Mantissa

by John Fowles

  “What’s a PB?”

  “A plexicaulic booster.” She glanced impatiently back at the door. “Nurse, do please hurry up. You know what a case load I have today.”

  Nurse Cory had, during this exchange, gone to the door and hung the white tunic on a hook there. She had not turned back, but unpinned the front and unfastened the back of her apron, and hung that up as well. Now she was absorbed in unbuttoning her blue dress. At the doctor’s voice she hastened the task, slipped the dress down her brown arms, and placed it over the apron; crowned the hook with her cap, slipped out of her shoes. She walked back, supplely and lightly, as naked as the doctor, to her side of the bed. He stared, both mesmerized and panic-stricken, at the dark and the light female bodies. They were the same height, though the twenty-year-old nurse was not so slim; nor so clinical, for he thought he detected a certain sardonic amusement in her look down at him, in the ghost of a pout that haunted her mouth. The doctor spoke again.

  “Before we begin I think I had better inform you that your obstinacy may not be quite so moral as you imagine. We are by no means unfamiliar here with patients who resist treatment because they hope we shall be forced to employ perverted practices… so called. We do very occasionally apply them in cases of genuine and persistent erotic recalcitrance. But never at an early stage like this. So if you are secretly attempting to drive us to coeno-nymphic or pseudo-terguminal stimulation, I can tell you now – no chance. Is that clearly understood?”

  “I don’t even know what they are, for God’s sake.”

  “And the same applies to the Brazilian fork.”

  “Or that!”

  This brought another brief silence. The doctor assumed the look of a schoolmistress who knows she is being deliberately provoked to lose her temper. Her hands went to her hips.

  “And one last thing, Mr. Green. We also take the dimmest possible view of crypto-amnesia.” She paused, to make sure the warning had registered. “Now on your side. Facing me.”

  The nurse’s hand slipped under his left shoulder, coaxing him around.

  “Go on, Mr. Green. Mrs. Grundy says. Be a good boy.”

  He cast a suspicious and resentful look at the smiling West Indian face, but eventually turned on his side. With a neatness of movement and simultaneity of timing that suggested considerable experience his two medical attendants were immediately on the bed as well, on their respective sides. Nurse Cory lay against his back, while the doctor disconcertingly pressed her back against his front. He felt them both squirm a little, respectively forwards and rearwards, as if to secure him more firmly in the vise of their two bodies. A gratuitous wriggle of the black girl’s loins against his bottom, as she did this, confirmed what he had already suspected about her. He stared at the doctor’s dark hair, the wisp of scarf an inch or two from his nose. There was a brief silence. Then the doctor spoke. Her voice was quieter, in an evident, but not entirely successful, attempt to make a less peremptory approach.

  “Right. Now kindly place your left hand on my breasts.”

  She lifted an arm towards the ceiling. He hesitated, but then did as he was told; as one might, at the behest of a driving instructor, place one’s hand on some knob or switch. The doctor lowered her arm. Her hand came to rest on his, to keep it where it lay.

  “Now listen closely, Mr. Green. I will try to explain one last time. Memory is strongly attached to ego. Your ego has lost in a conflict with your superego, which has decided to repress it – to censor it. All Nurse and I wish to do is to enlist the aid of the third component in your psyche, the id. Your id is that flaccid member pressed against my posterior. It is potentially your best friend. And mine as your doctor. Do you understand what I am saying?”

  He felt Nurse Cory kiss, then lick, the nape of his neck.

  “This is an infamous abuse of personal privacy.”

  “I’m afraid that is your superego speaking. This procedure bears some resemblance to mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, just as amnesia is akin to drowning. Do you follow me?”

  He stared at her hair. “Under the very greatest protest.”

  She took a breath, though her voice remained deliberately neutral and matter-of-fact. “Mr. Green, I’m bound to tell you that I expect this kind of attitude in the culturally deprived. But not in patients of your background and education.”

  “Moral protest.”

  “I cannot pass that. Your mind is where I need help.”

  “I may for the moment not know who I am. But I’m damn sure it wasn’t someone who’d have ever –”

  “Forgive me, but that is hardly a logical statement. You don’t know who you are. There is therefore an equal mathematical possibility that you were sexually promiscuous. Statistically I can reveal that it is rather more than an equal chance. In your particular social grouping and profession. Which latter is one, I must also warn you, that has an extremely long and well-recorded history of general incapacity to face up to the realities of life.”

  “That bloody woman did tell you something!”

  “A good deal less than your hostile attitude to her.”

  “I couldn’t remember who she was, that was all.”

  “But you appeared to prefer looking at me. Even though you no more knew who I was.”

  “You seemed more understanding. Then.”

  “And more attractive?”

  He hesitated. “Perhaps.” He added, “Physically.”

  “In common parlance, you fancied me?”

  “I’m a very sick man. Sex was the last thing on my mind. And for God’s sake tell this nurse to stop nibbling at my neck.”

  “Would you prefer the attentions of her mouth elsewhere?”

  He was silent a moment.

  “That’s revolting.”

  “Why, Mr. Green?”

  “You know perfectly well why.”

  “No. I do not know why.”

  “My dear woman, I may have forgotten facts. I have not forgotten common decency. If I had, I should almost certainly have strangled you by now.”

  She pressed his passive hand a little closer against her breasts. “That’s precisely my puzzle, Mr. Green. Why your apparently violent dislike for our methods manifests itself only in words.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You’ve made no attempt to push us away, to get off the bed, to leave the room. All actions of which you are capable. And which would appear to be the normal physical equivalents of your state of mind.”

  “It’s not my fault if I’m half drugged.”

  “Ah. But you aren’t, Mr. Green. You may have felt so at first waking. But you only woke because I had given you a countersedative. A stimulant. It would have taken full effect long before now. You can’t put it down to that, I’m afraid.” He felt like someone in a chess game, trapped without warning. The doctor pressed his hand again. “I’m not criticizing you, Mr. Green. Merely asking.”

  “Because… because I can’t remember anything. I presume someone knew what they were doing when they sent me here.”

  “Are you saying you concede it is possible our methods do have their reasons?”

  “It’s your manner I can’t stand.”

  The doctor did not answer for a moment; then she quietly removed his hand from her breast, shifted away a little, and turned around on her other side to face him. Her eyes were so close that he had difficulty in focusing on them properly, but something in them, and her face, suggested that she realized he was not to be further bullied. For once it was she who lowered her eyes. She spoke in a near-whisper, almost as if she did not want Nurse Cory, just behind him, to hear.

  “Mr. Green, our work here is not easy. We are not totally devoid of ordinary human feelings. There are patients who… well, that frankly we can relate to more easily than others. I shouldn’t be saying this, but when I examined you on admission, I did not, as I confess I sometimes do at that stage, secretly wish that I had followed my original ambition of specializing in pediatrics. As a matter of
fact I have been looking forward to working on your case, partly because I anticipated from certain features special to it that you would be eager yourself to work on it in conjunction with me. Inasmuch as a patient can, that is. I sincerely beg your pardon if I counted too much on that prognosis. On the other hand I hope you will believe that no one can work in this ward who does not put patients’ health well above personal feeling. Who has not learned to sacrifice extramural notions of modesty and privacy on the greater altar of human need.” Her eyes rose gravely to meet his. “I trust you can accept at least this?”

  “If I must.”

  “Mr. Green, in a moment or two I shall close my eyes. I would like you to kiss me, then to turn around and kiss Nurse. Purely as a symbol of our common humanity in a situation that is difficult for all three of us. Then perhaps we can all make a fresh start and help you achieve the erection, and eroticism, I know you are capable of.”

  Before he could answer she had tilted her mouth a little; no longer the doctor, the schoolmistress, or even a grown woman – but most of all like a demure and obedient niece waiting for a kiss from an uncle. He felt a pressure from his back, discreetly urging him to do what was asked. He looked at the face so close to his own, the dark eyelashes resting on the pale skin, the classical nose, the finely proportioned mouth. In other circumstances one might have called it a beautiful face, rather divinely balanced between intelligence and a latent sensuality. He wavered, still resisted, felt unfairly trapped. But he had to do something. He craned forward, touched his pressed lips briefly against hers, and drew back immediately.

  “Thank you, Mr. Green.” Her eyes opened, the medical persona reappeared. “Now I’m sure you’re not a racist, but you were less than kind to Nurse Cory just now. In case the fact is lost along with the rest of your memory, perhaps I may remind you of the very considerable West Indian contribution to the efficiency of our hospital services. I’m sure Nurse would appreciate it if you would turn and extend the same token of understanding to her.”

  She eased her body back a little, and he felt the body behind do the same. Dr. Delfie’s severely professional eyes held his, and perhaps it was above all to escape them that he finally turned. He kept his arm rigidly along the side of his body, as if he were standing at attention. Nurse Cory’s hand came up to his shoulder. Her eyes were also closed, the fuller mouth tilted up in the same waiting, submissive, childlike manner. However, her body seemed warmer, more curved and pliant than the doctor’s; and though she lay quite still, he sensed a dormant agility.

  He bent his head to deliver the second token of understanding. But this time he did not encounter the same passivity. The nurse’s hand slipped up behind his head. Their mouths had barely lost contact after his quick peck than they met again. Her lips opened a little, and he detected the same tarry fragrance as with the doctor. It must have been used in mouthwash as well as soap, and by all the staff. A moment or two passed, he tried to draw back, but the hand behind his head insisted he should not, and the girl’s body strained closer. Her tongue began to probe. Then a dark leg bent and slipped up across his, bringing them closer still.

  He felt no less horrified, shocked and indignant than before, but somehow still lacked the will to push the persistent young nurse away. After all, she was a comparatively innocent party; and there was even a certain pleasure in putting the doctor’s nose out of joint by being more cooperative with her junior. He had not been mistaken over the agility, for now the lithe and restless creature bore him backwards on the pillow and swarmed half across him, seemingly not to be denied this demonstration of her ability to prolong and deepen a kiss. In another few moments she had managed to find her way entirely on top of him. The doctor must have got off the bed. He felt the nurse reach down and catch his limp left wrist on the rubber sheet, then lead his hand to lie on the rounded contour of her right cheek. To the now quite unashamedly suggestive synecdoches of her tongue were added quiverings and tremulous little borings in the surface beneath his hand. In a vain attempt to calm her he raised his right hand and placed it on the other cheek.

  He knew, as in a nightmare, that he was slipping fatally towards disaster; and equally was powerless to prevent it. Yet somewhere inside his blinded psyche an entire moral being continued to protest at this abject surrender to animality, this blatant pandering to the basest instincts. It was seconded by an aesthetic being, a person of taste, a true if temporarily lost Miles Green – who would not, he knew it in his bones, have ordinarily been caught dead in such vulgar and humiliating physical circumstances, or for a moment listened to the doctor’s specious justifications. It occurred to him, with a dawning excitement, that this intuitive sense of what he could never have been might be a useful clue to what he actually was, and he began to speculate – with some difficulty, as Nurse Cory had now raised herself on her arms and was teasing his face and mouth with her exuberant young breasts – as to a suitable profession. Almost at once he had evidence that he was on the right track, and that the doctor, in hinting at something vaguely louche, promiscuous, had once again been deliberately misleading him.

  From nowhere, miraculously, came a first recall of something he knew was autobiographical, and to do with his occluded past. Though it was only the very haziest apprehension, without detail, he knew it had something to do with rows of watching, attentive faces; and that what they were watching was he himself. Of that he was quite sure. Indeed, in his excitement at this breakthrough he inadvertently dug his nails into the nurse’s bottom, a gesture she misinterpreted, so that he had to suffer a paroxysm of breasts and loins in response. The last thing he wished was to be distracted from his train of thought. It therefore seemed wisest to encourage her in hers. Having improved his grip on the exposed cheeks, and undergone another bout of trembling, he was able to concentrate anew on his discovery.

  More specific clues his crippled memory refused to surrender; but he felt convinced that he had been used to performing in some way in public. As he absentmindedly caressed an excited nipple with the end of his tongue, purely to still the body on top of him, he tried to evoke a suitably senior and respected profession. It was obviously something far removed from the frivolity of the arts, from mere entertaining – the law, perhaps. The Church did not feel quite right. A public-school headmaster was a possibility, or the Navy. Captain Miles Green, Royal Navy, had a very plausible sound – yet brought no more precise and clinching echo. It crossed his mind that the theatrical profession might just, after all, fit the bill, since there did seem something spellbound, as also something half hidden in darkness, about this blurred, yet definite, sense of an audience. On the other hand actors were not socially responsible people, as he felt more and more certain the true Miles Green was.

  For what his equally blurred yet definite real self rose against, as abruptly as Nurse Cory herself, suddenly erect, a knee on the bed on either side of his chest, was the idea that it would, in its right mind, ever have allowed any of this to happen. A further inspiration breathed upon him. Was it not actually most likely, he thought, as the black girl, having seized his hands, now led them up, like lifeless flannels or sponges, over her smooth stomach to ablute the cones of dark-tipped flesh above, that he was a Member of Parliament? A determined opponent of the forces of evil and permissive morality in society?

  And what had the wretched doctor said about inability to face up to the realities of life? Was not that just the sort of snide, childishly malicious remark the general public liked to make about their elected representatives? He felt a thrill of intuitive certainty that he was very warm… and then another thrill, for something else she had said still worried him. Why indeed had he not left the room at once? But wait: suppose he truly was a Member, stumbled on a flagrant medical malpractice of import far beyond the walls of this one hospital? Then it was clear. Between personal repugnance and public duty, there was only one choice, as Gladstone had so amply witnessed in his work with prostitutes.

  Gladstone – he had remembered Glads
tone! He felt a third frisson of incipient self-discovery; for not only the memory of Gladstone, but that of more recent public figures selflessly braving the sex-hells of Hamburg and Copenhagen on behalf of their constituents returned to him. He felt profoundly relieved. Albeit unconsciously, he had, in not leaving this room, chosen the right, the responsible thing, and was doing what he began to feel sure he was elected to do.

  If that were so – my God, a day would come when he would arraign doctor, hospital, treatment, all, in terms that would settle their hash for good. Now a hand was led down and invited to explore between the splayed thighs of the kneeling nurse. No silent Member, he: he would catch Mr. Speaker’s eye and rise, nothing could stop him rising, with aplomb and dignity and full force, to his most solemn and convincing height. “Is the Minister aware of the increasing incidence of gross sexual abuse of mentally incapacitated patients by nymphomaniacal and multiracial members of staff in a certain major hospital? Does he realize that their hapless victims…”

  Alas, further composition of his speech became impossible, for Nurse Cory’s attention must have been caught by something else rising behind her. Her hand released his, felt back.

  “Mr. Green! You done it!”

  The next moment she had sunk upon him. His mouth was briefly but violently kissed, then she seemed to writhe and slither down his body, like a snake. He felt his own nipples being licked, and gave up trying to imagine how this appalling scene might end.

  “That’s enough, nurse. Nurse!”

  The nurse lay still, at the second and sharper admonition, her cheek couched against his stomach. He opened his eyes. Dr. Delfie was standing by the side of the bed, her arms folded, eyeing her prone assistant with more than a hint of the disapproval hitherto reserved for him. Nurse Cory raised herself from body and bed, then stood with her head bowed.

  “Sorry, doctor.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you we use the Hopkins-Sezscholsky sequence here?”

  “I forgot.”