Chapter 9
Lengthening her pace to accord with his, Candy stole a glance at Krankeit as he strode determinedly through the white halls, bent slightly forward, and with his hawklike nose cleaving the air before him like the cone of a medium-range guided missile.
Why, she thought, could this striding along together of theirs not be a symbol of all that was to come? In the bright triumphs of his medical career, and also in the moments of anguish and doubt when it seemed to him that all his efforts were to end in ignominious failure-she would be at his side, marching along, as at present, to the next encounter with the Enemy, and lending him the soft assuring warmth of her femininity.
'Candy Krankeit,' she thought with a bittersweet thrill-so that was how it was to be! All those dreamy-girl hours spent wondering whom her fate would bring... what the forceful male presence would be like that would provide her with the key to fling open the gates of her womanhood-and then, on a day like the others, she opened a door and there was the man that put an end to all her games of reverie. As simple as that.
And this meant that she, in turn, must be the instrument of his release, though he hadn't as yet sensed it of course. This fact, that Krankeit was still unaware of their looming, destined love, only endeared him to her the more. 'The poor darling ninny,' she thought, little did he realize the stark, aching need he had for her. She almost laughed aloud thinking of this obtuseness of his-so like a man too. There he was, all wrapped up in thoughts of his work, never dreaming what his heart held in store for him. She felt like pinching him, or playfully giving him a push just to break through his absurd masculine numbness; but it was too soon, she knew, and it wouldn't do to disconcert him just now when he needed all his calmness and lucidity for the examination of her father.
'Poor Daddy,' she thought, 'and it's all my fault too! Well, I'll make it up to him somehow. I'll-'
Just then Krankeit turned sharply and entered a short, vaulted hallway, and Candy's speculations were broken off as sharply by what she saw there...
The hall they were in terminated in a flight of stairs leading down, and, halfway to the stairs, was a middle-aged, brick-shaped woman lying on her stomach on the floor.
Hearing Candy and Krankeit approaching, she raised herself heavily to her knees and began to scrub the floor with a wet and soapy brush. Evidently, she had been taking a break from her work when they had entered the hall. Then, as they got closer, the woman looked up at Candy with an expression of such fierce hostility that the girl almost stopped in her tracks. But Krankeit kept on walking and even said, "Good afternoon, Audrey," to the scrubwoman, who lowered her head, as if refusing to answer, or even look at them, and muttered angrily under her breath as they passed. She did not stop her scrubbing to let them by and Candy actually
had to step over her arm. But, a second after they had passed, the thickset woman impulsively tipped a bucket of soapy water she was using, and sent a good-sized puddle of it flowing swiftly after Candy's high heels...
Candy was looking at Krankeit at that moment, trying to determine what his reaction was to this disagreeable person. She had just the time to see that he seemed completely oblivious-and then the treacherous liquid reached her feet and she began to slip. She realized with horror that she was in danger of tumbling down the flight of stairs, which was very close now, and, in that instant, the silence of the hospital corridor was shattered by a blood-curdling roar of laughter!
Startled from his bemusement, Krankeit finally saw what was happening and managed to grab hold of Candy just as she was about to launch into space; then, having steadied her, he glanced back with a long look of revulsion at 'Audrey,' the scrubwoman, who was making no attempt to conceal her joy at the near-accident, or to still the laughter that echoed so diabolically in the hall.
"Gosh!" said Candy, when they had descended the stairs and were out of earshot of the husky scrubwoman. "Who was that?"
"Hmmm?" Krankeit seemed to have already forgotten the incident.
"That woman-the woman who was washing the floor. Who was she?"
"Who was she? Why, she was a woman washing the floor." He said this in the soothing manner of a psychoanalyst addressing a nervous patient.
"Yes, but you called her 'Audrey.' "
"Well, why shouldn't I have? It's her name, you see," said Krankeit a bit brusquely.
"That's what I mean. You seemed to know her... know about her that is. She seemed so strange, so-"
"I fail to see anything remarkable about her, or about the fact that I know her name: I happen to know the names of many people who work in the hospital."
He seemed to be getting a little angry and Candy diplomatically dropped the subject. 'Cranky old darling,' she thought, but it was easy to see how the enormous strain of his work had gotten him on edge.
Uncle Jack, his head and a good bit of his face swathed in bandages, sat propped against pillows like an Oriental Pasha and regarded his young visitors with a gentle smile.
"I've brought Candy to visit you," the young man had said.
"Candy? I knew a girl named Candy," Uncle Jack reminisced. "Looked just like this girl too... Could be her twin sister."
Just before coming in, Krankeit had explained the patient's condition to Candy, pointing out that he had become a more or less "disembodied intelligence," and could be expected to lack the most elementary knowledge about himself or even the ordinary details of existence. His id and his ego-both so central to rational conduct-had suffered near obliteration; and consequently, though he might be quite conscious of what was going on about him, it was like the awareness of a camera or a microphone, for he had practically no feeling of self.
Despite this briefing, Candy couldn't restrain a sigh of distress when Uncle Jack told her she reminded him of herself.
"But Daddy," she said, fighting hard to keep her voice steady, "it's me, it's Candy!"
Apparently Uncle Jack didn't feel this statement was intended for him, for he looked at Krankeit smilingly as if expecting him to answer.
Krankeit had taken out pad and pencil, and now jotted down the words "agonic id." He too was smiling, but in a different way than the patient. He was happy because this was his work, his element; he was like an expert operator seated before some fantastically complex switchboard, and he was about to determine which of its circuits were clear and which had been interrupted. Silently, he took Uncle Jack's hand and placed it, fingers spread apart, on the blanket. "Where is your thumb?" he asked.
Uncle Jack's angelic smile slowly froze on his face.
"Which one of your fingers is your thumb?" the young doctor repeated patiently.
Uncle Jack looked at his hand, perplexed. After a while, the middle finger raised up.
"Which is the middle finger then?"
This time the little finger lifted hesitantly.
"Ring finger?"
Nothing happened.
"Little finger?"
Uncle Jack's middle finger bobbed up again.
Krankeit reached over and lifted Uncle Jack's thumb. "What's that?" he inquired.
Uncle Jack smiled with relief. "You knew it all the time," he said admiringly.
Krankeit took hold of the little finger and held it up. "Which is that?"
"Pinky!" the patient said delightedly. "I'm pretty sure, pretty sure of that."
Candy was barely able to suppress a sob at this. 'Oh, poor dear Daddy,' she thought, 'and it's all my fault, every last bit of it...'
"Which is your right hand?" Krankeit said, continuing his examination.
"I'll have to guess on that one. I get all mixed up," Uncle Jack explained, presenting his left hand.
"Which is your left hand?"
Uncle Jack looked intently at his hand, but said nothing.
"Which is your left foot?"
He presented his left little finger.
"Are you sure that's your left foot?"
He offered his right little finger.
"Which is your right thumb?"
"I'm all mixed up," said Uncle Jack, pointing to his left hand, then to his right hand, then to Krankeit's left foot. "I'm kind of messed up on them," he confessed. "I never could get them straight."
Krankeit now took a number of heterogeneous objects from his pockets, humming cheerfully the while, and placed them on the patient's night-table. Then he pointed to each one and carefully named it.
Uncle Jack's attention was apparently focused on this procedure: however, when asked to pick up the matches he picked up a pencil; asked to pick up the lighter he picked up a penknife; asked to pick up the chewing-gum he did so and hurriedly chewed it; asked to pick up the pencil he picked up the gum again...
"Is my arm up or down?" asked Krankeit, holding his left arm up and jotting busily on his pad with his right hand.
"I believe it's right up; not too positive though."
"Where is the ceiling?"
Uncle Jack looked up at the ceiling.
"Is it up?"
"I'm gonna say up."
"Where is the floor?"
"It's down there."
"Is it up or down?"
Uncle Jack was silent for a few seconds, and then he said, "I'm gonna give up."
Krankeit pursed his lips reflectively as he framed the proper reply to bring the patient back into a more responsive syndrome, but before he could speak, the door sprang open and a chubby little man, followed by two women, entered the room.
Candy stood up from her chair in astonishment-it was Aunt Ida and her husband Luther, and with them, gayly waving a bunch of tulips, was Livia herself!
"Greetings Gates!" Livia screamed merrily, laying the flowers on Uncle Jack's chest and friskily pinching his cheek. "We've come to cheer up our little sick boy!"
Ida and Luther, obviously wishing to disassociate themselves from this riotous entrance, hung back decorously at first, then stepped forward.
"Everything all right, Sidney?" asked Luther. "Not too bad?"
Aunt Ida, pale and gaunt, and grimly dressed in black, stared silently at her brother, her eyes glistening lugubriously.
Uncle Jack smiled sweetly in greeting. Not a bit of resistance from him if people wanted to call him "Sidney" or "Daddy," or anything else. And since in their minds he was "Sidney" and "Daddy," and since the real Sidney Christian was in a lost state similar to his own and in no condition to dispute the title, "Uncle Jack" became "Sidney" and "Daddy," and that was the end of it.
Livia had turned to wave hello to Candy, and now, for the first time, noticed the silent Krankeit. "Ah!" she said, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume."
A dark flush of annoyance clouded Krankeit's features. Ignoring Livia's brashness, he glanced quickly at his watch. "I have a consultation now," he informed Candy in a low voice. "I'll try and stop back here when I'm finished." Then, with a last look at Uncle Jack, he murmured, "Pity... We didn't even get to sounds and colors..."
"Who's that Hebe doctor?" Livia said loudly before Krankeit was well out the door.
"Good Grief, Aunt Livia!" Candy flared. "Can't you ever... keep still?"
"Keep still?" Livia asked in genuine puzzlement.
"Candy's right," said Luther. "That was a tactless remark, and he couldn't possibly not have heard it. Couldn't you have waited till he was out of the room?"
"Oh my God!" Livia snorted in exasperation. "You've got to watch every damn little word with you people. Do you think that's going to help cheer up Sid, if we all sit around like that mopey Hebe doctor and don't say anything?"
Aunt Ida, who was arranging the tulips in a vase, sighed and exchanged looks of patient resignation with Candy and her husband-since Jack's disappearance, Livia had become worse than ever...
"Poor old Sid," Livia went on. "Nothing to do but lie in bed and look at the four walls. He must be bored stiff." She was fumbling with a Pan American Airways satchel which she'd brought. "Well, we'll see if we can't cheer him up a little bit."
The others looked on in disapproval at the telltale sound of bottles clinking together in the satchel, but Uncle Jack, who had been supine in his bed, sat up with interest. "I could do with a drop of bourbon," he observed earnestly.
"Not bourbon, old boy," Livia corrected, extracting two bottles from her satchel and winking lewdly, "Schnapps! Steinhagen from the Tyrol! It'll juice you to the gills!"
"Now Livia, that's a darn silly idea to have brought that here," said Luther, puffing anxiously.
"Nonsense!" Livia snapped. "Just the thing for a hangover. Matter of fact, we could all probably stand a quick one. How about it, Ida? Straight or on the rocks? How about it, Can? Think you can scare up some ice cubes in this mausoleum?"
Candy was so angry she could have wept. "This-this is incredible," she said with a tiny stamp of rage.
"Oh really!" said Uncle Jack, sounding very lucid and urbane. "I don't see how a quick one could possibly do me any harm." He accompanied this remark with a look of calm severity-not to be gainsaid-in Candy's direction.
Aunt Livia had brought glasses too, and now set about improvising a bar on a large hospital wheeling-table. "There's a good girl, Can," she urged. "Ice cubes! And with all due dispatch! Remember, there's a brave little sick boy waiting for you to get back with the serum. So hurry! Mush! Mush!"
Candy flounced out of the room and cracked the door shut behind her.
Scarcely knowing where she was going or what she was going to do, she wandered blindly through the immaculate hospital halls... In her mind, of course, was the desire to find
Krankeit, but she soon became lost in the labyrinthine passages and stairways, and had no idea where to seek him.
Rounding a corner she faced yet another long corridor. Had she already traversed it? It was identical with the others and she felt the confused beginning sting of tears in her eyes as she started down it. Abruptly, a door on her left opened; a massive red arm reached out, seized her, and drew her into the room...
She was in a kind of dimly lit, oversized closet, full of brooms, mops and pails... She stood there, petrified with fright, hardly daring to look at the person who had pulled her so fiercely into this sinister place...
'Audrey,' the squat, evil-tempered scrubwoman, leaned back against the door and eyed Candy impassively.
"You should excuse me," she said suddenly, "from yanking your arm so brutal."
Candy's arm did hurt, and she rubbed the spot ruefully, but she was vastly relieved that the terrifying little woman was merely talking to her-she had feared, at first, that her life might be in danger.
"I wanted to have a chat with you," Audrey disclosed.
"Certainly," Candy agreed nervously.
"Just this: LEAVE MINE BOY ALONE!"
"Leave who? I'm afraid I don't-"
"Please!" cut in the stumpy scrubwoman. "I saw you with mine Irving! Lookin at him-"
Candy regarded the powerful gray-haired woman with astonishment.
"- like salami wouldn't melt in your mouth!"
"Irving is your-your 'boy'?"
"Leave him alone! LEAVE MINE BOY ALONE!"
"Do-do you mean that you are Mrs. Krankeit-Dr. Krankeit's mother ?"
"Yes. I am Irving's mother, but Mrs. Krankeit I am not. 'Krankeit' is a name that Irving made up because he didn't like our real name."
"Made it up? But why, what is your real name?"
"Semite," the squat little woman gravely replied. "Mrs. Silvia Semite."
Candy understood. She could guess at the untold hell the name "Irving Semite" must have caused Krankeit as a lad in his student days. But good grief, what a person's name was wasn't the important thing! She would make him see that she decided. She would show him, when the time came, that she would be proud to become "Candy Semite."
"Irving changed his name because he's so sensitive," the scrubwoman pointed out proudly.
"But I don't understand. Why are you-" Candy stopped, staring at Mrs. Semite's soiled workclothes in utter bewilderment.
"You mean this?" and Irving's mother waved contemptuously at the mops and pails.
"Well... yes."
"It's so that I can be here, close to mine boy."
"But? But-" Candy looked about hopelessly at the brooms and dripping brushes.
"Irving, mine son, is a genius," Mrs. Semite reminded Candy. "I want to be near him, to see him-every day. In his office I can't stay, I know-it 'embarrasses' him, and to the patients it looks funny to have his mother always standing there. All right. I understand that."
"And so you've taken on this job in order-in order to be near your son?"
"Exzectly. And no one should know I'm his mother... but to you I tell it, because I want you should leave Irving alone. I heard about you-you're not a nize girl for him!"
Candy looked away self-consciously and steeled herself for what was coming. No doubt Irving's mother had also heard the story about her and was going to revile her now as Dr. Dunlap had done.
But the older woman had become silent. She was standing with her ear to the wall and seemed to be intently listening to something...
In another instant she sped to a shelf stacked with bars of soap and packages of detergent. Scurrying like a mother squirrel, she moved these objects aside, and presently uncovered a part of the wall where there was a small sliding panel. She cautioned Candy to silence, holding her fingers to her lips, then slid the panel open and put her face to the aperture. After a few seconds she turned back toward Candy with a bemused smile on her face. "There he is!" she whispered ecstatically.
Candy stepped to the opening, which seemed to have been intended for a movie-projector window, and found herself gazing down into a good-sized amphitheater. The vast room was empty save for Dr. Dunlap, who was sitting under a strong light in the very center, and Krankeit himself, standing high in the uppermost tier of seats and barely discernible in the shadows.
Dr. Dunlap had a device of some sort clamped to his head: there were electrodes taped to his temples, and wires from them led to a screen, coated with some fluorescent material, which stood a few feet before him. On the screen danced a jagged pattern of lines-wave lengths of the electrical impulses of his brain, apparently-and the distinguished-looking detector, leaning forward slightly, stared wide-eyed at them as if hypnotized...
"Can you give me an 'all-clear'?" called Krankeit tersely, a small megaphone raised to his mouth.
"All clear!" replied Dunlap, tight-lipped.
"Ready for you little stand-by?" demanded Krankeit.
"Ready for little stand-by!" snapped Dunlap.
Krankeit leaned over into space, his keen eyes riveted to the patterned screen and the flashing instrument panel, as he lifted the miniature megaphone to his lips again.
"Ready for your little count-down?"
"Ready for little count-down!"
Krankeit regarded his wristwatch, stared at the sweeping second-hand.
"8... 7... stand by for stand-by... 6... ready for ready... 5... 4... stand by!... 3... 2... 1! Ready for your big stand-by?" He was practically shouting now, and both men had the intensity of children at a game of magic.
"Ready for big stand-by!"
"Ready for your big count-down?"
"Ready for big count-down!"
"Stand by!" shouted Krankeit, and, as he continued, his voice took on an odd metallic quality as though it were coming through a large public-address system: "100... 99... 98... 97... 96... 95... 94... 93... 92... 91... 90... 89... 88... 87... 86... 85... 84... 83... 82... 81... 80... 79... 78... 77... 76... 75... 74... 73... 72... 71... 70... 69... 68... 67... 66... 65... 64... 63... 62... 61... 60... 59... 58... 57... 56... 55... 54... 53... 52... 51... 50... 49... 48... 47... 46... 45... 44... 43... 42... 41... 40... 39... 38... 37... 36... 35... 34... 33... 32... 31... 30... 29... 28... 27... 26... 25... 24... 23... 22... 21... 20... 19... 18... 17... 16... 15... 14.... 13... 12... 11... 10... 9... 8... 7... 6... 5!... 4!... 3!... 2!... 1!...:
JACK OFF!"
Stationed at her tiny window, Candy looked on incredulously at what took place when Krankeit's thunderous command had ceased echoing in the amphitheater. After a minute she turned weakly from the wall and said, "I think I'd better leave now, if you don't mind. I'm afraid I'm getting a bit of a headache."
"Don't forget what I told you," said Krankeit's mother, eyeing her pugnaciously. "Leave Irving alone!"
She wandered again in the maze of white corridors, trying to find her way back to the sickroom. Walking slowly, she considered the outlandish things that had been happening to her-the scene with Dr. Dunhill, the strange meeting with Mrs. Semite, and now, this upsetting incident she'd witnessed in the amphitheater. She'd heard about Krankeit's unprecedented theories from the nurse of course, but seeing them put to practice had been something of a shock. She was disturbed, bewildered, and, more than anything else, she was terribly tired. She dabbed her moist forehead with a hanky and wished she could sit down...
A few minutes later, a burst of wild laughter, coming from one of the rooms, told her where the others were.
She opened the door and was presented with the spectacle of Uncle Jack and Luther performing a primitive dance together.
"Daddy" had gotten out of bed in his bathrobe and turban of bandages, and he and Luther were grunting, and shuffle-stamping about each other in American Indian style. Luther was in his undershirt, and, from time to time, would lock his hands behind his neck and do an obscene wiggle like a burlesque dancer. It was the sight of this bald, little, roly-poly man doing bumps and grinds in his undershirt that was provoking Livia's hilarious shrieking.
Obviously, they hadn't waited for Candy to return with the ice cubes to begin their merrymaking.
Seated in a corner, Aunt Ida-insanely calm-was reading a hospital-bound copy of "Popular Mechanics."
When they saw Candy standing in the doorway, the men abruptly ceased their barbaric squirming and changed to a chaste and stately minuet, Uncle Jack bowing sedately and fat little Luther doing a charming curtsey.
"Too much! Too much!" Livia howled, falling on the bed helplessly.
'Good Grief!' Candy thought, 'they've gotten completely hysterical!'
The two men soon tired of doing the minuet and reverted to their primitive technique-Luther scuffling around the room on his knees, Uncle Jack war-whooping and stamping his feet.
Just then the door opened and Krankeit entered.
To everyone's surprise, he didn't seem to be shocked by what was happening, and actually waved his hand to the dancers as if to tell them not to bother about him but to go on with their fun.
Perhaps it was for her sake, Candy thought with a catch in her throat, to save her from the painful embarrassment of a scene.
In gratitude for Krankeit's good sportsmanship, Uncle Jack and Luther linked arms like chorus girls, and began kicking rhythmically to the tune "Give My Regards to Broadway."
The young doctor smiled good-naturedly, but refused to go as far as taking part himself when Luther beckoned him to come and join the chorus line.
"I take it back!" Livia cried gayly to Krankeit from the bed. "I thought you were going to be one of those melancholy ones, but you're not a bad chap at all-God, if there's one thing depresses me it's to have some mopey Hebe around when people are trying to be cheerful, don't you agree?"
At this remark, a nervous tic appeared in Krankeit's cheek, but he soon mastered it and said to Uncle Jack, "Well, I'm glad to see you're up out of bed and getting the kinks out of your bones! Mustn't overdo it though. Mustn't take on too much the first day... Careful your bandage doesn't come of..."
Uncle Jack's dressing had come undone, and he was waving a loose yard of gauze can-can style, in time to the step. Now, with amusing versatility, he changed again, metamorphosing into a gorilla-lumbering about, scratching himself under the arms, and pouting his lips disdainfully.
"Sid has gotten to be a scream since he got that band in the head," Livia commented.
The 'ape' lurched to where Ida, deathly pale, was still reading "Popular Mechanics." Gripping her magazine tightly, she kept her eyes trained on the page and did not look up.
Uncle Jack made an insulting monkey-face in her direction, and turned to the wall. He seemed to be making some rapid adjustments in his costume. From time to time, he made a soft hooting sound in imitation of a chimpanzee. Then, finally ready, he turned to face the crowd-he had undone his bathrobe, lifted his nightgown, and, with a fatuous leer, was exposing his member!
'Good Lord!' Candy thought in a panic, 'not again!'
"You can't say he's not the life of the party," Livia quipped, in high spirits.
Poor Luther, who had taken one brief look at what was happening, had buried his face in a chair like an ostrich.
Uncle Jack stood not more than two feet from Ida and cynically waved his member at her. At last, she looked up from her magazine. "Well-eh-well, perhaps something should be done," she suggested in a discreetly unruffled voice, catching Krankeit's eye.
"Oh my no!" Krankeit declared.
"Well, after all-I mean don't you think-eh-" (The ape-man was very close to her. His gross organ virtually loomed in the corner of her sight.)
"Oh heavens no!" Krankeit assured her. "Perfectly okay. Best thing in the world for him."
"Dr. Krankeit feels that the way to clear up our mental problems is to... to masturbate, Aunt Ida," Candy explained.
Ida listened to this information calmly, but she had become rather green and was swallowing continuously.
"AH!"
Everyone turned and looked at Livia, who had suddenly staggered to her feet. She held her palm to her mouth as if to suppress a screech of fright, and, with the other hand, she pointed an accusing finger at Uncle Jack's member. "JACK!... AH!" she gasped-and crumbled to the floor.
Uncle Jack and Luther set to work immediately to mimic her-falling and getting up in a series of imitations of people passing out from drink.
"Good Scott!" Krankeit exclaimed, looking at Livia lying motionless on the floor. "We'd better get her to the dispensary at once! I'm afraid she's had a bit too much," and, signifying to the others to continue with their fun, he lifted the unconscious young woman onto the wheeling table and rolled her smoothly away.
Now that their audience was gone, and with Candy and Ida glaring at them, the two men finally stopped their cavorting and sat down exhausted on the bed.
"Whew!" panted Luther, trying to make it seem as if their insensate exhibition had been an innocent lark. "I don't know when I've had a workout like that in the last six years." He chuckled, and glanced sheepishly at the women, who looked back at him in grim silence. "Well, Sidney," he said, getting up and picking up his shirt from the floor, "this has been an awfully pleasant visit, and I hope-uh-I hope we've helped you get your mind off your troubles a bit..."
"Wait a minute!" Uncle Jack said excitedly, and sprang up from the bed. "I just thought of one we forgot to do!" and he began the familiar tune of the Parisian Apache Dance, took several ominous strides, and froze ludicrously, having just knocked an imaginary mademoiselle to the floor. "Right?" he said to Luther. "Come on!... LET'S GO!" he roared, motioning for the chubby Luther to perform the painful r"le of the girl.
"Now Sidney, maybe we'd better not get started again," Luther observed apprehensively. "You know the doctor just told you to take it easy..."
"COME ON!" Uncle Jack bellowed, and, whether he was furious at his partner's reluctance, or whether it was simply part of the dance, he stalked up to his brother-in-law and slapped him smartly in the face.
This was too much for Ida, who finally passed to the attack and began pushing Uncle Jack vigorously toward his bed.
"Hands off!" he shouted in astonished protest. "Hands off, you sow!"
'I can't stand another minute of this,' Candy thought. 'Good Grief!' And she rushed blindly out of the room to find help.
She flew down the hall, and with a little sob of despair, flung open the first door she came to, but was startled to find herself again in the service-room, full of mops and buckets, where she'd made the acquaintance of Irving Krankeit's mother.
It seemed impossible-she could have sworn that the tiny room was whole floors and corridors distant, tucked away in some obscure corner of the colossal building. Hadn't it taken her ten minutes to find her way back from it to Daddy's room?
She stepped to the shelf and moved aside some packages of detergent... Yes, there was the little sliding panel!
It was still partially open, and as she looked she heard someone in the amphitheater say something that sounded like "Ping!" Candy had an almost physical premonition warning her not to look; but some still louder inner voice fiercely compelled her to peer into the vastness below...
"Chiang!"
Aunt Livia-naked, unconscious, attached by the wrists to the vertical operating table-looked like a handsome animal offered for sacrifice.
Seated immediately behind her was Krankeit. The young doctor sat silently as if meditating on the form before him, then he took something from a table at his side, leaned forward, and inserted it in Livia's girlish right buttock.
"Moo!" he said distinctly, settling back into his seat.
This was Krankeit's "ancient Chinese therapy," Candy thought, with a tinge of reverence. These were the Chinese pins with which he had treated her, the same silver pins...
"Dung!"
... that he was now sticking in Livia.
Candy suddenly felt very tired; and beyond the fatigue was an aching uneasiness which wasn't solely from her resentment to see Livia occupy her place on the tilting-table... 'I feel as if something were coming to an end,' she thought. 'My childhood perhaps...'
"Tch!ou!" Krankeit said, and sat back.
In a minute, though, he was forward again with another pin. Back and forth he went, like someone giving artificial respiration very slowly; and the pins grew into clusters like two little bouquets, one on each of Livia's handsome tushy...
"Moung!"
How defenceless Aunt Livia looked!... Strapped to the table, naked and unconscious... and a few hours ago it had been her. Of course Krankeit was a doctor, Candy reflected, but he was also a man! And Livia was beautiful. It seemd so unfair somehow, and Candy had a momentary impulse to take off her own things and rush into the amphitheater.
"Ping!"
'Oh I just wish that it would stop happening!' thought Candy, cross and weary. 'I just wish I were someplace else...'
'Meeow!' (There was a note of tense excitement in Krankeit's voice now which grew stronger with each pin.)
'... someplace far from Racine... I'm tired of that darn old college too...'
"Fu!" Krankeit cried. "Feng! Jao!" (putting in three pins in quick succession).
'I don't care,' Candy said to herself, 'I don't want to see Aunt Livia anymore... or Dr. Krankeit either...'
"Wowee!"
One of Krankeit's hands, Candy noticed, was briskly engaged in his lap. 'Why-why he's abusing himself,' she thought, her eyebrows shooting up.
At that precise moment, she thought of New York City, and decided to go there...
"Wu Shih! Wu Shih!" Krankeit yelled.
'...someplace where she knew no one, and where no one knew her...'
"POW! FANG DANG POW!" Krankeit screamed triumphantly, dropping forward from his chair, to lie utterly spent, face down and apparently unconscious, on the floor of the great amphitheater.
'...where she could lose the old Candy in the nameless city streets,' she thought, 'where she could finally... be herself."