Chapter 6
Next morning Candy stepped out of the shower's biting embrace, now feeling fresh and restored after a sound sleep; she slipped on her bathrobe and hurried down to get breakfast.
Before starting her toast and coffee, she turned on "The Sunrise Symphony," a morning program of recorded music. Soon she heard the disquieting chords of Bartok's "Miraculous Mandarin Suite".
"Darn!" she said, realizing she'd missed the nerve-shattering introduction and the hideously discordant section where the elderly sex pervert is murdered by gangsters.
The orchestra was just finishing the formless waltz of the syphilitic prostitute as Candy was putting bread in the toaster, and it was about to begin the anguished cacophonies of the scene where the old mandarin is stabbed and strangled, when the telephone rang...
"Hello?" (It was Aunt Livia's voice.) "Is Uncle Jack there?"
"Oh!" Candy said, feeling very confused and embarrassed. She had succeeded in putting the previous day's events out of mind and now, at the sound of Livia's voice, it spilled back in untidily-all of it-the scene at Halfway House with the Kingsleys, the visit to the hospital... Oh, why had she done it!... but Uncle Jack's need of her had been so great, so-so aching...
"Would you mind putting your Uncle Jack on the phone!" said Livia.
"Why, Aunt Livia, whatever are you talking about?" Candy asked in real bewilderment.
"Well, I just happened to notice that my husband didn't come home last night," said Aunt Livia with heavy sarcasm, "and for some strange reason I thought he might be in your bed!"
"Uncle Jack? Do you mean Uncle Jack?"
"That's right. Uncle Jack!"
With a loud click the golden slices sprang up in the toaster, one of them jumping right out and tumbling on the floor.
"But-but what makes you think he's here?" Candy said, nervously picking the toast up from the floor.
"PUT HIM ON THE PHONE!" Aunt Livia thundered.
"Now, Aunt Livia, there's no need to-"
"CUT OUT THE CRAP!"
"But Uncle Jack isn't here I tell you! He isn't here!"
For a few seconds there was silence, as if Aunt Livia was digesting this information. Finally she replied.
"PUT THAT RAT-BASTARD ON THE PHONE!"
"But Aunt Livia-"
"CUT THE CRAP, YOU BITCH!"
Candy summoned all her dignity. "I'm sorry, Aunt Livia," she said, "but I don't propose to be talked to like that by anyone. Furthermore, I simply don't know what you're talking about. Goodbye!"
With that she replaced the phone firmly in its cradle and stood up to brush off her bathrobe, for she'd been unconsciously crumbling the piece of toast she'd picked up and her lap now was completely covered with it. She was quite certain that she had done the 'right' thing. Really, there were limits to-to how much vulgarity one could permit and-
The phone rang again, cutting short this train of thought.
"Where do you suppose he is then?" Livia asked in a quite normal tone of voice, just as if the conversation had never been interrupted, or had never taken place.
"I've no idea," Candy replied. "Have you tried phoning his office?"
"His office? No, I haven't tried that. That's not a bad idea. I'll do that right now... I'll catch up with that skunk and believe me, when I do..." and she hung up.
Candy sat silently for a second or two, her eyes fixed on the telephone. She was waiting for it to ring again, and for that raucous, unladylike voice to complete its demolition of the lovely summer morning. As for the "Miraculous Mandarin Suite," it had come to an end and the radio was now delivering an extremely nasal rendition of "The Wabash Cannonball."
Candy bit her full lower lip in annoyance, and had just begun to pour herself a cup of expresso coffee when the bell rang again.
She placed the half-filled cup on the table with a little crash of exasperation and picked up the phone. There was no answer-and yet, the bell kept ringing. Then she realized that it was the front door; she had absurdly confused it with the phone.
Ordinarily she would have thought of such an error as no more than amusing; but not this morning. Coming after the stormy events of the past few days, this little stumble that her mind had made struck her as being significant-ominous as well. 'My nerves have had about as much as they can stand,' she thought as she went to answer the door.
Standing in the doorway was a very thin old man dressed in a messenger boy's uniform.
"Telegram for Miss Christian," he said. He was blinking violently.
Candy noticed how slender and delicate his wrist was when she took the envelope. She looked at him again. He seemed to be on the verge of tears. "Is there anything wrong? I mean are you feeling ill, or is-"
"Something in my eye," he explained.
"Something in your eye! Well, for goodness sake don't rub it like that!"
(He had taken out a handkerchief and was patting at his eye.)
Candy had to stoop down to look into his eye-he was quite short. As she did so her bathrobe opened considerably and, since this took place a few inches before his face, he found himself staring at her bare throat and splendid young breasts...
"No, not that way," she ordered, "look up!"
"Boy!" he muttered enthusiastically, squinting as best he could with his watery and twitching eye at Candy's luscious chest.
Even if he had looked up it wouldn't have been much good-he was standing in the doorway with the light behind him and it was impossible to see the speck in his eye. Impulsively, the young girl took him by the lapels of his jacket and drew him into the room where she turned him this way and that trying to get the proper light.
After a few minutes of this she ended up sitting on a sofa with the elderly messenger boy stretched out beside her and his head in her lap.
He had yielded limply when she had bent him down backward and now, as she leaned over him, her left breast became almost entirely disengaged from the bathrobe and loomed above his face. He snapped at it weakly, missing it by a few inches.
The elderly messenger boy regarded Candy's breast peevishly and now and again lunged feebly, like a sick seal, at it. Finally, he paused, his mouth was looking intently at the red, winking eye. "I'll have it out in a jiffy!" she announced cheerfully.
The elderly Western Union boy regarded Candy's breast peevishly and now and again lunged feebly, like a sick seal, at it. Finally, he paused, his mouth O-shaped, as if awaiting further developments.
"Hold still!" Candy ordered, and, as she twisted to and fro, the flimsily attached bathrobe really opened and both her pert, inquisitive young breasts appeared. "Don't move!" she admonished, "I think I see it!"
The aged fellow held still as requested but, an instant later, when Candy leaned forward abruptly, bringing her breasts to within a fraction of an inch of him, he lost control and dived desperately into the open bathrobe...
Candy was so taken aback that she sat stock-still at first, and for a few seconds the thin old man wallowed between her breasts, rubbing them with his nose and muttering wildly to himself.
"Now listen..." she said, realizing finally what was up, "...What in the world are you doing!" and she pushed him firmly from her lap.
He fell immediately to the floor and lay there on his back with his frail limbs waving slowly like a beetle's. Then he managed to stagger to his feet and shuffle to the open door...
"Goodbye, darling," he gulped, pausing there and blinking rapidly four or five times.
Candy waited till she was sure he was gone before she crossed the room and shut the door. 'Well,', she said to herself, 'I wonder what the messenger service people would think if they knew that one of their messengers-.' She stopped, noticing the telegram which she'd all but forgotten in the confusion. She stooped and got it from the floor, opened it and read:
EXPECTING YOU HOSPITAL 10.30 A.M. DR. J. DUNLAP.
I'll barely have time to dress, she thought and shuddered slightly-a chill feeling of foreboding had come over her as she read the message, and she couldn't shake it off...
By taking a taxi she managed to arrive at the Racine County Hospital at 10:30 on the dot. She hurried into the first door she saw, which didn't happen to be the main entrance, and found herself standing in a gleaming long corridor flanked by spotless white doors. She started walking tentatively, looking for an office of some kind where she coud state her business. Each door seemed very much like the next and she finally opened one at random, hoping to come upon a nurse or someone who could be able to tell her where to find dr. Dunlap.
She saw at once that she was in one of the sickrooms. There was a disheveled bed, and, squatting on the floor for some reason was the occupant.
It was a woman in her seventies with very long grey hair and wearing a white nightgown.
"Git out!" she said in a cranky voice.
"Oh!" Candy said. "Oh-I'm so sorry," and she carefully shut the door.
After this she was more prudent, but when she came to a door with a bronze plaque on it on which was engraved OSPHRESIOLAGNIA, she paused. From inside she could hear the clicking of a typewriter. It stopped when she knocked and a deep masculine voice said, "Come in. "
Seated behind a desk was a dark, good-looking young man. His deep brown eyes were the most sensitive and the most intelligent that Candy felt she had ever seen, and his nose was thin, and with a fine aristocratic curve.
Her heart gave a little jump in that first instant of their meeting, and she even had time to think: 'Perhaps all the rest of my life I shall recall this moment'-and then the silence was broken by his sonorous voice, as he cleared his throat and leaned forward slightly, placing his hands gracefully, almost protectingly, on the typewriter.
"Are you here for masturbation?" he inquired briskly.
"I beg your pardon?" said Candy. It was just possible, she thought, that she hadn't heard right.
The young man held his fist up and agitated it meaningfully, yet with such a disinterested air that his gesture-ordinarily such a smutty one-seemed quite abstract and inoffensive. "You know-Onanism- 'beating your meat,'" he explained.
"Oh no!" Candy declared, quite taken aback. "I'm not quite sure why I'm here... but it certainly couldn't be for that!"
"You said 'that' in a peculiar sort of way-as if you thought there were something wrong with the subject," observed the young man behind the desk, his eyes flashing belligerently.
"Well I-I er-I didn't mean to make a value judgment," she stammered, terribly flustered.
"I see," he said coldly.
"But isn't it unhealthy?... I mean masturbation is bad for the complexion, isn't it?"
The young man stared at her with scientific detachment and said nothing.
What she had just uttered sounded idiotic to her and she tried frantically to think of some way to repair the damage, but nothing came to mind. She stood, blushing crimson for an unbearable few seconds, then, unable to stand the tension any longer, she wheeled and bolted-
dashing out the door so precipitously that she collided with a nurse who was coming down the hall.
The nurse-a small stocky brunette-stepped back, clenched her fist and prepared to punch Candy in the jaw. (You had to be ready for trouble at any moment in a hospital; and anyone who came flying violently out of that door could quite easily be catatonic.)
Candy excused herself as best she could and asked the nurse where the hospital's office was.
"Well, it's not in there," the nurse replied warily, indicating the room Candy had just rushed out of. (She still wasn't sure she mightn't be dealing with some kind of raving, anal-erotic maniac.)
"Yes," Candy said dryly, "I found that out... But whose office is that? I mean there was a young man in there who..."
"Dr. Irving Krankeit," the nurse cut in.
"Dr. Irving Krankeit," Candy repeated musingly. "And he's-?"
"He's our staff psychiatrist."
"Oh, I see! I was just wondering because some of the things he said were-Well, I understand of course, if he's a psychiatrist..."
The nurse nodded sympathetically, then, growing secretive, she suddenly grasped Candy's elbow and drew her several paces down the hall. "Dr. Krankeit's theories are unconventional," she confided in a low voice. "... very unconventional."
"Oh?"
The nurse grew even more conspiring. Her voice threatening to descend to a whisper, she said:
"Yes. He believes that the way to clear up our mental problems, and to settle all the troubles in the world is to get everyone to-"
"Yes?"
"...to-Well, you've heard the title of his book, haven't you?"
"I'm afraid I haven't," said Candy.
"It's Masturbation Now!" the nurse said, forming each syllable slowly with her lips and making almost no sound. Then she sucked in her cheeks appraisingly.
"That certainly is an unconventional idea," Candy admitted.
"He claims that normal sex relations," the nurse went on, "is what causes all these mental disorders so many people have, and he says that his way would stop War!"
Candy thought of Dr. Krankeit's earnest young face, the evident sincerity of his dark beseeching eyes... Surely he was honest!... and dedicated too, and-and sweet and kind... "Well," she said philosophically, "maybe the world needs some shocking new notion like that to make men stop fighting with each other."
"Your guess is as good as mine," the squat little nurse said shrugging, and with that she turned on her heel and started to walk away. "'Reception' is down that way," she called back,
"turn right at the end of the corridor," and she pointed to the way from which she herself had come.
Candy followed these instructions and soon found herself in a waiting room for visitors and 'outpatients.'
The several people sitting about all put down their magazines and ceased their whispered conversations to stare at the newcomer; and Candy, feeling quite self-conscious, went straight to the reception desk and showed the woman there the telegram she'd received. The receptionist was a small, birdlike woman whose name, according to a sign on the desk, was Mrs. Prippet.
"Have a seat," she said, having scarcely glanced at the telegram and regarding Candy fixedly as if there were something extremely curious about the lovely young girl standing before her.
Candy hesitated. "This came this morning," she said, indicating the telegram. She paused, and Mrs. Prippet and the people seated about looked at her expectantly. "I wonder if you could tell me..." her voice trailed off uncertainly-everyone in the room was listening with great interest and she was especially intimidated by the receptionist, Mrs. Prippet, who was looking at her with a pained expression as if Candy were speaking some sort of grotesquely broken English.
"You are Candy Christian?"
"Why yes, I-"
"Well please sit down," Mrs. Prippet said icily. "Dr. Dunlap will see you as soon as he's free."
Candy turned only to face a barrage of silent eyes.
Not until she had found a seat did they leave off and, with a rustle of pages and dry whispers, go back to their previous occupations. And now that she was safely ensconced, Candy, in turn, began to look at them, stealing furtive glimpses and turning quickly away whenever another pair of exploring eyes clashed with her own...
Sitting opposite was a fat girl, about her own age, and her throat was horribly distended with goiter. Candy looked at it for five seconds in fascination before realizing that she was 'staring.' She turned then, angry with herself. For heaven's sake, she thought, a thing like that is merely an accidental glandular condition; it has nothing whatsoever to do with what the girl's really like. She might be someone with a great awareness of Beauty... a sculptress perhaps, or a magnificent contralto... well no, not a contralto...
She continued taking inventory. There were two nuns; one old, one young, but both pale and wearing eyeglasses with silver rims. From time to time the younger one hissed something to her companion who would give no sign of having heard anything. Near them a young couple, the woman pregnant, whispered together. And finally, a man wearing Bermuda shorts and a sport jacket whose face she couldn't see since he was holding a copy of National Geographic in front of it. Candy's gaze lingered on the man's knees and calves, which were a bit plump she thought, and then she realized with a start that he was looking at her-peeping, that is, through the fingers that held the magazine, and, presumably, watching her reaction to his plump knees...
She looked hastily away and her eyes were drawn to the goiter again; but this time its owner caught her in the act, and stared fiercely back at her. Candy didn't know which way to
turn and was considering just shutting her eyes when a man with snow-white hair and a goatee strode into the waiting room.
There was a distinct elegance about this man, Candy thought, something chivalric-a natural grace in the way his body bent from the waist almost as if he were bowing.
Suddenly he straightened bolt upright and stared at her, at Candy! Then he bent down quickly again, whispered something... Mrs. Prippet was eyeing her too now and was nodding 'yes' with her head...
"Miss Christian," she called.
Candy sprang up and came to the desk. Once again all eyes focused on her, and a warm blush welled up, darkening her pretty face. It was like being the point of interest in a stadium, she thought, as she gracefully took her position before the man with the snowy hair.
Mrs. Prippet cleared her throat, and said, in a whisper everyone in the room could hear, "Dr. Dunlap would like to ask you a few questions, Miss Christian," and then added ominously, "Dr. Dunlap is the director of our hospital."
Candy expected that the courtly gentleman would invite her to his office at this point, but such an idea didn't seem to occur to him. He was staring at her in an extraordinarily blunt fashion.
"Yes!" he said in a rasping whisper, spacing each word slowly and distinctly, "I most certainly would like to ask Miss Christian 'a few questions'!"
Needless to say, his vehemence discomforted Candy still further.
There followed a pause now, during which the distinguished-looking doctor glared sternly at Candy as if to see whether she dared say anything. The suspense increased by the second; everyone in the waiting room leaned forward, hardly breathing, and shamelessly attentive...
This would have been a good moment for Candy herself to suggest that they retire to Dr. Dunlap's private office, but she discovered she was incapable of speaking. Helplessly she glanced about at the audience with their bulging eyes, then, mutely entreating, she turned again to the director...
Either Dr. Dunlap didn't understand this plea, or else he simply didn't care. He held his hands clasped behind his back and stood with his feet spaced well apart, and now, just before he addressed her, he rose up and down on his toes several times in a terrifying imitation of Charles Laughton in Mutiny on the Bounty.
"Miss Christian," he snarled in an ear-splitting whisper, "your father was admitted to this hospital two nights ago with an extremely grave head injury, suffering from shock, loss of blood, and possible concussion... He had been dealt a violent blow to the frontal lobe of his brain-a blow, which, if by some miracle did not prove fatal, will nevertheless probably leave him mentally impaired for the rest of his life!" Dr. Dunlap paused, carefully breathed three times, rising up and down on his toes as he did, then went on even more slowly and pompously than before. "Last night, Miss Christian, at a time when your father was hovering so closely to death that the slightest disturbance might have sealed his fate, one of our nurses, hearing a noise, entered the room and found you... stark naked, writhing, wallowing and-and-and-COPULATING ON THE FLOOR WITH A MAN!!!"
A gasp of triumph-almost of relief-burst from the crowd at this revelation. The girl with the goiter slapped herself on the thigh as if she had somehow guessed what was coming all along...
Dr. Dunlap had actually shouted the last few words of his terrible accusation and now stood with his jowls trembling from the intensity of his emotions.
Mrs. Prippet, the receptionist, smiled proudly, and, as for poor Candy, her knees suddenly sagged and she felt as though she were going to swoon.
"No," she moaned. "No... no..."
"What!" the director demanded indignantly. "I say that you were seen, you and some man, having wanton intercourse on the floor under your father's bed! SEEN-do you hear me? Seen going at it like a pair of HOT WART HOGS!!!" (He had begun to shout again, carried away like a holy-roller preacher.) "HORSING ON THE FLOOR! HUMPING UNDER THE BED! GROUSING IN THE GOODIE!"
"No, no," Candy sobbed, "oh please... please, please. PLEASE! You don't understand..."
"DON'T UNDERSTAND?" roared the director.
"Don't understand?" echoed the girl with the goiter, who had suddenly gotten to her feet in the excitement.
"No!" Candy cried. "You don't!... It isn't what you think!"
"Why the nerve of her!" the pregnant woman exclaimed.
"She could have killed her own father-doing a thing like that right there under his nose," interjected the man in the Bermuda shorts.
"I'll have you know that this is a hospital, and not a... house of ill-repute!" Dr. Dunlap proclaimed. "This is no place for a common young harlot to-"
"Oh!" Candy whimpered, flinching at every word.
"Another thing," volunteered the younger nun, "how did her father get hurt? Who was it that struck him down... and why?"
Mrs. Prippet nodded her head vigorously in agreement and said:
"That's right! We haven't heard about that part yet."
"Probably did it herself," the young husband muttered.
"Or had her boyfriend do it," added his wife, giving him a dark look.
"I say that nobody in their right mind would come into their own father's sick-room and-and-" said Dr. Dunlap, trying to develop his theory calmly and with scientific objectivity, but as he started to grope for words he lost control and was soon bellowing again: "TROLLOP! SLUT! FLOOSIE!"
"Could you sit down, please?" the young nun said to the girl with the goiter. "She can't see," she explained, indicating the old nun who was straining forward in her chair and trying to look around the others, but who was evidently too weak to stand up.
The plump girl did not sit down, but rather stepped to the side, considerately looking back to ascertain that she no longer obstructed the view.
For Candy, overwhelmed with embarrassment, it happened with the economy and the faultless logic of a dream: the girl stepping aside and looking back... moving her slablike arm out of the way... and finally, the toothless old nun revealed, leaning forward with visible relish to drink in what she'd been missing...
"Good Grief!" Candy said aloud. "This is worse than a nightmare!"
Then she fainted.