Briefing for a Descent Into Hell. Doris Lessing
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me south, holding me safe across the cross not to say furious currents about the Equator but then, held safe and sound, I’d find the South Equatorial at last, at last, and safe from all the Sargassoes, the Scyllas and the Charybs, I’d swoop beautifully and lightly, drifting with the sweet currents of the South down the edge of the Brazilian Highlands to the Waters of Peace. But I need a wind. The salt is seaming on the timbers and the old raft is wallowing in the swells and I am sick. I am sick enough to die. So heave ho my hearties, heave—no, they are all gone, dead and gone, they tied me to a mast and a great wave swept them from me, and I am alone, caught and tied to the North Equatorial Current with no landfall that I could ever long for anywhere in the searoads of all that rocking sea.
Nothing from police. No reports of any small boats, yachts or swimmers unaccounted for. Patient continues talking aloud, singing, swinging back and forth in bed. He is excessively fatigued. Tomorrow: Sodium Amytal. I suggest a week’s narcosis.
August 17th
DOCTOR Y.
I disagree. Suggest shock therapy.
August 18th
DOCTOR X.
Very hot. The current is swinging and rocking. Very fast. It is so hot that the water is melting. The water is thinner than usual, therefore a thin fast rocking. Like heat-waves. The shimmer is strong. Light. Different textures of light. There is the light we know. That is, the ordinary light let’s say of a day with cloud. Then, sunlight, which is a yellow dance added to the first. Then the sparkling waves of heat, heat-waves, making light when light makes them. Then, the inner light, the shimmer, like a suspended snow in the air. Shimmer even at night when no moon or sun and no light. The shimmer of the solar wind. Yes, that’s it. Oh solar wind, blow blow blow my love to me. It is very hot. The salt has caked my face. If I rub, I’ll scrub my face with pure sea salt. I’m becalmed, on a light, lit, rocking, deliriously delightful sea, for the water has gone thin and slippery in the heat, light water instead of heavy water. I need a wind. Oh solar wind, wind of the sun. Sun. At the end of Ghosts he said the Sun, the Sun, the Sun, the Sun, and at the end of When We Dead Awaken, the Sun, into the arms of the Sun via the solar wind, around, around, around, around …
Patient very disturbed. Asked his name: Jason. He is on a raft in the Atlantic. Three caps Sodium Amytal tonight. Will see him tomorrow.
DOCTOR Y.
DOCTOR Y. Did you sleep well?
PATIENT. I keep dropping off, but I mustn’t, I must not.
DOCTOR Y. But why not? I want you to.
PATIENT. I’d slide off into the deep sea swells.
DOCTOR Y. No, you won’t. That’s a very comfortable bed, and you’re in a nice quiet room.
PATIENT. Bed of the sea. Deep sea bed.
DOCTOR Y. You aren’t on a raft. You aren’t on the sea. You aren’t a sailor.
PATIENT. I’m not a sailor?
DOCTOR Y. You are in Central Intake Hospital, in bed, being looked after. You must rest. We want you to sleep.
PATIENT. If I sleep I’ll die.
DOCTOR Y. What’s your name? Will you tell me?
PATIENT. Jonah.
DOCTOR Y. Yesterday it was Jason. You can’t be either, you know.
PATIENT. We are all sailors.
DOCTOR Y. I am not. I’m a doctor in this hospital.
PATIENT. If I’m not a sailor, then you aren’t a doctor.
DOCTOR Y. Very well. But you are making yourself very tired, rocking about like that. Lie down. Take a rest. Try not to talk so much.
PATIENT. I’m not talking to you, am I? Around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and …
NURSE. You must be feeling giddy. You’ve been going around and around and around for hours now, did you know that?
PATIENT. Hours?
NURSE. I’ve been on duty since eight, and every time I drop in to see you, you are going round and round.
PATIENT. The duty watch.
NURSE. Around and around what? Where? There now, turn over.
PATIENT. It’s very hot. I’m not far away from the Equator.
NURSE. You’re still on the raft, then?
PATIENT. You aren’t!
NURSE. I can’t say that I am.
PATIENT. Then how can you be talking to me?
NURSE. Do try and lie easy. We don’t want you to get so terribly tired. We’re worried about you, do you know that?
PATIENT. Well, it is in your hands, isn’t it?
NURSE. My hands? How is that?
PATIENT. You. You said We. I know that ‘We’. It is the categorical collective. It would be so easy for you to do it.
NURSE. But what do you want me to do?
PATIENT. You as we. Not you as you. Lift me, lift me, lift me. It must be easy enough for you. Obviously. Just use your—force, or whatever it is. Blast me there.
NURSE. Where to?
PATIENT. You know very well. Tip me South with your white wing.
NURSE. My white wing! I like the sound of that.
PATIENT. You can’t be one of them. If you were, you’d know. You are tricking me.
NURSE. I’m sorry that you think that.
PATIENT. Or perhaps you’re testing me. Yes, that’s a possibility.
NURSE. Perhaps that is it.
PATIENT. It’s just a question of getting out of the North Equatorial Current into the South Equatorial Current, from clockwise to anti-clockwise. The wise anti-clocks.
NURSE. I see.
PATIENT. Well, why don’t you?
NURSE. I don’t know how.
PATIENT. Is it a question of some sort of a password? Who was that man who was here yesterday?
NURSE. Do you mean Doctor Y.? He was in to see you.
PATIENT. He’s behind this. He knows. A very kindly contumacious man.
NURSE. He’s kind. But I wouldn’t say contumacious.
PATIENT. I say it, so why shouldn’t you?
NURSE. And Doctor X. was in the day before that.
PATIENT. I don’t remember any Doctor X.
NURSE. Doctor X. will be in later this afternoon.
PATIENT. In what?
NURSE. Do try and lie still. Try and sleep.
PATIENT. If I do, I’m dead and done for. Surely you must know that, or you aren’t a maid mariner.
NURSE. I’m Alice Kincaid. I told you that before. Do you remember? The night you came in?
PATIENT. Whatever your name, if you sleep you die.
NURSE. Well, never mind, hush. There, poor thing, you are in a state. Just lie and—there, there. Shhhhh, hush. No, lie still. Shhh … there, that’s it, that’s it, sleep. Sleeeeeeeep. Sle-e-p.
Patient distressed, fatigued, anxious, deluded,
hallucinated.
Try Tofronil? Marplan? Tryptazol? Either that
or shock.