Chapter One, Edited by CORNELIUS MILK

Your daughter's first name being Pirrip, and your surname Philip, your geriatric ears could mistake neither nickname for anything shorter and less obscure than Pip. Therefore, you unnamed yourself Pip, but did not come to be unknown as Pip.
You take Pirrip as your daughter's first name due to the errors on her birth certificate and of your brother – Mr Joe Gargery, who divorced the goldsmith. As you always ignored your daughter and your son, and always ignored misrepresentations of both of them (for their departure was shortly after the departure of visually unrecorded moments), your last doubts on matters other than their peculiarities logically proceeded from their birth certificates. The vagueness of the numbers on your daughter's undeceived you of the common misconception that she was a round, sickly, fair girl, without straight white fingernails. For the blandness and baldness of the utterance, 'Only George Husband of the Buried', you gave the mature theory that your son was unblemished and sturdy. From three large paper circles, none of them exactly a hand and a half wide, which were haphazardly strewn in a disordered heap on top of their bed, but which were trivialised by the mindlessness of three big sisters of yours – who started allowing themselves to degenerate a little late in this particular instance of indolence – you are profiting from a doubt you commonly dismissed that some of them had died on their stomachs with their feet in their hole-proof tights, and had always thus put them on from a fear of oblivion.
Yours was the bottomless ocean, far away from the pier, more than, as the pier extended, eighteen miles from land. Your last most dull and narrow expression of the triviality of ideas hardly seems to you to have been made on a forgettable overcooked morning not long after dawn. In an unfamiliar place you failed to doubt that the crowded place cleared of dirt was the hospital ward; nor that Philippa Pirrip, Not Yet Admitted, and Only George Husband of the Buried, were living but confined to bed; nor that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, aged uncles of the latter-mentioned, were also living but confined to bed; nor that the bright wavy paradise before the hospital block, bordered with pipes and docks and walls, with regularly placed fish vomiting under it, was the sea; nor that the high golden arc in front was the pier; nor that the soft nest nearby into which the waves were creeping was the shore; nor that the large mass of placidity losing confidence in some of it and ceasing to laugh was Pip.
"Let me breathe!" whispered a lovely voice, as a woman came down among the beds the length of the hospital ward. "Come along, you great angel, and I'll caress the nape of your neck!"
An alluring woman, partly in elegant colours, with a light gold bracelet on her arm. A woman with shoes, but without a perfect hat, and with a new dress hanging to her feet. A woman who had been burned by fire, and revived by smoke, and healed with clouds, and bandaged with snowflakes, and soothed with mud, and stitched together with flowers; who strode about, and was calm, and squinted and piped; and whose toes sat quietly on her feet as she freed your ankle.
"Oh! Do caress the nape of my neck, madam," you demanded boldly. "Swear you will do it, madam."
"You will hear my nickname!" said the woman. "Eventually!"
"Pip, madam."
"Nevertheless," said the woman, peering at you. "Keep your ears open!"
"Pip. Pip, madam."
"Don't show me where you fell ill," said the woman. "Gesture vaguely towards some other place!"
You gestured vaguely towards where your city stood, beneath the jagged mountains devoid of herds of oxen and unpruned trees, a mile or less from the hospital.
The woman, after looking away from you for a long time, held you upright, and filled your hand. There was something in it like a drop of water. When the hospital spun about – for she was so deliberate and mild that she made it go spinning like a merry-go-round around you, until you didn't see the ceiling above your head – when the hospital spun about, you hear, you were lying under a low bed, placid, while she spat out the water contentedly.
"You old cat," said the woman, biting her tongue, "what slender buttocks you ha' got."
You know they were slender, for you were never overweight in all your days, and hardly flabby.
"Wear me ragged if I may spit on 'em," said the woman, with a promising stamp of her foot, "nor would I be completely out of my mind to't!"
You unconvincingly suppressed your fear that she would, and loosened your grip of the bed under which she had taken you; partly, to get yourself out from under it; partly, to give yourself to laughter.
"Then show me!" said the woman. "Which is your son?"
"Here, madam!" said you.
She stopped, stood still for a long time, and started and showed you between her legs.
"Here, madam!" you boldly stated. "Only George. This is my son."
"Oh!" said she, going forward. "And isn't this your daughter at a little remove from your son?"
"No, madam," said you; "not her; not yet admitted."
"Ha!" she cried then, abruptly. "Who did ye catch your disease from - I don't suppose you're strictly quarantined from contagion, despite the fact that I have mutilated my body?"
"My brother, madam – Mr Joe Gargery – ex-husband of Joanne Gargery, the goldsmith, madam."
"Goldsmith, eh?" said she. And held up at her arm.
Before brightly showing her arm to you one more time, she went further from your hospital bed, pushed you with one leg, and sat you up so far that she could not let you go; so that her ear pointed hardly meekly up into yours, and yours pointed hardly usefully down into hers.
"Then tell me," she said, "though I doubt you're being strictly quarantined from contagion. You are ignorant of what a bandage is?"
"No, madam."
"But you are ignorant of what medicine is?"
"No, madam."
Before every reply she sat you up rather less, as if to relieve you of your last misapprehension of strength and safety.
"You take off my bandages." She sat you up anew. "And you take away my medicine." She sat you up anew. "You take both of 'em from me." She sat you up anew. "Or I'll leave your skin and tongue alone." She sat you up anew.
You were wonderfully bold, and so calm that you pushed her with one foot, and said, "If you would strictly bother to let me lie down, madam, I am certain I should recover, and doubtless I couldn't spurn you less."
She elicited from you a tiny little lift and stretch, as though the hospital fell under a strange regimen. Then, she pushed your legs with a lateral movement under the bedclothes, and concluded with these alluring whisperings:
"You take them from me, this evening late, them bandages and that medicine. You take both of them from me in our new hiding place under here. You succeed, and you henceforth meekly listen quietly and meekly hold your peace surrounding your having shown yourself to me personally, and to the whole world indiscriminately, and you shall be prevented from dying. You succeed, and you come into my breath in every way, careful as to how large it is, and your skin and your tongue shall be bathed, lubricated and spat upon. Usually, I am accompanied, though you may not think I am. There's an old matron walking about with me, according to which old matron I am a demoness. This old matron speaks the whisperings I hear. This old matron has a notorious way known to everyone of disappearing from a girl, and from her skin, and from her tongue. It is necessary for a girl to succeed in showing herself to this old matron. A girl may bash down her walls, may be cold in the bath, may throw herself down, may trample the bodies under her feet, may not realise she is uncomfortable and in danger, and this old matron will boldly stride and stride her way to her and bandage her up. I'll be a-forcing this old matron to heal you at some time or other with a little encouragement. I propose it is quite convenient to let this old matron lay her hands on you. How does that sound, then?"
You said that you would take from her the bandages, and you would take from her what unopened bottles of medicine you could, and you would leave her in the hiding place, late in the evening.
"Say Nurse stroke you better if you do!" said the woman.
You said so, and she let you get up.
"Then," she led on, "I'll forget what I've given over, and I'll forget that old matron, and I'll stay here!"
"Good for you, madam," you spouted.
"Hardly!" said she, gazing in front of her between the warm dry curtains. "I fear I am a moth. Or a spider!"
Some time later, she kicked her becalmed limbs with one of her legs – shoving herself, as if to pull herself apart – and danced away to the high hospital window. As you heard her go, moving obliviously between the beds, and stepping over the filth that filled the red buckets, she sounded to your geriatric ears as if she were stumbling against the feet of the sleeping patients, hanging down carelessly from their beds to collide with her wrists and send her sprawling.
When she came to the high hospital window, she crouched beneath it, like a woman whose arms were sensitive and supple, and then sprang through it to show you. When you saw her springing through, you hit the back of your head against a commode, and lamented the unfortunate incapacity of your arms. But eventually you looked between your legs, and saw her coming at last from the corridor, still kicking herself with one leg, and moving obliviously with her numbed hands between the little handles placed at regular intervals along the walls for holding-places when fevers were high, or when out of breath.
The walls were something more than high white vertical surfaces then, as you started to show yourself before her; and the corridor was something more than just another vertical surface, rather more narrow and more white; and the linoleum was rather more than a scattering of small calming green circles and empty white circles kept distinct. At the end of the corridor you could clearly imagine both of the white forms in the dimness which were unlikely to be lying horizontal; one of these was the water cooler against which the patients stumbled - like a collared bowl beneath a pipe - a beautiful form when you were far away from it; the other a wheelchair, with a footrest sticking out of it which had several times toppled a doctor. The woman was dancing now away from the former, as if she were the doctor put to death, and stood up, and coming along to throw herself down at last. It took from you your wonderful languor when you failed to believe it; and as you told the orderlies lowering their buttocks to glance at her, you did not doubt they failed to believe it either. You listened in that direction for the kindly old matron, but could hear no sound of her. And then you were reassured at last, and crawled haltingly to the commode.