Free I Am Lazarus (Peter Owen Modern Classic) by Anna Kavan Page A

the last day or two,’ ‘Kling? What's he been up to?’
    ‘He seems very depressed, doctor.’
    ‘You think his condition's deteriorating?’
    ‘Well, he seems to be getting more depersonalized and generally inaccessible. There's no knowing what's in his head. It's not the language difficulty either; his English is perfectly good. But he's hardly spoken a word since that day he was put in the gardening squad and got so upset.’
    ‘Oh, yes; the gardening incident. Odd, getting such a violent reaction there. It should give one a lead if there were time to go into it. But there isn't, of course. That's the worst of dealing with large numbers of patients as we are.’ A shade of regret on the doctor's face faded out as he said to the nurse still standing beside him:
    ‘You see far more of Kling than I do. What's your own opinion of him?’
    ‘I think, personally, that he's got something on his mind. Something he won't talk about.’
    ‘Make him talk, then. That's your job.’
    ‘I've tried, of course. But it's no good. Perhaps he's afraid to talk. He's shut himself up like an oyster.’
    ‘Oysters can be opened,’ the doctor said. He twisted his chair round and smiled directly up at the good nurse he had trained. He was very pleased with her and with himself. In spite of troublesome individuals like Williams and Kling the work of the hospital was going extremely well. ‘Provided, naturally, that one has the right implement with which to open them.’
    He got up and stood with his back to the window which to be in keeping with the room's decoration should have had satin curtains but instead was framed in dusty blackout material. He had his hands in his trouser pockets and he was still smiling as he went on, ‘We might try a little forcible opening on oyster Kling’.
    The nurse nodded and made a sound of agreement and prepared to go, holding the signed pass in her hand.
    ‘Lovely day, isn't it?’ she remarked on her way, in order not to end the interview too abruptly.
    Dr. Pope glanced into the sunshine and turned his back on it again.
    ‘I'll be glad when the summer's over,’ he said. ‘Everyone's efficiency level drops in this sort of weather. Give me the cold days when we're all really keen and on our toes.’
    The nurse went out and shut the door quietly.
    The doctor swung round again in his energetic fashion and opened the window as wide as it would go, looking out over grassy grounds dark with evergreens. On a hard tennis court to the right a circle of patients in shorts clumsily and apathetically threw a football about and he watched them just long enough to observe the bored slackness of their instructor's stance and to note automatically that the man was due for a reprimand. Then he went back to his desk under the smiling loves.
    As if he were somehow aware of the doctor's censorious eye, the instructor outside just then straightened up and shouted with perfunctory disgust, ‘You there, Kling, or whatever your name is; wake up, for Christ's sake, can't you?’
    The man who had not been ready when the ball was thrown to him, who had, in fact, altogether forgotten why he was supposed to be standing there on the hot reddish plane marked with arbitrary white lines, looked first at the instructor before bending down to the ball which had bounced off his leg and was slowly spinning on the gritty surface in front of him. He picked up the big ball andheld it in both hands as though he did not know what to do with it, as though he could conceive of no possible connection between himself and this hard spherical object. Then, after a moment, he tossed it towards the man standing next to him in the ring, not more than two yards away, and at once forgot it again and nothing remained of the incident in his mind except the uneasy resentment that always came now when anyone called out to him.
    For many months he had been called Kling, that being the first syllable and not the whole of his name which was too difficult