He'd explored a male before. It had ruined his plans.
Since then he'd been disciplined. The males finished lightning-fast, the females for exploration.
But he'd come a long way since then. Learned how to be careful, how to clean up perfectly.
Sting.
Swat.
Fuck it! He was in charge; no need to be hemmed in any longer by what Gauguin Boy had done to him.
Just the opposite: He needed to break free of constraints. Liberate himself. Dieter Schwann and Grandpa Hermann would want that, would be proud of his creativity.
Suddenly he knew why the young cop had been delivered to him: The dumbfuck was there to save him, to be savored by him. Dessert after the final act. A bouquet of roses tossed onstage after a bravura performance.
Roses from Dieter, a message: Free thyself.
His decision was clear.
Keep the dumbfuck tied up nice and snuggly-wuggly; pump him with enough H to keep him calm; then, after the final curtain had fallen, come back, wake him up, give him some more H-no, curare, just like the dog. Motor paralysis accompanied by total mental awareness!
Lying frozen on ice, corpse-helpless, but hearing and seeing and smelling. Knowing!
Exactly what was going on.
Exactly what was being done to him.
The terror all in the eyes.
Bow wow wow.
A superb plan. He finalized it in his head, started preparing a batch of new needles, thinking:
This will free me forever from Sumbok memories.
But as he thought about it, Sumbok memories bore through his mind, making high-pitched bad-machine noises, like termites crunching through masonry.
He touched himself, stroked himself, trying to get past the noise. Dropped a glass syringe on the floor and barely heard it shatter as he grappled with images. Doctor's smug, puffy face:
Well, I finally found a place for you. Not much of a med school, but a med school. Cost me a fortune to convince them to take you. If you manage somehow to g't? through four years and pass the foreign graduate exam, you might be able to find an internship somewhere.
Fucking smugsmile. Translate: You'll never do it, stupid.
Showed how much he knew, the lame fuck. For all practical purposes, he was already a doctor; all that was left was to make it legal by matching his Dr. Terrific hands-on experience with boring books, paper formalities. Then, claim his birthright:
Dieter Schwann, II., M.D., Ph.D., Aryan conqueror of the welcome hole. Mengele-magician-artisan, painting the visceral mural.
The seed preserved!
He'd filled out the application forms with a sense of joy and purpose, readied himself for the adventure, masturbating to happy graduation pictures: himself ten feet tall, in black satin doctor's robes collared with velvet, a satin mortarboard tilted with just the right cockiness. Collecting certificates of honor, delivering the valedictory, then dedicating the Dieter Schwann, M.D., Chair in Surgical Pathology and Visceral Exploration at the University of Berlin.
Bravo.
Living off those pictures for two butt-numbing days of air travel to Djakarta, only to feel the joy die inside of him as the rattling shuttle prop landed on that putrid, humid shithole of an island.
A lumpy brown patch. Water all around, like some cartoon. Sand and mud and droopy trees.
Where are we?
The pilot, a rotten-toothed half-breed, had turned off the engine, opened the door, and tossed his luggage out onto the landing strip.
Welcome to Sumbok, Doc.
Reality: mosquitoes and swamps and grass huts and pockmarked Gauguin-scum hobbling around in loincloths and T-shirts. Pigs and goats and ducks living in the huts, mounds of shit everywhere. On the south side of the island, a muck-filled stagnant bay, jellyfish and sea slugs and other disgusting things washing up on the beach, putrefying, sliming the sand. The rest of it jungle: snakes, nightmare bugs as big as rats, rats as big as dogs, hairy things that gibbered and shrieked in the night.
The so-called school: a bunch of rusting Quonset huts, cement-floored wooden cabins for dormitories, the bunks hooded with mosquito netting. One big, crumbling stucco building for classrooms. In the basement, the Gross Anatomy Lab.
A hand-painted tin sign over the front door: The Grand Medical Facility of St. Ignatius.
Big joke, ha ha.
Except that he was living it.
The so-called students: a bunch of losers. Morons, dopers, chronic complainers, perverts of sullied ethnic origin. The faculty: slant creeps with M.D.'s from dubious places. Delivering their lectures in pidgin accents no
