Mobius Dick

by Andrew Crumey

  She made a further note on her clipboard. ‘Who were they?’

  ‘Vernon Shaw was General Secretary of the British Communist Party. Heinrich Behring was a famous author whose novel The Angel Returns was made into a film.’

  ‘Do you recall seeing it?’ she asked.

  ‘It was in black and white, and everybody stood up for the national anthem at the end.’

  ‘Can you sing the national anthem for me?’

  He hummed the tune but couldn’t remember the words until he got to we’ll keep the Red Flag flying here.

  ‘That’s fine, Harry,’ she said, then brought out a little torch from her pocket, sat down on the edge of his bed and shone the beam into his right eye. ‘Very good,’ she said soothingly as she tugged his eyelid.

  ‘What can you see?’

  She gave no reply; merely switched off the torch, returned it to her pocket as she stood up, then said, ‘Priscilla Morgan showed me what you’ve been writing.’ She described to him the latest instalment of a story about someone called John Ringer that he had no recollection of having written. ‘As far as I can tell,’ she said, ‘it bears no relation to fact, except perhaps in one or two places. Some of the characters resemble real people, almost in the manner of a dream.’

  Priscilla had already explained this to him. ‘Penis Man is based on Heinrich Behring,’ he said.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Dr Blake replied. ‘In any case, it gives us a good idea of how the AMD mind attempts to construct an alternative reality. I hope you’ll continue with it.’ She lifted a page on her clipboard. ‘Now, let’s see if you have any new symptoms to report. Fainting fits?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Dizziness?’

  ‘Only if I move too abruptly.’

  ‘Any pains outside your body?’

  This gave Harry pause for thought. ‘I’m not entirely sure I understand what you mean.’

  ‘Oh well,’ she said casually, ‘that means the symptom hasn’t occurred. Blurring of vision?’

  ‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘Do some people with AMD get pains outside their own bodies?’

  Dr Blake nodded brusquely. ‘Blurred vision?’ she repeated, preparing to make a tick on her sheet if necessary.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But these external pains … what do they feel like?’

  Dr Blake looked at him quizzically. ‘I suppose they feel like any other pain.’

  ‘Stabbing?’ he asked. ‘Throbbing? Dull? Nagging?’

  ‘I expect so.’

  ‘Except that they come from outside?’

  ‘That’s right, Harry.’ To a clinician, the most exotic and extreme experiences that humanity has to offer can become ticks or blanks on a piece of paper.

  ‘How can you have a pain outside your body?’

  She said, ‘How can you have one in your foot or your stomach, when really we know they’re all inside our heads?’

  ‘Might I, for example, develop a sore chair?’

  ‘I believe such things were reported by a patient in southern Italy,’ she told him calmly.

  ‘And when that patient went out for a walk, did the pain go with him, or stay in the chair?’

  ‘It went with him,’ she said. ‘It was in his wheelchair.’

  Harry tried again. ‘Let’s say I was to become afflicted by a sore window.’

  ‘A window pain, Harry?’ She gave a patronizing laugh.

  ‘Yes, suppose I was to start feeling pain in that window over there. Would the pain get stronger or weaker depending how far I moved from it? If I went wandering around the hospital and got lost, could I use my window pain as a homing device?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ she said dismissively. ‘If the symptom occurs then perhaps we’ll find out. Premonitions?’ Harry realized she must be moving on in her list of symptoms. ‘Do you find yourself remembering things before they happen?’

  ‘Don’t tell me your Italian fellow in a wheelchair developed second sight.’

  ‘I believe it’s only a theoretical symptom that hasn’t yet been reported,’ she said. ‘There’s always a first time.’

  Harry was still having too much trouble recalling the past, he explained, to worry much about what was yet to come. Dr Blake looked up from her checklist.

  ‘But you do know what’s going to happen to John Ringer and Laura, don’t you?’ she said.

  ‘I can’t even remember writing about them. And besides, they’re made up.’

  ‘Are they?’ she asked. ‘Can you be sure of that?’

  It was Dr Blake who had described Harry’s tale as an alternative reality; but ever since Clara had shown him the newspaper article about Dr Blake’s experiment, Harry had known that whatever Dr Blake told him was open to doubt.

  She said, ‘Your writing is a form of dream activity. That’s why you forget it as soon as you stop; it’s as if you’re waking up. But unlike ordinary dreams, your periods of altered consciousness have their own consistent logic. You become another person. You’re even able to get out of bed and take exercise.’

  Harry was surprised. His AMD alter-ego was in better physical shape than he was. ‘When I’m in these trances, do I speak?’

  ‘Sometimes, though you tend to be morose, petulant and uncommunicative. Priscilla finds this consistent with your new-found literary vocation. But what about when you’re asleep?’ she asked him. ‘Which person are you then?’

  ‘How am I supposed to know that?’ Harry asked helplessly.

  ‘Do you recall any dreams?’

  ‘I think I had one last night.’

  ‘A genuine dream?’

  ‘I can’t be sure,’ he said.

  ‘Do you have sexual dreams?’ she enquired blandly.

  ‘Not last night. It was about submarines, I think.’

  ‘That sounds sexual to me,’ she said authoritatively. ‘And when you have sexual dreams, do they ever include me?’

  ‘Is this for your checklist?’

  ‘I need to know these things, Harry. As part of your treatment.’

  There was no treatment; Harry knew this. He told Dr Blake he had not had any sexual dreams about her, and she almost looked disappointed.

  ‘Have you ever dreamt about me at all?’ she asked.

  ‘Not that I’m aware of.’

  This gave her a grain of hope. ‘We mustn’t dismiss the possibility that your dreams about me have all been forgotten, perhaps selectively so. I’ve had very few AMD patients, male or female, who did not at some stage dream they were having sex with me, or watching me have sex with someone else. It seems almost symptomatic, but I need to get further data on this before I can definitely add it to the list. Harry, I want you to pay very careful attention to your dreams, and note what happens when I appear in them.’

  Then she looked at her clipboard again, and asked, ‘Do you ever dream that you’re awake?’

  ‘Yes, always.’

  ‘Never that you’re asleep?’

  ‘Not that I can recall.’

  She continued, ‘Do you ever dream that you’re somebody or something else? You know, a patient in Argentina recently dreamed she was a fruit bat.’

  ‘What’s it like to be a fruit bat?’

  Dr Blake didn’t know. ‘The journal paper reported only the content of the dream, Harry, not what it was like to have it.’

  ‘When the woman woke up, could she remember what it was like to be a bat?’

  ‘I don’t think so, Harry. Since she had AMD she wasn’t very good at remembering anything, and if she thought she knew what it was like to be a bat she was almost certainly wrong. She only knew what it would feel like for a human with AMD to believe she once dreamt she felt like a bat, which hardly counts, really.’ Then Dr Blake asked him, ‘Do you ever doubt that you’re awake? Right now, I mean. Are you completely comfortable with the notion that you’re fully conscious, Harry, or do you feel as if you might be dreaming?’

  She was quite serious. He said, ‘Are there AMD patients who can’t tell when they’re awake?
’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Dr Blake. ‘So let’s try and suppose, for the sake of argument, that you’re dreaming all this, right now.’

  It was not hard. ‘It would be so much better if this were a dream,’ he said.

  ‘Well, Harry, if we agree you’re dreaming, we can see that you lied to me earlier. And lying, we have found, is one of your most persistent symptoms.’

  ‘When did I lie?’

  ‘You said you never dream about me. Yet here I am before you.’

  ‘Yes, but I’m awake!’

  ‘Only for the sake of argument, Harry. Did you lie to me about anything else? Premonitions, perhaps?’

  ‘No, I honestly don’t know what you’re going to say next.’

  ‘You mean you’re powerless to control your dreams?’

  ‘Isn’t everybody?’

  ‘Dreams are the work of the imagination, Harry. If you don’t control your own thoughts, then who does? You’ve been dreaming about me quite a lot, haven’t you?’

  His mouth had become quite dry – a result of his medication, perhaps, or else something to do with the way she had allowed her hand to brush his arm; the way she was leaning closer to the bed, so that he could smell what must have been a combination of liquid from an expensive bottle and vapour from her own smooth body, mingled with a clinical aura of pathological cleanliness.

  Or else he only imagined it. She was standing clear of him again, absorbed by the checklist that summed up his irrational existence. She made a note, then directed her cool gaze at him once more.

  ‘I want you to realize that AMD can affect a person’s judgement and perceptions in quite a profound way. If you were to leave hospital right now, you’d be a danger to yourself and others.’

  ‘Am I still supposed to be dreaming this?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘For the sake of argument.’

  ‘I’ve no idea what you mean.’

  ‘You told me I was dreaming, only a moment ago.’

  ‘No I didn’t.’

  ‘You did! You wanted to know if I have sexual dreams about you.’

  She looked flustered. ‘I never said anything of the kind. Is this a lie, Harry, or a false memory?’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said meekly.

  ‘You can see what I mean about being a danger to yourself. We even have to be careful about who you see while you’re here.’

  ‘What about your other patient Clara?’ Harry asked. ‘Can I meet her? We could exchange false memories.’

  Dr Blake looked momentarily surprised. ‘We don’t have any patient named Clara,’ she said calmly. ‘Now, Harry, when you wake up …’

  ‘I am awake.’

  ‘Yes, I mean, when you next wake up after you’ve had some sleep, I want you to try and remember your dream in as much detail as possible.’

  ‘What if I don’t have one?’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll think of something,’ she assured him. She clicked her pen and returned it to her breast pocket, then walked to the door. As she reached it, she turned and said, in what was clearly meant to be a casual manner, ‘By the way, that journalist woman – Laura – did she ever say anything to you about possible causes of AMD?’

  ‘No,’ Harry replied. ‘According to you, Laura is a fictional character. And I’m not dreaming any of this.’

  ‘Good, Harry,’ she said. ‘Very good.’

  ENLIGHTENMENT

  Ringer presented himself in Mrs Moffat’s dining room at half past eight precisely and settled himself at the table. ‘Here you are,’ his landlady declared as she came and deposited in front of him a large and steaming bowl of porridge.

  Laura had as good as warned him. There were mental problems round here: premature Alzheimer’s, and a strange new condition causing false memories. Laura would be going up to Burgh House later to find out more; and Ringer could only hope she’d have a better breakfast in her stomach than the ‘full Scottish’ in front of him, which contained none of those countless varieties of sausage Mrs Moffat had kept going on about, but instead amounted to this single bowl of congealing wallpaper paste looking slightly less nutritious and appetizing than the place mat it stood on. But in the presence of a sick woman, Ringer felt the need to be tactful. He could always eat the place mat.

  ‘Everything all right?’ Mrs Moffat asked, her plump mass sensing the uneasiness her guest now exuded.

  ‘Fine,’ he told her.

  ‘I only put in a wee bit of salt,’ she assured him. ‘There’s sugar on the table as well, if you need any.’

  Neither additive appeared likely to turn the over-heated baby food she’d presented him with into a fair substitute for the promised fry-up. So great was his disappointment, his nose was even beginning to hallucinate the smoky tang of bacon.

  ‘Now,’ she said, ‘I’ll go and get on with the rest of your breakfast.’ This comment lifted his spirits. ‘You wanted slice and links together, didn’t you? I hope you’ll have room for it all after your porridge.’

  That smell of bacon was genuine; Mrs Moffat’s boiled oats could go to fill a few cracks in the brickwork where they belonged. ‘Actually,’ Ringer called out to her as she went to the kitchen, ‘I didn’t ask for porridge yesterday.’

  She came back. ‘Did you not? I was sure you did. Well, why did you not say so?’ She chuckled as she lifted the bowl. ‘Really, there’s no need to be polite, you know.’

  She went away, and when she returned she was carrying a pot of coffee and a mug. ‘You still want coffee, I take it?’ she asked teasingly. ‘Haven’t changed your mind about that, have you?’ She’d evidently decided it was Ringer’s memory at fault, not hers.

  ‘Do you know anything about Burgh House?’ he asked.

  Her brow furrowed. ‘Hospital up the hill? What about it?’

  ‘I hear they’ve been doing a lot of work there. Looks like they’re expecting to be busy.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ she said, going back to the kitchen.

  Ringer couldn’t tell if she was being evasive, or else genuinely didn’t know. He chose not to raise the matter again when she returned to the table a few minutes later bearing a heaving plate of calories greasy enough to see him through the day. Crisp lean bacon; two kinds of sausage as promised; a glistening egg that ran when he pricked its golden yolk, smothering the tasty triangle that Mrs Moffat called a ‘potato scone’. This was another item Ringer had never asked for, but he didn’t mind. Soft brown mushrooms and a fried tomato filled the remaining square inches of plate, and Mrs Moffat left him to gobble it all down.

  Afterwards, finishing his coffee, Ringer brought out his Q-phone and called Don, who sounded cautious when he first heard Ringer’s voice, unsure if his former supervisor had chosen to join the project after all.

  ‘You were right,’ Ringer told him. ‘I checked my calculation and found the mistake. Now I can raise the safety limit by three orders of magnitude.’

  Ringer could detect a sigh of relief at the other end. ‘That’s great, John. I’ll see you later, and we can discuss this in more detail. I can’t think of any other contentious issues in your paper; but you do realize we’ve got some top people with us today, and we don’t want any gaffes.’

  Ringer told Don there was nothing to worry about, and they fixed a time to meet. Then as Ringer hung up, another cartoon envelope made its way across the phone’s display screen. He read the new message. Call me: Harry. So he had a name at last. Now all Ringer needed to know was why Harry kept pestering him.

  He got up from the table as Mrs Moffat came back. ‘Everything all right?’ she asked.

  ‘Wonderful,’ he told her. ‘It’ll last me all day. I’m going to Craigcarron.’

  ‘My Jim worked twenty years there,’ she said, starting to clear the table. ‘Been gone nearly five.’ She lifted the empty plate. ‘We thought the cancer might be from his work, but they said it wasn’t a kind he could get that way. The company looked after us very well, so they did. But that’s all going now
.’

  She smiled; an old lady’s look of stoical resignation, or of apathy. Ringer took his leave and went up to his room to get ready for what lay ahead.

  He was going inside the wire. He’d made his pact with the devil; now Don would open the gate and show him the secret of his mirrored machine. At another door stood Laura. For the sake of one he would betray the other.

  Soon he was prepared. Wrapped in his winter coat he went back downstairs and stepped out into the cold morning air, puffing grey swirls of breath as he went to his car and found it sugared with a fine layer of frost. Once he got it going he trundled along the main street and saw Ardnahanish properly by daylight for the first time, finding it a prettier place than he’d first thought. Again he saw the brown sign at the end of the village, pointing uphill to Burgh House Hotel.

  Ringer decided to follow it, turning left and finding himself ascending a steep, wide road that looked newly upgraded. Soon the trees gave way to barren scrub, the views lengthened, his ears popped. Winding up around a bend that took him onto the mountain’s far side, he got a glimpse of the distant hospital; a group of buildings standing in complete solitude. And coming up quickly ahead, a lowered barrier painted red and white, and a roadside hut from which a uniformed guard was emerging.

  Ringer came to a halt and wound down his window. ‘I’m looking for the hotel,’ he said.

  ‘Did you follow the sign from Ardnahanish?’ The security guard was plump, cheerful and evidently starved of conversation in his little hut, where pop music crackled from a portable radio. ‘I do wish they’d get rid of that notice. We keep telling them.’

  ‘Telling them what?’ asked Ringer, playing dumb.

  ‘Hotel closed a long while back. It’s a private clinic now. I’m afraid you’ll have to turn back.’

  ‘What a pity,’ said Ringer. ‘Any idea where I might be able to find a place for the night?’

  ‘Best try Ardnahanish or Craigcarron.’ While the guard began to give directions, Ringer got out of his car to listen.

  ‘Turn right at the junction?’ Ringer parroted, glancing around to try and take in whatever details he could. In the hut, a newspaper lay open, a walkie-talkie rested beside it. Further up the road, a minibus was reaching the main hospital building, disappearing into what was probably an underground car park.