by Will Self
Chapter Eight
Dr Anthony Bohm’s assistance was pant-hooted for by the staff on Gough before too many more days had passed. George Levinson had already been, twice in fact. Which, knowing George and the stacked nature of his diary, was something of a miracle. Sarah had been back every day, two or three times, since that first awful morning. On the third day she brought Tony Figes with her, in the hope that maybe someone who Simon didn’t know quite so intimately might be able to reach him where she had failed. But it was all to no avail. Whether his visitor was his consort, his dealer, or his ally, Simon Dykes’s reaction was the same – he went humanshit.
Simon comes to. In nest, in secure room number six, on Gough Ward. He is reassured on opening his eyes by the sight of walls painted with institutional creaminess. He is further reassured by the nest itself, with its functional aspect, all rounded wooden edges. Nothing for a hysterical chimp to damage himself on here. The small window is too high up to see through, and it’s barred anyway. But that doesn’t matter – it’s still reassuring. Everything has the character of wakefulness. Simon looks at the very weave of the sheet, the nap of the grey institutional blanket, and sees that it is real. He looks at the back of his hand – only this is unfamiliar. It’s clearly his, but it seems somehow far off and hovering –furry as well. There’s a noise from the door, and he turns to be blessed by more reassurance, by the security of the door itself. It’s a hospital door with a judas in it. Simon thinks: I’ll go to the hole and get some comfort. Parley with a vision and have it reassure me by being real.
He rises and walks, unsteadily upright, across the linoleum. Flotch, flotch, flotch, of sweat-damp soles on linoleum. So reassuring. Someone is looking in on him, someone … he sees as he approaches the judas … Someone with the muzzle of a beast. He collapses. The nurse enters, chimphandles him back into nest, administers ten milligrams of Valium, with sure fingers finding vein below fur.
They come by night and they come by day. Sometimes seconds after he has awoken, sometimes minutes, very occasionally hours. Each time they come it is the same; it cancels out, completely erases whatever security he has gained from the minute, intense examination of his environment. If they leave him for a long time, and then silently, surreptitiously check to see what he’s up to before they come in, they may catch him intent upon a laundry mark, or manufacturer’s plastic plaque, welding origination to artefact. For the artist is nothing if not painstaking in his delusion. But even if they leave him for hours and he has the opportunity as the sedatives seep out and the disastrous day seeps in fully to accept the testimony of his senses, their arrival is always the same nullifying shock. They are so fast when they enter. So squat, moving rapidly towards him in black scrimmages of fur and muscle.
They appear to be communicating with him – this much he knows. They appear to be communicating with him, as much because of the intentness of their movements, placing their hairy limbs here and there, as the meaningfulness of their meaty grunts, their sonorous squeals. There’s further import in the way they grasp him when he begins – as he invariably does – to flip; grasp him when he begins – as he invariably does – to scream. Scream until the needle bites. Scream until consciousness seeps back out and the dreams flow around and under him.
In the dreams he is always with bodies. Human bodies. And the bodies are beautiful. He almost thinks this to himself, half forms the idea. How so that these bodies can be so beautiful, so ethereal? Because on the muzzle of it they aren’t, these disordered recollections of his father’s stringy calves, with knee-borne clusters of grapelike varicosity; his mother’s breasts dangling, the aureoles stretched ovals of brown stippling; his sister’s breakable thighs, so white, so thin; her soles lifting, first one, then the other, each so wrinkled pink, newborn soles throwing up little plumes of sand as she scampers ahead of him to the sea, to paddle. Not beautiful if beauty is extraordinary, but perhaps beauty has always been very ordinary, and it was just that I couldn’t see it.
On the third day, after six or seven of these episodes, Sarah bearded Dr Bowen in her office. She drummed lightly on the door and pant-hooted a little more loudly than she normally would, in order to impress upon the psychiatrist that – appearances to the contrary – she was not a female to be trifled with. ‘ “HooH’Graa” may I gesticulate with you for a moment please, Dr Bowen “huu”?’
‘ “HooH’Graa” of course, of course. ’ The psychiatrist put down her pen. ‘It’s Sarah “huu”, isn’t it?’ She pushed her chair back and regarded the female in the doorway. Attractive ape, she thought to herself, very handsome, wouldn’t mind frottaging her myself with that fabulous swelling dangling off her. I bet she’s been having fun the past few days.
‘That’s right. Look, I know, or at least I hope I know, that you’re doing everything you can to help Simon – Mr Dykes –’
‘You can be certain of that “euch-euch”.’
‘It’s just that … “hoo”, he doesn’t seem to be improving at all … and I thought … “hooo”. ’ Sarah summoned herself. Get a grip, she thought, looking at the female behind the desk. I may be petite, but she’s positively gracile. If it came to a scrap between us, I’m sure I’d come out on top. ‘There are some things that I’ve noticed about his behaviour … Things that might be significant.’
‘Yes “huu”?’ Dr Bowen pushed her papers to one side and at last gave the pretty young female her full attention. ‘And what would these things be “huu”?’
‘It’s his posture that alerted me,’ signed Sarah. She approached the desk and leapt up on to a corner of it. Her hands went automatically to her gingham swelling protector and rearranged it. ‘He always squats in this odd way, right on the edge of the nest, never draws his feet up. And when he comes at me – I couldn’t really call it an attack – he’s always bipedal, always.’
‘ “Grnnn” yes –’
‘There’s one other thing, his fur. It’s never erect, always dead flat. Now isn’t that strange, something so … so involuntary not happening “huu”?’
‘Young female. ’ Bowen got up on the desk and crawled to where Sarah was squatting; they began casually to groom one another. ‘You are very observant, Sarahkins, very observant indeed –’
‘I’m an artists’ agent, it kind of goes with the range.’
‘Of course. Well, what you sign is true and it’s something that we’ve noticed as well. To begin with – as you are aware – we were fairly certain that Simon had a drug-induced psychosis. I can show you now, although for some reason he didn’t feel able to himself, that Simon was taking medication for depression –’
‘You mean “huu” he was on Prozac?’
‘Yes, yes, Prozac.’
‘Why didn’t he show me “huu”?’ Sarah was dismayed, her pretty little muzzle crumpled up with distress.
‘Perhaps he was ashamed, Sarahkins. ’ Jane Bowen’s inparting was the gentlest, subtlest tweaking of fur. ‘You know, many chimpanzees still regard depression as a source of shame.’
‘But I knew all about his depressions. He said they were over, he attributed them to the fissioning of his group.’
‘Well, possibly the Prozac played a part in that – but more to the point, we have an idea that the Prozac may be implicated in this breakdown. Or rather the Prozac in conjunction with the ecstasy he was taking.’
‘ “H’huuu”? How could that be?’ Sarah was intrigued.
‘We don’t altogether know. Suffice to sign, ecstasy – or MDMA – acts on exactly the same receptors – you know, the parts of the brain which the molecules of a chemical attach themselves to – as Prozac. We think the two drugs synergise strongly when taken in conjunction –’
‘But I don’t understand, we’ve taken ecstasy quite a lot. ’ Sarah flushed. ‘We like to … we find it …’
‘I know. ’ The psychiatrist grinned and sniffed appreciatively. ‘It’s good for mating, isn’t it “huu”?’
‘Yeah, sort of.’
�
��But anyway, you may have taken it a hundred times, and then this added, synergistic effect can occur. It’s idiosyncratic. Nor do we know quite what the implications are, but some sort of damage to Simon’s neurochemistry seems to be one hypothesis.’
‘But what about what I was signing – his posture, his lack of horripilation “huu”?’
Jane Bowen got down from the desk and knuckle-walked to the window, where she used the blind cord to pull herself upright. She was tired and much as she found the young female’s pink cushion arousing, and the predicament of her artistic patient an interesting one, such cases were often more trouble for the psychiatric department than conventional complaints. She stared out of the window at her occluded view of a ten-yard stretch of the Fulham Palace Road, idly noting the posse of bonobos hanging outside the betting shop, smoking weed and drinking Special Brew. At length she grunted, turned to Sarah and gestured, ‘I’ve no idea what these symptoms mean. We’ve never seen anything quite like them. I’ve gesticulated it with Dr Whatley, the consultant, and we both feel that what’s disturbing Simon most is simian contact.’
‘ “Huuu”? Simian contact? What do you mean “huu”?’
‘Well, we can’t – as I sign – explain it, but Simon appears to have lost the ability, or perhaps inclination, to engage in the basic forms of simian interaction. Not visual communication – he signs, albeit his signing is hysterical – but vocalisation, body signage, grooming, presenting, all of these are grossly impaired, if not absent altogether.’
‘Could this be part of the psychosis “huu”?’
‘It’s possible. It could be what’s denoted hysterical conversion – we’ve noticed that when he is left alone his behaviour becomes far more responsive – to his environment, that is. He examines all the furniture and fittings in the room with great attention to detail, his own body as well –’
‘Why “huu”?’
‘We don’t know, but I have a hunch that if we deny him simian contact altogether for a couple of days, and perhaps give him access to writing materials, he may reach out to us using those.’
Sarah shook her head, still hooting with puzzlement. It made no sense to her, the psychiatrist’s theorising; all she knew was that her consort was distressed, confined against his will instead of ranging freely. Locked up like some captive human, about to be employed for hideous experimental purposes. She didn’t find Jane Bowen’s touch, when they resumed grooming, at all reassuring.
So the following morning, the duty psychiatrist skipped Simon’s medication, along with his forlorn attack and inefficient spraying. The chimp was left to his own devices and the judas employed to give him, along with his first breakfast tray, a foolscap pad and some pencils.
Dr Bowen even insisted on covering the judas with a piece of two-way mirroring, so that Simon was free from any visual contact whatsoever with the staff. ‘It’s this business about him signing
‘ “Huuu” you don’t think that he’s seeing other chimps in some weird way, do you?’
‘It’s possible “gru-nnn” – maybe he’s having a baboon delusion. It’s rare, but I have seen some clinical literature on such syndromes. Anyway, I think this is worth a try.’
They’ve stopped showing themselves. That’s some relief. When Simon goes to the judas he sees only the wavering reflection of his own pale muzzle, not a hairy visage, leering back at him with slavering canines. This is a respite – but it also serves to confirm the awful integrity of his madness. Could it be the shots they are giving me? it occurs to Simon. Perhaps that explains the nagging sense of weakness, of lassitude? Then, during one of the periods when he sits, motionless, on the edge of his nest platform, there comes the tray offood – you cannot eat in a delusion, you can orgasm, but you can’t eat. Sex is hardly ever about sex, but food is nearly always about food. With the tray comes paper and pencil. Simon thinks: Shall I draw something? The exhibition must have been and gone – then pulls himselfup, because this is the first time he has consciously referred to his past within the delusion. The dreams have been doing the business of being the past, but now he’s thinking about it and looking at the pencil and the paper. Bog-standard pencil and paper. Staedtler HB, black-and-red hexagonal type, not well sharpened. They don’t want me to wound myself. Dig that for a news item: Artist Dies by Self-Inflicted Pencil Wound. I never was that good a draftsman.
He looks at the implements wonderingly and then writes.
* * *
It didn’t take long. When the auxiliary went back to collect the breakfast tray an hour or so later, she found on it a single sheet torn from the pad and covered with spiky, irregular writing. She rotated the slot, recovered the tray, and took the note straight to Dr Bowen.
Without even scanning the artist’s screed, Dr Bowen ran to the door of her office, swung into the corridor and opened one of the windows that looked out on to the carpark. “H’hoooo,” she pant-hooted, and when Whatley’s glasses flashed in the open window of his own office – which was a floor below Bowen’s on a projecting wing of the hospital – she waved, ‘ “HoooGraa” I’m sorry to interrupt you, Kevin, but Dykes has done some writing!’
Whatley’s spindly form materialised in Bowen’s office and together the two of them pored over the artist’s message. ‘PLEASE, PLEASE HELP ME,’ Simon had written in clumsy capitals at the top of the sheet, and below it, ‘I am mad. I know that. I am mad. Please, please help me. They come all the time, the beasts, the monkeys. Are they monkeys? I don’t know. They come, they attack me. I haven’t seen any humans. Where are the humans? Is this a hospital? Am I mad? Why is there all this screaming, I can hear screaming, the monkeys screaming. Where are the humans? All I see are beasts, monkeys. Where is Sarah? Who has given me this paper? Where are my infants? Help me, please help me. I can’t stand this any more. They attack me – the beasts. They bite me and hit me, are they monkeys? Who sent this paper and pencil? Can you help me. Please. Am I mad? If I see the beasts much more I will kill myself. Please …’
‘What a lot of questions,’ Whatley gestured, putting the sheet down on the desk without bothering to ask Jane Bowen if she had finished reading. ‘What can they mean “huu”? This business about seeing monkeys – sounds like it could be a baboon delusion. I’ll pant-hoot Ellchimp at the Gruton Clinic – they have a good archive there, plenty of case histories, see if they can send something over –’
‘But what about the humans “huu”? He’s put here twice
‘God only knows. He’s clearly very confused indeed. I suppose it might be evidence of an aphasia – Wernicke’s, possibly. His signing is fluent but ridiculous and inappropriate. Still – I wouldn’t get too fixated on that, we have no image of organic impairment, and any delusion of this form is bound to incorporate all sorts of psychic detritus. Perhaps he thinks humans are a kind of monkey “huu”? Many chimps do, you know.’
‘I know, of course I know,’ Bowen signed petulantly – something she would never have dared do with Whatley’s predecessor, who had kept a much tighter grip on the department. Whatley was an ineffectual chimp, and even a female like Bowen, despite – or perhaps because of – her sexuality, was able to challenge his dominance without fear of reprisal.
‘How do you propose to follow up this gesticulation with Dykes in the meantime “huu”?’
‘Stick at it “grnn”. With his second breakfast I’ll give him a few figs, or sloes, or something by way of a reward, and ask him to describe the monkeys. Let’s establish if he’s seeing baboons or humans, or whatever; it’s well known that the very recounting of a delusional state can help to dissolve it.’
‘How do you propose to
follow up this gesticulation with Dykes in the meantime …’ Bowen mimicked Whatley as soon as he had left her office. Her fingers making the words with an exaggerated parody of his cod-Oxford accent, every crooked finger a spire, every smoothed palm a dream. Bowen couldn’t fault Whatley’s approach to the mad artist thus far, but he had, as she styled it, ‘a short intention span’, and she could well imagine him losing interest in Dykes before too long. Bowen herself was inclining to the view that Dykes might well have some organic, neurological damage. The odd postures he adopted were almost Parkinsonian, as if the limbs he were attempting to control were not altogether coextensive with those he actually had.
Bowen would have liked to run a battery of perceptual, relational and other tests on the chimp, but there was no way it could be done while he was unreachable, uncooperative. There was little point in tranquillising him, darting him like some wild beast; he had to be whatever passed for – in the Dykes world – compos mentis. Bowen sighed, a slight chimp, almost bonobo-like, she found the regimen at Charing Cross hardly to her taste. The routine was wearing, the hours long, the patients often intractable – fodder for the long-stay hospitals or the street sink of crazies. She had always fancied herself as a more wide-ranging practitioner, more adventurous, more in the tradition of Charcot and the other nineteenth-century pioneers in the field. She despised the way her colleagues reduced everything to either a continuum of mind or a continuum of matter, without considering the idea that there might be another level where these two apparently irreconcilable continua commingled.
Zack Busner, her old alpha at Heath Hospital had gestured in such terms. He had inherited his semiology from the anti-psychiatrists of the sixties and signed always of the ‘existential’ and the ‘phenomenological’. Now he had made a second name for himself, cranked up his fading notoriety with his anthologies of whacko prodigies and twisted savants. What would Busner make of Dykes? Surely just the kind of case he would like to get entwined in – if Dykes’s delusion remained as promisingly coherent.
