Lancelot

But I know that one must start from scratch.
    Begin with a burrow, a small clean well-swept place such as this, with one tiny window on the world and another creature in the next room. That is all you need. In fact, that is all you can stand. Add more creatures, more world, books, talk, TV, news—and we’ll all be as crazy as we were before. There is too much feeding into the tape head—the new tape is too empty—too many possibilities—but the recorded tape is too full.
    But what went wrong with the other new life last year? I must find out so I won’t make the same mistake twice. Therefore I must go back and kick through the ashes of Belle Isle. There is something I don’t understand. And you are both my leverage point and my companion. Because you knew Belle Isle and you know me and I can’t tell anyone else.
    In a month or so I shall be leaving here. At least that is my opinion, even though the doctors have not committed themselves. Perhaps Anna will be well enough to leave too.
    Who is Anna? The woman next door. I didn’t tell you I had paid her a visit and she told me her name? She also ate something for the first time. Soon they won’t have to force feed her. How did that happen? Very simple. I just got tired of all that wall tapping. Yesterday I simply got up, went to my door, opened it, and went out in the hall—the first time I had ever done so voluntarily—and walked ten feet and there was her door. I knocked on it and went in. (Sometimes life is simple!) She was lying on her cot as usual, curled up, face to the wall, a tangle of hair on her cheek, thin hip upthrust in her hospital gown. Her brown boylike arms made a perfect V, hands pressed palms together between her thighs.
    I stood looking down at her. She stirred.
    â€œWhat’s your name?” I asked her.
    â€œAnna,” she said. That was all she said.
    I decided to sit beside her. She stirred again, tucking her chin in her throat so she could see me past her cheekbone. I could see the gleam between her eyelids.
    Her thin brown face reminded me of Lucy, except she didn’t have Lucy’s funny quirky expression and the tiny scar on her lip. Her face was blank, lips slightly parted and dry, like a woman asleep. She had a scar all right, not like Lucy’s, but a big white raised scar curving from forehead to cheek where she had been cut in the rape and beating. Her scar was like a whore’s. Do you remember our both making the observation that all whores have scars, belly scars from hysterectomies and abortions, face scars from beatings, leg scars from car wrecks?
    â€œHere,” I told her. “Eat this.” In my pocket I had half a dozen Hershey kisses Malcolm (the guard—or is he a nurse?) had given me. I unwrapped the silver foil of one and offered it to her. She made no response. I put it into her mouth.
    Do you know what she did?
    She raised one hand from between her thighs, took the candy out, tucked her chin again, frowned, and looked at it exactly the way a child would, then closed her eyes, put it back in her mouth, and began sucking it.
    Yes. Jacoby. He was there, I think, the night of the day I talked to Elgin. At any rate, there was one night I remember.
    Janos Jacoby was full of himself. Youngish, short, black forelock which he kept whipping off his eyes with a toss of his head. He was either volatile fiery French-Polish or he knew how to act volatile fiery French-Polish or maybe both. Maybe he was from the Bronx. His accent varied—he had been an actor too and so didn’t know what he was. Sitting next to Margot, he gave all his attention to her, turning so far around in his chair that, his back to me, he was almost facing her. He had also gotten onto the foreigner’s knack of using his accent and even his mistakes to his advantage. Searching for a word, lips tensed European style, he would hold both hands under Margot’s face as if the word were there for both to examine. Though he ignored Raine and Dana—I wondered if all directors ignored all actors—he used his head, face, hands, lips like an actor, for an effect. An effect on Margot. She was charmed. Her eyes sparkled. Color rose in her cheeks. Her freckles darkened. His eyes swept past me, through me, as if I weren’t there. When she spoke, her shoulder swayed jokingly toward him. touching him.
    Merlin, on the other side of Margot, seemed inattentive and bored. Using his spoon