Читать книгу Angel of Death - Christian Russell - Страница 11

CHAPTER SEVEN

Thursday, October 15

Years before psychiatrist Philip McGerr had stood out as one of the best practitioners at the hospital in Secaucus. His success was such that he eventually opened his own clinic in Bloomfield. Three years before he had started a psychoanalysis practice in Union Square. There came patients without serious psychiatric problems: just common people affected by their minor or major dramas, depressed or obsessed by certain phobias. Most of his colleagues were guided by the principle that there were no psychologically perfect people—only insufficiently examined patients. McGerr was much more lenient and he only provided a diagnosis after multiple tests. Sometimes his results were truly spectacular.

It was for the Union Square practice that he was heading for this morning. He got there a few minutes before ten. July, his attractive dark-haired nurse, had already placed the files of the day’s patients on his desk. The first file contained only several blank pages and a cover.

Philip remembered Cathy’s phone call, the sadness and despair in her voice. He was looking forward to their first session. At 10:00 a.m. sharp July announced ceremoniously, “Mrs. Du Nancy.”

A good-looking woman, still in her youth, came in. The doctor noticed she wasn’t wearing any makeup, not even lipstick. The dark rings around her eyes and the sad countenance didn’t manage to spoil the beauty of her face. Her figure was still slim but the doctor guessed she was putting up a great fight against cellulite. He stood up and welcomed her like an old brother-in-arms. For, after all, they had both fought a war which they had eventually won. Or had it been just a short-lived victory? Was that the reason for her visit, the doctor wondered.

“What’s the matter? Has Mark...relapsed by any chance?”

“No, it’s not that.”

“Alright then,” McGerr said waving his hand as if to drive away the memory of those unhappy days.

“It’s not alright, doctor. Our marriage’s going down the drain!”

“Why don’t you take a seat on the couch and tell me what it’s all about. I’m sure things are not as bad as they look. Your marriage lasted while he was an alcoholic. I’d say that’s a sign of stability.”

“We fought together to cure him, doctor, but I’ve never told you what I went through those fourteen months.”

“It’s OK. You can tell me now,” the doctor said sitting comfortably on a chair in front of her.

“Those months were a real nightmare. I gave him a triple dose of Disulphiram, as you had prescribed, before we went out in the morning. After work he would wander on a different street every day until he reached a bar. And dried it up. He didn’t even throw up when he got home. I enlisted him in AA. He attended the first meeting and when that ended he took everybody out for a drink. At the time, alcohol and hormones were chasing all lucidity out of his brain. He fooled around with all sorts of women: blondes, brunettes, fat, thin, it didn’t really matter. It bothered me he hadn’t traded me for only one woman but for the entire womankind. It’s kind of sad: a man can be faithful to a hockey team his entire life but not to a woman. One day I had to do a story in Chicago. I missed my plane and returned home. I found him in the bedroom with a young woman. He swore it was a professional meeting.”

“Maybe that’s what it was.”

“Of course that’s what it was. Only it was about her profession, not his. I wanted to die then. But then I pictured him at my funeral, leering at all my girl friends and decided to go on living. I lost my job trying to make him keep his.”

“I’ve always thought you wanted to leave the paper. How did that happen?”

“He had been missing from home for twenty-four hours. His boss, Julius Beck, had been enquiring about him. This man showed a great deal of understanding for his problems. He told me some big shots from Washington were coming the next morning. Mark had to be there and in a very good shape too. I had an interview with Mayor Giuliani scheduled for that evening. Instead of doing the interview I chose to look for my husband in all of the city’s ill-reputed places. I finally found him at Hells Kitchen. He was having a drink with the ‘cardboard’ people on the Hudson bank. All that night I did my best to mend him so that he wouldn’t have too much of a hangover at the office the next morning. I managed to do that but...the paper fired me for missing the interview.”

“But you did manage to get over that, didn’t you?” the doctor said.

“That’s true, but at what cost? Our relationship, which hadn’t been great before either grew worse. It was a vicious circle. I couldn’t stand him drunk, he couldn’t stand me in the rare moments when he was sober.”

“You know what? I’ve always wanted to ask you: How did you make him give up drinking?”

“I didn’t, Tommy did. He was the key to our success. In fact, even during that awful period the relationship between father and son wasn’t affected very much. I don’t know how but he managed to hide his vice from the child. He almost acted normally. He bought him toys like he used to, told him all kinds of tales before going to sleep.... Only once, when Mark didn’t know Tommy was downstairs, the boy saw him crawling up the stairs trying to reach the bedroom. That’s the whole secret of Mark’s recovery.”

The doctor fidgeted on his chair. “I don’t get it! Help me understand, Cathy!”

“One evening, the child asked some neighborhood friends to come over and play. At some point they decided to do an impression on their dads. Hank, whose father is a driver, took a chair and started pushing it around the house taking all sorts of dangerous turns. When his turn came, Tommy started climbing up the stairs like a drunkard, not forgetting to stumble a couple of times. Everything with the innocence of a six-year-old. Mark had just come in a few minutes earlier, dead drunk as usual. He stood in the doorway, without anybody noticing him except me, and watched his son’s performance. He went out again and got lost into the night. The next day, when he came home to change his clothes for work, he was ‘fresh.’ He’s never touched alcohol since.”

“So that’s how Mark came back to the world of the sober,” McGerr remarked obviously impressed.

“Yes, doctor. I’ve never had any influence on him. But there’s something special between Mark and the child. They feel each other; they search for each other, they long for each other when they’re not together. Before going to sleep Mark tells him tales about Caesar, Troy, Achilles, or Spartacus. And Tommy’s all ears, whereas he always sleeps through my fairy tales. I tried to draw his attention by making all sorts of origami: to no result. The mere presence of my husband in the same room shuts me out of the child’s world. I simply feel I’m pushed aside.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem for you. The boy’s at an age when fathers are heroes. They’re almighty, omniscient and invincible. In four or five years’ time things might turn the other way round.”

“I might believe it, doctor,” the woman said distrustfully. “The problem is I don’t know if our marriage will last that long. Mark’s quit drinking, that’s true. He’s also quit fooling around. Actually, I think he’s been faithful to me this past year. That’s a matter of speech for we haven’t made love for more than three months. We only talk about daily matters. He looks bored and weary of life. If I tell him what’s on my mind he just gives me this sad look and doesn’t say anything. Do you understand, doctor? I don’t even have someone to fight with. That’s it. Our marriage is on the rocks and it’s been like that for several years. As a matter of fact, I think our love story lasted for one year only, the first of our marriage. Then everything started going down. It drives me crazy not to know what caused it. Fate probably can’t be avoided.”

McGerr stood up and started walking thoughtfully around the room. After a few moments he sat down on a chair close to the woman.

“Look, Cathy, he’s drawing on forty. That’s a difficult age for a man. For a woman as well,” he added, looking straight into her eyes. “What I want to know is if you still love him.”

“Yes, doctor, I love him,” Cathy answered convincingly.

“Then you’ll have to fight for your marriage. That’s right, fight. Only the helpless resign themselves. As for fate, it’s a kind of gap you fall into only if you look too much at it.”

“How am I supposed to fight and whom?” she asked crying.

“First of all, yourself. Try to change yourself somehow. I see you’re depressed. Probably Mark sees you that way too. Try to look a little more cheerful. Do that in the evening, with your family. And be a little more lenient. Let him win the small battles. You’d better save your energy for winning the most important arguments. Do it the Michelangelo way: chop off the unwanted piece of marble and you’ll get the man of your dreams.”

“But he hardly notices me, doctor. How am I supposed to do all the things you mentioned?”

“You must change your look a little bit. Take better care of yourself. Smarten up! Flirt a little when given the opportunity. Make him jealous. Sometimes a marriage is happier if the man loves his wife as if she were someone else’s. That’s about all I can tell you, Cathy,” McGerr concluded checking his watch discreetly. “I’ll even lend you a book on evolutionary psychology. It’s The Moral Animal by Robert Wright. It’ll help you understand some of your husband’s flaws better.”

Cathy stood up. “Thank you, doctor,” she said taking the book. “I’ll make good use of your advice.”

She was on her way out when McGerr spoke again. “And try to judge him by the good intentions he goes out with in the morning, not just by the sins he returns with in the evening. If we didn’t sin what would there be left for God to forgive?” the doctor added smiling.

* * * * * * *

After the woman left, the doctor took a look at the next file and his face suddenly darkened. He wished the next patient hadn’t come. For it was Pollux’s appointment. That’s exactly how he had introduced himself and how he had entered his name. “Like one of the Dioscuri?” the doctor had asked.

The other had nodded. “Where’s Castor, then?”

“He’s dead. I’m the surviving brother,” Pollux had explained.

A strange guy, a most strange guy who had set him up. He had offered to pay him three times the usual fee, provided he chose the topics during the sessions and only answered the questions that suited him. “As a sort of experiment,” Pollux had motivated it. Though a little intrigued, McGerr had accepted. He hadn’t done it for the money. Why not? That’s also an experience, he had thought slightly amused. During the psychometric test, compulsory for all his patients, the guy had behaved like a spoiled child who had just been punished. During the IQ test, obviously bored, he had scribbled something and then, for half an hour, stared at his delicate, thin-fingered, almost woman-like hands.

When he took a look at the papers, the doctor wasn’t that amused any more. The WAIS tests were altogether brilliant. Even if the results of the projective ones were odd, bizarre even, all in all that was a man with a huge IQ. McGerr panicked. It was the panic of having accepted a new, unfavorable situation. But the cards had been dealt. This was going to be their third session. The doctor had come out a little ruffled from the first two.

“Mr. Pollux, sir,” the receptionist announced gloomily, scattering his thoughts away. She didn’t like the patient very much either.

The man came in with the air of a god visiting mortals.

“Nice to see you again, Pollux,” McGerr lied through his teeth.

The patient merely nodded. The doctor decided to take the initiative.

“I’ve got the complete results of your tests,” he said. “The verdict is: you’re a very smart man. Are you aware of that?”

“What can I say?” Pollux asked. “I know I mustn’t get off the train while it’s still moving.”

Pollux stared at McGerr with his strange, laser-like eyes. His lively look, giving off so much energy, contrasted with the rest of his face. For his face was angelic,almost inhuman, but pale and expressionless. He looked like a handsome dead man with bright, living eyes. The doctor noticed something else, too. He kept his head bent backwards and whenever he looked at him it was from a mile away.

“We’re going to talk about fate today,” he decided, cutting the doctor’s ambitious plans short.

McGerr recalled having tried in vain to find out what Pollux’s profession was. So this time he tried a diversion. “Before we start you must tell me what you do for a living. In psychoanalysis a patient’s profession may often prove essential.”

“I rather doubt it,” the other man sounded sceptical. “Besides, if I revealed it to you, you might have to offer me a discount as from one colleague to another.”

“What, you’re a doctor, too?” McGerr asked.

“No, I’m an executioner. And, in my trade, as well as in yours, it’s crosses that give the true measure of things,” Pollux said and burst out laughing: a harsh laughter.

The doctor felt hurt and humiliated. “Sometimes I find black humor funny but I can assure you that’s not the case now,” he replied. He was angry. He was trying hard not to throw the guy out of the window. Eventually common sense and professional patience prevailed and he calmed down but not before he promised himself he would find something to call off the other sessions with Pollux. Exhilarated at the thought, he went on in a more conciliatory tone. “Fate? That’s a very interesting topic that—”

“I’d like to tell you a real story,” Pollux interrupted him brutally. “It happened many years ago, in Brazil. I was six years old. My father took me and my sixteen-year-old brother hunting in the Amazon Delta. We were the only children in that group, which was made up of eight other men except my father. Everything went on as planned in the first few days. Rowing, steaks, cheerful drunk men. About a week later, when we were about fifty miles away from Macapá, almost isolated among the islands of vegetation, something happened. The boat with supplies and medicines capsized and everything ended up forty-five feet below. The grown-ups kept their cool. There was plenty of water and game. Only we had lost our way. Suddenly marsh fever struck ruthlessly. It was a very quick and aggressive type, ‘Plasmodium falciparum,’ as I found out later. We were stuck in the marshes without any medical kits, and four days later all the grown-ups were dying. My father died second. They passed away one by one under our very eyes. Neither my brother nor I caught it. We just starved until some fishermen found and helped us get to a Salvation Army shelter, in Belém. Now, tell me, doctor, do you think our rescue was a sign foreboding a special fate?”

McGerr, rather troubled by what he had heard, felt the need to point out. “First, allow me to draw your attention to the implications. This tragic story’s affected you deeply. A man is the sum of his childhood traumas. Freud said that.”

“This guy, Freud, was sexually obsessed. You’d better answer this question, doc: don’t you think this story points to a special fate, to the few chosen ones?”

“It depends on what you mean by fate. The notion is ambiguous. Tell me, is the fate of the Potomac to flow through Washington or to flow into the ocean?”

“By special fate I mean leading a special kind of life, not mingling with the crowd.”

“I see. Man’s ultimate obsession, that of not being mistaken for someone else. The very fact that you survived should make you happy, though. Your rescue may have been the very climax of this special fate. Don’t hope for too much, however. You’d obviously like the sun to shine for you only. But—mind you, Pollux: out there, far away from the crowd, all on your own, there’re lots of risks!” The doctor paused to see if his words had sunk in.

“What risks?” Pollux asked still undisturbed.

“The risk of being outcast and ignored, the risk of only coming to terms with yourself on your death bed. And then it will be too late.”

“Maybe my fate is to be a powerful man, worshipped by the crowds, able to spare or to sentence. Such a man can’t be an outcast and has nothing to regret in his dying hour, simply because he might become immortal.”

“Sure, I’ve seen that TV series too,” the doctor tried to sound funny.

“Come on, doc, what do you think of what I’ve just told you?”

“You want so much to be special, Pollux, unique even. And you want power, too,” the doctor tried to make things clear to him. “But God loves ordinary people. That’s why He’s made so many of them. Remember what the Bible says? ‘The meek shall inherit the earth.’”

Pollux nodded waving his arms as if he were exercising in a gym. “Fear of power.... Who the hell preaches that? Jerks like Freud and Jung?”

“You’re so full of contrasts, Pollux. On the one hand, you’re afraid of the society and its strictness. On the other hand, you need the crowds, their love and admiration. You think of yourself as one of the chosen but the real personalities are nothing but jerks to you.”

“Not all of them. There are some I admire. Not many, though, I must admit that.”

“Give me one example.”

“Well, in my opinion, Shakespeare’s a genius.”

“Right. Now we’re getting somewhere. I think it was he who said that if you live in such a way that no one will remember you, you’ll die alone and your face will die with you too.”

“That’s right. Only you didn’t grasp it properly, doc. You don’t need a crowd to be remembered forever. You only need to entwine your fate at one time or another with that of a chosen person. Who would remember Ophelia, Polonius, King Claudius, or Laertes if their fate hadn’t been tied to Hamlet’s?”

“But Hamlet brought death to them all,” McGerr protested.

“Indeed he did. But in return he offered them a life beyond time. A life in Eternity.”

The doctor decided it was time he inhibited the other with his competence. “Look here, man! I understand your quest, your doubts. You’re terrified lest conformity should cripple your soul. And you’re trying to put the pieces of your life together, like in a puzzle, so that you’ll get a unique fate, that of a superman. Only you can’t do it all. You don’t know what the puzzle looks like.”

“And you can help me?” the patient asked distrustfully.

“I don’t know. Maybe, if you give up that sadness of yours.”

Pollux stood up. He took a chair from the corner of the room, drew it next to McGerr’s and sat down. He gave him that penetrating look, piercing both his mind and soul.

“You know something, doc?” he said after a while. “I think you’re sadder than I am. So sad and fed up with your own failures that you’ve chosen to know the others’ failures as well. Especially when you get paid for it too. And you’ve collected a pile of dramas, an ocean of misery just to convince yourself that, by comparison, you’re still a lucky guy. Tell me something, though: how many of those fates have you managed to change? How many of your patients have you offered a new existence? And if you have, how many of them placed you in its center? I’ll tell you: those patients have written your name on their Christmas card lists and then forgotten all about Dr. McGerr. You know what I’m going to do? When I get home I’ll write this in my journal: ‘Today I met a man who fools himself by pretending he honors the human species.’” Pollux stood up to leave.

“There’s still twenty minutes to go,” McGerr said.

Pollux gave him a compassionate look. “You can use it to woo your receptionist. I’m afraid this hasn’t been a very fruitful session for either of us. Should I say ‘See you’? Actually, I think I’d better say ‘Good-bye.’ I’m afraid your schedule will be so tight the next few weeks you won’t be able to squeeze me in.”

He saw through me, the doctor thought. Am I that obvious? God, that was fast! Meanwhile, Thanatos had taken a few steps toward the door then turned to face the doctor. ‘Maybe the meek shall indeed inherit the earth...but not before the powerful have had their way with it!” He went out but his presence, heavy, almost surreal, lingered in the room.

Alone in his office, McGerr tightened his fists. On the blank chart carrying only the name of Pollux he wrote ‘demophobia.’ He recalled the marsh fever incident and added ‘possibly drepanocytosis’ or ‘thalassemia’ in a subclinic stage. ‘Heterozygote?’ Then he realized it had actually been their last session. A humiliating one for him at that. He crumpled the paper and threw it into the basket in the far corner of the room with a dexterity even Patrick Ewing would have envied.