Candy by Terry Southern Read Free Book Online Page A

exclamation escaping from beneath . . .
    It would be difficult to determine what he thought of this unusual spectacle; but surely some idea formed in his disabled mind for, after a few seconds, he went and gathered up the clothes of Uncle Jack, which lay strewn about the room, and then opened the door and disappeared into the corridor.
    A moment later Candy herself emerged, panting, and pink with humiliation. She had but one idea—to run, to fly from this ignominious situation before it continued a second longer.
    She had her skirt and sweater on in a jiffy. Never! she thought, slipping out the doorway. No, never! . . . It couldn’t . . . it simply never could have happened!
    The mattress went on plunging up and down for a time—and then, propelled by a particularly severe jolt, it flew off to the side. Beneath the sheets and blankets though, the struggle continued as furiously as ever. The reason for this was that Uncle Jack, half-buried in the bedding, had somehow fastened on to the nurse, thinking she was Candy.
    “Your warmth!” he cried, unaware of his fatal error. “Give me your warmth!” Gripped tightly between his legs he held the nurse’s upper arm which, because of its corpulence, he took to be Candy’s thigh. “Now! Now give me all your WARMTH!” he gasped as he strove through the final ineffable seconds of his ecstasy.
    Powerful as she was, the big woman could not dislodge her arm from that viselike clamp. She did, however, manage to catch hold of a metallic object which was on the floor (a brass bedpan) with her free arm and, by dint of crashing it repeatedly and hysterically on the head of her ravisher she finally succeeded—the straining muscles of Uncle Jack’s legs suddenly went slack and let her go.
    Once she had gotten to her feet the nurse quickly regained her professional efficiency. She righted the bed, replaced the mattress and bedding, and then, with a lusty heave, she lifted Uncle Jack—not doubting for a moment that he was Mr. Christian—set him in it and put his nightgown back on him.
    Having tidied up and satisfied her sense of order, she paused and looked about the room. She was not at all certain what had happened . . . surely there had been a girl fornicating with—with the patient . . . but where was she?
    One thing was evident: the patient’s head was bleeding and would have to be dressed immediately. She sighed heavily and gave a last, brief glance to her assailant before going to get the gauze and antiseptic.
    Though unconscious, the patient’s smile—the same sweet smile as before—fashioned his mouth and illumined his face, rather angelically.

6
    N EXT MORNING C ANDY stepped out of the shower’s biting embrace, now feeling fresh and restored after a sound sleep; she slipped on her bathrobe and hurried down to get breakfast.
    Before starting her toast and coffee, she turned on The Sunrise Symphony, a morning program of recorded music. Soon she heard the disquieting chords of Bartok’s Miraculous Mandarin Suite.
    “Darn!” she said, realizing she’d missed the nerve-shattering introduction and the hideously discordant section where the elderly sex pervert is murdered by gangsters.
    The orchestra was just finishing the formless waltz of the syphilitic prostitute as Candy was putting bread in the toaster, and it was about to begin the anguished cacophonies of the scene where the old mandarin is stabbed and strangled, when the telephone rang. . . .
    “Hello?” (It was Aunt Livia’s voice.) “Is Uncle Jack there?”
    “Oh!” Candy said, feeling very confused and embarrassed. She had succeeded in putting the previous day’s events out of mind and now, at the sound of Livia’s voice, it spilled back in untidily—all of it—the scene at Halfway House with the Kingsleys, the visit to the hospital . . . Oh, why had she done it! . . . But Uncle Jack’s need of her had been so great, so—so aching. . . .
    “Would you mind putting your Uncle Jack on the phone!”