10

Rows and rows of rats crawled on the ground and began to climb the walls, onto the ceiling. The room was large and echoless. Bright lights glared on the rats and the tubes lining the shelves on one wall, tubes full of yellow chemicals. The rats all gathered on the ceiling, covering every inch. Then they began to fall one by one, on my head, shoulders, hands. I screamed but no sound came out of my throat.

Someone shook me.

“I think you were having a bad dream,” Manijeh said.

I sighed with relief. “I did have an awful dream about rats crawling around.”

The dream was not all that unrealistic. I had once used fifty rats in an experiment on the effect of thorazine on their eating behavior—would the ones on the tranquilizer eat less or more, faster or slower. Late one evening I had come in to check on them and discovered that the cages were open—carelessness on my assistant’s part, probably—and rats crawled on the floor. I had stifled a scream. Later I almost fired my assistant. She had begun to make other similar blunders. She underfed some mice, for instance, and I found them on the verge of starvation.

I started to worry about my work which I had managed to push out of my mind for a while. So many things could go wrong with the experiments I had left in her care. Chemicals congealing in tubes, she not properly recording the data. I resolved to write to her immediately and also send a telegram to Tony. He would get it as soon as he returned from his trip.

I asked Manijeh how to go about sending the telegram. She said I should write down the message and she would phone it for me.

She pulled open the curtains and soft sunlight flowed in. Behind the window there was a fig tree, and sparrows hopped on its branches.

“How’s the pain?” she asked, wrapping the cloth around my arm to take my blood pressure.

“It’s still there. The medicine doesn’t seem to help.” I had awakened a couple of times during the night with acute pain.

She took my pulse, gave me a pad and a pen, and then left the room.

I sat up in bed. I could see the garden with its small flowered paths in the back of the hospital. An old woman, wearing the hospital robe, sat on a bench while a young girl fed her. Men, women, and children, the relatives of patients, wandered around or sat on benches, talking.

I jotted down on a piece of paper a few words about the letter of permission I needed and the illness. I also wrote a brief letter to my assistant, telling her of my situation and urging her to supervise the experiments closely.

Manijeh came back with breakfast on a tray. She rolled up my bed and put the tray before me.