Madness

by Roald Dahl

  ‘I myself would leave all three coverings – don’t they have lovely names, the dura, the arachnoid, and the pia? – I’d leave them all intact. There are many reasons for this, not least among them being the fact that within the dura run the venous channels that drain the blood from the brain into the jugular.

  ‘Now,’ he went on, ‘we’ve got the upper half of your skull off so that the top of the brain, wrapped in its outer covering, is exposed. The next step is the really tricky one: to release the whole package so that it can be lifted cleanly away, leaving the stubs of the four supply arteries and the two veins hanging underneath ready to be re-connected to the machine. This is an immensely lengthy and complicated business involving the delicate chipping away of much bone, the severing of many nerves, and the cutting and tying of numerous blood vessels. The only way I could do it with any hope of success would be by taking a rongeur and slowly biting off the rest of your skull, peeling it off downwards like an orange until the sides and underneath of the brain covering are fully exposed. The problems involved are highly technical and I won’t go into them, but I feel fairly sure that the work can be done. It’s simply a question of surgical skill and patience. And don’t forget that I’d have plenty of time, as much as I wanted, because the artificial heart would be continually pumping away alongside the operating-table, keeping the brain alive.

  ‘Now, let’s assume that I’ve succeeded in peeling off your skull and removing everything else that surrounds the sides of the brain. That leaves it connected to the body only at the base, mainly by the spinal column and by the two large veins and the four arteries that are supplying it with blood. So what next?

  ‘I would sever the spinal column just above the first cervical vertebra, taking great care not to harm the two vertebral arteries which are in that area. But you must remember that the dura or outer covering is open at this place to receive the spinal column, so I’d have to close this opening by sewing the edges of the dura together. There’d be no problem there.

  ‘At this point, I would be ready for the final move. To one side, on a table, I’d have a basin of a special shape, and this would be filled with what we call Ringer’s Solution. That is a special kind of fluid we use for irrigation in neurosurgery. I would now cut the brain completely loose by severing the supply arteries and the veins. Then I would simply pick it up in my hands and transfer it to the basin. This would be the only other time during the whole proceeding when the blood flow would be cut off; but once it was in the basin, it wouldn’t take a moment to re-connect the stubs of the arteries and veins to the artificial heart.

  ‘So there you are,’ Landy said. ‘Your brain is now in the basin, and still alive, and there isn’t any reason why it shouldn’t stay alive for a very long time, years and years perhaps, provided we looked after the blood and the machine.’

  ‘But would it function?’

  ‘My dear William, how should I know? I can’t even tell you whether it would ever regain consciousness.’

  ‘And if it did?’

  ‘There now! That would be fascinating!’

  ‘Would it?’ I said, and I must admit I had my doubts.

  ‘Of course it would! Lying there with all your thinking processes working beautifully, and your memory as well …’

  ‘And not being able to see or feel or smell or hear or talk,’ I said.

  ‘Ah!’ he cried. ‘I knew I’d forgotten something! I never told you about the eye. Listen. I am going to try to leave one of your optic nerves intact, as well as the eye itself. The optic nerve is a little thing about the thickness of a clinical thermometer and about two inches in length as it stretches between the brain and the eye. The beauty of it is that it’s not really a nerve at all. It’s an outpouching of the brain itself, and the dura or brain covering extends along it and is attached to the eyeball. The back of the eye is therefore in very close contact with the brain, and cerebrospinal fluid flows right up to it.

  ‘All this suits my purpose very well, and makes it reasonable to suppose that I could succeed in preserving one of your eyes. I’ve already constructed a small plastic case to contain the eyeball, instead of your own socket, and when the brain is in the basin, submerged in Ringer’s Solution, the eyeball in its case will float on the surface of the liquid.’

  ‘Staring at the ceiling,’ I said.

  ‘I suppose so, yes. I’m afraid there wouldn’t be any muscles there to move it around. But it might be sort of fun to lie there so quietly and comfortably peering out at the world from your basin.’

  ‘Hilarious,’ I said. ‘How about leaving me an ear as well?’

  ‘I’d rather not try an ear this time.’

  ‘I want an ear,’ I said. ‘I insist upon an ear.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I want to listen to Bach.’

  ‘You don’t understand how difficult it would be,’ Landy said gently. ‘The hearing apparatus – the cochlea, as it’s called – is a far more delicate mechanism than the eye. What’s more, it is encased in bone. So is a part of the auditory nerve that connects it with the brain. I couldn’t possibly chisel the whole thing out intact.’

  ‘Couldn’t you leave it encased in the bone and bring the bone to the basin?’

  ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘This thing is complicated enough already. And anyway, if the eye works, it doesn’t matter all that much about your hearing. We can always hold up messages for you to read. You really must leave me to decide what is possible and what isn’t.’

  ‘I haven’t yet said that I’m going to do it.’

  ‘I know, William, I know.’

  ‘I’m not sure I fancy the idea very much.’

  ‘Would you rather be dead, altogether?’

  ‘Perhaps I would. I don’t know yet. I wouldn’t be able to talk, would I?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then how would I communicate with you? How would you know that I’m conscious?’

  ‘It would be easy for us to know whether or not you regain consciousness,’ Landy said. ‘The ordinary electroencephalograph could tell us that. We’d attach the electrodes directly to the frontal lobes of your brain, there in the basin.’

  ‘And you could actually tell?’

  ‘Oh, definitely. Any hospital could do that part of it.’

  ‘But I couldn’t communicate with you.’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ Landy said, ‘I believe you could. There’s a man up in London called Wertheimer who’s doing some interesting work on the subject of thought communication, and I’ve been in touch with him. You know, don’t you, that the thinking brain throws off electrical and chemical discharges? And that these discharges go out in the form of waves, rather like radio waves?’

  ‘I know a bit about it,’ I said.

  ‘Well, Wertheimer has constructed an apparatus somewhat similar to the encephalograph, though far more sensitive, and he maintains that within certain narrow limits it can help him to interpret the actual things that a brain is thinking. It produces a kind of graph which is apparently decipherable into words or thoughts. Would you like me to ask Wertheimer to come and see you?’

  ‘No,’ I said. Landy was already taking it for granted that I was going to go through with this business, and I resented his attitude. Go away now and leave me alone,’ I told him. ‘You won’t get anywhere by trying to rush me.’

  He stood up at once and crossed to the door.

  ‘One question,’ I said.

  He paused with a hand on the doorknob. ‘Yes, William?’

  ‘Simply this. Do you yourself honestly believe that when my brain is in that basin, my mind will be able to function exactly as it is doing at present? Do you believe that I will be able to think and reason as I can now? And will the power of memory remain?’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ he answered. ‘It’s the same brain. It’s alive. It’s undamaged. In fact, it’s completely untouched. We haven’t even opened the dura. The big difference, of course, would be that we’ve sev
ered every single nerve that leads into it – except for the one optic nerve – and this means that your thinking would no longer be influenced by your senses. You’d be living in an extraordinarily pure and detached world. Nothing to bother you at all, not even pain. You couldn’t possibly feel pain because there wouldn’t be any nerves to feel it with. In a way, it would be an almost perfect situation. No worries or fears or pains or hunger or thirst. Not even any desires. Just your memories and your thoughts, and if the remaining eye happened to function, then you could read books as well. It all sounds rather pleasant to me.’

  ‘It does, does it?’

  ‘Yes, William, it does. And particularly for a Doctor of Philosophy. It would be a tremendous experience. You’d be able to reflect upon the ways of the world with a detachment and a serenity that no man had ever attained before. And who knows what might not happen then! Great thoughts and solutions might come to you, great ideas that could revolutionize our way of life! Try to imagine, if you can, the degree of concentration that you’d be able to achieve!’

  ‘And the frustration,’ I said.

  ‘Nonsense. There couldn’t be any frustration. You can’t have frustration without desire, and you couldn’t possibly have any desire. Not physical desire, anyway.’

  ‘I should certainly be capable of remembering my previous life in the world, and I might desire to return to it.’

  ‘What, to this mess! Out of your comfortable basin and back into this madhouse!’

  ‘Answer one more question,’ I said. ‘How long do you believe you could keep it alive?’

  ‘The brain? Who knows? Possibly for years and years. The conditions would be ideal. Most of the factors that cause deterioration would be absent, thanks to the artificial heart. The blood-pressure would remain constant at all times, an impossible condition in real life. The temperature would also be constant. The chemical composition of the blood would be near perfect. There would be no impurities in it, no virus, no bacteria, nothing. Of course it’s foolish to guess, but I believe that a brain might live for two or three hundred years in circumstances like these. Good-bye for now,’ he said. ‘I’ll drop in and see you tomorrow.’ He went out quickly, leaving me, as you might guess, in a fairly disturbed state of mind.

  My immediate reaction after he had gone was one of revulsion towards the whole business. Somehow, it wasn’t at all nice. There was something basically repulsive about the idea that I myself, with all my mental faculties intact, should be reduced to a small slimy grey blob lying in a pool of water. It was monstrous, obscene, unholy. Another thing that bothered me was the feeling of helplessness that I was bound to experience once Landy had got me into the basin. There could be no going back after that, no way of protesting or explaining. I would be committed for as long as they could keep me alive.

  And what, for example, if I could not stand it? What if it turned out to be terribly painful? What if I became hysterical?

  No legs to run away on. No voice to scream with. Nothing. I’d just have to grin and bear it for the next two centuries.

  No mouth to grin with either.

  At this point, a curious thought struck me, and it was this: Does not a man who has had a leg amputated often suffer from the delusion that the leg is still there? Does he not tell the nurse that the toes he doesn’t have any more are itching like mad, and so on and so forth? I seemed to have heard something to that effect quite recently.

  Very well. On the same premise, was it not possible that my brain, lying there alone in that basin, might not suffer from a similar delusion in regard to my body? In which case, all my usual aches and pains could come flooding over me and I wouldn’t even be able to take an aspirin to relieve them. One moment I might be imagining that I had the most excruciating cramp in my leg, or a violent indigestion, and a few minutes later, I might easily get the feeling that my poor bladder – you know me – was so full that if I didn’t get to emptying it soon it would burst.

  Heaven forbid.

  I lay there for a long time thinking these horrid thoughts. Then quite suddenly, round about midday, my mood began to change. I became less concerned with the unpleasant aspect of the affair and found myself able to examine Landy’s proposals in a more reasonable light. Was there not, after all, I asked myself, something a bit comforting in the thought that my brain might not necessarily have to die and disappear in a few weeks’ time? There was indeed. I am rather proud of my brain. It is a sensitive, lucid and uberous organ. It contains a prodigious store of information, and it is still capable of producing imaginative and original theories. As brains go, it is a damn good one, though I say it myself. Whereas my body, my poor old body, the thing that Landy wants to throw away – well, even you, my dear Mary, will have to agree with me that there is really nothing about that which is worth preserving any more.

  I was lying on my back eating a grape. Delicious it was, and there were three little seeds in it which I took out of my mouth and placed on the edge of the plate.

  ‘I’m going to do it,’ I said quietly. ‘Yes, by God, I’m going to do it. When Landy comes back to see me tomorrow I shall tell him straight out that I’m going to do it.’

  It was as quick as that. And from then on, I began to feel very much better. I surprised everyone by gobbling an enormous lunch, and shortly after that you came in to visit me as usual.

  But how well I looked, you told me. How bright and well and chirpy. Had anything happened? Was there some good news?

  Yes, I said, there was. And then, if you remember, I bade you sit down and make yourself comfortable, and I started out immediately to explain to you as gently as I could what was in the wind.

  Alas, you would have none of it. I had hardly begun telling you the barest details when you flew into a fury and said that the thing was revolting, disgusting, horrible, unthinkable, and when I tried to go on, you marched out of the room.

  Well, Mary, as you know, I have tried to discuss this subject with you many times since then, but you have consistently refused to give me a hearing. Hence this note, and I can only hope that you will have the good sense to permit yourself to read it. It has taken me a long time to write. Two weeks have gone by since I started to scribble the first sentence, and I’m now a good deal weaker than I was then. I doubt I have the strength to say much more. Certainly I won’t say good-bye, because there’s a chance, just a tiny chance, that if Landy succeeds in his work I may actually see you again later, that is if you can bring yourself to come and visit me.

  I am giving orders that these pages shall not be delivered to you until a week after I am gone. By now, therefore, as you sit reading them, seven days have already elapsed since Landy did the deed. You yourself may even know what the outcome has been. If you don’t, if you have purposely kept yourself apart and have refused to have anything to do with it – which I suspect may be the case – please change your mind now and give Landy a call to see how things went with me. That is the least you can do. I have told him that he may expect to hear from you on the seventh day.

  Your faithful husband

  William

  P.S. Be good when I am gone, and always remember that it is harder to be a widow than a wife. Do not drink cocktails. Do not waste money. Do not smoke cigarettes. Do not eat pastry. Do not use lipstick. Do not buy a television apparatus. Keep my rose beds and my rockery well weeded in the summers. And incidentally I suggest that you have the telephone disconnected now that I shall have no further use for it.

  W.

  Mrs Pearl laid the last page of the manuscript slowly down on the sofa beside her. Her little mouth was pursed up tight and there was a whiteness around her nostrils.

  But really! You would think a widow was entitled to a bit of peace after all these years.

  The whole thing was just too awful to think about. Beastly and awful. It gave her the shudders.

  She reached for her bag and found herself another cigarette. She lit it, inhaling the smoke deeply and blowing it out in clouds all over the
room. Through the smoke she could see her lovely television set, brand new, lustrous, huge, crouching defiantly but also a little self-consciously on top of what used to be William’s worktable.

  What would he say, she wondered, if he could see that now?

  She paused, to remember the last time he had caught her smoking a cigarette. That was about a year ago, and she was sitting in the kitchen by the open window having a quick one before he came home from work. She’d had the radio on loud playing dance music and she had turned round to pour herself another cup of coffee and there he was standing in the doorway, huge and grim, staring down at her with those awful eyes, a little black dot of fury blazing in the centre of each.

  For four weeks after that, he had paid the housekeeping bills himself and given her no money at all, but of course he wasn’t to know that she had over six pounds stashed away in a soap-flake carton in the cupboard under the sink.

  ‘What is it?’ she had said to him once during supper. ‘Are you worried about me getting lung cancer?’

  ‘I am not,’ he had answered.

  ‘Then why can’t I smoke?’

  ‘Because I disapprove, that’s why.’

  He had also disapproved of children, and as a result they had never had any of them either.

  Where was he now, this William of hers, the great disapprover?

  Landy would be expecting her to call up. Did she have to call Landy?

  Well, not really, no.

  She finished her cigarette, then lit another one immediately from the old stub. She looked at the telephone that was sitting on the worktable beside the television set. William had asked her to call. He had specifically requested that she telephone Landy as soon as she had read the letter. She hesitated, fighting hard now against that old ingrained sense of duty that she didn’t quite yet dare to shake off. Then, slowly, she got to her feet and crossed over to the phone on the worktable. She found a number in the book, dialled it, and waited.