflist still worked. So I suggested an early lunch break.
There was a pleasant corner off the main campus quadrangle, with a couple of benches, a scrap of lawn and a large rose bush which was just starting to open its fragrant flowers.
Sarah didn’t waste time with preliminaries. “I think your friend Dr. West is going crazy.”
I nearly dropped my sandwich, but managed to ask, “What makes you think that?”
“Well, maybe crazy is too strong but he’s sure acting strange. For one thing, he’s working much too hard. He’s taken on two other doctors’ surgeries, Dr. Peterson’s and Dr. Little’s. Peterson’s sick and Little’s going on a trip somewhere. And he’s losing his temper. Now Dr. West never loses his temper, even when he’s mad at someone. But yesterday he yelled at Nurse Dempster for forgetting to put out an instrument, and today I heard him yelling at Dr. Shortt. Shortt was yelling too, but… And he just doesn’t look right.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you know how neat and tidy he always is? Not today. That suit he has on, he’s been wearing it for days. Sleeping in it too, by the looks of things.”
This sounded bad. “Is he at the hospital?”
“No, I think he’s in his office at the Med. School. But he’s due to operate again this afternoon.”
“When did all this start?”
“I first noticed it last week. But I think he’s been doing extra operations for a couple weeks. It’s just catching up with him, I guess.”
Talking to West certainly had not helped before. He had told me to mind my own business months ago. But Sarah had taken the trouble to come to me, and she was not even West’s friend. I was. “Sarah, I hope you don’t mind, but I have to cut our lunch short.”
“Be careful, Charles. I’ll bet you haven’t seen him like this.”
West looked up with a glare as I peered into the doorway of his office. His face was pale and unshaven, his hair wildly disordered, necktie loose and vest unbuttoned.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“Herbert, I shouldn’t have come, perhaps, but – ” My second mistake, I realized, was to have come unprepared.
“So why did you?”
“I heard you were in some sort of trouble. Maybe I can help.”
“Yes, of course! How would you like to do a splenectomy in half an hour? Or maybe you could give a lecture on skin grafting techniques later this afternoon. Look, Charles, this is neither the time nor the place for a visit. If I have troubles, they’re mine and I neither want nor need your help. Now please leave.”
His voice grew quieter as he spoke, so that the last sentence was delivered in a near-whisper. There was something disturbing about this decrescendo. His eyes were huge in a face that had surely grown thinner since I had seen him last. Murmuring an apology, I left.
But before I gave up I went to the hospital and sought out the office of the Chief of Surgery, Dr. Harold Shortt. I had never met Dr. Shortt, but I could not think what else to do. I waited for twenty minutes in his antechamber until a starched but ornamental female (was she a nurse or a secretary?) conducted me into the presence. Dr. Shortt bore a striking resemblance to the Bolshevik leader, Vladimir Lenin, with which his Yankee accent seemed at odds.
I introduced myself and said, “Dr. Shortt, I’m a friend of Dr. Herbert West. I was in Dr. West’s office just now, and I must say that he doesn’t appear to be himself. I thought I should bring this to your attention, since I understand he’s carrying a heavy workload these days. I’m concerned that he may not be fit to do all the surgery he has taken on.”
“You’re a librarian, Mr. Milburn?”
“That’s right.”
“What makes you think you can tell whether a physician is fit to do his job? Do they teach that in Library School?”
“No, but I’ve known Dr. West for many years. His appearance and behaviour today are most uncharacteristic. Believe me, I wouldn’t have troubled you if I didn’t think there was a good reason.”
“Mr. Milburn.” Shortt stroked his beard and began speaking in what I assumed to be his lecturing style. “Physicians are trained to endure long hours. It’s part of our calling. True, at times we become a little testy when we’re under pressure. But knowing our limits is part of the job. I’m sure Dr. West is perfectly capable of operating or he would not do it. Now you must excuse me. I have another appointment.”
I could do no more. I went back to my office, deeply troubled.
Late that afternoon, finally immersed once more in my own work, I became conscious of a small commotion in the outer office. I looked up when someone threw my door open without knocking. It was West. He looked, if anything, more dishevelled than before. He leaned over my desk and without preliminaries said,
“You presumptuous bastard! What did you think you were doing when you went to Shortt? By taking it upon yourself to judge my competence you played right into his hands. You would have done better to plunge a knife into my heart. So listen well, because I’ll say this once only – I’m finished with you. I don’t want to see you or hear from you again.”
Before I could find my voice he was gone.
As if this wasn’t enough, there was a disturbing story in the Arkham Advertiser a day or two later: a dangerous lunatic had escaped from Sefton Asylum after nearly twelve years of confinement. He had been known as the ‘Wild Man of Arkham’ at the time of his incarceration early in 1912, when he had committed a heinous deed. Officials at Sefton were not prepared to speculate as to how this individual had managed to break out of the facility and elude capture, but the police warned residents of the district to be vigilant, since the escapee was considered extremely dangerous.
Nothing more happened until a night in July. I sat near an open window, listening to the small unknown sounds outside. It had rained earlier and the air had a blessed coolness. I could smell the freshness of wet grass and leaves, and the perfume of night-scented stocks. It had been dark for nearly an hour and I was thinking that it was time I went to bed, but inertia kept me where I was.
Just then I heard light steps coming up the front walk and the verandah stairs, followed by a sharp knock on my door. It was West. Without a word, I held open the door and stepped back. He came in, murmuring a greeting, and fell into an armchair. When I had switched on a lamp I was shocked at his appearance, even after the terrible scene a few weeks earlier. He was no longer unkempt, but looked exhausted, the customary elegance of his clothing a harsh contrast to the weariness in his face. He sat for a moment with closed eyes, then looked up at me and said,
“Well, Charles, it’s all up. The career of Dr. Herbert West has been rather like a meteor – fiery, fast, and now finished.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, for one thing, Hobson and Edward Clapham-Lee are p
lotting against me. And for another, I’m being sued.”
“Sued? By whom?”
“The family of a patient, of course.”
“What patient?”
“A Boston banker, George Hurley.”
“He’s dead?”
At this he began to laugh. “No, he’s not dead. That’s the problem, actually. Things might be better if he was.”
“I don’t understand. You’d better start at the beginning.”
“Yes, except I’m not sure where the beginning is, really.” He thought for a moment. “I suppose it was about six weeks ago. Hobson and Vladimir began hinting that a certain member of the staff was not bearing as much of the load as the rest of the stalwarts. This individual was getting undue attention from the press and the public by performing frivolous surgical pyrotechnics while the rest of them were putting their weary shoulders to the wheel.”
“Excuse me, Herbert, but who is Vladimir?”
“Shortt, of course. He looks just like Lenin, wouldn’t you say? You must have noticed, when you went to warn him about the unstable Dr. West. You played right into his hands, unfortunately, but now I know I can’t blame you for everything.”
“You mean this is a plot of some sort?”
“I think so. You wouldn’t believe it possible, would you, that a couple of elder professor-doctors would use patients as pawns in a game of this sort, but it certainly seems that way. The long and the short of it (and yes, I meant that) was that I foolishly accepted what I saw as a challenge. Peterson had just done a bunk, supposedly because of his nerves, and Little simply had to go off to visit his old mother in darkest Ohio. So I took on their work. After all, I told myself, it wouldn’t be anything like my workload during the big pushes in the War. But of course I was the only one at war here. Everyone else was just following their regular routines.
“I should have known better. That day you came to see me I had just about reached the end of my rope. I eased up after that, but the damage was done. Word leaked out that West was finally slipping. Then along came George Hurley, fat and fifty, with his hernia. Not the sort of thing I usually do any more, but Hurley wanted his hernia fixed by the same hands that had repaired Eleonora Desanges’ face. So I thought, what harm could there be in it? After all, I can do hernias in my sleep.
“The trouble was, first, that the gentlemen of the Boston press had been alerted of Hurley’s insistence. One or two lively little stories appeared in the papers. The other thing was that at the last minute I found that my assistant was to be Pokey Campbell – Dr. Patrick Campbell to you, Charles. Now his job was to look after the anaesthesia, which is trickier than you might think. It requires constant monitoring of the patient’s state, so that he is maintained at a steady level of unconsciousness but not pushed into a state of excessively deep unconsciousness, otherwise known as death. Well, Pokey isn’t the most reliable individual in the world. He’s too shaky to hold a scalpel, so has been relegated to minding the gas canister. Generally, I avoid him like the plague, but that day (just three days ago, how much longer it seems) everything went wrong. When I got to the operating theatre, there was Pokey goggling at me over his mask. I knew I was in for it then. I would have to do the surgery and monitor the anaesthesia too. Never mind that I hadn’t slept in a week. Yes, I know I should have refused to go ahead, but… Vladimir and Hobson had me figured out, all right.
“Well, you can imagine what happened. The hernia was a little trickier than I had expected. Part of the problem was that Hurley is a fat man, and everything took a little longer than usual. The outcome was good, though, very good, or would have been except for one detail. I had been too busy to check Hurley’s state. Pokey was off in dreamland somewhere, and by the time I’d sewn Hurley up he was just slipping over the edge. I alerted Campbell to the fact that he had let the patient die, thanked the nurses for their help and left.
“That’s when I made my real mistake. Damn it, I didn’t want to give in! I got my revivification stuff and when I came back Hurley was still on the table. I guess no one knew what to do with him after I left so abruptly. Well, I set up the gear and pumped old George full of fluid before anyone showed up. He’d been dead less than an hour; maybe that’s why it didn’t take very long for him to come back. But of course he was still under the anaesthesia. Actually, it was interesting. I’d never revivified someone who was in that state, but I suspect it contributed to the less than happy result. The nurses came in with Dr. Shortt (who else?) to get Hurley declared dead, and there I was, hovering over him and telling everyone, ‘He’s alive!’ And he was, too, and still is, but in an apparently infantile state.
“His family is determined to sue the negligent surgeon who reduced this pillar of the community to such a pitiful condition. And Drs. Hobson and Shortt are encouraging them, I might add. Ironic, isn’t it?” He closed his eyes again.
“So what might happen if they sue? I suppose you’d have to pay damages of some sort.” I knew he was independently wealthy but had no idea of the amount that might be involved in a case of this sort.
West waved that aside. “That would be the least of my troubles. If it were only the family and a neat little lawsuit, I could weather it. But you can’t imagine what a Godsend this is for Hobson and Shortt. They’ve been busy for weeks, keeping notes on my mistakes, real and imagined. They’ll start up committees of inquiry and investigation and hound me out of Arkham, and out of my mind too.”
“Have you considered leaving Arkham? You should be able to do well anywhere.”
“You’d think so, but there’s also the Clapham-Lee business. A war on two fronts, I’ll have, just like the bloody Kaiser. And I think my brothers are working on a little project of their own.”
“What Clapham-Lee business? You’ll have to tell me more about that. I really don’t understand it.”
“Neither does Edward Clapham-Lee, although he thinks he does.” West laughed again.
“I have to ask you, Herbert. Did you kill Clapham-Lee?”
“Not if you know where to look. But what I did or didn’t isn’t really the issue. The issue is one of perception. Edward Clapham-Lee, along with a cadre of lawyers, police and journalists, is likely to be hanging around my neck for the foreseeable future, sending out allegations of dark deeds committed in the shadow of the Great War. And Hobson and Shortt will be sniffing around too – well, I’d rather be stood up against a wall and shot. That at least would finish the business quickly.”
“I think they do that in France. Here in America it’s hanging, usually.” This was my sorry attempt to deflect his increasing hysteria.
“Well, even that would be preferable. Oh, and – ” He laughed yet again, a little too heartily. “This is priceless. The Wild Man of Arkham is free once more and possibly still wild. Of course, you and I know him as John Hocks.”
“I read about it in the newspaper. I thought about telling you, but decided you probably knew.”
“I did indeed. Mr. Hocks paid me a visit one evening. Unfortunately for him, I was not ‘at home,’ as they say.”
“What do you mean, he paid you a visit?”
“Just what I say. He came to the door. When Andre opened it, he ran away, but I’m sure I’ve seen him slinking about in the shrubbery since then. No doubt he too has a score to settle with me, and is just waiting for his chance. I don’t dare go about unarmed these days.” He pulled a pistol from inside his jacket, a gesture I found more disturbing than reassuring.
He stood up, returning the weapon to its place of concealment. “Look, Charles, I won’t keep you much longer. I’m thinking up a plan of sorts to deal with all this, and I’ll need your help. Have you taken your summer holiday yet?”
I couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d asked me to dance. “No, I’m scheduled to take it in a couple of weeks. Why?”
“Could you advance it by a week or so – say to next week? This plan of mine – it should take you four or five days at most. Well, maybe a week. That’s i
f I decide to go through with it. It’s… drastic. But it cannot possibly succeed without you. Will you help me?”
When had I ever refused him my help? I didn’t like the signs of paranoia I saw in him, or the tinge of hysteria in his manner, but I thought the fact that he had a plan in mind was a good sign. “Of course I’ll help. And I should have no difficulty changing my vacation to next week.”
“Good. Now Charles, I may ask you to drop everything and come in the next several days. If I go through with this thing it’ll take all our time and attention. And nerve too.”
“Like our old experiments,” I said.
“Just like that.”
He did not seem ready to leave. Twice he started for the door and both times came back. There was a moment of awkward silence, then he said, “At a time like this, I wish I … It would be good to have someone who…” He came closer to me.
“Charles,” he said, “it’s not… lack of desire, but desires that are abnormal.”
I had no idea what he was talking about but that word, ‘abnormal,’ reminded me of his obsession with what he thought of as his flawed heredity. These troubles must have reawakened it.
He stood silent before me. The dim light from the lamp in the corner cast shadows beneath his cheekbones and in the caves of his eyes. He had disarranged his hair by running his hand through it and it fell over his forehead. In that moment I felt pity for him, something I once would not have thought possible.
He was now so near to me that I caught a faint scent of narcissus, probably from the stuff he used on his hair. His eyes were rapt, enormous, his lips slightly parted. Slowly, he raised his hand. His fingers brushed my cheek, the line of my jaw, flitted lightly over my lips. He made as if to snatch his hand back, but I caught it in both of mine. In my ears I heard a high, sweet, constant note, as though a harp-string had been plucked and reverberated in the silent room.
I held his hand, thinking, Of course he’s troubled, and for the first time in his life he needs simple comfort from another human being, but he doesn’t know how to ask for it, with all his nonsense about abnormality. Gently, I drew him toward me and embraced him. His slight body was full of tension. “Herbert, it’ll be all right,” I said. “You’ll find a way out of it. And I’ll help you, you can be sure of that.”
He relaxed a little and laid his head on my shoulder like a tired child. The moment lengthened as if to eternity, then passed. He drew away from me with a sigh.
I wanted to reassure him further, but didn’t know how. “Herbert, if you’re thinking... I know about you. And it’s all right – ”
“It’s all right with you, is it? Are you sure?” he asked, mockingly. He kissed me on the lips, hard. It felt like an attack, and I stepped back involuntarily, wiping the back of my hand over my mouth.
West laughed. “Is it still all right? I admit, there have been times when I’ve wondered about you. Do you ever wonder? I can tell you now, you probably don’t know what you have inside of you. Maybe you never will.” He moved toward the door, then turned back. “Charles, you’ve been a good friend to me. Better than I deserve.” And then he was gone, into the darkness. I stood for long moments with my hand pressed to my lips, until the perfume of night-scented stocks had obliterated the scent of narcissus and the turmoil inside me had subsided.
The next day I went to Dr. Armitage and told him that urgent business required me to take my vacation the following week instead of the one after. He readily agreed. “And what are you going to be doing with your two weeks?” he asked.
“Well, I have business here in town first. Then Cape Cod for a week or so.”
“Ah, you young fellows have all the fun! Footloose on the Cape, and I’ll bet you won’t be lonely, either.”
I nearly started to laugh. Under the circumstances, I thought, that was quite ironic. “I don’t intend to be alone, Dr. Armitage,” I replied.
“Good luck to you.” He waved me out of his office.
I had decided that I needed an objective opinion on the matters that West had told me about. Sarah Enright was pretty well my only source of information in the Arkham medical community, apart from West himself. While I valued her insights, I needed to talk to one of the doctors, who would be better able to judge how plausible were West’s ideas about a conspiracy. After some thought, I remembered John Billington. He had taken over West’s practice in 1914. Since then, he had moved it to Bolton, as that was where most of his patients lived. But I was fairly certain he retained ties with the Arkham medical community and with Miskatonic. I telephoned him and made an appointment.
Billington’s office was about half way up the hill from the river, with a view over its sinuous curves. Behind the building, the walls of the Cathedral soared skyward.
Billington greeted me cheerfully. He was a stocky, brown-haired fellow. With his shirt sleeves rolled up, his vest half-unbuttoned and jacket discarded on a nearby chair, he was a complete contrast to West. I had to admit that were I in need of medical help just now I would feel better in Billington’s hands.
“And what can I do for you today, Charles Milburn? I don’t believe I’ve seen you as a patient before.”
“I haven’t come to see you in a professional capacity today, Dr. Billington,” I said. “Not for my own sake, anyway. I would like your opinion on a matter concerning our mutual friend, Dr. Herbert West.”
“West! What’s he gotten himself into now?” He smiled, but a small frown creased his forehead as he spoke.
“Well, I’m not certain. Suppose I describe the situation as Dr. West has explained it to me.” I laid out the main points of the Hurley business, delicately hinting at West’s suggestion that Drs. Hobson and Shortt had inveigled him into making unwise choices. Of course I omitted any mention of the revivification, merely suggesting that West had managed somehow to resuscitate the patient, but with unfortunate results. I said nothing about the Clapham-Lee matter, either. West had refused to give me any particulars, and it was unlikely that Billington would know anything about it anyway.
When I had finished, Billington sat for a while without speaking. He lit an evil-smelling pipe and puffed on it. Then he got up and looked out of the window. Finally, he said, “West is a peculiar fellow. I can’t say I know him well, even though we had some classes together. And there were all those discussions at his dinner parties, of course. But he wasn’t exactly forthcoming about himself.
“At first I had an idea he was a pure materialistic optimist. But about the time he went off to the War I had begun to think otherwise, that it was just a veneer over something else. I guess I started to wonder when he pulled that graduation stunt. Remember that?” He laughed a little.
“Well, anyway, eventually I began to think he was a lot more finely balanced than he seemed. As long as things were going in a way that he could cope with, increased intensity didn’t seem to matter – he’d just spin faster, you might say, and leave the rest of us in the dust. But if something came along that he couldn’t fit into that peculiar world-view of his, it would throw him off completely for a while. Then – well, it was such a contrast – near-hysteria, wild accusations, a kind of self-destructive mania. Luckily, these episodes never lasted very long. He’d think up some sort of plan and be in control again.”
“But would it be a good plan? I mean, a reasonable one?”
“Well, they usually worked out. There might have been better ways to deal with the situations, whatever they were. But West always came out on top in the end.”
“Dr. Billington, would you say that Dr. West is… well, crazy?”
“No, only that he doesn’t always cope well with uncertainty. I always wondered how he managed over in France during the War.”
“Do you think he has any reason to suspect a conspiracy against him?”
“Not a conspiracy, no. But I know for a fact that he has enemies. Serious ones, going right back to his Med. School days. That Halsey business, for one thing. Sure, a lot of those old guys are out of th
e picture now, but a few are still there, and they have some big grudges against West. You see, he has an unfortunate tendency to go a little too far. It’s totally uncalled-for too, like throwing rocks at a wasp nest. I heard him thank old Shortt once for the amount of business he generated for West’s father – the undertaker, you know. Shortt was going through a phase where he lost a lot of patients. West said it so politely, too, and in such a complimentary tone, that Shortt just about fell for it. When the real meaning seeped through, he almost burst. By then West was down the hall, laughing his head off.
“That kind of thing doesn’t win many friends. Or the deep-freeze treatment he gives people sometimes. But then West, you see, takes on this air of martyrdom, claims people hate him, et cetera. And he’s never managed to grow out of this habit.
“All those innovations of his, too – he’d rush ahead and use them on patients, then complain of persecution when something went wrong and he was reprimanded. In fact, that’s one place where I was pretty sure he’d come to grief in the end. He’s good, really good, but a doctor can’t use patients as experimental subjects willy-nilly. Something is sure to go wrong, and now probably something has. But he does have enemies, yes. Does this help, or have I just confused you with my ramblings?”
I assured him that he had been most helpful. As I was leaving, something else occurred to me. “Dr. Billington, have you heard… can you tell me anything about that fellow that escaped from Sefton, the Wild Man?”
Billington eyed me curiously for a moment, as if wondering what my question had to do with West. “I’m not up on his case, naturally,” he said, “but I gather his physical state is not good. He’s subject to convulsions, apparently, but given his history cannot be regarded as anything but dangerous. Surely you haven’t seen him?”
“No, I haven’t,” I said, “and I hope I won’t. Goodbye, Dr. Billington.”
“West is lucky to have a friend on his side. I hope he realizes that. Good luck.” But I noticed that he didn’t offer his own help.
That Saturday, after I had finished work, I left my office with the good wishes of my staff ringing in my ears. I had two weeks of leisure time ahead of me, except for the days I had committed to West’s plan, whatever it might be. By Tuesday, having heard nothing from him, I was beginning to hope that his troubles had resolved themselves. After a late lunch, I fired up Alma’s old Ford, which I had bought from her after her return from Europe, and headed toward Kingsport. I needed to get away from Arkham and its troubles. I turned off on the same dirt road that Alma had taken on that long-ago day before the Great War, when she, West and I had spent a lazy afternoon on the high cliffs.
The place was just the same. Here I still am, it seemed to say. You come and go, but I remain. The wind blew over the cliff top, stirring the grass tussocks that clung to the thin soil on the rock. On the far horizon was a bank of high-piled cumulus clouds, their battlements and crenellations like the gates of heaven. I had intended to walk north, into a valley and up the slope beyond to the higher cliff top on the other side. But when I descended, I found a steep, brush-grown gully that discouraged further exploration. Out of the wind it was hot and airless. A dense green smell of growing things filled the place. No birds sang, but a humming of insects told of multitudinous beings pursuing their lives in this remote place. Underfoot, leaves of past summers had accumulated in a thick brown mat of humus through which the green grass had pushed. I stood for long minutes, relishing the atmosphere, so alien to me after my desk-bound existence. Eventually, the heat and insects became oppressive and my imagination began to turn every moving shadow into the shambling figure of John Hocks. I turned and toiled back up the way I had come.
Lying down on the cliff’s edge, I looked over the rim. Immediately below me, rocky shelves and ridges thrust out, obscuring the narrow strip of gravelly beach and making me forget that there was a drop of several hundred feet beneath my elbows. It was rather exhilarating to lie there, as though suspended in the blue air of high summer, with the constant wind raking through my hair. For some time, I lay and watched the clouds. They slowly reshaped themselves, new forms ever arising, a constant succession of shapes superimposing themselves one on the other in an almost orderly way that reminded me of polyphonic choral music, where the overlapping voices make shapes of sound. I heard again the Miserere of Gregorio Allegri, as it had been sung at the Cathedral recently. The achingly beautiful, ethereal melody floated to my mind’s ear like the finest wisps of cirrus cloud high above.
Tibi soli peccavi, et malum coram te feci;
Ut iustificeris in sermonibus tuis,
Et vincas cum iudicaris.
Ecce enim in iniquitatibus conceptus sum
Et in peccatis concepit me mater mea.
Against you alone have I sinned and done evil
In your sight: it is right that you pass sentence
And just that you give judgment.
For behold, I was born to transgression,
And my mother conceived me in sin.
Ecce enim veritatem dilexisti;
Incerta et occulta sapientiae tuae
Manifestasti mihi.
Asperges me hyssopo, et mundabor:
Lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.
Yet since you delight in truth,
You have shown me the
Secrets of your wisdom.
Sprinkle me with hyssop, and I will be clean.
Wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
For some reason these words from the Fifty-First Psalm reminded me of West. I should have asked him to come along today, I thought. It would have done him good. Perhaps next week, after the business, whatever it is, is finished. I fell to thinking then, about West and his troubles, real or imagined. After my talk with John Billington I had sought out Sarah Enright and asked her if she had heard anything about the Hurley incident.
“Yes I did. The nurses that assisted at that operation are friends of mine. They said it was very strange. Just as Dr. West was finishing, he checked Hurley’s vital signs and pronounced him dead. ‘Thanks to you,’ he said to Dr. Campbell, and left the room. The nurses didn’t know what to do and Campbell had made himself scarce. They talked about it for a while and decided to go to Dr. Shortt. Shortt wanted to see Hurley for himself, so they all went back to the operating room. And there was Dr. West, only this time he said Hurley was alive. And he was, too. Shortt checked for himself. The trouble was, when he came out of the anaesthesia, he was like a child.”
“Sarah, were your friends convinced that Hurley was dead?”
“Well, I imagine they took Dr. West’s word for it. Neither of them would have gotten a stethoscope and listened to his heart, I don’t think, but they would have felt for a pulse in his wrist. If they said there wasn’t one, I believe it. And he wasn’t breathing, either.”
“And how is he now?”
“Stronger, but still can’t talk or do anything for himself. Maybe he’ll come out of it, maybe not.”
It occurred to me that Hurley’s diminished capacities could have been caused solely by the oxygen deprivation resulting from over-anaesthesia. That is, even if he had not died and been revivified, he might have ended up in the same state. In which case the fault was entirely Dr. Campbell’s. From what West had told me, it was nearly impossible to predict someone’s post-revivification mental capabilities. But of course he could not very well present this argument to colleagues and a public who were ignorant of, and not receptive to, the entire concept of revivification.
Under the sun and wind my anxieties diminished somewhat. Perhaps Hurley would recover. And West, with his resourcefulness, would surely come up with some way of confounding his enemies, even as I had tried to reassure him the other night.
The other night… Only then did I permit myself to think about what had passed between him and myself at the end of his visit to me. A need for simple human comfort, I had explained it to myself then. But I could no longer deny the inter
nal cataclysm I had experienced when I had held him in my arms. Even his harsh and mocking kiss had excited me as much as it had repelled.
While I had thought of West as a fortunate being in the centre of things, I had admired him like a distant, brilliant star. But when I learned something of his history I found that we had things in common. Could it be that the most important difference between us was that as a child I had known that my father was a good man, and that my mother loved me?
Thinking of these things, I drifted into sleep, and had a dream.
West and I were walking up a steep, grass-grown slope toward a belt of storm-twisted oaks. Above us, the sky was luminous with dawn. Beyond the oaks, the ground fell away sharply into a gully. I hesitated at climbing down, but West did not.
“Come along, Charles,” he said, with a characteristic trace of impatience. “Look, it’s quite easy. Here, take my hand and I’ll make sure you don’t slip.” Despite the impatience, he smiled up at me. The slanting light touched his hair with fire, but left his face in shadow. Somehow, we found ourselves on the far side of the gully. Before us now was a house built on the very rim of the cliff. West went to the door without hesitation. “Here it is at last,” he said. “This is the place where I will be married.” He opened it and went in. I followed, full of fear and sorrow which clutched at my heart. By the time my eyes had adjusted to the green dimness inside, West had opened another door in the far wall of the house, one that swung out into sun-shot space.
“Herbert, wait!” I cried in a panic. I ran forward, but my progress was slow, as though I ran through thigh-deep water. Just as I reached him, he said, “You’ve been a good friend to me, Charles. I’ll see you on the other side.” He stepped over the threshold into a blaze of light. I tried to follow but could see only swirling mists before me. Far below, a white wave crest spent itself on rocks and sand. Terrified, I jerked myself backwards, and woke up.
A paralyzing sense of loss and loneliness filled me. The bright day had faded and an enormous copper-coloured moon was rising out of the pale mists that hid the place where the sky and sea joined. I got up, feeling cold and stiff. It took a long time for the mood of the dream to disperse. Even when I arrived at home I was haunted by it still.
That night I did something unusual for me. I went to Water Street, to a tavern I knew, and drank until I no longer cared much about anything. It was like a crude version of one of West’s brain-clearings, and without his diverting company. But it worked.
The Friendship of Mortals Page 30
