Dialogue with Foot

By J. M.COHEN

THE pain nagged away at the other end of my body, pulsing like one of those persistent enemy planes whose noise always seemed to fill the sky and which seemed at every moment to be overhead, and yet which were always capable of growing nearer and louder, just when you expected that they would begin to die away. There were two ways of tackling it from the pillow-end- either to let it grow till its throbbing became unbearable, and then by a sudden shift of position to cut its rhythm short for a moment ; or to surrender to it, to relax the muscles consciously and deli- berately in the leg itself and all up the body, and stop fighting it. :Then it became almost bearable. But the relaxing had to be re- peated again and again, because the muscles tautened up on their own and did not like to have their habits interfered with.

This poisoned foot of mine took an amused interest in my i'quandary. With the heightened mental activity that goes with a temperature of 103 I turned my attention to the things of the commonplace world, from which Foot had unceremoniously ejected me on the day before, and for a few seconds the pain ;receded to the very furthest end of the bed, as if by taking thought I had somehow added to my stature and increased the distance between Foot and Head. But quickly it was with me again, like ism aggressive servant insisting that the success of the evening's party ;depends on her keeping her unobtrusive place. Foot, in Victorian carlance, was " giving warning." Head ignored the interruption, nd continued its glitteringly lucid aititrent with that creature whose approval it never wins for anyth' g t writes. It was outlining i,

the review of a book which, if it had not hien for the intrusive foot, . – should have been written next morn m. " It won't get done," commented Froot, and he sounded a little palicious. " I could dictate It even with a temperature," came the answer prom the pillow-end, which no longer seemed so far away from that very insistent throbbing.

The pillows were an unyielding lump, and as 1 made this gesture of defiance I tightened all my muscles in order to assume a resting position for my head and neck. But a second or two later my pillow-end was again convulsively trying for a comfortable position. i" I 7 " questioned Foot, stabbing away at the tightness in my calf- „muscles ; two spheres of influence seemed to meet on an aching boundary below my ankle. ” Who's I ? The limb that puts out all that thought stuff up the other end ? " Pain stabbed across my foot in a slightly different direction.

" Generally it's my mind—my consciousness, you know," I ex- plained, " that knows what's going on and makes the decisions. Of course, these are exceptional circumstances," I conceded, " a sort of rebellion, you might say." I felt I was on unsafe ground. Foot had crowded the usual " I " into a pen up at the pillow-end, where it was going on with its affairs rather hectically, under sufferance.

" Well, who's conscious now ? " growled Foot. " Me or the Head-end ? That's the question. Why it can't make those leg- muscles relax for more than two seconds on end. Each time it loosens them they clench themselves hard again. As if they could shut out what I've got to say that way."

" I know," came the answer. " I'm trying to control them, but they seem to behave automatically, as if they knew best."

" Now, if you had conscious control . . ." began Foot, dog- matically, but Head had stopped listening.

" What 4. 311 you've got to say ? " it asked, endeavouring to be placatory. The pain was probing so deep that it seemed on the point of bursting out of Foot itself and shooting its way up the leg. The penicillin was containing it, though.

" Don't like being neglected," complained Foot. " Always ex- pected to act right and give no trouble, even if Top-end doesn't bother about what I need. Why, he never gives me his thoughts for five minutes on end, not even when he's buying me a pair of shoes. Has to try and impress the shop assistant, and . . ." Foot broke off to engulf a toe, which had been quiet, in unexpected pain. Top-end made another convulsive clutch at the pillow, and heaved into a momentarily cool position.

" Then it's so downright unconscious up there," Foot continued, " that it makes me walk down the garden barefoot, because it's shuffled out of its sandals and is too busy thinking, as it calls it, to kick them on again. So it gets me pricked by a bit of rusty wire, and I can't tell it what's happened because it never listens, and so I get poisoned."

" I don't remember anything like that occurring," protested my pillow-end.

" You don't remember anything for five seconds on end," replied Foot. " But I've got a memory. I remember what happens to me, and try to stop its happening again if it's bad. Instinctive reaction you call it up there. Yes, I've got a memory, but you haven't. Try and go through the events of yesterday, say, between breakfast and lunch. It'll take Top-end's mind off my nagging little jabs. But you won't remember anything, and in a second or two you'll forget even to try. Not that I like hurting," Foot went on, changing to a rather aggrieved tone. " I'm not doing it to annoy or even to teach a lesson. I'm the part that's ill, and I'd be worse if the doctor hadn't a good deal more sense than Top-end, that's 'so proud of being conscious, but spends all his time going round in his own dreams. Yes, if it wasn't for the doctor this bit of poison that's boiling up under the pad of Little Toe would go seething all the way up the leg. Bad management, that's what I complain of. If Top-end would listen to some of us limbs occasionally now, and put a bit of iodine on a scratch, instead of being too lordly to • notice it's happened, we should all be a lot better off."

The pain was concentrating in one spot now, like a little bit of magnesium just beginning to flare. " All right," commented Foot. " It's going to burst now, and in a day or two you'll forget all about this little talk of ours. But if you could remember to come out of your dream for a moment every now and then, and listen if any of us has got anything to say, it'd make living together a lot easier for everybody. As things are," he concluded with an incandescent stab of pain, " there's no getting attention except by going and swelling up like this. It's the pnly way of shaking Top-end out of his dreams. Trouble with him is he thinks he's real."

The pain receded a little under a liokwater compress. In a day or two now it will be quite gone. I think it only fair to Foot, though, to put his case on paper. For everyone who comes to see me thinks he's behaved rather badly.