Too far to walk, p.18
Too Far to Walk, page 18
There was a flickering moment in which John saw, or thought he saw, the benign old fellow sneaking a sheath knife out of his coat pocket, and there was a sharp impression in his mind that the blade was engraved with the unmentionable fourth letter of the alphabet, which, leaping off the blade toward John, seemed to have a dreadful effulgence, a power to burn the eyes of anyone who looked at it, even from a distance. John decided to be very careful, and he said:
—— No name. Anomie. Ego-loss.
—— Never mind (the old man said). We were talking about how to end the war.
Mona-Helen: —— You have to reach the outgoing, loving side of human beings. It’s up to the women. Women make babies.
Orreman-Priam: —— My theory is this. If the young men would only decide: killing is wrong, killing is the one absolute wrong. And they’d say, no thanks, I’m not having any of it. They would just refuse. You couldn’t make them kill. If enough of them decided to abstain, that would be the end of it. Refuse to kill. I mean in very large numbers.
But had they said this at all? John’s “mood” was becoming worse.
Wagner came over, if it was Wagner. He wasn’t buying the Troy jazz.
—— Sure, sure (he said), her face is O.K., she’s no dog, but it wasn’t the face that launched the ships. Whist! S-h-h! Listen. She fux. She took on Paris, Hector, Priam. Then after, Menelaus, Ajax, Odysseus. Even Nestor. Then after that, the crews. The sailors. A thousand ships.
John: —— Oh, Wagner, hang up. You’re disturbed. You’re really tuned up. Look how quiet Flack is.
Wagner: —— Sure, sure, now Metlin T. Flack’s the big model patient.
Then the old man who may have been Orreman said: —— We have laws against murder to protect society. Why isn’t all killing a crime? You see, it’s for the young to take on their own shoulders. Just say, it’s wrong. No, thanks. Not me. Get someone else. An absolute one-hundred-percent shutdown on killing by the young.
Mona: —— It’s up to the mothers.
The atmosphere in the room was suddenly turned on, and John’s “mood” seemed to dissolve like a morning fog; he was alert. A doctor, whose name was Flankton, wearing a coat the color of the melancholy walls, a Tattersall vest, a stiff collar, and a black knit tie, and with a dribble of food, possibly Cream of Wheat, on his left lapel, so that he made altogether a fake-European, shabby-natty, absentminded-genius impression, had entered the room and was wandering from loon to loon. John was afraid of him, for he had asked one of the long-time patients what Dr. Flankton’s problem was, and the answer had been: —— He’s a maniac on the subject of shock treatment. A real monomaniac. He doesn’t use shock delicately to help a patient become reachable as a human being, he uses it like fire, like hot coals on a grill, like hellfire, forty, fifty, sixty treatments, to shrivel and shrivel and shrivel the symptoms. The so-called symptoms. (So the long-time patient had said.)
In his circling the doctor came eventually to the group around Helen of Troy.
—— How’s the most beautiful woman in the world? (He put a hand on Mona’s shoulder.)
Mona shrank away, pouting.
—— John? How you doing?
At first John wanted to avoid answering, but the doctor took a step toward him, looking closely at him, as if judging his silence, and John decided it would be safer to answer.
—— My chest hurts.
—— Where?
—— Right here.
—— Don’t worry about it. Get your mind off it.
Then John thought he would make light of it, put the doc on, and he said: —— Listen. (He dropped his voice to a whisper.) I think I’ve got lead poisoning. From a bullet.
—— Really? (Professional humoring, John thought. He’s pretending to go along with me.)
—— I ought to be in a regular hospital. Get it cut out.
—— We can take care of it. (An incipient glint in the eye, a pat on the back.) We’ll begin some treatments tomorrow. (The doctor’s eyebrows twitched downward, his cheeks jumped, and both eyes were pressed tight over that fierce glint by a sudden tic.) We can melt it out.
—— No! No! I was joking, Doctor. Not that! I’ve heard about you! I don’t want that!
Visiting hours began, and Grandma Newson came to see John. They sat at a small square table surfaced with walnut-grained plastic. John’s grandmother opened a package of Lorna Doone cookies; the crackling of the wrapper as she tore at it was horrendous, like a huge fire in a forest. She offered John a cookie; he refused, not trusting her. The world’s blue-ribbon best-in-breed best-in-show bitch.
—— Your mother sent love.
—— If she loves me so much, why doesn’t she come to see me?
—— She’s terrified of places like this. You know how hard it would be for her.
—— Listen, Gam, you’ve got to help me. I want to get out of here. Those male nurses are sadists.
—— You signed yourself in.
—— I know, the whole thing is voluntary. Look, Gam, what kind of an idiot do you take me for? I read that fine print. It said that after five days I had a complete total absolute constitutional moral human right to walk out any time I wanted. Sure, sure. Every door you walk through, click, click, they lock it behind you.
—— Dr. Stampleman up in Worcester says—
—— Look, Gam, you don’t seem to understand, something terrible is happening. There’s a doctor right here who wants to start frying me on his electric table. He threatened me today. He’s crazy, Gam. He said he was going to start tomorrow. They’ll get those goons to hold me down. You’ve got to help me.
—— Let’s talk about something a little more pleasant.
—— Brother!
The conversation became more pleasant from John’s grandmother’s point of view; she talked about the murder of Mrs. Liuzzo, the burglary of the Star of India, the bombing of Zone D by B-52s. Sane topics.
Then after a while, apparently feeling that she had had a soothing effect on John, she left.
Later Chum Breed came to visit. He and John sat in two aluminum-rod chairs near the billiard table, at which Wagner, chalking and chalking the cue tip after each shot, was putting all of his brutal power into each thrust of the inlaid shaft; the balls cracked like snipers’ reports.
John: —— My grandmother was here.
Breed: —— Which side?
—— My mother’s. I’ve told you about her. The bitch one.
—— Ah, yes.
—— I’m scared, Breed. She convinced me I’m really…sick.
—— How’d she do that?
—— Look, she’s dead. She’s been dead eight years.
Breed leaned toward John, and he appeared to be enthralled by John’s words.
—— This must be the richest experience of all.
—— Listen, you big shit, you got me into this, now get me out.
Breed was in a rapture: —— The depth of this—
—— This is too much. Do you hear me? This is too much.
—— “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”
—— I mean it, Chum. There’s an insane doctor here who wants to destroy me. (O God! Was that what the smell had been all along? Premonition of the mad doctor’s brain burner?) He’s a shock-therapy nut. He wants to start in on me tomorrow. You’ve got to help me.
—— I love that about your grandmother.
—— You’re not listening to me. Look, Chum, do you know what this place is like? No one listens to you here. You try to talk sense, you use words the way you’ve used them all your life, but they might as well be balls of cotton coming out of your mouth. Words have no value here; they aren’t accepted. When the words come out of your mouth, people—and I mean doctors, visitors, the ones they call sane, not just patients—people nod, shake their heads, give you black looks; they react physically to the sounds you make, but you aren’t getting through. At first you feel helpless; this collapse of your own words strips you of all humanity, and you begin to get really scared. I guess that’s why some of the people around here have taken to just grunting—or going dumb altogether, like animals. But the worst of it is, other people’s words reach you. I can hear what old Oval Ears Orreman is saying clearly as a bell, and he sounds to me like the sanest man I know. But I have to assume that he doesn’t realize that I receive what he says. He doesn’t listen to me—or anyway doesn’t hear me—or anyway doesn’t seem to. Everyone here is in a glass container as far as his own utterances are concerned. Words go dead around my own ears as I speak them. I don’t feel crazy. The guy named I never is. But the catch is, you have to be an I, know that you are one, and that’s just what’s so hard when you lose the power to push your words into other people’s heads.
—— Did you have the feeling your words reached people at Sheldon?
—— Different types of nuthouses have different types of accreditation.
—— You mean you think of Sheldon as an asylum, too?
—— This place certifies you as being bughouse; Sheldon certifies you as educated. Both on the basis of the words you use—or rather on the basis of the way they hear, or don’t hear, your words. I don’t like either deal.
—— What about the other people here? What about that beautiful dame? Can she use words?
—— Mona? She has a non-verbal problem.
—— Interesting? It should be! Whee-oo!
—— Well, no, it’s rather common, actually. She’s so lovable that she can’t find the right man to love her. Why lock her up on that account? She’s not going to find him here.
—— What about the problem of safety?
John answered sharply: —— What about safety?
—— What about the danger of people hurting themselves? Or hurting others?
—— If you locked up everybody who was potentially dangerous, who would carry the keys?
—— Oh now, John. That is a little off base.
John was beginning to talk rather loud: —— I ask you to take wars into account in reckoning who might become dangerous.
—— Wars are a bit special, aren’t they? (Breed’s teeth glistened in his nicest grin—that of irony.) After all, they’re fought for matters of principle.
—— Take into account all the things insurance companies are reluctant to assume any risk for: wars, strikes, riots, civil disturbances, rebellions. They all start with matters of principle. So who’s dangerous? The people in here?
—— Don’t get excited.
—— I’m not excited. (But John knew that he himself now had a hold of a matter of principle and that he was in fact incipiently dangerous.) It’s not so-called crazy people who are a threat to others, or to themselves. It’s the people who know they’re right—who aren’t able to hear anyone else.
—— You don’t have to shout.
—— I’m not shouting. (But he was. There was the most provocative, the most infuriating, glint of amusement in Breed’s eyes, and a glaze of not hearing, which made John shout even louder.) What are all these matters of principle anyway? They all come down to one thing: Don’t stand on my toes. Hey, you’re standing on my toes. Get off! God damn it, get off my toes!
John was standing up and really sounding off.
He heard Wagner say: —— Look who’s disturbed now.
Breed snapped a thumb and finger in the direction of the hairy-armed man beside the door. When the nurse saw Breed’s imperious gesture—that of a healthy, well-adjusted type of person—he turned to the small glass window in the metal door of the R.T. room (love conquers) and in turn made a signal with his fingers.
John roared at Breed: —— If you don’t stand off my toes I’ll bring my free foot into play. I’ll kick the bejeezus out of you.
The door was unlocked from outside and two huge men entered the room. One was white, the other Negro. They came toward John, who suddenly began to weep. To Breed he sobbed:
—— I have a pain in my chest.
Breed, cheer dancing in his eyes: —— What kind?
—— It’s a knot of…a gob of…
—— Breakthrough? Is it a breakthrough?
—— You bastard! You bastard!
The two nurses took hold of John’s upper arms, and the Negro said aside to Breed:
—— This cocky boy won’t take his medication. He puts it in his mouth and tucks it in his cheek and swallows the water. Then later he takes the pill out and puts it in the cuff of his pants.
The white one said: —— He thinks we don’t know it. There’s nothing we don’t know.
The Negro, bending down: —— Look.
He turned John’s trouser cuff inside out and a dozen round red-and-white pills rolled out on the floor.
The white one: —— Come on, naughty boy.
They danced him along like a marionette, his legs flopping and his feet occasionally knocking on the floor.
John shouted over his shoulder to Breed: —— Get me an I-doctor! Don’t turn me over to that kook!
They took John to his room; the white man entered with him, and the metal door clicked behind them. Metal closets flush with a wall; a metal bed with a rough wool blanket; bars in the windows.
—— What’re you going to do with me?
—— We’re going to take care of you, son.
A vein bulged on the nurse’s forehead, emphasizing the ambiguity of that promise.
—— Where’s that other one gone?
—— He’ll be back.
With a wrench, John got away from the man’s grip. They began a chase, ducking, slapping, grabbing, bouncing off walls, jumping over the end of the bed. John, still weeping, also began laughing.
Then the Negro man came in the room with a hypo in his hand. John, eluding his pursuer, lunged at the bare brown arm to try to knock the needle out of the nurse’s hand.
They caught him.
—— What’re you going to do?
—— I’m going to trankillize you for the full count, baby. Kay-oh. Out.
—— What is it?
—— It’s a cuckoo-cocktail, son. Now come on. Easy does it.
They drove it into him. The two men stood back, panting and sweating.
It was then—on the instant, to John’s surprise, long before the drug could possibly have taken effect—that he felt the ease, the relief, the cool bliss of, this time, a swift heaven riding on hell’s heels.
The white one said: —— Count backwards, college boy. That’ll dilly you down.
29
MINUS three and counting…two fifty-eight, two fifty-seven, two fifty-six, two fifty-five…
John had the vaguest impression that he and Chum Breed were sitting side by side on straight-backed wooden chairs in a place, an enclosure, a capsule—a hospital room? a college room? What were those gyrations, convolutions, pulsations on the wall? Controls? A reserve of motive power of some sort? Candy canes, Möbius bands, Albers squares? In front of the chairs was Breed’s undoubtable coffee table: on it, a little fruit, a pitcher of drinking water, the electric clock. All they would need, it seemed Breed had said.
Less than two minutes.
—— Are you go?
—— I’m go through and through. We’ve waited so damn long.
Where was the small glass pig-within-pig-within-pig? Would its not being on the instrument panel cause any trouble? John focused his larger misgivings on that small fear.
They were in the final minute. John became joyous at seeing the second hand of the clock wipe relentlessly, with a steady sweep, round and round, cutting off the past. He felt welling within him a lightness, a grace, a courage he hadn’t known since…since…
…Eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one—lift-off. Whoo-oo-oo-s-s-s-s-sshh-h-h-h!
At first they hovered just off the floor in the most subtle levitation, a kind of floating on a deep-piled carpet of emotional energy; then, as the thrust of psychokinesis took more and more effect, they drifted upwards to, and then through, the ceiling (yet the op art went with them, in full flutteration, and the coffee table, and the chairs under them) and up through some slovenly idiot’s room upstairs, and up through the beams of the attic and the slate roof, into the starry cavern of the eve of Rood Mass Day.
Below, John saw the lights of a town receding—a main street with the regular yellowy blobs of light thrown downward by street lamps, neon winking all along, the little white castle of an Esso station, lights in bedroom windows, car-beetles pushing their luminescences before them, then—the college carillon tower whited by floodlights! Were the glass bells chiming ever so faintly? On the flying coffee table the clock showed for an instant all hands standing straight up, and then the inexorable wiper moved onward into the witching hours, eating into the future.
The impression of acceleration was overwhelming, yet John felt no wind in his hair, no pressure of G’s on the seat and slats of the chair; there was a constant rhythmic motion, yawing, faster and faster. They must very soon have broken through the speed of sound, yet they were bathed, too, in sound—stuttering, beating. Motion and sound were in perfect phase, and the insistent, repetitive, unwavering rhythms soon became hypnotic. On the two chairs in the night sky: Morning rada, cha-cha-cha, the wild beat of Welsh hymns, a voodoo houngan swaying to imperative drums, revivalists’ cadences pounding in hysterical neck arteries, the Maulawiyah whirl, involuntary orgasmic pulsations of space itself. It seemed endless, ever-moving—and at last John fell into a state of infrahuman, extrasensory ecstasy. Soaring, soaring spirit!
How long? A few moments?
Then they could see a bald mountain ahead: huge wrinkled cloudlike roundnesses of barren granite, like a naked geologic cerebellum against the dark skull of the sky.
As they came rapidly closer the terrain on the mountain could be seen to be harsh and eye-stingingly beautiful. Rock, moor, knob, vale, scarp. In the crevices there seemed to be bushy places. The stone looked as cold as the moon.
