The Secret Book of Paradys (102 page)

Penguin Gin
, Leocadia thought,
Penguin Gin. Drink it up, it will
–

Leocadia could not recall, out in the garden, where she had left the antique bottle with its square neck and top, its label of ice floes and bird.

She felt almost afrighted, a kind of pang.

Leocadia made herself move slowly back toward the Residence – someone might be watching.

When she gained her room, the bottle was standing on her worktable. Had she put it there? Had it been there all the time?

Leocadia picked up the bottle and examined it, an archaeologist with a flask of Egyptian pottery, some tiny god incised upon it.

Drink it up, it will
–

Maddening, a rhyme that did not conclude.

Maddening
.

Of course, possibly they watched her in her room, in the same way that unseen sounds and unheard lights threaded through it. But then again, if they had decided to keep clear of her – some campaign of theirs, or else some ploy
of
his
– probably they would monitor her response but not interfere.

She felt a consoling violence as she prepared the wall beyond the book alcove.

The best of the light fell here, almost as good as the spot where the easel balanced.

There would be difficulties, but they must be met in the nature of challenges rather than of barriers.

The walls had always annoyed her. The pale gray surfaces without texture, against which she saw the motes in her eyes.

To change the wall, smother it in shadows and densities, illusions and images, that was a fair return.

And whatever else, unlike canvas and oiled paper, the plaster, the bricks and mortar, could not be taken away from her.

She covered a large area, larger than any canvas she had ever attempted.

Then, leaving it to dry, she took the gin bottle to the ivy window and studied it again.

The next day, Leocadia walked around the asylum grounds and across to the old buildings.

She patrolled their alleys and looked up at their windows. She paused in their courtyards, listening.

She did not come on the great teetering rubbish tip – either it had vanished, or she had chosen the wrong entry.

Leocadia saw and heard nothing.

There was no one else about, as on the previous day, except that, coming back, she beheld Thomas the Warrior in his flower bed.

She spoke to him.

He took no notice.

“The silence is broken,” said Leocadia. “You talked to me, at some length.”

Thomas paid no attention.

In the summerhouse, Mademoiselle Varc lay sleeping, and Leocadia did not try to wake her.

Returned to her room, Leocadia drew across the white expanse of the prepared wall the guideline of a horizon. Here the snow would end against the silver of the glaciers. And here, below, a penguin would stand, comic and baroque, like one note of music played too loud. She began to sketch it in. It was tall.

Van Orles had not thought to remove the finished canvases, although she might have painted over these. How had he known she would not? Was he clever after all?

She stared at the ship that spilled fruit, and on the sand beside the shells the white thing lay, which now she recognized. It was a snowball.

The hot light made the snow of the wall very rich and enticing. And in the same way the brown glass showing through the label of the bottle made that snowscape also alluring and warm. Warm as the refrigerator.

White snow gentle as a young summer.

Leocadia drank wine, and let fly a tuft of darkness on the drawn penguin’s daggered head.

Every day about noon, Dr. Volpe toured his kindgom, the lunatic asylum. This gave him a feeling of uneasy and strange power, which he confirmed for himself as the sense of duty. He always hoped that nothing had gone wrong, that none of them had become violent or terribly ill. He liked them to be docile, sitting or wandering about in the straw of the large white rooms. Some nodded or rocked or swatted invisible insects, some sang quietly. These aberrations were normal and he found them almost soothing. The bad smell of confined bodies or those who had messed themselves he was accustomed to. Snuff taking had dulled his nose; he brought with him a scented handkerchief. Now and then there would be an upset. One would not eat, or had set on another, or banged his or her head against a wall. These inmates were restrained, and the sight of their tethers, and the mad-shirts confining their arms, calmed Dr. Volpe.

Sometimes more drastic treatment was required, the Swing or the Waterfall. Doctor Volpe disliked these measures, as he disliked shutting his patients in the upright coffins that permitted only their faces to be seen. He preferred where possible to administer huge doses of opium. As the raving creature sank into oblivion, Dr. Volpe felt an iron clutch slacken on his own muscles.

After his noon perambulation, he would return to his apartment in the adjacent block. Here, when the door was shut, he might, aside from the occasional interruption, have been in some luxurious flat of the City, a gentleman of leisure. There were his shelves of books, his piano, his plants, his various collections – of birds’ eggs, butterflies on pins, and so forth. He could potter about all day, and in the evening, the housekeeper brought him his dinner, after which he would drink a bottle of fine brandy.

It was another concern of Dr. Volpe’s that some of his warders drank inferior liquor. Although it was, of course, reasonable to drink large amounts of a decent vintage. Amid his brandy Dr. Volpe played scherzos at his piano. His thoughts ranged. Finally he slept well, indeed late into each following day. But to drink all one could afford of a cheap and dreadful gin, which, it was said, was actually poisonous … He did not berate the warders. They were curious men and women, bound to their profession by ties Dr. Volpe did not always care to consider. One must not cross them, or one could not exact service. But nevertheless, he had once or twice glimpsed the terrible gin bottles, brown and queerly shaped, with a peculiar label.

Dr. Volpe let out his inner excellence at his piano, and every six months it was carefully tuned.

Playing, he knew a faint loss, for he could have been a great pianist. Misfortune and the pressure of his bourgeoise upbringing had led him where he was.

In fact he did not play very well, fumbling and bluffing works he should not have attempted, firing off like explosions or farts cascades of horrible wrong notes. Besides, and worse, he lacked expression. There was no tenderness, let alone the delicate neurasthenia so often called for. At his most fiery he was at his most appalling. This he did not know.

He was dreamily thinking of his music now as he passed along the galleries above the pens of white rooms.

The women and men were to have been kept separate, but ultimately it was easier to enclose them together. They were scarcely human after all. One woman warder and two men kept watch today, or rather were playing cards at a table.

Dr. Volpe moved over the room like a visiting meteor. All was well. A couple were tethered, the rest moved freely about, or sat in arrested attitudes on the ground. One of the females kissed her hand to the doctor up in the air. He had always liked her gesture, and saluted her gaily. He did not know who she was. Only the troublemakers became, temporarily, known to him.

“Judit is frisky again,” said one of the doctor’s attendants.

“Judit?”

“The bitch who kissed her hand to you. Better be careful, monsieur doctor.”

“Oh, now, now,” said Dr. Volpe.

“There is the new female patient,” said the woman attendant somberly.

“Ah. Yes.”

“She’s in the cells.”

The “cells” were the place to which newcomers or desperates were assigned. Until their especial malady had been glanced at, they were not herded out with the rest of the prisoners of the asylum.

“Then, I must interview her. Is she lucid?”

“Not very. She’s young. About fourteen.”

“How tragic,” said Dr. Volpe, who was wishing that the cells were unoccupied. He had begun a Russian novel of vast import the night before and longed to get back to it. “What cause is known?”

They shrugged.

“She’s crazy. A girl of good family. Suddenly afflicted with
melancholia
and
hysteria
.” (The words he would approve of were stressed.) “Her parents were vague.”

Dr. Volpe pursed his lips. This kind of mania particularly offended him. Perhaps the woman attendant knew it. Her face was like a wooden box with a nose, and twinkling eyes. She drank the perfidious gin, he knew.

“Well, shall we go along now? I’ll see her.”

They crossed the last of the gallery and were gone from the rooms. (None of the beings below now seemed aware of them.) They descended stairs and went through a door, and so across a yard where sometimes the mad people were pushed out for exercise. There was a stone block in the middle of the yard. It had been put there for a statue. The statue had been going to represent Madness, with snakes for hair, but in the end this had been thought too strong, and also a waste, for mostly only the mad would see it, and not understand its significance.

The doctor and his warders entered another block, went up a stairway and along other corridors. Below were rooms of treatment, containing the Swing and the Waterfall, and a sample of other apparatus. Above was a set of offices, and near these were the cells.

The wardress unlocked a door. They went in.

Beyond a lattice was a place with a bed, a sort of pallet having one pillow and one blanket. Here someone lay.

Her eyes were open, but they might have been closed. Long bright hair rayed over the pillow. She was dressed in ordinary garments of the City, for she had not yet reached the level of an inhabitant.

“I’ll wake her up,” said the male warder. His name was Desel. Dr. Volpe believed that he was cruel, but efficient, perhaps necessary.

Desel strolled over, and came into the shut-off portion of the cell. He stood over the bed, and then he slapped the feet of the girl with his stick.

She was still wearing shoes, which had not yet been removed. Nevertheless, the shock boiled through her, and she sat up like a jack-in-the-box. She did not cry out.

“Sleeping Beauty wakes. Doctor’s here,” said Desel, smiling.

The girl looked at him with utter disbelief. As if he, the warder, were entirely mad.

“Get up, you. Get up and be respectful.”

And the girl got off the bed and stood, looking around her, the way a doll would if someone unwisely brought it to life.

“What is your name?” called Dr. Volpe through the lattice. “Do you know?”

“Hilde.”

“Good, good. You know your name.”

“What is this place?” she asked faintly. “Is it hell?”

“Oh, hell.” The doctor laughed. “No, it is to be your heaven.”

“I was thrown down. I was held! They struck me,” said Hilde. But she seemed bewildered.

“It was for your own good. No doubt you were irrational.”

“What is this place?” repeated the girl.

“A hospital. You’ll soon be better.”

The girl began to cry. This was like a demon coming on her.

A second demon: The warder Desel, started to chuckle with enormous amusement. And the girl, looking up at him, screamed until her throat cracked.

“Go in, comfort her,” said Dr. Volpe.

“I? She’s dangerous. She tears things,” said the woman, Marie Tante.

“Well, then. What do you think?”

“The Waterfall,” said Marie Tante. She added mildly, “That will sedate her.”

Dr. Volpe grimaced. The Waterfall did not, he had long reasoned, half-kill. It softened, eased.

“She’s so young.”

“A savage case. Look at that hair. A tricky color. She was vicious with her own mother.”

The girl with orange hair had gone on screaming, and they had been forced to shout.

Desel stood by, waiting only for the girl to rush at him. But she did not. She fell suddenly down and lay on the floor. Silence.

“There, the fit’s passed.”

“Better be sure,” said Marie Tante.

“Prepare her,” said Dr. Volpe. These people were indispensable. He must follow their advice.

They led Hilde Koster to a large white room that was somehow like a giant’s bathtub turned upside down. There was another partition, this time of glass, and beyond it a terrible little black chair, the highchair of a malign child, with bars.

In this chair they put Hilde, Desel and Marie Tante, who, now the girl was
to be “subdued” did not seem to fear handling her. The bars of the chair were fastened, across the throat and lap and ankles.

Hilde put out her hands, and Marie Tante slapped them back.

“What are you doing?” Hilde asked.

“Ask no questions,” said Marie Tante cheerfully.

“A little wash,” said Desel, and grinned.

Hilde seemed embarrassed, confused. All violence had deserted her, run away and left her at their mercy.