by John Tan
Meantime, although water was still soaked in my skin, I felt as if I had been perspiring and the bathroom was warm with the smell of my body heat; and so, after ten minutes I had another shower again, but turned my face from looking at the walls and also shutting my eyes.
7
The dreadful undercurrent of declension, which was what it was, had kicked up its little spurts, thus, impinging on my consciousness in regard to my present existence what had been leaked psychic material from my own inner being. This was apart from the feelings of normalcy which I haven’t any quarrel with; but rather, this was something else. Something not particularly outside and not particularly inside that was being kindled or was stirring; this was an extraordinarily heightened consciousness, behind which was a compelling force, a torque or compulsion—I suppose, that might make somebody develop obsessive-compulsive behavior; an attempt to try to outwit something nebulous yet dangerous in the inner recesses of my mind, something that felt like a personality, if I might put it that way, or, some kind of evil construct that needed to be urgently and constantly outwitted to give a sort of coherent meaning in the understanding of and a new relationship to one’s mending selfhood. It was the mind grappling with some evil barrier that hindered that person’s mind from BECOMING—which all creation whose relationships with inmates like me had become changed in unfathomable ways, perhaps, and shall ever be—are conspiring to affect us-- into more durable creatures. Because the mind was injured, a thickening layer or whorl had formed when there was a split—was it a molecular breakdown?, I ask myself—like the calluses on the surface of the skin, and in this state the epidermal cells now hung in existence, with a life that was different from those earlier times there was no injury.
They were talking, Mrs. Cavendish and her friend from across the corridor (from Room no: 36), and as I listened--sipping my soup got from the vending machine downstairs in the vestibule, the two elderly ladies, both of whom wore woolen cardigans of deep violet or purple, sat darning,--and I pricked up my ears when I heard them speak about the late Mrs. Elkland the following way:
‘Don’t take her too long to go, hey?’ said the lady from no: 36.
‘Of course, it didn’t, she knew it was her time, and she came here for complete bed-rest and to die without fuss—all her children are living in other states, and her husband, poor man, had the temerity to have departed before her.’
‘What was she like—when she had to give up her ghost?’
‘Eh? I don’t rightly know; I think she expired without a struggle, very peacefully, it seems and it’s what I told the Warden James; she died, you know, in her sleep, and nothing unusual passed in the night. It was all quiet and natural-like, but the next night there was a howling gale over our roof-tops, do you remember—and the furze bushes were tossed, and the pussy willows, uprooted,--such a freak thunderstorm I never did yet experienced. They say the sky was overcast when they laid her to her rest in Wardorfburg Cemetery and may God rest her soul.’
‘She donated her brains to the hospital down the road: did I hear that a-right?’
‘Yes, you did; er--that is correct.’
‘What do the researchers want with dead brains of ailing old women, such as Mrs. Elkland, but I heard her saying she was lobotomized in her early twenties the other day, and later taught singing and English in a private school, but all this is beyond me. What do they want with Mrs. Elkland’s brain?’
‘Why, I don’t suppose, they will freeze it, after all, it’s smaller than a small cabbage, or they will preserve it in spirits and then it is taken out to be viewed by the medical students; or, perhaps, it will be stained and microtomized into transparent sections to be mounted on slides and then, examined under a microscope. But perhaps, proving to be an excellent specimen it might end up being sent to medical facilities all over the world—so much for dear Mrs. Elkland’s brain. Do you want some fruitade, fruit juice, dear?’ said Mrs. Cavendish to her friend, ‘She—Mrs. Elkland, our late friend—has made me promise to give a bundle of her papers and letters that is bound with tape and a few black and white photographs to the next occupant of her bed, and I thought it was a kind gesture to gain her a purchase of the heart. But she made me bide my time to find out what kind of character our next occupant has.’
Thus, being referred to somewhat implicitly, I was gradually brought into their conversation, and Mrs. Cavendish was about to say more, but I interrupted her, ‘Please, ladies, I do not mean to overhear but I could not help it. But I was wondering if any of you have sticking-plaster, for, you see, I have a blister on my thumb and it hurts frightfully; I would be awfully glad for a loan for a strip or two.’
‘There is a box on my dresser-top; now, let me give my back a good rub while I get up, and I will get it for you,’ said Miss Wysocki, a spinster, to me rather kindly.
When she came back and brought the needed article, the conversation had unfortunately fallen asunder; and having flung myself on my bed, the recent death-bed of our late and lamented Mrs. Elkland, I turned up my Toshiba Bom-Beat, because I felt an urge to listen to whatever was coming through the airwaves. For a time, I lay easily on my bed, which smelled faintly of flowers, because the bedspread was the linen that Mrs. Elkland had bequeathed to me, and suddenly, I became very—overtly receptive, or annoyingly so: too sensitive because I was still too highly strung, and coming through the speakers was what seemed a concert performance of some with-it, sexy and dangerous eighties pop group, but the layers of sound reached my ears strangely altered; or so I thought! It was the British group, Duran Duran performing the dramatic, The Reflex. Something’ seemed to be throwing up suggestive nuanced voices, or partial semblances of voices above the music of the instruments and LeBon, the singer’s raucous and suave vocals, just slightly beyond my range of hearing, blending with the other sounds—sundry wails, screams, catcalls, and laughter—a mad cacophony or perfect caterwaul; that could only be perceived and heard using the ear of my mind! I was perfectly stupefied, but I suffered myself to hear this music, sounding so loud that it rattled my nerves; but Mrs. Cavendish still went on with her darning, and I did not tune the knobs and I thought my room-mate did not hear or perceive anything that was above the normal. She said nothing, and seemed to be in a meditative mood over what she said to Miss Wysocki, and soon she was in a brown study. For my part, I couldn’t stand it anymore and so I pulled out the electric cord from its socket; got up in a huff, and went to look at the picture of Mr. Augustine Tecumseh Hamplock, and have a better look at the boy and the girl in the family portrait. Suddenly, I was aware of a flash of ideas coming like telegraph signals along the humming lines. I thought Mr. Hamplock had married a German lady, the daughter of an immigrant from the Rhone Valley, possibly, because I studied about the Ruhr and the Rhine in Geography in school, and had always like the sound of it. Father; a captain of industry, coal and iron ore; I thought, without any basis or supporting facts!
8
Some loving soul said to me since I took up my pen to write these lines,-- something borne out from personal experience--is that what clinches the matter whether a person recovers from mental illness or not is attitude; simply put--a tenacity born of a willingness to exhaust possibilities to overcome long odds, a Never-say-die Attitude! Before I elucidate on my experiencing the portrait afresh which I intend to do, I want to fill up this chapter on what happened in the dining hall during lunchtime that same Tuesday. At nearly noon, I headed to this place, anticipating my stomach would be better, being persuaded by some kind of appetite or hunger pang that it should be so! I was elegantly mired with dust as having gone for a walk in my white cotton frock and Merino blouse, and came back with my mind full of the autumnal drapery of particolored hues and tints, creative arabesques of the beautiful pavilion, and the shapes and the nomenclatures of the flowers and plants in the garden lately hanging on my tongue. I thought life has been a masque and solicitousness that happenstance threw in one’s way were cloud-racked and not much to be over-trusted! W
hat kinds of persons outside their professional personalities were Doctors Cranston and Alvarez? When I had dropped my diary on an empty place on one of the long tables I saw two doctors there, engaged in a conversation, and I saw at once they were discussing an ex-mental patient, within or without earshot of the said ex-mental patient himself,--for I guessed correctly from one with a long, down in the jaw, wolfish glare, to wit,--one of the assistant cooks, who counterchecked (or at any rate, tried to) the speakers’ knowing glance:--as if the world were full of slanderous liars and winsome, perverted cheats that it was he, indeed!
This downy assistant cook had a scraggly brown moustache and rings in his yellowish, mildewed eye, of the darkest grey hue. Fixed in is perpetually evil-humored countenance was a very wry smile, as if live eyeballs of his were held within deadly sockets, where thoughts like wild plants flowered and thrived were flitting or flickering out; as accustomed to the deadly disease of sheer, loneliest pains! The two doctors’ conversation progressing and unfolded for me something of the character and the troubles of this man, I saw the sharp glances the cook threw towards one doctor, whom I was later informed to be Doctor Alan Scipio, and his interlocutor too; most of which was purposive and full of impotent rage because he was steeling himself against the moment some embarrassing disclosure would fall out of the tongue that was tasting the peaches and cream that he himself had ladled out. The cook was known to me as Georg “creepy” Clearwater. I thought a mosquito was waxing lyrical in his ear, and he looked like one of those cautionary pages that sound dire warnings and sharp moral rebuffs!
Old Georg was intoning in a singsong, low voice: ‘Rums out! Rums out! Rums out!’ looking as perplexed as can be.
Doctor Alan Scipio had been sharing a vignette with his white-gowned colleague, something about Georg, the assistant cook, who was turning up his beet nosed anger, so Doctor Scipio addressed him over his shoulder, ‘How many jugulars have you eaten today, sir?’
At this, the man visibly shrank away and blanched.
The doctor continued, as his colleague applied his teeth and sucked the goblets of flesh from a sheep-bone, with admirable dexterity and masticating the peas slowly, as if he subsisted entirely on peas and beefsteaks and mutton curry. The second man clearly looked like he would encourage his man to punctuate the air with a cry of foul over what he was doing in full sight of him, saying, ‘The fellow (Georg) is a desiccated little man with many foul antecedents. I used to treat him at the Hospital, and I had been thoroughly acquainted with many of his phases, and I should say and, I think you know, he was once known to stick hairs into the kitchen washbasin, as some kind of important, elemental gesture of his battling against the irrational forces that continually hounded him. Freud’s irrational forces, of course! And of course, this place abounds with Freud’s irrational forces, as a matter—of course!’ (He laughs.)
‘Your teeth looks yellow, Michael Ransom Arthur,’ said the same Doctor Alan Scipio, after he had been observing his colleague for a while.
‘No toothpaste has ever been invented that could remove the tartar stains from my teeth,’ replied Mick, ‘you know that, Alan. It’s the nicotine, of course.’
‘As Doctor Scipio treats schizos, I know, Mick. You smoke overtly much, I’d say, by the way. Moreover, you should know better also.’
Doctor Scipio went on: ‘But then again, you might say, sticking hairs down the holes in the kitchen sink is in itself irrational, don’t you think so? For I had observed him, casually and not so casually, of course, and it seems what seemed like an ordinary and simple task was prolonged inordinately long—as if some god-awful force was preventing him from doing it, or bringing his task to satisfactory completion. He must have made up his mind at the outset how many hairs and through which hole he wanted to stick a particular hair in, and meant to stick to his guns until he had finished his task, or until he was forcibly stopped by someone who took some alarm from accomplishing it. Like I say, I had been observing him, and I saw or felt his triumph turned to chagrin the next moment; when he was detained—by what I thought, hairs that simply come out again the moment it was thrust in, or more hairs appearing from who knows where. While the mood lasted, he kept up this rigmarole for two or three weeks, altogether; and then his interest waned, or at last, he was finally satisfied. Deeply satisfied that he had beaten back something he needed to defeat and stopping it from overwhelming him. Like I said, he had gone through many such phases, but at last, as his doctor--I thought he could get no better, and the people here offered him a job, as he sorely needed one, and he became an assistant cook, in charge of chopping and dicing and shelling and buying supplies such as apples, oranges and canned peaches from the supermarket in town.’
‘He spends most of his money on drinks, too, so I have often heard,’ said Mick off-handedly, ‘or is that the same man?’ quite loudly that to have been overheard was easy.
‘Same man. Your estimation is correct,’ said Doctor Alan Scipio. ‘Do you want to know what the quip I made is about?’
‘Yes—what is it about?’
‘It’s a reference to what T.H. White had described in a chapter that concerns the Wart being changed into a bird in The Once and Future King. Cully, the peregrine falcon’s instability—or at any rate, the boy’s standing near him was the Wart’s trial by ordeal, you see, so that he has right to membership in their “Spartan mess” the hawks’ regimented company--I mean,—and Cully said something that to me smacks like a capital, spot-on description of a madman’s mental condition or emotional state: a fellow whose skin was turned outside in, with all the hairs rubbing against his organs and the raw flesh exposed to inclement conditions outside, the dust, dirt and grime, to say the least about it, though, not so many of Mr. White’s words!) That’s precisely what a mad man is, he is one bleeding wound—and Cully bemoaned he was flabbergasted to see “so much blood in him”, at the madman’s having murdered an old man—and howled fearfully like a wolf.’
‘I am of one mind as you, my esteemed Doctor Scipio,’ returned the other psychologist, ‘and I have seen my due by studying the life and habits of mental patients, also. Instead of processing information that comes through the media of the senses itself,--I mean, doing it properly like everybody does—these people have insane emotions! But, most sane people have some insane, unhealthy emotions too, and the most insane people have some sane emotions, by the by! That’s right, your Freud’s irrational forces are constantly at play in all of our lives:--All of us have to cope with the usual human foibles and mistakes one makes, but on top of that Freud’s irrational forces, such as irrational fears, infantilism, rage, unreasonable guilt, unbridled instincts, tend to push us over the edge if we’re not careful, and one of the danger signs is that one gets depressed, or gloomy most of the time, or one is always edgy, nervous and restless; and then, if uncurbed, one gets funny ideas that some impending doom is going to fall on us or on humanity. And, another thing, although seeing is believing, a person under a spell can no longer believe his eyes. Why is that, eh? Oh, merely because our emotions reflect or are a reflection of how we are connected to our world. God is in relationships and in peoples; and I mean, in relationships to self as well, and chemical relationships, as well; as well as relationships to nature in a complex web of relationships that are interlinked or mutually influencing links, or chains, or influences that are mapped into each other called Natural Phenomena, and furthermore, He is in relationships to money, worldly goods, and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs such as shelter and prestige, and in social and political organizations, and in every way how mankind organizes himself. If the presence of God is high in our relationships we are happy, and we are satisfied with our own particular lives, and that mean our relationships are mostly good. If the presence of God is low, we sinned and are unhappy at the end of the day—and note—I mean, at the end of the day. You do not necessarily have a good personal relationship with God, if you let other people fill your head with a lot of nonsense about Him and about Revelation
, because you are what you read and heard spoken by some Christians, I mean, about being religious, and these uncomfortable or seemingly canonical bits get stuck somehow inside your head. These undigested profound morsels then get to sour inside your satirical stomach, eh? About a person who had insane emotions—isn’t that an indication that he was having trouble, most of all, with his relationship to himself? Because what was inside a man--in his internal reality—always came out and impinge on the external world sooner or later (it’s a natural law or phenomenon!) and the external world mirrors what is tormenting a soul and a heart that is in turmoil, like a violent storm, in the pathetic fallacy of our literature, which is the intuition of the poets before psychology was ever invented! So, a person’s emotion has a power to influence how he experiences reality. Might not it in some way, change the normal reality to an abnormal reality, for these patients? I am not just talking about a hallucination which happens inside a person’s brain like seeing pink elephants or purple dragons; or pseudo-hallucination, when a person realized what he was seeing is not real, but nonetheless participated in something which none other can see. Do you ever wonder why a mental patient would keep drinking from a purportedly dry cup, when he had drunk it continuously down to the last drop? That was because the cup still yielded yet another drop, and as long as he raised the glass to his lips the liquid inside was not verily exhausted. Might sound a bit like nonsense, this but--’
