Dr Cockcroft poured himself another bourbon at the bar. This time he brought the bottle back with him.
“Let’s return to the barn,” he said, sitting back down in the plush chair. “You described flasks and cauldrons and pipes. What did these things remind you of?”
“I had never seen them before.”
“But didn’t you have any thoughts about the function of the equipment? What it all could be?”
“A lab.”
“More specifically?”
“Why are you asking this?”
“Why aren’t you answering?”
“Because you don’t know the answer either.”
“Answer anyway.”
“Why? If I say it looked like a fertilizer factory, or if I say it was a physics lab, what are you going to do—drive there and have a look?”
Dr Cockcroft was silent, and Carl, who was trying in vain to suppress his increasing mistrust, said: “I don’t understand what you are testing here.”
“Just answer my questions. What could it have been?”
“You tell me.”
“The way you describe it, and given the fact that you detected, and I quote, a slight smell of alcohol when you woke up, could it perhaps have been a distillery?”
Carl shook his head. “Could be,” he said, seemingly offended. “Could be.”
“Do you know how alcohol is made?”
“From fruit. Through fermentation.”
“More specifically?”
“Once it’s fermented, you heat it up… you heat something and then filter off the alcohol. Or the water out of the alcohol. And then… I think you have to dilute it again at the end.”
“Should we take a short break? You look tired.”
“No,” said Carl resolutely. “No need.”
“Or shall I take a look at your head wound?” Dr Cockcroft poured himself another bourbon. “I’m only a psychiatrist, but you pick up a lot during your studies.”
With his glass in one hand, he began to unwind the bandages on Carl’s head.
“Just stay seated. I’m going to open this very carefully… Okay. Aha, aha. It’s all nicely scabbed over. But cleaned up first and stitched together, eh? Looks almost professional. Hold this glass for a moment. How does it feel when I press here? Ouch. Right. Of course that hurts. And here? Overall it looks very stable. A bruise, maybe a small fracture, but not too bad. I’ll close it up again. The problem is when you have hemorrhaging in the brain. But when that happens you’re dead within forty-eight hours. So in retrospect that can be ruled out in this case.”
With cautious if also a bit awkward and drunken handiwork, Dr Cockcroft tried to put the bandages back in their previous form while lecturing about intracranial hemorrhaging until finally turning back to his bourbon.
“I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” he said. “Even if it offends our vanity: we shouldn’t overestimate the complexity of brains like ours. Have you ever seen a computer? What you call an electronic brain? No, of course not. I happen to know a little about them from my time at MIT… does the Dreyfus Affair mean anything to you?”
Dr Cockcroft froze, both hands still hanging in the air in front of him holding the quotation marks he’d signed in the air around the phrase “electronic brain”. He leaned forward and looked at the iridescent-blue life form crawling along on dark tarsi in front of him. He held his finger down to the table top and waited until the beetle had scaled the impediment, then flicked it onto the carpet. The insect immediately began to paddle across the woven sisal fibers to the table and once again started to scale it.
“Sisyphus. Or Sophocles. What’s it called again?”
“Sisyphean,” said Carl.
Dr Cockcroft sat there with his head lolling. A hidden smile pushed his beard out into puffy hamster cheeks.
“A strange country. With strange insects. But what I actually wanted to say: that during my studies I was really into cybernetics. Without actually knowing anything about it, of course. I was from a human sciences background. But I found the computer fascinating. And the people there, and, to be frank, I was in love with a girl, a supposedly highly gifted engineer. Just let me know if I’m digressing too far… In any event, I watched her battle a computer once. And that was my first glimpse at the inner life of such a machine. A dusty diorama of green and brown circuit boards surrounded by a circulatory system of colorful cables. A foot on the overturned box, she ripped cables out of their mounts with a screwdriver. She broke squares out of the crystalline structure, soldered something on somewhere, wrestled it back onto its trembling legs. It didn’t take even thirty seconds and the computer was up and running again.”
Dr Cockcroft stuck his arm out, flicked the beetle off the table a second time and then tried to catch the uncomprehending gaze of his patient. “What I’m trying to say: that is the way one should think of our brains, or just about. Inevitably we think of our own organ as highly complex because, rightly or wrongly, we wish to think of the expressions of this organ as complex and rarefied. But it’s just not borne out on a strictly physical basis, and one can expect good outcomes with screwdrivers and pliers. To put it more succinctly: I wouldn’t worry about the hole in your head too much. The most dangerous thing is cerebral hemorrhaging and—”
“What is the Dreyfus Affair?”
“Aha, you noticed that? You’re as observant as a lynx.”
Dr Cockcroft looked around somewhat mystified at the three disparate entities surrounding him: the beetle that had now for the third time scurried back up the table leg, the inquiring patient and the reddish skin-covered gripping device made of bones, sinews, nerves and muscles that was trembling while holding a glass of bourbon. It guided the bourbon up to his mouth.
“Dreyfus has nothing to do with us!” he said positively. “Just that the computer that I was talking about was of course a chess computer. Richard Greenblatt. Probably doesn’t mean anything to you. But he started it about five or six years ago. He and a few other people tried to teach the machine how to play chess. Useless, but that’s the way computer scientists are. And Dreyfus—Hubert Dreyfus—was a philosopher at MIT. He was of the Heidegger school and didn’t really know much about electronics. Had written books for years about why there was no such thing as artificial intelligence, why there never would be, and why any eight-year-old played chess better than a punched-card system. Of course he annoyed his colleagues in the computer science department with all of that, and at some point Greenblatt invited the good Hubert to play against his computer. As far as I can remember the machine went by the nom de guerre of Mac Hack. And Mac Hack wiped the floor with the philosophy department. As a result Dreyfus achieved a dubious sort of immortality as the first human who was stupider than a couple of copper wires. Not quite as great as the first man on the moon, but still. I’ve heard that his subsequent books criticizing the machine world have got a touch more adamant…”
Dr Cockcroft went on that way for some time. Carl, who didn’t know why the doctor was telling him all of this, and, most importantly, whether the peculiar memories of this man’s university days were part of the examination or not (and if they were, what the aim of them was), fought in vain against the impression that the psychiatrist was trying to bait him into some kind of trap in a way that was as intricate as it was slippery.
“What does this have to do with me?” he finally interrupted.
“Nothing!” Dr Cockcroft said cheerily, taking a big sip of bourbon and setting the glass down on the table with verve. He opened his eyes wide and looked at the patient.
“Was that on purpose?” asked Carl.
“What?”
“That.” He pointed to the bourbon.
Dr Cockcroft squinted one eye, left the other wide open and peered down through the amber liquid at the beetle. A knuckle tapped Morse code on the table and the insect, trapped beneath the recessed bottom of the glass, scrambled around in tiny panicked circles. A lifting of the glass prison—“Pardon me!”�
�and the six-legged creature rushed across the table top, flopped over the edge and whisked itself under a stack of newspapers.
“So why are you telling me all of this?” asked Carl.
“Why am I telling you? Because I find it all highly interesting! And because I believe we are heading into a golden era.” With his two index fingers he tapped on his right and left temples while his eyebrows danced up and down. “Sooner or later two integrated circuits and a couple of colorful wires will replace that thing we carry around in our heads and allow to torture us. Gorgeous female students will free you from misery with a kick, a hammer and a pair of pliers, and as for the question of immortality… but I see that this doesn’t particularly interest you. That’s fine. It’s all just a pleasant dream of things to come. Right now, however, we need to dive back into the whorls of your brain by conventional means, no matter how painful.”
He picked up his notebook again, flipped through a few pages and suddenly froze: “It occurs to me, did you mention why you are here? I don’t mean because of the amnesia. Initially you didn’t want to see a doctor. And now—did something happen in the meantime?”
Carl shook his head. “Except that I found your flyer. And I wasn’t doing well. I’m anxious and getting more and more anxious. I can barely sleep. I have horrible dreams.”
“I see.”
“Last night I basically didn’t sleep at all. One continuous nightmare.”
“That’s understandable. So back to the question—”
“Shall I tell you what I dreamed about?”
“No, you don’t need to. We can move on.”
“It’s of no interest to you?”
“You think, because I’m a psychiatrist.” Dr Cockcroft chewed on the last of his thumbnails. “If it would help you feel better, then go ahead.”
Carl hesitated momentarily and then described his dream about the giant goat. The goat that had taken on Helen’s facial mien. “That is, Helen’s face,” he corrected himself. Carl became more and more insecure as he went on, since he realized that he couldn’t express even the basics of what had been so horrifying about the dream. In the cold light of day it all seemed quite harmless.
“And now you want me to come up with a meaning?” asked Dr Cockcroft. “What do you want to hear? That you are apparently afraid of the American tourist who has taken you in, nursed you back to health, set you up with money, bandaged you and sent you to me? That the woman’s face is as unfamiliar to you as any other face? That you’ve fallen into the claws of a cleverly masked con woman?” He grabbed his beard with both hands and pulled on it, as if proving its authenticity. “A spy on a secret mission? Your longtime wife who is using the situation to play out an exquisite joke? I may be a psychiatrist but I’m no friend of the Viennese sewer. If you want my modest opinion: dreams are fireworks in our brains. They have no meaning. That is also the position of the scientific community.”
“That’s not very comforting,” said Carl after a long pause.
“None of the findings of modern brain research are very comforting,” answered Dr Cockcroft excitedly. “What is the story with the word mien?”
“What?”
“You immediately went back and used face instead. Right? So, back to the American tourist. Helen. The one you apparently have difficulty trusting. Do you have an intimate relationship?”
“What?”
“Do you have sexual relations with each other?”
“What business is it of yours?”
“I’m a doctor. Are you living together?”
“What does that have to do with my amnesia?”
“Are you unable to remember intimacies?”
“No. Because there haven’t been any.”
Dr Cockcroft nodded, rapped the end of his fountain pen against his neck and looked Carl in the face for a long time. “One last question. Try to answer without counter-questions for once. Are you entirely sure that you don’t know who you are?”
“Why else would I be here?”
“I’m not asking without cause.”
“Yes!” said Carl desperately.
32
Dissociation
His face bore the artless expression of a man who meditates and makes no effort to conceal it.
KAFKA
“YOUR CLINICAL PICTURE IS, let me put this gently, unusual. I know that one should be conservative in any diagnosis, but we don’t have the time for the appropriate level of restraint. First of all, we’re not in a clinical setting, which is where you actually belong. Second, I would venture to say that there’s not an adequate clinical facility for you anywhere within five hundred kilometers. And third, you have a rather tenuous livelihood and moreover seem to be involved in things that could hinder any further treatment. Provided, of course, that what you say is true. Finally, I’m also no specialist in the area of amnesia, I’m more of a run-of-the-mill psychiatrist. I know a bit, but certainly not all. I’m going to take a shot in the dark, if you don’t mind. And in the hope that you will help me.”
He flipped through his notebook. “You don’t have any major functional deficits, you realize that yourself. You are well oriented chronologically and spatially. Your real-world knowledge is intact and seems to be at a middle-school level. You can remember all the occurrences since your—let’s call it an accident—and when it comes to anterograde amnesia, which would be typical of craniocerebral injury, you seem to have none whatsoever. The shortcomings in your memory apply exclusively to the past. And within that, to things tied to autobiographical information. Which is not unusual. Functional knowledge and procedural faculties often remain unaffected, the autobiographical content disappears in accordance with Ribot’s law: last in—first out. One forgets the most recent periods of time before the trauma, days, weeks or years. There are known cases where the last thing the patients remember are their seventh birthdays. There are also cases where they believe themselves to be seven still. Something is really shot in cases like that. What is, however, extremely rare, and I mean extremely rare as in essentially zero cases, is when the missing period of times encompasses one’s entire span of life and one’s identity. Someone not knowing their name. That’s the way amnesia is usually depicted in fiction or film. You get hit on the head and your identity is gone. You get hit again and it’s back. Asterix and Obelix.”
Dr Cockcroft leaned back in his chair, put his hands together with the fingers intertwined and smiled weakly.
“So?”
“So, I want to be honest with you. Your condition has characteristics of something non-existent.”
A mob of people had gathered around the referee in the penalty area, players in dark uniforms protested. The players in white uniforms pushed those in the dark ones. The line judge ran out across the field.
“What are you trying to say?” asked Carl. “That I’m faking it?”
“I didn’t say that.” Dr Cockcroft pulled his gaze away from the television. “I said your condition has characteristics of something non-existent. Which means one can doubt certain things. One thing I don’t doubt is that you… how should I put it? That you have some sort of serious damage. I just can’t say what sort. Of course faking sounds very negative at first blush, but it doesn’t typically mean that someone is affecting brain damage for laughs. It can also be out of necessity. In a desperately stressful situation, for instance. Modern science has encountered feigned memory loss that happens subconsciously. Ganser, for example… Although it’s not relevant to your case. And that’s where the problem lies. They don’t fit your case, either: dementia in old age. Total senility. Korsakow. Quite apart from more dubious things like hysterical dissociation.”
“What’s Korsakow?”
“Alcohol. But you’re clearly too together for that to be it. It would have been perfect with a barn full of distilling equipment in the background. But a true Korsakow has completely destroyed the brain through drinking. They can’t even put together a sentence with a clause. No, sorry, that’s
not it.”
“Which means?”
“It means that I can rule out a few things by process of elimination. And, as I said, you can be sure that I’m no specialist. But I can quote from the classical medical school textbook: global amnesia is so rare that you are a thousand times more likely to encounter a fake version of it.”
“But it does exist.”
“It appears to exist.”
“What is Ganser?”
“Ganser was a German doctor. He first discovered it among prisoners. Initially he called it Vorbeireden, or paralogical, talking past someone. Can you picture anything about a disease referred to as talking past someone? Yes, of course. And what do you picture?”
“That somebody’s answers have nothing to do with the questions. Like you and me.”
“If you ask somebody with Ganser syndrome what two plus two is, he will answer five. He doesn’t answer forty-eight, but he also doesn’t answer four. Always just a little off. How many ears to do you have? You feel around and then guess two. Questions about identity: apparently impossible to answer. It lasts three days, followed by a full recovery, and no memories whatsoever of the three days of apparent dementia. Which is what the condition is called: pseudo-dementia.”
“And you’ve ruled that out in me?”
“I could be convinced by some of your answers. But others, on the other hand—”
“But if this is all pseudo-dementia, do other people who get it also have their skulls smashed in beforehand?”
“That is a very good question. A really very good question. I was just about to get to that. Of course a blow to the head is not a precondition for Ganser syndrome. But a blow to the head isn’t a precondition for any other possible causes of loss of identity, either. It takes a psychologically traumatic event.”
“And what are the other possible causes?”
“You’re grasping at straws, which is understandable. I would probably do the same thing in your situation. But there’s no point.”
“What was the other thing you mentioned before? Hysterical dissociation?”
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