Hector was horrified to discover that he had slept for an entire day or more. After his meeting at St. Paul’s, of which he could remember little, and the run home, of which he could remember everything, he just slept. It had only been Solli’s insistent knocking and calling that had hauled him out of the long dream of the long run. He staggered to the door, rubbing his bristled chin and bleary eyes. He undid the bolts and turned away from the door saying, “Come in, Solli, come in.”
He heard them enter and close the door behind them as he shuffled towards the sink and the kettle. Then he heard their stillness and silence as they stood by the door, staring.
He turned. “What, what is it?” Imagining some auspicious or alarming piece of news had weighted them to the floor, transfixed them to the spot with the burden of its disclosure. “What?”
Solli was with the youth called Jerry, who lifted his hand to point at Hector. Their eyes were wide, their mouths stuck in imbecilic grins.
“Your hair, Prof, your hair…” Jerry said.
Hector remembered the wind and the imaginary mane, the stranger in the fragment of looking glass. He brought an unbelieving hand up to his head and touched the mass that grew there.
“You can see it?”
The thin, shrill question was answered by the men nodding in unison. Hector rushed at the mirror, lifting it from its nail and taking it to the window, where he moved it this way and that, steering the irregular glint of the shard and his astonished image back and forth. Causing an escaping dagger of reflection to bob and scurry over the walls and the ceiling of the room. For a moment it distracted Jerry’s appreciation of the comic scene.
“I thought it was a dream. Only a dream,” Hector muttered.
Out of the shadows and in the flooding illumination of the skylight, Solli and Jerry could see that it was not just the hair that had changed. Hector looked younger, something about his posture had changed. It had tightened and become more flexible at the same time. Solli did not like this kind of thing and recently there had been a lot of it centred around this strange old man. Best to ignore it. Impossibilities were for the real rabbis, not him; he had the muscle and the nerve of the street to deal with. He was not here to witness miracles.
“You’re wanted across town,” he said sharply.
Hector did not hear him.
“Uncle Hymie wants you over at Bedlam.”
He heard that. It was not a request. Nobody could have ignored the urgent thuggery in the order. Even Jerry stepped back to look at his leader in surprise.
“I think you’d better get dressed, Professor,” Jerry said, trying to calm the unpleasantness that was damaging the air.
“We’ll wait downstairs, and I ain’t got all day,” said Solli, turning on his heels and gaining the landing before anybody else could move or speak.
“Better do what he says, Prof,” said Jerry after a while.
Solli had started his second cheroot by the time Hector came down. He was leaning against the entrance, tapping his stick with irritation against the metal drain cover. There had obviously been bad words between the youths. Jerry said nothing and studiously looked in the opposite direction.
In an attempt to lighten things, Hector asked, “Are we going by boat?”
Solli looked at him as if he had asked for the crown jewels, and Jerry looked farther into his imaginary horizon.
“No, we fucking ain’t. Ain’t got the fucking time to muck about. Get a taxi,” he ordered Jerry, who happily ran away from them towards the main road at the end of the street. Hector and Solli followed at a respectively brisk and artificially casual pace. Solli let the old man go in front so that he could scrutinise him with sideways glances. His walk had changed, both in rhythm and pace. It was brisker and more alert, closer to his own, which he did not like, and worse was the overall impression that the old man had grown taller. Solli aggressively chewed and puffed at his cheroot and clattered his cane at his heel like the teeth of a choke-chained dog. Jerry had the taxi waiting and they bundled in.
“St. George’s Fields, Lambeth,” said Jerry.
He had long since learned that you did not say Bedlam in front of Solli, or anybody Solli was with. He alone was able to use the B word, and when he did, you knew there was going to be trouble. They drove in silence, the cab full of smoke, the window tightly closed. Hector coughed and paddled at the window-release strap.
“Do you mind?” he said to Solli.
“Yes, I fucking do, it’s too cold, keep it shut.”
The matter was over and Hector tried to breathe in shallow gasps as they travelled the miles across London and over the Thames. Things got worse when they arrived at Bethlem Royal Hospital. Solli’s hatred of the place and his uncle’s captivity turned his gait into a begrudging swagger that seemed to increase in velocity without gaining speed. Nobody spoke until they reached the dormitory that Hymie shared with his “comrades.” He was not there, but two of his pals were. Nicholas was standing next to a far bed spoon-feeding another man who sat propped up against the headboard. Hector was caught between a bristle and a smile at seeing the Erstwhile. Solli shouted across the room, making the man in the bed jump.
“Where’s Hymie?”
Nicholas ignored him, spoke softly to the patient, and continued to spoon food into his bandaged head. Solli was dangerously near his cracking point. He sped across the room, seething in irrational aggression.
“I am talking to you, you fucking freak, where is my uncle?”
The bandaged man cringed, some of the food oozing out of his slippery mouth. Without turning around Nicholas put down the spoon and pointed one of his immaculately manicured hands towards Solli. He held it cobra-like about two feet in front of his nose and then made a repeated opening and closing of the fingers held together and the thumb below, imitating the head of a bird yakking. Solli reached inside his coat, his hand grasping the bone-slivered handle of his cutthroat razor. He was about to slash it out when Nicholas brought the index finger of his other hand up to his lips, making the sign of hush. The effect was instantaneous. All the air, acid, and violence drained out of Solli, deveining him until only a lost youth hung in the clothes that had been so stretched and threatening before. Nicholas returned to the dinner, picked up the spoon, and continued.
For the next ten minutes or so a great stillness filled the room. Only the soft pendulum of the spoon marked any passage in time.
“Have you had enough, Edmund?”
The bandaged man nodded and smiled.
“Very well, try to sleep now,” Nicholas said, pulling the blanket up to the man’s neck and setting his pillows at a lower angle. He then collected the plate and spoon and walked past the waiting men and out of the tall doors. He sat down on a broad bench in the corridor and briskly tapped the metal spoon against the china plate. Solli blinked and stumbled forward like a sleeper missing a step in a steep dream. Hector and Jerry also blinked back into action. All three came and quietly sat at his sides.
“Now, Solomon, you were asking about Uncle Hymie? He is in the treatment room receiving interruption like poor Edmund there.”
“Treatment?” said Solli.
“Yes, they have come from Maudsley with interruptions, an invention from the colonies, as I understand. Something that stops the frowning, they say. But I think they are separating him, slicing away his visibility. The exact opposite of what I have been doing for centuries.”
“Why are they doing it, Nicholas?” asked Hector.
“They said to stop the ‘mood swings,’ making them ‘better’ by tapping out the headaches.”
“Tapping?” said Solli, stiffening back into his clothing, his skeleton of violence gleaming. He exchanged quick black glances with Jerry. “Tapping with what?”
“A spike and a hammer, I think Edmund said.”
“Where?” demanded Solli, his rage back and doubled.
Nicholas extended a languid arm. “Treatment room B. Turn left at the end at the second corridor.”
The words had barely left his soft grinning mouth and they were gone.
“Good, now we can talk alone, have you ever seen a mood swing? I think they must keep it in the gardens somewhere.”
He paused for a moment as if his mind had wandered outside to look for the allusive swing, hanging from a distant branch of one of the older trees in the walled grounds. He eventually returned, delighted to find his old friend still sitting at his side.
“Anyway, how are you, Hector?”
Hector felt ashamed about his previous behaviour to this extraordinary being. Now it all seemed so distant, with only his insulting language standing proud like an ugly rock in a quiet lake.
“I am very well, Nicholas, how are you?”
“Soho.”
Hector ignored the possible mistake in language in case it was another invitation to join a scree of meaningless jokes. He had only just got over the last one.
“I must apologise for my bad language when last we met.”
“Ah! You mean the Huns Toft,” said Nicholas gleefully.
It was worse than Hector hoped for, he had actually remembered the words, or rather his version of it.
“Yes,” he said very quietly. “I am sorry.”
“But what does it mean, Hector? I have never heard it before.”
The old man shrunk inside. “It’s just bad language, that’s all.”
“But it must mean something, all words mean something.”
He was not going to let go. Hector did not know if he was like a dog with a bone or a cat with a mouse. He secretly prayed for the former.
“It is the back end of an animal.”
“What animal?”
“A dog.”
“Ah! I see.”
Patients and doctors were walking past. Each one acknowledged Nicholas and stared at his companion. They all seemed purposeful and busy and engaged in the serious business of real life.
“Is it its arse? Is that what you called me, a dog’s arse?”
“No, not exactly.” Hector was talking to his shoes again.
“What then?”
“Well, it’s a female dog.”
There was a silence while Nicholas stroked his chin and thought very deeply. Hector wanted to interrupt this and change the subject, but did not know how. And anyway it was nearly over, might as well brazen it through.
Three corridors down and at a right angle were the treatment rooms. Each with benches arranged outside. Little groups of men dressed in skimpy gowns sat waiting for assessment or treatment. Solli looked for Uncle Hymie among the vacant flock. There was no sign of him and he bit his lip in anxiety. Suddenly his attention was seized by a wheeled stretcher bumping out of the rubber doors of treatment room B. Its occupant did not look like the rest of the patients waiting. It looked like the spoon sucker he had just seen with Nicholas. He made straight for the trolley and held it fast in his small white hands.
The attendant stopped and sneered down at Solli. He was a large man, who had not bothered to shave that day.
“What you want?” he barked.
Solli looked into the patient’s eyes, looked for a response, personality, or even life. What he saw changed the seething anger that he had carried all day, transmuted it by the violent application of fear. His eyes then found those of the burly attendant.
There are modes of communication that the superior human still shares with the animals that we deem to see as lower: expressions of dominance and power that are far more vital than all our words put together. Moments where the primitive must be trusted and obeyed. The large man was looking at one now and instantly knew that all his strength and size was meaningless before the ferocity of the small man who was gripping the trolley.
“What happened to him?” said Solli in a voice that an iceberg would be envious of.
“New treatment,” said the attendant without a moment’s hesitation.
Solli took one hand off the trolley and made a minute adjustment of his neck, his eyes never leaving the looming man.
“It’s a Yank thing, they’re trying it out over here, at the Maudsley. All hush-hush and now they are trying it here.”
“In there?”
The attendant nodded and Solli was gone in a black-chromed blur.
“A bitch arse?” said Nicholas, very pleased with his deduction.
“Almost,” said Hector, resigned to the humiliation of his exposure.
More occupants of the hospital passed them and stared, including a stern-looking nursing sister who had heard every word they’d said.
Solli heard Hymie’s voice two rooms down the antiseptic-smelling corridor. A group of four men in surgical gowns and two nurses stood around a table talking quietly. Hymie’s voice was corralled inside them. He was strapped to the table and his head was in a clamp. The authoritative tones of the most senior doctor could be heard above all others. A voice that had been trained by privilege, pampered with conceit, and smoothed by never encountering doubt. All attention was on him. Nobody saw or heard Solli enter the room and stand behind them. Hymie was equally ignored, talking to himself about this and that, a nurse occasionally shushing him when his volume interrupted the speech of the eminent man who was enjoying his audience and seemed to be conducting their admiration with a slim baton that he had in his hand and waved about in a casual manner. It looked like one of Mrs. Fishburn’s knitting needles. Except that it was thicker at one end and tapered to a hard sharpness of gleaming steel. Mid-sentence the doctor gave a slight nod and the two nurses and one of the other doctors descended on Hymie, putting a gag in his mouth and a strap around his jaw, tightening his head in the clamp. The distinguished surgeon moved towards his patient, still talking, and Solli saw that in his other, inarticulate hand he held a hammer of stainless steel.
“I got it. A dog bitch’s cunt. That’s what you called me. A cunt of a bitch.”
Hector grumbled agreement and Nicholas slapped his thighs and rolled about on the bench, guffawing and greatly savouring his new name.
“I shall wear it in the plural,” he said, tears filling his laughing eyes.
“What is this plural you speak of?” asked Hector.
“It’s when we sleep together again, as one. The great union of angel and man.” He could barely hold the words together between his castanet-like outbursts of off-key braying guffaws. “It’s what you have been sent for, so we can do it together and make a barrier, a ripple under the river.” Tears were spraying Hector from Nicholas’s hysterical head. “The bitch cunt and the Jew embracing eternity in the mud!” He slapped his thigh again and wiped his face on his sleeve.
Hector formed the next question in his mind and filled his mouth with the taste of it when the corridor suddenly turned into a cattle market. Something had grabbed him up by his arm and tried to do the same with Nicholas. It was Jerry, wide-eyed and frantic.
“We gotta go, now, quick, hurry.”
There was the sound of a distant hand-cranked bell and a horde of running people. In its centre and moving quickly through the teeming mass was Solli, pushing his confused uncle in a wheelchair. The old man was wearing a loose-fitting smock, which refused to cover his sagging genitals and hairy knobby legs. When he saw Hector and Nicholas, he waved energetically, almost standing up in the chair. Solli put a blood-soaked hand on his shoulder and forced him back down into the fast-moving seat, dropping something shiny in the process. A snapped-off steel rod bounced brightly against the wooden floor.
“Come on, Prof, we got to go, scarper quick, like,” said Jerry.
“But why?” asked the confused Hector.
“ ’Cause Solli’s done a doctor.”
Hector had no idea what was going on as he was gathered up in the tide. Nicholas refused to move, Jerry’s hand having had no more effect than seaweed trying to push a cliff.
At the front Solli scooped his uncle up out of the chair and carried him down the front steps, the old man whooping with delight at such a game. Hector and Jerry followed, the young thug’s eyes watching the retreating entrance for signs of pursuit. On the street they hailed a taxi.
“The Pavilion, Whitechapel,” insisted Jerry. The cabbie, who had quite a lot to say about the motley passengers, their attire, and their comic destination, changed his mind when he saw Solli’s eyes in his rearview mirror. Only Hymie spoke as they sped across town. Solli patted the old man as if in agreement, his fierce gaze locked on the passing streets. Hector attempted to follow the gushings of Yiddish cockney and not to look at Solli’s bloodstained hand and sleeve, and Jerry closed his eyes and pretended to doze. They stopped outside the Pavilion and carefully helped Hymie out, who was ecstatic at being “home.” Hector followed a few paces behind the hobbling uncle and supporting nephew. Jerry gave the cabbie a handful of scrunched notes and said, “Stumm.”
The cabbie blinked, nodded, and was gone.
“What is happening, Jerry? Won’t they come to take Hymie back across the river?”
“No, Prof, they won’t come here and we can never cross the Thames again, Solli has burnt all our bridges. We are all here together now.”