Ingenious pain, Andrew Miller [little red riding hood ebook .txt] 📗

head and he is aware of her again. He does not speak to her. He wonders if she is watching him, or if, in her suffering, she watches no one other than herself. He whispers his greeting, waits, then shuffles back to his cell.

She is not there the next day, nor the next. He does not see her for a week, and when he does there is no Coffin but he knows her by the quality of her stare. She is stood amid a court of madwomen and keepers, her copper hair shaved on to her skull, one eye bloated in a green bruise, a cold-sore flourishing on her lower lip. When

he goes up to the bars she whispers to one of her gossips. All turn, laugh, Dot Flyer loudest of all. James is ashamed; of his rags, his old man's face, the way his movements are all graceless and cringing. Ashamed that he should want her to like him.

Seeing him discomforted, the women laugh louder. One turns her back, hoists her skirts and moons him; a vast crumpled arse. Dot Flyer is not laughing now. She is looking at James, and there is something of Mary in her expression, so direct is it, so penetrating. Then, as if she has conclusively seen the presence or absence of what she was looking for, she walks away from him into the women's wing, her court processing behind her; a robust and miserable sisterhood, a sorority of the damned.

In the darkest and most troubled reaches of the night, the graveyard watch, he seeks to know what it is he has become. What is he? A madman in a madhouse. A stranger to himself. At night incontinent in thought, sometimes in body. There are coarse grey curls in his beard. His hands shake like the palsy. Some mornings when he wakes his leg so pains him that were there a weapon to hand he would destroy himself in an instant. He lives in terror of the Physician, of Wagner, of O'Connor, of all the keepers, even those who treat him kindly, for nothing disturbs him more than kindness. His heart is raw, and this woman, this daughter of a drowned father, moves him. Her name seeps into his sleep like water into a cellar. He thinks of her continuously. He avoids her. It is her name now he mouths when they force him naked into a corner and fling iced water over him; when they burn him for blisters; when they cup him; when they physic him on to his knees, the vomit burning in his nose, afraid he shall bring up his own stomach. Dot, Dot, Dot. What a beautiful name!

To his amazement he acquires a despairing vanity. He begs the barber to shave him more closely, though the razor jags his face and makes the skin burn as though his sweat were the juice of an

onion. He binds his hair with a ribbon of straw, digs out the filth beneath his nails.

On the water in his pot one morning, as the bell rings for slopping out, he sees the reflection of another man. Not what he was, nor what he has become. It is the mirage of a possible self, unborn as yet, perhaps never to be born. A man poised on the edge of a lit and crowded room. He is smiling, and the eyes, though haunted, are calm. The memory of it dogs him for weeks. What impossible efforts must he make to become such a man? He must lose the carapace of madness; adopt the common valour of a common man. For that he is not ready. Not yet. In his prayers, his urgent mutterings to whatever god waits on lunatics, he begs deferment of this grace; the long postponement of salvation.

'Mr Rose,' says the Physician, 'this man was brought to us from Russia. Precisely such a case of vitiated judgment as I describe at length in my Treatise on Madness. Mayhap you have read it?'

Says Rose: 'I have heard it spoke of. How is he now?' 'He is not outrageous. I think we may make him right by and by. Should you care to feel his skull, sir?'

'I thank you, no. What was the cause of his insanity?' 'That is not established. There are many ways to madness, sir. One may take it from a parent, from a fever, from a blow to the head. Some are mad from love or grief. From liquor. From religious enthusiasm. From sunstroke. From too much reading, or tainted meat, or dog bites.' 'He has been educated?'

1 believe he has. You have your letters, Dyer? You may read and write?'

'Yes, sir.'

Rose examines him. He does not stand too close. He says: 'Is he free of disease?'

The Physician says: 'Quite free. And should he serve your turn we shall scrape him. Make him somewhat respectable.'

'Then I believe he may serve. Though I should like to hear more of his voice. It is the voice that counts.'

The Physician says: 'Speak up. Dyer. Come now. None of your tricks.'

James says: 'I do not know what to say, sir. I do not know what this gentleman would have me say. I have no conversation, sir.'

Rose says: 'He is originally from a western county. Somerset or Gloucestershire. Undoubtedly he is educated and has at some time kept good company. If not precisely a gentleman he was one of those who might wait upon a gentleman. A steward, a scrivener. A genteel barber.'

The Physician says: 'Why, that is a marvellous facility, sir, to tell a man so nearly from his voice. Were you ever on your uppers, sir, you might live by it.'

Rose steps closer to James. He says: 'I hope that shall not be necessary.' He takes hold of James's left hand, holding the fingertips with his own. He turns the hand over, says: 'Though the hands are damaged they are good hands. Have you worked as a painter, Mr Dyer, or as a