Poor Things

by Alasdair Gray

“Mr. Baxter would be a stone statue if he felt no pain,” I told them. “You have used this wise, kind, self-sacrificing man’s hospitality to call him a freak and a liar. In the hearing of the patient whose life he saved you have accused him of viciously assaulting her. You know nothing of the terrible crack which rings her cranium—had he not tended her like a mother and educated her like a father it would have caused worse than total amnesia: she would be an imbecile. His tour with her was no amorous excursion, but the best way of reintroducing her to a world she had forgotten. He did not connive at her elopement with Wedderburn—he tried to dissuade her, begged me to dissuade her, and when we both failed he gave her means to return to us when she tired of the escapade. No roué discarding a mistress would have done that! You have also had the insolence to call me—his best friend! Archibald McCandless M.D. of Glasgow Royal Infirmary!—you have dared to call me a low-born ruffian and weak-minded parasite. No wonder that vagal nerve discharge has induced reverse peristalsis and that excess pancreatic juice has irritated the oesophagus causing severe heartburn! And you say his pain at such vilification is a sign of GUILT!!!??? Think black black shame of yourselves, gentlemen. You have almost persuaded me that you are not gentlemen at all.”

GO OFF KING