confused; it will not be as they described it. He knew himself to be ripped with huge wounds, a vast punishment down his chest. Thin wires and tubes. A poor weak Gulliver.
He looked bitterly at those around him, forms which became more and more distinct, but he was ready for them before he saw them. He was in a room beside a verandah. Is this what they did to you? He demanded they state his sins although he could already guess them. They never answered directly, never once. 'As they will be men still,' he thought, 'so they will feel and act as men.'
Slowly, during his convalescence from his successful operation, Harry Joy became totally convinced that he was actually in Hell. He watched them, as cunning as a cat, silently indignant that fate should play such a trick on him.
PART TWO
Various Tests and Their Results
He moved around the house in sandshoes and tracksuit and exhibited a curious stealth and – if you had not shared the general trauma at Palm Avenue, had not felt those creeping, inexplicable irritations – you may have found his antics funny.
Look at him: sneaking up the stairs you might have thought he was impersonating a cat in a pantomime, or even without a costume, a lizard. But this is all deadly serious, and what he is doing is throwing the whole emotional balance of the house-hold out of kilter, tipping the axis of his world and producing peculiar weather.
Is he mad?
A question he has asked himself. And if you follow him now, as he turns, for no apparent reason, and begins to go downstairs, hesitating before he crosses the shining expanse of living room, out on to the creaking verandah, down the steps, you will see him slip, like a shadow, into the garage.
There are a number of dusty old ammunition boxes lying higgledy piggledy in the comer, so dusty that they might have been there for years; and have. Yet those shining new brass padlocks give his secret away, and in a day or two this will occur to him too and he will come down here at five o'clock one morning and paint them with khaki paint, clogging up the keyholes and giving himself new difficulties. But now the key slips into the padlock smoothly and the shining book flicks open, and the lock is removed, and softly pocketed. Inside there are notebooks, fifteen spiral-bound, but at this date only six have been filled and a seventh started.
They contain all manner of peculiar observations. These are tests for madness. He is making them himself.
Harry Joy is running checks. He is comparing his life (termed 'life' in the books) with his other life, that is the days and years before he entered the operating room, the days before this cruel scar on his chest. If he had found someone he half-trusted he might have confessed, initially, that the chances of this being Hell were about sixty / forty. But as the weeks have rolled on, the evidence has mounted and he is not, according to his own checks, mad.
This is not the childish Hell of the Christian Bible with its flames. Here, obviously they planned more subtle things, and it has already occurred to him – a flush of panic as he stared into the 3 a.m. dark – that this, these boxes, locks, etc., are to be his punishment. He contemplated the possibility of Hell in a universe made like an infinite onion until he became as sick and frightened as he had once, as a child, lying on summer's black night grass, trying to grasp the infinity of space.
But to return to these books, and their entries. Here, on page 16 of the first book: FIAT IS WRONG.
While he was in hospital Lucy and David decided to clean the Fiat. It was a present. And they waited, like children, for his delight or at least his thanks and if not his thanks, his acknowledgement. They encouraged him to walk beside the garage, to enter the garage, to drive the car, but nothing they did could induce him to mention the Fiat, and Lucy, whose idea it had been and who had contributed most of the hard work it took, became angry and thought
He looked bitterly at those around him, forms which became more and more distinct, but he was ready for them before he saw them. He was in a room beside a verandah. Is this what they did to you? He demanded they state his sins although he could already guess them. They never answered directly, never once. 'As they will be men still,' he thought, 'so they will feel and act as men.'
Slowly, during his convalescence from his successful operation, Harry Joy became totally convinced that he was actually in Hell. He watched them, as cunning as a cat, silently indignant that fate should play such a trick on him.
PART TWO
Various Tests and Their Results
He moved around the house in sandshoes and tracksuit and exhibited a curious stealth and – if you had not shared the general trauma at Palm Avenue, had not felt those creeping, inexplicable irritations – you may have found his antics funny.
Look at him: sneaking up the stairs you might have thought he was impersonating a cat in a pantomime, or even without a costume, a lizard. But this is all deadly serious, and what he is doing is throwing the whole emotional balance of the house-hold out of kilter, tipping the axis of his world and producing peculiar weather.
Is he mad?
A question he has asked himself. And if you follow him now, as he turns, for no apparent reason, and begins to go downstairs, hesitating before he crosses the shining expanse of living room, out on to the creaking verandah, down the steps, you will see him slip, like a shadow, into the garage.
There are a number of dusty old ammunition boxes lying higgledy piggledy in the comer, so dusty that they might have been there for years; and have. Yet those shining new brass padlocks give his secret away, and in a day or two this will occur to him too and he will come down here at five o'clock one morning and paint them with khaki paint, clogging up the keyholes and giving himself new difficulties. But now the key slips into the padlock smoothly and the shining book flicks open, and the lock is removed, and softly pocketed. Inside there are notebooks, fifteen spiral-bound, but at this date only six have been filled and a seventh started.
They contain all manner of peculiar observations. These are tests for madness. He is making them himself.
Harry Joy is running checks. He is comparing his life (termed 'life' in the books) with his other life, that is the days and years before he entered the operating room, the days before this cruel scar on his chest. If he had found someone he half-trusted he might have confessed, initially, that the chances of this being Hell were about sixty / forty. But as the weeks have rolled on, the evidence has mounted and he is not, according to his own checks, mad.
This is not the childish Hell of the Christian Bible with its flames. Here, obviously they planned more subtle things, and it has already occurred to him – a flush of panic as he stared into the 3 a.m. dark – that this, these boxes, locks, etc., are to be his punishment. He contemplated the possibility of Hell in a universe made like an infinite onion until he became as sick and frightened as he had once, as a child, lying on summer's black night grass, trying to grasp the infinity of space.
But to return to these books, and their entries. Here, on page 16 of the first book: FIAT IS WRONG.
While he was in hospital Lucy and David decided to clean the Fiat. It was a present. And they waited, like children, for his delight or at least his thanks and if not his thanks, his acknowledgement. They encouraged him to walk beside the garage, to enter the garage, to drive the car, but nothing they did could induce him to mention the Fiat, and Lucy, whose idea it had been and who had contributed most of the hard work it took, became angry and thought
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