Bliss

'I thought they told you.'

'No, no. I just found out. I mean, I just found out you were here. Alex, I'm sorry.'

'I thought they told you,' Alex said slowly, 'that my name is Harry Joy.'

There was a long silence and Harry Joy stopped smiling.

'Oh come on, Alex, don't be silly.'

'I am not being silly. If you think I'm being silly, talk to Mrs Dalton.'

'I don't blame you for being mad, Alex. I shouldn't have left you in the Hilton. You're quite right for being angry with me.'

Alex shut his eyes and rubbed his big hand across them. Harry was reminded of Mrs Dalton.

'This is a wonderful place if you are reasonable about it. So don't go around the place saying you're Harry Joy because you'll only get yourself into trouble.'

Harry's stomach gurgled. 'I'm Harry Joy,' he said. His name was his name. His name was more than his name. In short, it was him. It could not be stolen from him.

'You're new here. You don't understand yet.'

'Understand what?'

'You have a primitive attitude towards your name.'

'I don't know what you're talking about. Talk in plain English.'

Alex hesitated, hearing the voice of Alex's employer talking to him, a voice that could no longer be used against him.

'It's a therapy,' he said at last, 'to find the right name. But first you have to give up your old name. You see, when I came here I was really stuck on being Alex. I didn't want to give it up. No damn way was I going to give it up,' he smiled, remembering. 'I didn't want to be Harry Joy. No way was I going to be Harry Joy but, finally, I just stopped fighting. And it worked, you see, the damn thing worked. I'd always hated being Alex.'

'That's not therapy. That's a fuck-up. They called you Harry Joy because they got you by mistake. You're not meant to be here. They meant to get me. They thought you were me.'

Alex smiled and shook his big head. 'Sorry,' he said, 'save your imagination for someone else.'

'It's true.'

'You can’t be destructive with me any more. I'm free of you.'

'You're insane.'

'You can't run my life and pull the strings any more. They've put you in here as a final test, that's obvious. It doesn't fool me. Well, I'm ready for you. You see: you can't affect me.'

'Did they actually tell you it was the final test?'

'Well there'd be no point in telling me would there. No, of course they wouldn't tell me. I don't have to be told.'

'Alex... '

'Please call me Harry.'

'Alright then, Harry. Harry you don't have to be in this hospital. It's not you they wanted. Go home.'

'You want me to go, don't you,' Alex smiled cunningly. 'You don't like having to share a room with Harry Joy,' he laughed. 'Oh, what irony, what irony.'

'Everyone knows you're not Harry Joy,' said Harry, who, in spite of his growing conviction that Alex had been put there to torture him, was rattled.

'Who?'

'Everyone at the office. Your wife. My wife. My children. Aldo... '

'Don't see any of them here.'

'Of course not.'

'All the people here know I'm Harry Joy.' He picked up his book to signal the end of the conversation but after a moment or two he put it down again. 'You know,' he said, gazing at the ceiling, 'I'm not at all surprised to see you end up here. I knew you were crazy. All that bullshit about firing clients and Captives and Actors. You've been crazy for years. You've made everybody else crazy.'

'I've been trying to be Good.'

'How naive,' Alex said. 'The most dangerous thing in the world: an untrained mind deciding to seek salvation. The most astonishing thing about you is that you kept your ignorance as long as you did. It's probably a record.'

'All that business about Hell... '

'We're all in Hell, you silly ding-bat,' said Alex, playing his idea of Harry Joy. 'It's a question of making yourself com-fortable. I mean, if you want to be tortured, you've come to the right place. But look... it's nice here. We can stay here for ever if we want to. They need the money they get in subsidies from the government. They need us, Harry.' He stopped petulantly. 'Fuck it.'

'What?'

'I called you Harry.'

'I didn't hear you.'

'I don't care what you heard. I heard. I called you Harry.'

'Don't worry about it.'

'Of course I worry about it. You don't want me to worry about it. But I've got to worry about it, because I'm happy now. I feel really happy with being Harry Joy. I'm a successful advertising man without the smallest scruple. I've made money, made a name and don't worry about a damn thing. I'm crazy and happy.' He had started to cheer up as he listed the advantages of being Harry Joy. 'I can relax,' he beamed. 'We could get up a darts team and beat the old men.'

'Are they going to torture me?' Harry did not expect an honest answer.

'No, they like us. They want our subsidies.'

One in every three is a spy.

'They'll give us electric shocks and put electrodes in our brains. They'll give us pills and make us zombies.'

'Harry, you are part of the biggest growth industry of the decade. You can have peace here. No one will hurt you.'

Harry Joy considered it. As he watched Alex it occurred to him that he had the healthy pink glow of a pregnant woman. He plumped up his pillow and made himself comfortable, considering the implication of this amazing transformation.

'Fuck it.'

'What?'

'I called you Harry again.'

The real Harry Joy's stomach gurgled mournfully, dreaming of wholemeal bread and Honey Barbara.

Alex Duval had this dream only once but it had been so vivid that it had pushed its way through into his conscious where it occupied an important corner of his waking mind, metamorphosed from a dream to a memory.

There is a plush green carpet and a svelte grey cat with silky fur. On the cat's back is a large crayfish, about the same size as the cat. The crayfish is digging its sharp claws into the cat's body. There is a crackling sound. It is the cat tearing off those of the crayfish legs it can reach with its mouth. Alex Duval is watching. He believes at first that the crayfish will die, but then it occurs to him that this is stupid – dream-logic – and that the crayfish is in agony and cannot scream. The noise of the legs in the cat's mouth is the same noise you hear when you bite a cooked crayfish leg.

It was a portrait of his marriage. Who was the cat? Who was the crayfish? He didn't know.

He had wanted to leave his wife for ten years. Daily, nightly, he had been on the very brink of doing it and daily, nightly, he had failed, he had been defeated and fallen into bed drunk. Viewed in this light his guilty conference reports can be seen to be less of a punishment and more of an escape. He was like an unhappy man who retires to his dusty garage to play war games.

At first it is difficult to see why he didn't leave her or why, when he had left her the first time – and this is where the trouble really started, ten years before – he ever went back.