6

Baxter’s Dream

BAXTER RETURNED, SAT DOWN AND LOOKED at me with his lips compressed and his eyebrows raised. Maybe I blushed. Certainly my face felt hot. He said patiently, “Use your memory, McCandless. I am an ugly fellow but have you known me do an ugly thing?”

I pondered then said sulkily, “What about Mopsy and Flopsy?”

He looked hurt at this but not very hurt, and after a while spoke thoughtfully as if to himself.

“Sir Colin, his nurses and dogs gave me more attention than most newcomers to this globe are given, but I wanted more than that. I dreamed of a fascinating stranger—a woman I had not yet met so could only imagine—a friend who would need and admire me as much as I needed and admired her. No doubt a mother supplies this want in most young creatures, though rich families often employ a servant to take the mother’s place. I formed no special attachment to those who fostered me, perhaps because there were so many of them. I was always a mighty big fellow and seem to recall at least three mature nurses feeding and washing and clothing me before I could do these things for myself. Perhaps there were more, for I think they worked in relays. I may be imposing on infancy an obsession of my later years, but I cannot remember a day when I did not feel inside me a woman-shaped emptiness that ached to be filled by someone stranger and bonnier than I ever met at home. This ache grew stronger with puberty, which happened with catastrophic suddenness. My voice, alas, did not break, and remains mezzosoprano to the present day, but I woke one morning with the enlarged penis and heavy testes which afflict most of our sex.”

“And then, as you told me before, your father explained how female anatomies differed from yours and offered to provide you with a healthy specimen in full working order. You should have jumped at the chance.”

“Did you not hear me, McCandless? Must I say everything twice? I needed to admire a woman who needed and admired me. Will I say it anatomically? Spermatic ejaculation can only induce homoeostasis in me if accompanied by prolonged stimulation of higher nerve centres whose pressure upon the ductless glands changes the chemistry of my blood not for a few spasmodic minutes but for many tingling days. The woman I imagined stimulated me like that. I found her picture in Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare: a book that must have been left here by one of Sir Colin’s patients—it was the only work of fiction in the house. Ophelia was listening to her brother, an insipid looking lad despite his fierce little beard. He was saying something she was only pretending to take seriously, for her eager face looked toward something wonderful outside the picture, and I wanted it to be me. Her expression excited me more than her lovely body in a flowing violet gown, because I thought I knew all about bodies. Her expression excited me more than her lovely free, for I had seen women with such faces in the park—when they walked toward me their faces froze, grew pale or bright pink and tried not to see me at all. Ophelia could look at me with loving wonder because she saw the inner man I would become—the kindest, greatest doctor in the world who would save her life and the life of millions. I read the miserable story of the play in which she was the one true loving soul. It obviously described the spread of an epidemic brain fever which, like typhoid, was perhaps caused by seepings from the palace graveyard into the Elsinore water supply. From an inconspicuous start among sentries on the battlements the infection spread through prince, king, prime minister and courtiers causing hallucinations, logomania and paranoia resulting in insane suspicions and murderous impulses. I imagined myself entering the palace quite early in the drama with all the executive powers of an efficient public health officer. The main carriers of the disease (Claudius, Polonius and the obviously incurable Hamlet) would be quarantined in separate wards. A fresh water supply and efficient modern plumbing would soon set the Danish state right and Ophelia, seeing this gruff Scottish doctor pointing her people toward a clean and healthy future, would be powerless to withhold her love.

“Daydreams like these, McCandless, accelerated my heart and changed the texture of my skin for hours on end when I was not busy with my studies. A prostitute procured for me by Sir Colin would have been a contrivance of his, a clockwork doll driven by money instead of a spring.”

“But a warm living body, Baxter.”

“I needed to see that expression.”

“In the dark—” I began to say, but he bade me shut up. I sat feeling more of a monster than he was.

After a while he sighed and said, “My daydream of becoming a kindly popular beloved healer proved impossible. I was the most brilliant medical student the University has known—how could I not be? As Sir Colin’s most trusted helper I knew by practice what many lecturers taught as theory. But in Sir Colin’s operating-theatre the only patients I touched were anaesthetized. Look at this hand, although of course the sight pains you, this cube with five cones protruding from the top, instead of a kipper with five sausages stuck to the edge. The only patients I am allowed to touch are too poor or unconscious to have a choice in the matter. Several well-known surgeons like my assistance when operating on celebrities whose deaths would damage their reputations, for my ugly digits and (to tell the truth) my ugly head are better than theirs in an emergency. But the patients never see me, so that was no way to win the admiring smile of an Ophelia. But I have nothing to complain about now. Bella’s smile is happier than Ophelia’s was, and makes me happy too.”

“So Miss Baxter does not dread your hand?”

“No. From the moment she opened her eyes here these hands have served her food, drink and sweetmeats, placed flowers before her, offered toys, shown how to use them, displayed the bright pages of her picture-books. At first I made the servants who washed and dressed her wear black woollen mittens in her presence, but I soon saw this was pointless. The fact that others have different hands does not stop her thinking me and my hands as normal and necessary as this house and our daily meals and the morning sunlight. But you are a stranger, McCandless, so your hands thrill her. Mine do not.”

“You hope this will change, of course.”

“Yes. O yes. But I am not impatient. Only bad guardians and parents expect admiration from young brains. I am glad Bella takes me as much for granted as the floor under her: that floor on which she enjoys the music of the pianola, yearns for the company of the cook’s grand-niece, and thrills to the touch of your hand, McCandless.”

“May I see her again soon?”

“How soon?”

“Now . . . or this evening . . . at any rate, before you leave on your trip round the world.”

“No, McCandless, you must wait till we return. Your effect on Bella does not worry me. Her effect on you does, at present.”

He ushered me to the front door as firmly as the last time I visited him, but before shutting me out he patted me kindly on the shoulder. I did not flinch from the contact but said suddenly, “One moment, Baxter! That lady you spoke of who drowned herself—how advanced was her pregnancy?”

“At least nine months.”

“Could you not have saved the child?”

“Of course I saved it—the thinking part of it. Did I not explain that? Why should I seek elsewhere for a compatible brain when her body already housed one? But you need not believe this if it disturbs you.”