Mantissa Read Free Page A

again.
    Dr. Delfie said, “Lie still. Just as you are.” Though quiet, her voice was markedly more brisk; and she read his embarrassment. “My dear man, I’m a doctor, this is a nurse. We see naked male bodies every day of our lives.”
    “Yes.” He added, “Sorry.”
    “Now we have to put a rubber sheet under you. Turn towards me.” He turned, and felt the sheet laid close along his back by the nurse. “Now the other way. Over the roll. That’s right. Good. On your back again.” He stared up at the quilted ceiling. The sheet was pulled taut beneath him. “Now raise your arms and put your hands under your head. Like so. Good. Now close your eyes. I want you to relax. You’re in the best hospital in Europe for your problem. We have a very high success rate. You’re not lost anymore, you’re on the way to recovery already. Just relax all your muscles. And your mind. Everything’s going to be fine.” There was a pause. “Now we’re going to test for certain nervous reactions. You must lie quite still.”
    “Yes.”
    He kept his eyes obediently closed. There were a few moments more of silence, only the ticking clock, then the doctor said quietly, “Right, nurse.”
    Two light hands touched the underside of the arms cocked back on the pillow, ran down to the armpits, then down his sides; stopped at the hip bones, pressed down on them.
    “My hands nice and warm, Mr. Green?”
    “Yes thank you.”
    The nurse removed her hands, but only momentarily. One of them deftly lifted his limp penis and laid it back and rested on it; while the fingers of the other hand encircled his scrotal sac and began to massage it slowly. His eyes opened in alarm. The doctor leaned over him.
    “The memory nerve-center in the brain is closely associated with the one controlling gonadic activity. We have to check that the latter is functioning normally. This is standard procedure. No reason to feel shy. Now please – close your eyes again.”
    In her eyes there was no longer any humor or dryness at all, only medical seriousness. He closed his own again. The scrotal massaging continued. The other hand began to stroke the exposed underside of the penis. Though he did not feel relaxed at all, the manipulation did seem merely clinical, a routine matter; and as if to confirm it, the doctor spoke across the bed and his body to the nurse.
    “Have they done anything about that sluice yet?”
    “You’re jokin’.”
    “I don’t know what it is about Maintenance. The more you complain, the longer it takes.”
    “All that lot do is play gin rummy in the boiler room. I seen ’em.”
    “I’ll try to get Mr. Peacock to chase them.”
    “Best of luck.”
    He guessed, from behind his closed eyes, that the doctor liked the young nurse’s sarcastic resignation; that they smiled at each other after that last remark. There was a silence. The gentle squeezing continued, and the stroking, with now and then a little rolling by the fingers. Yet something about the words they had spoken nagged at him. He seemed to recall that snatch of hospital talk, to have lived it before, even this before… yet how could he have, and not remembered?
    The doctor murmured. “Reaction?”
    “Negative.”
    He felt the penis, still limp, lifted and allowed to fall; then the manipulation recommenced. Desperately now, through the fog, the cruel grey wall of amnesia, he tried to regain the lost structure of experience and knowledge. Hospitals, doctors, nurses, medicine, treatments… there was a movement on the doctor’s side of the bed.
    “Give me your right hand, Mr. Green.”
    Frozen, he did nothing, but the doctor took the hand from beneath his head and led it upwards. It touched a bare breast. Once more shocked and horrified, he opened his eyes. Dr. Delfie was leaning over him, with the white tunic open, staring at the wall above his head, as if she were doing no more than taking his pulse. His hand was led to the other breast.
    “What are you doing?”
    She