After which, you can bet your ass, I did not dissolve. I lay feeling my smooth-shaven parts - the lamb's neck fleeced for the slaughter!
I also listened to the gurgling man beside me, a man who was fed like a carburetor; whose tubes, whose intake and output, whose simple functioning, seemed to rely on a mechanical sense of timing.
I was not worried about my operation, really; I had anticipated it to death. What did worry me was the degree to which I had become predictable even to myself, as if the range of my reactions had been analyzed, discussed and criticized to the point where I was as readable as a graph. I wished I could shock them all, the fuckers.
It was nearly midnight when I convinced the nurse that I simply had to call Tulpen. The phone rang and rang. When Ralph Packer answered, I hung up.
(169: Sync sound. Close-up from dissolve. At her bathroom mirror Tulpen brushes her teeth; her shoulders are bare; presumably, so is the rest of her)
PACKER (offstage): Do you think the operation will change him? I don't mean just physically ...
TULPEN (she spits, looks in the mirror, then talks over her shoulder): Change him how, then?
RALPH (o.s.): I mean psychologically ...
TULPEN (rinses, gargles, spits): He doesn't believe in psychology.
RALPH (o.s.): Do you?
TULPEN: Not for him, I don't ...
(170: Sync sound. Medium shot of Tulpen in the bathtub, soaping her breasts and underarms)
TULPEN (with occasional looks at camera): It's a very simplistic whitewash to attempt to cover very deep and complicated people and things with very easy generalizations, superficialities - you know. But I think it's just as simplistic to assume that everyone is complex and deep. I mean, I think Trumper really does operate on the surface ... Maybe he is a surface, just a surface ...
(She trails off, looks warily at camera, then at her soapy breasts, and self-consciously slides down in the water)
TULPEN (looking at camera, as if Ralph were the camera): Come on, let's call it a night.
(The phone rings offstage and Tulpen starts to get out of the tub)
RALPH (o.s.): Shit! The phone ... I'll get it!
TULPEN (looking offstage after him): No, let me - it might be Trumper.
RALPH (o.s.answering the phone; Tulpen, listening, freezes): Yeah, hello? Hello? Hello? goddam you ...
(The camera is jerky; it tries to back up awkwardly as Tulpen steps out of the tub. Clumsily embarrassed, she wraps herself in a towel as Ralph steps into frame with her. He wears a light meter around his neck and points it at her, then down at the tub)
RALPH (irritably, he takes her arm and tries to steer her back to the tub): No, come on. We'll have to shoot this all over again ... the goddam phone!
TULPEN (pulling away from him): Was it Trumper? Who was on the phone?
RALPH: I don't know. They hung up. Now, come on, this won't take a minute ...
(But she wraps herself tighter in the towel and moves away from the tub)
TULPEN (angry): It's late. I want to get up early. I want to be there when he comes out of the anesthesia. We can do this tomorrow.
(She looks up, exasperated, at the camera. Suddenly, Ralph looks angrily at the camera himself, as if he just realized it was still running)
RALPH (shouting at camera): Cut! Cut! Cut! Sweet Jesus, Kent! Stop wasting film, you royal fuck-up!
BLACK OUT
Early in the morning they came and emptied the pots, hoses and receptacles of all kinds belonging to the man beside me. But they did nothing for me; they wouldn't even feed me.
At eight o'clock a nurse took my temperature and gave me a numbing shot in both legs, high up on the thigh. When they came to wheel me down to the operating room, I couldn't walk very well. Two nurses supported me while they made me take a leak, but I still had feeling down there, and I was worried that the shots hadn't worked the way they were supposed to. I remarked on this to the nurse, but she didn't seem to understand me; in fact, my voice sounded strange even to me and I couldn't understand what I said either. I prayed I would be lucid in time to stop them from cutting.