“Thank the guards who brought me.”
“You’relooking very well,” she said, handing him a hanger for his trousers.
“Shouldn’t I? Was I infected with something the last time I was here?”
“So far as I know this hospital has never had a single case of staph infection, if that’s what you mean. This is only a routine examination. Let me see your tongue.”
He stuck out his tongue. She wrote something on the card clipped to her board.
“What did you write on the card?” he asked, once his tongue was back in his mouth.
“That it’s pink. You show nosymptoms of any kind?”
“None.”
“Palpitations? Giddiness? Shortness of breath?Tension? ”
“Not a trace.”
“Your dreams?”
“Exhibit neither sex nor violence. The entire family could be allowed to see them.”
She tossed back waves of white hair to plug a stethoscope in her ears for auscultation. He breathed slowly or rapidly as she required.
“I hear so much from my brother,” she chattered, as though his internal processes were of interest to her only as background music, “about the lively process you’ve set in motion. I’ve never seen him work so hard at anything before. And not only my brother–everyone seems to be catching fever from it. Now breathe quickly. Yes, like that. What I couldn’t understand is whyyou should have become, all of a sudden, so civic-minded. When I last saw you, at your cottage, you showed something bordering on contempt for the greatness we were thrusting on you. Now, cough.”
He coughed.
“And again. Good. You can talk now.” She scribbled numbers on the card.
“Can I get dressed?”
“No, there are still your reflexes to be tested. Sit up there where your feet can dangle, and tell me about your change of heart.”
“It’s no change of heart. I’m doing this for myself, not for the Village. Ever since college, where I did a bit of acting, I’ve wanted to direct this play. There was seldom opportunity and never time. Here, there is plenty of time, and your brother, by arranging all the business of permits, rehearsal space and the rest of that, has provided the opportunity. It was his idea more than mine.”
“Not to hear him speak of it. I must say you’ve rewarded him handsomely enough: thetwo best parts in the play.”
“Your brother is a born actor.”
“The cast is complete now?”
“Very nearly. I had to take the Duke’s part myself. No one else would audition for it.”
“My brother says it’s an awful role–hundreds of lines and every one pure lead. The Duke, by his account, just goes around during the whole play, dressed up like a monk, doing nice things andsaying nice things. Whereas Angelo is amonster of wickedness and hypocrisy.”
“Is that your interpretation or your brother’s?”
“Not mine–I never interpret anything but dreams. Is it a wrong interpretation? I read Shakespeare so long ago that all the plays are muddled together, the comedies especially. I remember that everyone sings a lot and runs around disguised as someone of the opposite sex, and that in the last act they’re all obliged to get married.Measure for Measure –isn’t that the one in the Forest of Arden?”
“No, Vienna. Half the action is set in the city prison. It’s the darkest of the comedies. In fact, the chief thing that makes it a comedy is that everyoneis obliged to get married in the last act.”
“In a prison! Then it’s meant to beedifying! A kind of protest, in fact?” She tapped his kneecap with a ballpeen hammer. His foot jerked reflexively.
“There are correspondences to the world we know. In Shakespeare there always are. But I won’t underline them. The play speaks for itself.”
“The people in this prison,ought they to be there? That will be crucial, if it’s to be effective propaganda. In myown experience, I’ve never found anyone in prison who doesn’t really belong there. Sometimes, as in your case, they must go to the most extraordinary lengths to get in, but once they’ve made it you can see they were always meant to be prisoners. Would Shakespeare agree?”
“On anything concerned with the problem of authority, Shakespeare has two opinions. In this case, everyone in the prison has done something to deserve to be there, but—”
“Then I’m surprised you’ve chosen this play. The way you keep harping on this matter ofyour innocence andour injustice—”
“—butits central theme is the gross injustice of the person in charge of the prison.”
“My brother?”
“Angelo, yes. There is, as well, a heroine of unimpeachable innocence, whom this Angelo abuses in the worst way.”
“Don’t tell me–he seduces her.”
“He tries his damnedest. She has come to him, from the convent where she’s a novitiate, to plead for her brother’s life. Angelo has condemned him to death.”
“That’s the other part my brother’s playing, the condemned brother?”
“Yes, Claudio and Angelo are never on the stage together until the very end of the last act, when neither of them has much to say. I thought there was a certain fitness in having the same actor play both the judge and the condemned man, particularly as Claudio’s crime is the same as Angelo’s.”
“Claudio was . . . concupiscent?”
“That, and carelessness.”
“Playwrights always take these matters so much moreseriously than the rest of us.” Meditatively, she tapped his other knee with her hammer. The foot jounced. “Well, perhaps they have to, if they’re to go on writing plays. Surely, the sensible thing for Claudio and his girlfriend to have done, even in Shakespeare’s day, was to get married.”
“Claudio offers to, the girl is more than willing, and Isabella also tries to convince Angelo of this, when she pleads her brother’s case.”
“Andthat’s when Angelo tries to seduce her. Oh, he is wicked! The story seems to be coming back to me now. Angelo promises to spare Claudio’s life on condition that Isabella surrenders her virtue to him, and when she goes to the dungeon to tell her brother about it,he tries to persuade her todo it. But does she? I remember it both ways–she does and she doesn’t.”
“You’ll have to come and see the play.”
“I suppose your new friend–or your old friend, whichever turns out to be the case–the lady with the black hair, has been handed the plum of Isabella.”
“She read for the part, but she doesn’t have the voice for the grand Shakespearean manner. She’ll be Mariana, and even in that role she’ll be straining.”
“So the most important part in the play is still open?”
“It’s gaping.”
“Good! That’s what my brother told me, and I just wanted to be sure. You can put your pants on now. That was thereal reason I had you brought in. I have a copy in the desk drawer, and I want to audition. Now.”
“Would you have time, with your professional duties—”
“I have time, in this Village, for anything, and to spare. If it came to that, I’d rather pretend to be an actress than to go on being a doctor in real life. I love theatricals, howeveramateur. When we were little, my brother and I did hundreds of plays together for our parents. Besides, if he’s to be Claudio, it’s only proper that his sister should play Isabella.”
“Perhaps. But when he’s Angelo . . .”
“That’s no problem. Even when we had other children in our productions, Poppa insisted that if there were any scenes that threatened propriety, my brother and I had to act them, since there could not be question, between us, of anything indiscreet. Isabella doesn’t end up marrying Angelo, does she? That wouldn’t be a happy ending.”
“No, she marries the Duke.”
“Then I must have the part. I’dlove to marry you.”
“Doesn’t taste forbid that a doctor propose so shortly after a medical examination?”
“What taste forbids, Number 6, appetite excuses. Seriously, although I’ll admit it’s hard to be serious about a thing like marriage, I like you. Even something a bit more than that. Didn’t my brothertell you? I told him to.”
“No. He must have been too embarrassed.”
“Is it so impossible to credit? That little waitress is still in love with you, as you must know, despite the way you abused her confidence when you escaped. You’ve givenher a part in the play, haven’t you? And Number 41 is Mariana, even though you’ll have to teach her how to pronounce the words. Make me Isabella, and you’ll have every female in the cast in love with you. Isn’t that the principle most directors go by?”
“There’s still Mistress Overdone, and I don’t think our ex-Mayoress has any designs on me.”
“The way she flirted with you at your open house? Her husband was giddy with jealousy. Every other time I’ve seen Number 34, the man’s been as taciturn as granite, andthough she can be talkative enough, it’s usually with other mathematicians about the problems of higher mathematics, trigonometry and such.”
“She’sa mathematician?”
“I’m told she’s brilliant. But with you she becomes a giggling schoolgirl. You have that effect on women. You can’t pretend you didn’t know that, not the way you exploit it.”
“How have I exploited it in your case?”
“By assuming that I’ll go on keeping your secret.”
“Which is?”
“That youwere the one who set fire to the films in the church crypt. Number 2 has been worried silly trying to establish that fact.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow you.”
“You needn’t be disingenuous with me. You knew I was auditing your dreams that day, and you understood how we were directing them. Surely you must have figured out by nowwhere we were directing them.”
“As a matter of fact I wasn’t able to. Whether or not I did in fact set a fire where you say, Number 2 never seemed to doubt that I did.”
“Number 2 doesn’t doubt it, but Number 1 apparently is unconvinced. I gather that Number 2 thinks Number 1 thinks he did it.”
“Is that what you think?”
She smiled, pressing the ballpeen hammer to her lips. “I don’t have to think–Iknow . But, as I was beginning to fall in love with you even then, I didn’t tell. You still don’t believe me; why is that?”
“Because if it were a ‘secret,’ you would want to keep it. You wouldn’t be speaking of it now, in front of the bugs.”
“Oh, that! That’s one of the advantages of having a trustworthy staff. My Number 28 can perform wonders with electronics. When I need privacy, I can get it. You don’t think I’d declare my passion to you on television! It would destroy the reputation I’ve been so long building.”
“You would if you were told to. In any case, as declarations of passion go, it’s a rather tepid thing.”
“I got your clothes off, Number 6. To have gone any further without your cooperation would have exceeded a woman’s strength. Ifthis was tepid, your rencontre with Number 41 was quick-frozen. Yet you seemed willing enough to credit what she said, and most of what she only implied.”
“I know Liora.”
“Youthink you know her.”
“All right then, as you claim to be speaking to me in confidence, tell me–doI know her? Ought I to believe, if not in her story, in her candour?”
“On principle you should never believe in a woman’s candour. As to whether she’s who you think she is or who she says she is, anything I told you would only add to the confusion. Even assuming you would believe inmy candour (and remember, I’m a woman with a woman’s best motive for deceiving you), how can we be sure that I know the truth in this case? I’m told only as much asthey want me to know, and that often includes a great quantity of falsehood. I could read you the list ofnames in her dossier. Or I could—”
“Just answer this one question–why did I call that bookshop? Why wasthat number in my head?”
“Ididn’t put it there. I had nothing to do with your casetill you were brought back from London two weeks ago. Beyond that, it’s all speculation, fog, and upset stomach. You shouldn’t take these things so seriously, Number 6–what is true, what isn’t true. Doubt, as I’ve seen it noted in your dossier, is your Achilles’ heel. Choose a truth that suits you and stick with it.”
“Truth, then, should be whatever is most agreeable?”
“Has it ever been anything else? In this case, haven’t you given Number 41 the benefit of your doubt, and wasn’t it agreeable to do so? You love her, and you’re determined to believe she loves you. I love you, and I’ve managed to persuade myself, against every evidence, thatat root you must love me in return, or at least that the seeds are there. After all, look how long we’ve been talking together, and you haven’t even started putting your shoes on. That must mean something. I entertain you. God knows, Itry to entertain you.”
“Since you’re part of the establishment, I can afford to let myself be entertained by you; I could never afford to trust you.”
“Did I ask you to? Trust isn’t a precondition of love. In fact, in most cases, the opposite is true. I’m sure I wouldn’t have grown so fond ofyou , if I weren’t terribly jealous of Number 41. Do you trusther? You trust her even less than you do me for the sound reason that with me you know where you stand I’m one ofthem , and the fact that I’mnot one of them makes no difference, since you’ll never be convinced of it. But you needn’t let that stand in the way of affection. You’re putting your shoes on. You no longer are entertained. Is that because I’ve finally convinced you that I mean what I say?”
“It means I’m hungry. Your guards didn’t give me time for lunch.”
“But my audition! At least let me try out for Isabella.”
“You won’t have to. I think you’re a great actress, and you have the part. Start learning your lines. We rehearse the first two acts tonight.”
“I’ve already learned them, Number 6.” She kissed the tip of the hammer and waved it at him. “Bye-bye. I’ll see you at eight.”
“Why, as all comforts are: most good, most goodindeed.”Then, since Isabella’s next lines strayed from topicality: “The play goes on, and I’m to be the leading lady.”
“Have you ever been anything else? Between the two of us, there’s scarcely a scene in the whole play that we can’t steal. And even behind the scenes . . .”
“Will everything be ready when the curtain rises? There, I mean–on the set behind the scenes?”
“I’ve been busy with it all day. The hardest part is accomplished. I got the remains of the sphere (Thank God for Number 2’s niggardliness!) out of the storeroom and up to the roof of the theater. Your Number 28 has already knit up the major damage, but there are still fifty little rips to be mended where it was abraded by the cliff after it had burst. We won’t know for certain, of course, till everyone is in the theater and we can inflate it. You won’t be afraid?” he asked in a concerned and brotherly way, a Claudio to her Isabella.
“My blood is saturated with adrenalin, but I don’t knowif it’s fear or the excitement. I’ll feel no more afraid, certainly, at the ascent than when I have to go on as Isabella:
And have you nuns no farther privileges?”
He replied, falsetto:
“Are not these large enough?”
And she, rolling up her blue eye and her brown, ethereally:
“Yes, truly. I speak not as desiring more,
But rather wishing a more strict restraint
Upon the sisterhood, the votarists of Saint Clare.”
He hopped gleefully atop the examining table.“Then, Isabel, live chaste —”
And she tapped out the iambs on his kneecap:
and, brother, die:
More than our brother is our chastity.”
Wresting the hammer from her, he adopted a graver tone, judicial, sober, sanctimonious, without dimples. He became Angelo. “Did the prisoner, when he was here, exhibit any signs ofsuspicion ?”
“Indeed, milord. He suspects everything, except the truth.”
“He suspectsme , in that case?”
“Not of setting this up on your own behalf, but I think he’s worried that you’ll betray him to Number 2. After all, have you presented him with any better motive for your helping him than altruism?”
“That’s the motive he expectsme to believe. He’s going to all this trouble, he explained, forher sake, for Mata Hari.”
“But if he’s sayingthat , how can you be helping him forhis sake?”
“I said right out that I didn’t believe him, that I wasn’t that naive. As soon as I explained myreal reason for wanting him out of the Village, he admitted that they wereboth escaping, but that he couldn’t tellher , because he’d promised her he wasn’t coming.”
“Do you think he does intend to take her with him?”
“We’ll never know, will we?”
“And what was yourreal reason?” she asked.
“I want him far away from you, jealous, possessive brother that I am.”
“And so you are.”
“And, when you’ve left him behind, I’ll have accomplished that purpose too: you will be far away from him.”
“And from you. Aren’t you going to miss me?”
“Terribly. You know that.”
“Then whydon’t you come along?”
“Me? Why, I get dizzy just climbing a ladder. I’d die of terror in that thing. It will be bad enough to think of you sailing off like another Phaeton, or Icarus, or Medea. In any case, once you’re gone they’ll probably have no more use for me. I’ll promise never to tattle on them, and they’ll send me back to London, and we’ll live happily ever after. Yes?”
She gave him a sisterly kiss. “I hope so.”
He patted her hand. “You can stake your blue eyes on it. Within two weeks we’ll be back together. I don’t suppose you’ll be returning to your old flat, not right away. Shall we set a time and place?”
“For our rendezvous? Yes–somewhere sentimental.”
“The Tower of London?” he suggested.
“Another prison? That’s not the sort of sentiment I had in mind. Besides, it’s so big, and if the weather is nice I’drather wait outdoors. Let’s make it Westminster Bridge, on the side by Big Ben. If this were a movie, we’dhave to meet there. So that even Americans could tell it was London.”
“Once a week?”
“On Saturdays.”
“At one o’clock in the afternoon.”
“It’s a date.”