It could be seen that the syllable meant something to Prodd, something like the codification he offered, though far less.
But it would do.
He tried to repeat the sound, but his unaccustomed tongue became spastic. Saliva spurted annoyingly and ran from his lips. He sent a desperate demand for help, for some other way to express it, found it, used it. He nodded.
‘Lone,’ repeated Prodd.
And again he nodded; and this was his first word and his first conversation; another miracle.
It took him five years to learn to talk, and always he preferred not to. He never did learn to read. He was simply not equipped.
There were two boy’s for whom the smell of disinfectant on tile was the smell of hate.
For Gerry Thompson it was the smell of hunger, too, and of loneliness. All food was spiced with it, all sleep permeated with disinfectant, hunger, cold, fear… all components of hatred. Hatred was the only warmth in the world, the only certainty. A man clings to certainties, especially when he has only one; most especially when he is six years old. And at six Gerry was very largely a man—at least, he had a grown man’s appreciation of that grey pleasure which comes merely with the absence of pain; he had an implacable patience, found usually only in men of purpose who must appear broken until their time of decision arrives. One does not realize that for a six-year-old the path of memory stretches back for just as long a lifetime as it does for anyone, and is as full of detail and incident. Gerry had had trouble enough, loss enough, illness enough, to make a man of anyone. At six he looked it, too; it was then that he began to accept, to be obedient, and to wait. His small, seamed face became just another face, and his voice no longer protested. He lived like this for two years, until his day of decision.
Then he ran away from the state orphanage, to live by himself, to be the colour of gutters and garbage so he would not be picked up; to kill if cornered; to hate.
For Hip there was no hunger, no cold, and no precocious maturity. There was the smell of hate, though. It surrounded his father the doctor, the deft and merciless hands, the sombre clothes. Even Hip’s memory of Doctor Barrows’ voice was the memory of chlorine and carbolic.