The Year's Best Science Fiction 11 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Judith Merril

  As I fled down the stairs, with the soft urgent Bidwell prayers still hammering through my head and gnawing at my mind, I hoped I might sneak out unnoticed past the surgeons still busily, almost joyfully, it seemed, cutting the patients. But it was not to be. Two pairs of stark blue eyes flared up from their work and held me. “Oh no, Mr. Frine,” Angela said. “You’ll have to come in the right way and be admitted properly, Mr. Frine. Then we’ll be happy to help you. You’ll just have to be regular, Mr. Frine.”

  Somehow, I don’t know how, I unhooked from those four blue eyes and fled. But once out in the sun and running I couldn’t resist looking back again and again at the house of the Bidwell Endeavors, especially at the roof of that house where all the metal crosses and wires and cones were and the Bidwell prayers going out worldwideward toward heaven and the objects of their help. And on my way home from that town I couldn’t keep from wondering how in the world would be the best way for me to enter that special and specialized upstairs of prayer. Should I go kill my wife and four kids or just hurry and hold up a bank? Or maybe to cheat on taxes would get me a front-page portrayal!

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  * * * *

  I have mentioned some of the trials of the anthologist’s life; but it has its bonuses, and most of them come in the mail. Sometimes it is no more than a sort of passing-train-window glimpse into another writer’s life—attitudes, work habits, motivations, satisfactions— in the basic bio-letter. Occasionally a correspondence matures into fruitful dialogue, and sometimes personal friendship. With Peter Redgrove, the very first letter seemed to pick up in the middle of a conversation:

  About s-f—I’ve read it avidly—I thought it was because I had been trained as a scientist—now I discover that it wasn’t only my s-f reading that was exploratory of things in myself—gods, demons, blessed and cursed isles but also my science. Writing seemed to be able to take the mind and feelings further, so professional science had to take second place—I mean that my science was no matter of objective curiosity, but rather of feeling into the life of things (biology and chemistry).

  For the record: Redgrove was born in 1932, and won scholarships in the Natural Sciences to Queens’ College, Cambridge. He has worked as chemist, journalist, and editor; spent a year as “visiting poet” at the University of Buffalo; is now Gregory Fellow in Poetry at Leeds University. He has five volumes of poetry in print in England (most recent: The Force and Other Poems, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), and another. Against Death, to be published by Macmillan here. He also appears regularly on BBC-3’s poetry programs.

  * * * *

  THE CASE

  PETER REDGROVE

  Clinic Director: “This is schizophrenia. The boy was close to his mother: a widow after a very unsatisfactory marriage. His illness, which must always have been latent, accelerated when she died. ... He suffers also from an hysterical blindness, and cannot open his eyes. They have remained shut for the ten years of his illness. ... He likes to spend his time in the garden and likes also to be called ‘Father.’ He never replies when he is so called, but only smiles a little, and turns away. ... I have often noticed that such cases seem unwilling to be cured....”

  I am a gardener,

  A maker of trials, flowers, hypotheses.

  I water the earth.

  I raise perfumes there.

  Mother told me to stand, and I did so,

  Stepping towards the window in which she sat.

  “Now, did you find him, your other half?

  And mine,” she said, and I shook my head:

  “No, my time is so short and I’ll take no oath.”

  “You’ve just taken one, by standing,

  My dear one,” she said, and she told me how the stars

  Had said as much, and I concurred and saw

  How the crystalware of the polished table,

  The cabinets of glass things walling the room,

  The tall roses beyond the glass, the gloss of the table,

  Had said as much in sunshine from my first tottering.

  So she lifted my hand and kissed it and said I was to be celibate,

  And this was great good fortune and I was a good child

  For I had a quest and few had as much.

  The roses nodded.

  So I became a gardener,

  A maker of prayers, flowers, hypotheses.

  A gardener “washed in my fertile sweat,”

  My hair of an opulent brown “like the Lord’s,

  That makes you think of fertile fields.”

  And among the flowers, in the walled garden, “This is life!” she cried,

  “What a shame, oh what a shame,” she said,

  “What a shame we have to die,” she cried, all

  The flowers pumping their natures into her, and plumping

  Into her nostrils, winged wide, she leaning,

  Leaning back, breathing deeply, blushing deeply,

  Face shining and deep breath and tall brick

  Holding the air still and the heat high in a tall room.

  And I swam in the thunderstorm in the river of blood, oil and cider,

  And I saw the blue of my recovery open around me in the water,

  Blood, cider, rainbow, and the apples still warm after sunset

  Dashed in the cold downpour, and so this mother-world

  Opened around me and I lay in the perfumes after rain out of the river

  Tugging the wet grass, eyes squeezed, straining to the glory,

  The burst of white glory like the whitest clouds rising to the sun

  And it was like a door opening in the sky, it was like a door opening in the water,

  It was like the high mansion of the sky, and water poured from the tall french

  windows.

  It was like a sudden smell of fur among the flowers, it was like a face at dusk

  It was like a rough trouser on a smooth leg. Oh, shame,

  It was the mother-world wet with perfume. It was something about God.

  And she stood there and I wanted to tell her something and she was gone.

  It was something about God. She stood smiling on the wet verge

  And she waited for me to tell her but she was gone.

  And three gusts of hot dry air came almost without sound

  Through the bushes, and she went. Through the bushes

  Of blown and bruised roses. And she went. And the bushes were blown

  And the gusts were hot, dry air, nearly black with perfume,

  Alive with perfume. Oh shame. It was like an announcement,

  Like an invitation, an introduction, an invitation, a quick smile in the dusk.

  It was like a door opening on a door of flowers that opened on flowers that were

  opening.

  It was like the twist of a rosy fish among lily-pads that were twisting on their deep

  stems.

  The rosy goldfish were there in the dusky pond, but she was gone.

  It was something about God. My hand made a wet door in the water

  And I thought of something I knew about God. My mother

  Stared at me from the pool over my shoulder and when I turned she was gone.

  Then the wind blew three hot dry gusts to me through the broken rose-bushes

  And she came to me dusky with perfume and I walked towards her

  And through her, groping for her hand. And it was something about God.

  And I searched in my head for it with my eyes closed. But it was gone.

  And I became a gardener, a hypothesiser, one who would consult his sensations,

  For “we live in sensations and where there are none there is no life,”

  One with the birds that are blue-egged because they love the sky!

  With the flocks of giraffes craning towards the heavens!

  With the peacocks dressed in their love for the high sun

  And in their spectra of the drifting rains, one

  With the great oaks in my keeping that st
retched up to touch God!

  And one who could look up gladly and meet God’s gaze,

  His wide blue gaze, through my blood, as I think;

  And God was silent and invisible and I loved him for it,

  I loved him for his silent invisibility, for his virile restraint,

  And I was one with my peacocks that sent out their wild cry

  Sounding like shrill “help!” and meaning no such thing,

  While my flocks of deer wrote love in their free legs

  Their high springy haunches and bounding turf. And they would pause

  And look upwards, and breathe through wide nostrils, and all day

  It was wide and firm and in God’s gaze and open: tussock and turf, long lake,

  Reed-sigh, silence and space, pathway and flower furnace

  Banked up and breathing.

  And the people. And the causeway into the walled garden.

  And the people walking in so slowly, on their toes

  Through the wide doorway, into the cube of still air,

  Into the perspective of flowers, following each other in groups,

  Gazing around, “Oh, what shame, to die!” and the great doorway

  And ourselves, smiling, and standing back, and they changed,

  Concentrated, concentrating, at the edges of the body, the rims

  Tighter, clearer, by the sensations of their bodies, solidified, bound,

  Like the angels, the bodies’ knowledge of the flowers inbound

  Into its tightening and warming at the heart of flowers, the fire called

  “Then-shall-ye-see-and-your-heart-shall-rejoice—

  And-your-bones-shall-sprout-as-the-blade.. ..”

  And she was gone. And she lay down like the earth after rain.

  It was love-talk in every grain. And something about God.

  The brick walls creaked in the wind, grain to grain.

  And judgement came as the father comes, and she is gone.

  Clouds swoop under the turf into the pond, the peacock cries

  “Help!” strutting in its aurora, love talks

  Grain to grain, gossiping about judgement, his coming. Ranges

  Tumble to boulders that rattle to shingles that ease to wide beaches

  That flurry to dust that puffs to new dusts that dust

  To dusting dust, all talking, all

  Gossiping of glory, and there are people

  In the gardens, in white shirts, drifting,

  Gossiping of shame through the gardens. “Oh glory!”

  Through the gardens. . . . Well, father, is that how you come?

  Come then.

  Whose breath is it that flares through the shrubberies?

  Whose breath that returns? Look at the people

  All ageing to judgement, all

  Agreeing to judgement. Look at that woman

  Still snuffing up the flowers. My mother!

  Look at her. She bends backwards to the tall flowers, falls.

  Her flower-laden breath returns to the skies.

  I think this garden is a prayer,

  Shall I burn it as an offering?

  And I think these people are a prayer,

  I think they are a message.

  Shall I burn them for their syllable?

  There is a fire crying “shame!” here already!

  It mixes dying with flowering.

  I think we husk out uttering. I think

  We tip it out. Our perfect syllable,

  Tripped out over the death-bed, a one,

  Round, perfectly-falling silence.

  Look how they seek the glory over these flowers!

  I wanted to say something about God,

  My syllable about God. I think

  We are a prayer. I think

  He wants his breath back, unhusked

  Of all the people, our dying silences,

  Our great involuntary promise

  Unhusked, flying out into the rain, over the battlefields,

  Switching through shrubberies, into the sky. . . .

  You press, oh God!

  You press on me as I press on an eyeball,

  You press sunsets and autumns and dying flowers,

  You press lank ageing people in gardens “Oh shame

  To die,” you press roses and matchflames like wisps of your fingers,

  Your great sun cuffs age at us. I will bring,

  I will bring you in, father, through the bounds of my senses,

  Face to face, father, through the sockets of my head,

  Haul you in, father, through my eyes with my fingers,

  Into my head through my eyes, father, my eyes, oh my eyes. . . .

  To live in the blind sockets, the glorious blunt passages,

  Tended by gardeners, nostril, eye, mouth,

  Bruised face in a white shirt ageing,

  To be called “Father” and to hear call high

  “Oh shame, what a shame, to die” as they see the great flowers,

  To hear the peacock “help!” that means no such thing,

  And to live unseeing, not watching, without judging, called “Father.”

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  * * * *

  After the Neo-Hebbian, Bidwellian, and poetic-subjectivist viewpoints already expressed, it seems appropriate to investigate the clinician’s outlook. The following much-excerpted reprint is from a new magazine called Voices; the author, Jay Haley, has kindly given me permission to publish this drastically foreshortened version of a part of his article “The Art of Being Schizophrenic.”

  ... To use the term “schizophrenic” loosely for anyone who wanders in the hospital door looking befuddled betrays those individuals who have worked long and hard to achieve the disease.

  People who have attempted schizophrenia without the correct family background have universally failed. . . . They can erupt into psychotic-like behavior in combat, or when caught in some other mad and difficult situation, but they are unable to sustain that behavior when the environment seems to right itself. The same point applies to the variety of fascinating drugs which are falsely said to induce psychosis. Not only does the drug influence miss the essence of the experience, but the effect wears rapidly off. The occasional goat who manages to be a schizophrenic after the drug has left his system is easily separated from the sheep who go back to normal—he has come from the right sort of family and probably would have achieved schizophrenia even without the benefit of medical research.

  The Family: ... as individuals, the family members are unrecognizable on the street, but bring them together and the outstanding feature is immediately apparent—a kind of formless, bizarre despair overlaid with a veneer of glossy hope and good intentions concealing a power-struggle-to-the-death coated with a quality of continual confusion.

  The Mother: Just as the child in a circus family learns from his parents how to maneuver on the slack wire, so does the schizophrenic learn from his mother how to maneuver acrobatically in interpersonal relations. To achieve schizophrenia a man must have experienced a mother who has a range of behavior unequaled except by the most accomplished of actresses. She is capable, when stung (which occurs whenever any suggestion is made to her), of weeping, promising violence, expressing condescending concern, threatening to go mad and fall apart, being kind and pious, and offering to flee the country if another word is said.

  The Father: . . . must teach him to remain immovable. The father of the schizophrenic has a stubbornness unequaled among men (as well as the skill to keep a woman in the state of exasperated despair which helps mother make use of her full range of behavior). On occasions when present and sober such a father can easily say, “I am right, God in heaven knows I cannot be proven wrong, black is not white and you know it too in your heart of hearts.”

  The Sibling (important, but not essential): . . . the kind of person who is hated on contact—a do-gooder, a good-in-schooler, a sweet, weak, kind bastard of a sibling.

  The Budding Schizophrenic: . .
. must hold a certain position in the family. . . . Like any artist, several hours a day of practice over many years are necessary.

  It is the primary function of the schizophrenic to be the representative failure in the family. . . . The average schizophrenic shows his artistry by achieving more than usual ability along this line, while also indicating at regular intervals that he could do quite a good job at succeeding if he wanted to, thus giving [his parents] sufficient cause for disappointment.

  The primary responsibility of the schizophrenic is to hold the family together. Although social scientists, even family therapists, have not yet the vaguest idea how to prevent a family from disintegrating, the schizophrenic child accomplishes this with ease. It is his duty to use his keen perception and interpersonal skill to maintain the family system in a stable state, even if that state is a mood of constant despair. His importance in this function appears on those rare occasions when the schizophrenic abandons his disease and becomes normal, succeeding in life and leaving his family. His parents at once individually collapse, losing their sense of purpose in life, and they set about to divorce.

  [If, on The other hand, the family situation deteriorates, requiring heroic measures on the part of the schizophrenic...]

  The Psychotic Episode: ... is merely a more extreme version of other behavior of the schizophrenic at times of family crisis, but this time it precipitates him into a situation which calls forth all his skill— the treatment situation.

  Only in the mental hospital can schizophrenia achieve its full flowering. Just as a plant reaches its greatest growth in well-manured ground, so does the schizophrenic achieve his full range on the closed wards of mental institutions. Yet oddly enough the first reaction of the schizophrenic to hospitalization is a stout objection.