Kleinzeit

Mixed Feelings

’You’re looking surprisingly fit,’ said Dr Pink. Dr Pink was deeply tanned, looked as if he’d always look fit, as if everyone could always look fit if only they’d make the effort.

‘I feel wonderful,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘Except that I can’t sit up or anything.’

‘Are you sure it isn’t in your mind?’ said Dr Pink.

‘What’re you talking about?’ said Kleinzeit.

‘We don’t know an awful lot about the mind, do we?’ said Dr Pink. ‘On my holiday I was reading some books that were lying about in the villa we’d rented. Chap named Freud. Quite amazing stuff, really. Mind, you know, emotions. Mixed feelings about Mum and Dad, that sort of thing.’

‘What are you getting at?’ said Kleinzeit.

‘Sorry,’ said Dr Pink. ‘I was just wondering whether perhaps you mightn’t be of two minds about sitting up. Wanting to and at the same time not wanting to, perhaps. What they call ambivalence nowadays. Have you tried?’

‘Look,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘I’m trying.’ His mind sat up, the rest of him stayed lying down.

‘Hmm,’ said Dr Pink. ‘You’re still lying down, right enough.’ He picked up Kleinzeit’s chart from the foot of the bed. ‘I’ve put you on the new drugs to see if we can’t give your system some rest,’ he said. ‘The Greenlite, although it seems to have cleared stretto a bit, may have speeded up traffic more than one would like, so I’ve switched you to Lay-By. The Fly-Ova should give you a little less to cope with at the asymptotic intersection, and the Angle-Flex will take some of the strain off hypotenuse.’

‘That form the lady keeps bothering me about …’ said Kleinzeit.

‘We’ll put that to one side for a bit,’ said Dr Pink. ‘Let’s see where we are in a few days, talk about it then.’

‘Right,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘Maybe things’ll sort themselves out, eh?’

‘We can but try,’ said Dr Pink. ‘As you’ve got your mind so set against surgery. The mind, after all, one can’t separate it from the body. One might almost say it’s an organ in its own right.’

‘My mind feels very strong,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘My mind sits up with no trouble.’

‘Quite,’ said Dr Pink. ‘We’ll just see how it goes.’ He smiled, walked on peacefully to the next bed, examined Raj. Where were Fleshky, Potluck and Krishna, Kleinzeit wondered.

He rolled on to his side, his back to Schwarzgang and Redbeard. Raj, buttoning up his pyjama top, smiled. Kleinzeit smiled back.

‘You are going away, you are returning,’ said Raj. ‘To and fro you go.’

‘I try to keep moving,’ said Kleinzeit.

‘You are going back to work soon?’ said Raj. ‘You are going back to your job?’

‘Haven’t got a job,’ said Kleinzeit.

‘Ah!’ said Raj, passed him the Evening Standard. ‘Best classified adverts,’ he said.

‘Thanks so much,’ said Kleinzeit.

Beyond Raj Piggle’s bed was empty. Nox, in the next bed, looking over the top of the new All-Star Wank, caught Kleinzeit’s eye. ‘Surgery,’ he said, nodding towards Piggle’s bed. ‘He’s up there now. That’s where Fleshky, Potluck and Krishna are.’

Ah! said Kleinzeit with his face.

‘Yes,’ said Nox. ‘We pretty well have to take what comes, the rest of us here. We’re not all free to come and go like you.’

‘What makes you think I’m free to come and go,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘I walk out and I come back in an ambulance. I keep trying but I don’t make it.’

‘You will though,’ said Nox, and went back to All-Star Wank.

Kleinzeit thought briefly of Wanda Udders, Miss Guernsey, who’d always known there were big things ahead of her. Only a photo in a newspaper, but part of his past. For whom did the china mermaid smile now, he wondered. Nobody seemed terribly friendly today. He reached under the bed. You there? he said.

No answer. No hairy black hand. He rolled over to face Schwarzgang and Redbeard again. Schwarzgang was busy blipping, keeping up with his machinery, had no glance for him. Redbeard nodded, looked away again.

Piggle didn’t come back.