by David Karp
“Why, yes, I guess so.”
“I can’t blame you for being a little hesitant,” Richard said understandingly. “You have been given a rather rough going-over.”
“Oh, everyone’s been very nice to me, Mr. Richard. The hearing examiners were particularly kind and thoughtful. The only one who’s given me a ‘rough going-over,’ as you put it, was Mr. Conger. Frankly, I don’t understand his attitude.”
“Well, Conger is a rather suspicious cuss, Professor. He’s a good man but a trifle officious and overbearing.”
“That’s exactly the way I felt. I’m glad you people know about him. I don’t want to hurt the man’s position or anything like that, you understand,” Richard nodded quickly, understandingly, “but he treated me as if I were mentally deficient or trying to hide something. I mean, some of the things he suggested about me—well, they weren’t true at all.”
“Yes, of course we know that. You see, some of Conger’s questions and assumptions were deliberately provocative. We wanted to find out what your reactions were.”
“Oh?” Burden asked, interested. “You mean, some of the things he said to me weren’t true at all?”
“Of course not,” Richard smiled. “For instance—the remark about your reports. It was just a riser question. You know, a question or a statement intended to get a rise out of you.”
“He certainly got a rise out of me,” Burden said with a chuckle, recalling the way he had felt and acted in Conger’s office.
“The Department works in many different ways, Professor Burden, because we have many different sorts of people to deal with. You can understand, of course, why Conger should use the standard techniques on you.”
“Yes, of course. I mean, it’s his job. I know that. He has to do his job. But I just had the feeling that he wasn’t discerning enough.”
“Well, as I said, Conger is a fairly ordinary, unimaginative sort. Between the two of us, I’ve always disliked the man. I’ve had a few other cases like yours.”
“Is that a fact?” Burden leaned forward intimately.
“I wouldn’t want you to repeat this, Professor,” Richard said with a quiet warning shake of his hand.
“Of course not,” Burden said, interested.
“But frankly, I’ve had my fill of Frank Conger. I mean, some things are excusable in an investigator—but this is unfair. I mean, there would have been no need for a hearing or for a physical examination or for my visit if Conger had used simple common sense in your case.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” Burden said thoughtfully. “He’s probably started a terrific chain of events in motion by his attitude toward me.”
“Oh, Lord,” Richard said with a shocked smile, “the paper work, the memoranda, the schedules, the reports, the assignments—you know, every hearing entails an enormous amount of preparation. Did you realize all of your reports for the past ten years had to be read and abstracted for the hearing?”
“Good grief,” Burden said with a sense of shock and awe. Evidently he hadn’t the foggiest notion of the amount of time and effort the Department had to expend to give him his hearing. Burden’s resentment against Conger mounted with the thought of all that might not have had to happen if Conger had been less zealous and more perceptive. “If I had realized what it meant I never would have asked for a hearing.”
“Oh, you were perfectly within your rights, Professor. And frankly, I think you acted wisely in that respect. I mean, we owe you a debt of gratitude for showing up Conger. This whole mess goes into his rating file.”
“Ummm,” Burden said thoughtfully. It sounded serious for Conger and he was going to speak up at this point in Conger’s defense but Richard went on, “But, after all, in an organization this size there’s bound to be an enormous amount of official stupidity. That can’t be helped. I don’t know what breeds these blind spots in people in the Department. Maybe they’re in their jobs too long without examining the purposes of their work with any real understanding. I mean, some of the minor things—so incredibly ridiculous.”
“Ummm,” Burden agreed quickly, “like that bouquet, for instance.”
Richard stopped and looked bewildered for a moment.
“Those flowers in the vase,” Burden said, “they’re false. Paper flowers.”
“Oh?” Richard said politely.
“Well, I mean, if you’re going to use paper flowers and rubber ferns—why put them in fresh water?” Burden asked. Richard looked at the vase and turned back to Burden. He was smiling, but Burden saw that the agreeable Mr. Richard didn’t understand. “Well, don’t you see the fresh water?”
“Why, yes, of course,” Richard said. To Burden it seemed as if Richard’s eyes had narrowed slightly with puzzlement.
“But—the incongruity of it—using real water with false flowers. If you’re going to use paper flowers, use them, but don’t try to fool people into thinking they’re real by placing them in real water.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow you, Professor Burden,” Richard said, genuinely puzzled.
“Isn’t it obvious that it’s an official stupidity to treat paper flowers as if they were real flowers?” Burden was slightly disturbed by Richard’s failure to understand the point. It was really so simple—the dishonesty was so manifest.
“Well,” Richard said with a bland smile, “people have their reasons for everything, don’t they? But what Conger’s reasons were for failing to understand that you’re a cultured man—” Richard stopped when he saw Burden’s face. “Professor Burden, what’s wrong?”
Burden had been looking at Richard with a hard look. There was something about the man’s failure to see the dishonesty of paper flowers in fresh water that upset him.
“You don’t understand what’s wrong with putting paper flowers in real water?” Burden asked, watching Richard narrowly.
“Well, really, Professor,” Richard began with a smile that quite suddenly disappeared. Even his voice seemed to change subtly in tone when he spoke again, “After all, you use paper flowers as an illusion. If you can aid the illusion by adding real water to it—what’s wrong with that?”
“But the paper flowers are obviously frauds—”
“Didn’t they fool you?” Richard asked coldly.
“Yes,” Burden said after a long moment, “they did.”
“Then they obviously aren’t as fraudulent in their appearance as you say they are.”
Burden listened to the remark and fell silent. There was something very wrong with this pleasant young man who seemed, at first, so understanding, so genuinely warm and nonofficial.
“Well, anyway, flowers aside.” Richard once again picked up the thread of intimate warmth and companionability he had been using, but even he sensed that something had gone wrong, for he stopped and waited.
“Have you any more questions?” Burden asked in a calm, cool voice.
“I guess not, Professor Burden,” Richard said, rising now and closing his notebook, “as I said—this was just a routine visit.”
“I hope you can arrange for my physical examination this evening—and oh, some dinner, if that’s possible. I’m very hungry.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” Richard said, picking up the chair and replacing it neatly beside the bed, “dinner can be managed very well. About the physical—let me see what I can do. I hope it won’t inconvenience you too much if it has to be put off until tomorrow morning? I mean, you do have a comfortable bed and room here.”
“There’s no bathroom,” Burden pointed out.
“The first door on your left as you go out,” Richard said with a smile.
“Yes,” Burden replied, but the smile no longer pleased or satisfied him. There was something very wrong with Mr. Richard—almost as much wrong with him as with Mr. Frank Conger. “But I would appreciate being examined this evening so I can catch the late train home,” Burden said as Richard was opening the door.
“I’ll do my very best, Professor,” Richard said as he st
epped out and closed the door.
Burden regarded the door for a long time after Richard left. There was something struggling in his head. It flickered uneasily, stirring lightly. It had something to do with the Department—with the feeling that he was being deliberately manipulated and used. First Conger, who was deliberately hostile; then the hearing examiners, deliberately pleasant, noncommittal, understanding; and now this Richard. Why? Toward what end? What did they expect him to do or say? There was some purpose behind all the things that had happened, but what was it? Did they suspect him of something? But of what? Certainly not falsifying his reports, neglecting his duties. But what else? Heresy? Was that it? Did they suspect him of heresy?
Burden’s dinner came within twenty minutes after Richard left. It was a good meal but a little sparing, the way hospital meals are apt to be, and the food was cold. But Burden was so hungry he was grateful for the tray. He asked the ward attendant who brought the tray to see if he could be brought a pair of slippers. The ward attendant said he would see about it. When he returned for the tray he brought Burden a pair of new felt slippers without heels. The slippers were so new and so filled with sizing they felt cold and slippery on his feet. Burden rested in bed, thinking odd thoughts, wondering if the door were really open. For a long time he rested in bed, his legs crossed, his new slippers on his feet, his back propped up against the pillow, speculating upon whether or not the door could be opened from his side. He had seen the doctor do it, seen Richard do it, seen the ward attendant do it. And yet he had the feeling that if he wanted to open the door he couldn’t. Finally, when the heat had been turned off and the lights were out, he got out of bed, walked to the door, and tried the handle. He had been right. The door would not open.
Burden got back onto the bed, let his slippers drop to the floor, and got under the covers, certain that he wouldn’t be called for an examination before the next day.
But he was wrong. At four o’clock in the morning they came to get him.
9
They couldn’t have selected a better time for it. The instant Burden felt the firm, sharp hand on his shoulder shaking him he was aware of a terrific pain in his bladder. The room was dark and cold and it was only by the reflection of the moonlight on the starched white blouse of the man who woke him that Burden could make out a face. All he could tell was that it was a face.
“Your physical, Professor Burden,” the face said in the soft, low-pitched voice of someone who does not want to disturb other sleepers.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Burden said, straightening up in bed.
“All right, but please don’t waste time,” the face said, and Burden felt himself helped out of bed by hands that were cold and bony. He groped for the slippers and shrank involuntarily at their clammy contact. The rug retained some warmth and he gratefully felt it beneath the stiff felt, the sizing, the chilled flesh of his feet. The door was opened on a corridor that seemed endless in length. At its extreme end burned a sickly yellow light. In that light, as if Burden were watching a perfect miniature, a figure worked on its hands and knees scrubbing the floor. Whether the figure was a man or a woman Burden could not tell, but he heard the distant, rhythmic slur and return of a brush. He turned in the wrong direction for the bathroom and felt the hand at his elbow correcting him.
Burden pushed open the door and found the bathroom in darkness. Its antiseptic smell struck his nostrils sharply and he was astonished at how cold the bathroom was. The windows were open wide to the night air. Burden barked his shins on a pail set in the middle of the floor and the pail clattered on the tiles. The pain so surprised and seized Burden that he stopped short—and then hurried on.
His head throbbed and he panted a bit from the intense relief. He hesitated a moment, feeling giddy, resting his hand on the cold enameled steel. Light struck the polished copper pipes and he saw the beads of wet condensation on them.
“All right?” the man with the white jacket called to Burden, who nodded his head in reply.
In the corridor Burden was able to get his first good look at his escort’s face. He was no doctor. At least he didn’t seem to be a doctor. He had a hard, flat, broken face like that of a professional prize fighter. He walked beside Burden, keeping pace with his painful steps on the cold floor. The man in the white coat said nothing during their long walk down the corridor toward the tiny figure with its brush. Burden could still not tell whether the figure was that of a man or a woman. There was something curiously shapeless and anonymous about it, as if it had no sex, as if it were a neuter in gray doomed forever and ever to wash and wax the long corridors during the dead of night. It seemed such a lonely fate. Perhaps if there had been two figures instead of that lonely one. If the figure were in the middle of the corridor instead of its distant end. But then, Burden thought, there was no end to the corridor. It circled back upon itself and for all he knew the figure progressed completely about the circle during the night and repeated the trip night after night.
“We’re going to see the doctor?” Burden asked of his escort, just to shake the thought of the night cleaner from his mind.
“Yes,” the man in the white jacket said.
“And will I get my clothes then?”
“After you see the doctor you’ll get your clothes.”
Then the man in the white jacket took Burden’s arm and stopped him and steered him through heavy swinging doors with polished copper striker plates. It was some sort of a clinic or laboratory. It was not lit except for a small desk lamp at the far end of the room. Burden could make out cubicles with white cloth screens stretched on iron pipe frames. There were padded leather examining tables in the cubicles and on the wall opposite the cubicles was a row of porcelain and copper tubs. There was a network of piping on the wall with an elaborate system of valves and wheels and temperature gauges. Some sort of hydrotherapy equipment, Burden decided. All the equipment looked new and here and there gave off cold glints of surgical cleanliness, gold, silver, pale white. There was a padded leather examining table in the center of the room and Burden’s escort steered him to it. His escort smacked the leather top with his hand. It made a sharp sound reminiscent of a hand striking bared flesh.
“Hop up on here, Professor. The doctor’ll be with you in a minute.”
Burden mounted the table, feeling the cold leather chill his buttocks through the thin pajamas. He faced the cubicles, the tubs at his back. He could see that long windows lined the wall, one for each of the cubicles. They, too, faced the brick wall of the neighboring ring building but moonlight filtered through faintly so that the white screens looked starched with terror.
Footsteps at the entrance to the room made Burden turn his head. A doctor came toward them. Not the same young man who had first come into Burden’s room. This was an older man, heavier, who walked more slowly. He came up to Burden and put his hand on his knee. It was a heavy hand, warm and somehow reassuring.
“Good morning, Professor,” the doctor said, and Burden nodded his head. The doctor seemed rather kindly, reminding Burden somewhat of a colleague on the staff at Templar. For some reason the colleague’s name escaped him. The doctor, his hand still on Burden’s knee, said something to the young man with the fighter’s face and the young man nodded and walked to the opposite end of the room where the desk lamp was lit.
“Well, we’ve got a physical examination, haven’t we?” The doctor tapped Burden’s knee reassuringly. “Won’t take long. Take off the top of your pajamas,” the doctor said. The skin on his back prickled from the cold air in the room. The doctor fixed the horns of his stethoscope in his ears and placed the tube on Burden’s chest. “Breathe in deeply, please—exhale—again, please—exhale—again, please—” The doctor plucked the stethoscope horns from his ears and smiled faintly at Burden. “You’re a little excited, aren’t you?”
“No,” Burden said.
“Your heart’s going a mile a minute,” the doctor said calmly, taking Burden’s wrist and looking at
his watch. Burden felt his pulse increase its beat under the pressure of the doctor’s thumb. He also thought he felt his heart picking up in its rate. “Man, what are you so upset about?” the doctor asked, smiling. “I’ll bet if I took your blood pressure now it would be over a hundred and eighty. Calm down. Do you normally have high blood pressure?”
“No, not normally,” Burden said, wondering where the young man with the fighter’s broken face had gone, wondering what the doctor had whispered to him.
“Have you been unusually upset the past few days?” the doctor asked, picking out a small black instrument from a drawer in a table near the examining couch.
“Well, not unusually,” Burden said, feeling more fear now than he ever had in his life. There seemed to be something in the back of the doctor’s mind that he sensed, something that frightened him. They were always talking, the people of the Department. They were always trying to lead him into something, admitting something, confessing something, agreeing to something. What? Why?
“You’re very tense,” the doctor said, snapping the switch on the small black hand instrument. A tiny beam of light came out. The doctor gestured at Burden’s glasses. He removed them and the doctor used the small pinpoint of light on Burden’s pupils. Finally satisfied, he snapped off the light and then turned Burden by the shoulders. “Mmm, no bruises, contusions, abrasions, or welts.”
“Can you tell in this light?” Burden asked dryly.
“There never are any, Professor Burden,” the doctor replied with weary good humor, “it’s just routine. However, there is something about you that isn’t quite routine.”
“Yes?” Burden felt himself alerted, his pulse increasing.
“You’re very tense and upset about something. I don’t imagine you’ll sleep well unless you get some sedation.”
“I don’t want to sleep at all,” Burden said, “I want to get my clothes and get out of here. If I’m going to do any sleeping I’ll do it at home, in my own bed. May I have my clothes now?”
