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demonstrate the result of using
Basic White, that is, pure white, on an off-color white background
such as this.”
    Deftly her no. 4 brush dipped into the pure
white and obliterated the appeal to disorder. A rectangle paler
than the background betrayed its former position. “Still there, as
you can see,” commented the director. With a certain tenseness in
his voice he ordered his assistant to repeat the operation, but
this time with White Stock 1, a shade darker.
    As the sub-ministry toilet cascaded again
behind the rear wall, she performed the task in pure virtuoso
style. It was almost a single uninterrupted movement: a quick dip
of the brush into the bottle of water, a squeezed passage through a
cloth on the way to a redip into White 1 and then a second
rectangle over the first. It had taken three seconds. There was an
expanse of pure white now.
    She glanced at the director for more
approbation. His face was set in hard lines as he stared at what
she’d done. She blinked and looked back at the poster. A perfect
expanse of pure white.
    She looked at the director again, in alarm
now. In the big windowless room the only sound was the whirring of
the giant ventilator and the ticking of the wall-clock which marked
thirteen minutes to nine.
    He stood there, Basic White himself, sweat
pouring down his face. Then he staggered off the podium and
collapsed into an empty chair. One of the bottles on the table
before him teetered dangerously and a brush fell to the floor.
    His assistant dropped her aching arms. She
checked her impulse to abandon her ladder and rush to his side. She
feared a second rebuff. The candidates stared at the director. He
sat doubled up, clutching his stomach. They started whispering. One
of them reached back for his leather jacket. She saved the
situation by clapping sharply and regaining their attention. She
continued the lesson where the director had broken off, but at a
slower pace.
    Finally she climbed down the ladder and told
them that they had half an hour to apply their newly acquired
skills to the poster on their table. She approached the director,
knelt and picked up the brush. With a discreet cough she replaced
it in the glass. She made sure it tinkled. Motionless, eyes shut,
he paid no attention to her. “Sir,” she finally ventured, “if you
need me, I’ll be here, of course, monitoring them.”
     
    He heard her murmur from far off. He’d given
up trying to localize the burning: duodenum, ascending colon,
jejunum, sigmoid flexure, transverse colon, ileum (he knew the
convolutions of the human intestine as well as he did those of the
capital’s underground lines to which it bore a remarkable
resemblance). The fire was everywhere.
    The burning spells had started four years
before and had steadily worsened. Painful and humiliating
examinations revealed no intestinal lesions. Drugs provided no
relief. The prescription of his first doctor was purely verbal.
“You overreact. You must learn to relax, to untense,” he was fond
of saying as he pocketed his fee.
    There was no question of letting a
mind-charlatan pry into his brain but he did follow his first
doctor’s advice more or less. At the slightest sign of negative
thoughts he would censor himself. When he felt like bellowing he
would smile. One of his later doctors had commented on the smile
maintained while Lorz was clutching his abdomen. “Let it out! Don’t
keep it bottled up. When you’re alone try kicking things, try
yelling.” Lorz’s smile unconsciously broadened with anger at
hearing, once again, the implicit localization of the trouble not
in his intestines but in his brain and at the dangerous stupidity
of the advice. If you let all the accumulated rage out wouldn’t you
run amok?
    If this attack didn’t prove fatal he’d
return home and spend the next two days in bed, biting his arm to
blood during the worst times. It had all happened before. His
assistant saw things through. When he returned to the