"Perhaps the wisest thing would be to say, here and now, that the case was hopeless, that he could do nothing, and ask to be sent back to Madras forthwith. Then he looked again at the sick man. Through the grotesque mask of his poor deformed face the Raja was looking at him intently-looking with the eyes of a condemned criminal begging the judge for mercy. Touched by the appeal, Dr. Andrew gave him a smile of encouragement and all at once, as he patted the thin hand, he had an idea. It was absurd, crackbrained, thoroughly discreditable; but all the same, all the same ...
"Five years before, he suddenly remembered, while he was still at Edinburgh, there had been an article in The Lancet, an article denouncing the notorious Professor Elliotson for his advocacy of animal magnetism. Elliotson had had the effrontery to talk of painless operations performed on patients in the mesmeric trance.
"The man was either a gullible fool or an unscrupulous knave. The so-called evidence for such nonsense was manifestly worthless. It was all sheer humbug, quackery, downright fraud- and so on for six columns of righteous indignation. At the time-for he was still full of La Mettrie and Hume and Cabanis- Dr. Andrew had read the article with a glow of orthodox approval. After which he had forgotten about the very existence of animal magnetism. Now, at the Raja's bedside, it all came back to him-the mad professor, the magnetic passes, the amputations without pain, the low death rate and the rapid recoveries. Perhaps, after all, there might be something in it. He was deep in these thoughts when, breaking a long silence, the sick man spoke to him. From a young sailor who had deserted his ship at Rendang-Lobo and somehow made his way across the Strait, the Raja had learned to speak English with remarkable fluency, but , also, in faithful imitation of his teacher, with a strong Cockney accent. That Cockney accent," Dr. MacPhail repeated with a little laugh. "It turns up again and again in my great-grandfather's memoirs. There was something, to him, inexpressibly improper about a king who spoke like Sam Weller. And in this case the impropriety was more than merely social. Besides being a king, the Raja was a man of intellect and the most exquisite refinement; a man, not only of deep religious convictions (any crude oaf can have deep religious convictions), but also of deep religious experience and spiritual insight. That such a man should express himself in Cockney was something that an Early Victorian Scotsman who had read The Pickwick Papers could never get over. Nor, in spite of all my great-grandfather's tactful coaching, could the Raja ever get over his impure diphthongs and dropped aitches. But all that was in the future. At their first tragic meeting, that shocking, lower-class accent seemed strangely touching. Laying the palms of his hands together in a gesture of supplication, the sick man whispered, ' 'Elp me, Dr. MacPhile, 'elp me.'
"The appeal was decisive. Without any further hesitation, Dr. Andrew took the Raja's thin hands between his own and began to speak in the most confident tone about a wonderful new treatment recently discovered in Europe and employed as yet by only a handful of the most eminent physicians. Then, turning to the attendants who had been hovering all this time in the background, he ordered them out of the room. They did not understand the words; but his tone and accompanying gestures were unmistakably clear. They bowed and withdrew. Dr. Andrew took off his coat, rolled up his shirt sleeves and started to make those famous magnetic passes, about which he had read with so much skeptical amusement in The Lancet. From the crown of the head, over the face and down the trunk to the epigastrium, again and again until the patient falls into a trance-'or until' (he remembered the derisive comments of the anonymous writer of the article) 'until the presiding charlatan shall choose to say that his dupe is now under the magnetic influence.' Quackery, humbug and fraud. But all the same, all the same ... He worked away in silence. Twenty passes, fifty passes. The sick man sighed and closed his eyes. Sixty, eighty, a hundred, a hundred and twenty. The heat was stifling, Dr. Andrew's shirt was drenched with sweat, and his arms ached. Grimly he repeated the same absurd gesture. A hundred and fifty, a hundred and seventy-five, two hundred. It was all fraud and humbug; but all the same he was determined to make this poor devil go to sleep, even if it took him the whole day to do it. 'You are going to sleep,' he said aloud as he made the two hundred and eleventh pass. 'You are going to sleep.' The sick man seemed to sink more deeply into his pillows, and suddenly Dr. Andrew caught the sound of a rattling wheeze. 'This time,' he added quickly, 'you are not going to choke. There's plenty of room for the air to pass, and you're not going to choke.' The Raja's breathing grew quiet. Dr. Andrew made a few more passes, then decided that it would be safe to take a rest. He mopped his face, then rose, stretched his arms and took a couple of turns up and down the room. Sitting down again by the bed, he took one of the Raja's sticklike wrists and felt for the pulse. An hour before it had been running at almost a hundred; now the rate had fallen to seventy. He raised the arm: the hand hung limp like a dead man's. He let go, and the arm dropped by its own weight and lay, inert and unmoving, where it had fallen. 'Your Highness,' he said, and again, more loudly, 'Your Highness.' There was no answer. It was all quack-ery, humbug and fraud, but all the same it worked, it obviously worked."
A large, brightly colored mantis fluttered down onto the rail at the foot of the bed, folded its pink and white wings, raised its small flat head, and stretched out its incredibly muscular front legs in the attitude of prayer. Dr. MacPhail pulled out a magnify- ing glass and bent forward to examine it.
"Gongylus gongyloides," he pronounced. "It dresses itself up to look like a flower. When unwary flies and moths come sailing in to sip the nectar, it sips them. And if it's a female, she eats her lovers." He put the glass away and leaned back in his chair. "What one likes most about the universe," he said to Will Farnaby, "is its wild improbability. Gongylus gongyloides, Homo sapiens, my great grandfather's introduction to Pala and hypnosis-what could be more unlikely?"
"Nothing," said Will. "Except perhaps my introduction to Pala and hypnosis, Pala via a shipwreck and a precipice; hypnosis by way of a soliloquy about an English cathedral."
Susila laughed. "Fortunately I didn't have to make all those passes over you. In this climate! I really admire Dr. Andrew. It sometimes takes three hours to anesthetize a person with the passes."
"But in the end he succeeded?"
"Triumphantly."
"And did he actually perform the operation?"
"Yes, he actually performed the operation," said Dr. MacPhail. "But not immediately. There had to be a long preparation. Dr. Andrew began by telling his patient that henceforward he would be able to swallow without pain. Then, for the next three weeks, he fed him up. And between meals he put him into trance and kept him asleep until it was time for another feeding. It's wonderful what your body will do for you if you only give it a chance. The Raja gained twelve pounds and felt like a new man. A new man full of new hope and confidence. He knew he was going to come through his ordeal. And so, incidentally, did Dr. Andrew. In the process of fortifying the Raja's faith he had fortified his own. It was not a blind faith. The operation, he felt quite certain, was going to be successful. But this unshakable confidence did not prevent him from doing everything that might contribute to its success. Very early in the proceedings he started to work on the trance. The trance, he kept telling his patient, was becoming deeper every day, and on the day of the operation it would be much deeper than it had ever been before. It would also last longer. 'You'll sleep,' he assured the Raja, 'for four full hours after the operation's over; and when you awake, you won't feel the slightest pain.' Dr. Andrew made these affirmations with a mixture of total skepticism and complete confidence. Reason and past experience assured him that all this was impossible. But in the present context past experience had proved to be irrelevant. The impossible had already happened, several times. There was no reason why it shouldn't happen again. The important thing was to say that it would happen-so he said it, again and again. All this was good; but better still was Dr. Andrew's invention of the rehearsal."