594
"God damn love," wails Hyde.
"What did you say?" Jekyll asks.
SUSAN SONTAG
"I said," Hyde lowers his raucous voice to a growl, "God damn love."
Hyde empties his glass in two gulps. Not only. does Hyde seem to have
lost most of his flair for moral turpitude, but this vehement drinking indicates
that he is going soft. Jekyll is discouraged. "God damn love," he thinks he
hears Hyde hiss once more.
Hyde can't seem to keep still, darting about the living room from the
liquor on the rattan table to his packing crate and back again, like a dyspeptic
gorilla. Jekyll leans back on the mauve couch, tired from watching him move
so much. He feels drowsy, under water. How long must he go on chasing
after Hyde? Are they to go round and round, continuous as a frieze round an
urn? He'll never overtake him. Hyde, despite his odd gait, is incredibly light,
mobile. You couldn't catch him with a rope, as one could imagine catching
Utterson-a big, bull-like man who moves with ponderous slowness, and
generally prefers to be enthroned in a chair or, whenever possible, lying in
bed. Jekyll imagines how he might lasso Utterson and drag him here, to
continue the conversation. It's not with Utterson, though, but with this
morose manic lout circling around the room-fuat he must try to communicate.
At least the doctor in Jekyll remains undaunted by Hyde's corrosive
antics. Jekyll notes that Hyde's constitution looks embattled now. From what
can be glimpsed of Hyde's chicken-breasted frame through his wrinkled
work-shirt, two of whose buttons are missing, he's lost weight and his
cigarette cough rivals Camille's.
Making one more effort, Jekyll also manages to rouse the eloquent,
long-suffering aspirant to psychic unity; and from the couch he aims that part
of himself, like a gun, at Hyde. Addressing Hyde, he begins a monologue.
Hyde gulps down more gin while Jekyll names the main points on the map of
his discontent, expounding on his heartfelt desire to change his life. Utterson
comes in for heavy savaging, he and that motley crew of disciples and bastards
camping out in Oyster Bay at the Institute for Deprogramming Potential
Human Beings.
"But the Work did you a lot of good, right?" Hyde mumbles, still on the
run.
How could Jekyll deny that the Work has helped him? That, without the
Work, he wouldn't have become as gifted a physician as he is today; that he
wouldn't be as calm, controlled, steady, self-observing; that he couldn't as
easily inspire trust in and impose his will on colleagues, subordinates, and
patients. "Utterson isn't the problem," Jekyll admits. "It's me."
"I don't get it," whines Hyde, abruptly dropping to all fours and crouch–
ing in a corner.
