Read Online The Doctor Is Sick by Anthony Burgess - Free Book Online Page B

sensation.’
    They resented his body, Edwin could tell that. It was in the way, a long clumsy shoot out of the potato they were trying to roll around. If only the head could be, perhaps painlessly, temporarily severed and then, with some epoxy resin or other, fitted back. The air hissed about in all the convolutions and curlicues of Edwin’s brain, and the ladies in white, panting, coaxed it to the eye that would see everything. Click. And again click. It took most of the morning.
    â€˜You’ll have a rather nasty headache for a couple of days,’ said one of the ladies. ‘You won’t have to move around very much.’
    â€˜And what happens to the air?’ Edwin felt unreasonably sorry for it, imprisoned in that labyrinth. ‘Can it be sucked out again?’
    â€˜The air,’ they said, ‘will be absorbed.’
    He and the air were trolleyed back to the ward, where a conference of clinical sneerers was in progress. Lying still in his bed, Edwin listened to his own dressing-gownedneighbour and the two youths in pullovers who had come up from the medical ward, their speech impeded by the set eerie grimace they all shared.
    â€˜I mean, if I saw you in the street, and we was both the way we are now, I’d think you was taking the mike out of me, wouldn’t I?’
    â€˜It might be the other way round, depending on who looks first.’
    â€˜Dead sinister. Could make a packet in one of them horror films.’
    Suddenly Edwin had the sensation that his own face had twisted and fixed itself, compulsively, in an homme qui rit mask. He felt each cheek in turn with his left hand, then reached over to his locker for his shaving-mirror. The air in his skull and his head seemed to split. He lay back again, convincing himself that, if he were to speak, the same flat sneering vowels he now heard would be emitted from his own spread mouth. He said aloud, loudly:
    â€˜Ye Old Tea Shop is a solecism. The “Y” is a mistake for the Anglo-Saxon letter called thorn , which stood for “TH”.’
    The conference was silenced. The pullovered youths said they thought they’d better be going down to lunch. Edwin was aware of being watched narrowly by those nearest to him. Oh, well, if they thought he was mad—— Anyway, his mouth was still mobile, as capable of rounding as of spreading; at least he’d proved that.
    Another long yawn of a day, a huge mouth into which dull meals were thrown. At visiting-time a small man in an old baggy suit, cap and muffler, shambled in. He had a piece of paper in his hand. This he showed to an Italian ward-maid who was removing chrysanthemums. Shepointed to Edwin’s bed. ‘ Il dottore? ’ she said, without satire. The man, still capped, shambled over.
    â€˜Told me to come ’ere,’ he said, standing at ease. He was a youngish man, though lined, and his incisors and precanines seemed to have been yanked out as a single wedge. ‘’Er. She told me to come.’
    â€˜It’s very, very kind,’ said Edwin.
    â€˜Beat me at shove-ha’penny at dinner-time. Didn’t think she’d beat me, I didn’t, and I didn’t ‘ave the price of a pint on me. So couldn’t buy her one. So she made me come ’ere instead.’ He continued to stand at ease, but kept his eyes at attention. They were pale blue eyes and they looked fixedly at the blank wall opposite.
    â€˜You needn’t stay if you don’t want to,’ said Edwin.
    â€˜Got to. It’s only fair. She beat me at shove-ha’penny.’ There was a lengthy pause. Edwin said:
    â€˜What do they call you?’ This, he was sure, was a man with no real name.
    â€˜â€™Ippo.’
    â€˜Hippo? Why do they call you that?’
    â€˜That’s what they call me. ’Ippo.’
    â€˜It’s quite a distinguished nickname really, I suppose. Have you ever heard of St Augustine of Hippo?’
    The man