by Howard Fast
“I feel that I require your testimony, sir.”
Kensington whirled on him. “Damn you, Adams, what are you trying to do?”
“What I have to do.”
Kensington said slowly, “Can’t you understand what it would mean for me to repeat the things I said to you? Don’t you understand that?”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
Kensington walked over to his chair and slumped into it. Outside, a steam whistle blew. “That’s sick call,” Kensington explained with a sigh. “You’ll have to excuse me for the time being.”
“I don’t want to have to force you to appear, sir.”
“I’ll come,” Kensington said. “When do you want me?”
“Monday morning. Nine o’clock—at the Judge Advocate Building.”
Thursday 4.20 P.M.
The narrow gauge was only twenty minutes late. When the train pulled into the Chaterje Station and the screaming mob rushed toward it and the constables beat them back with their long sticks, Barney Adams had a strange feeling of confusion and unreality. On the one hand, he felt that he had not been gone at all; and again, that he had been at Bachree a very long time. A sense of newness and strangeness had worn off.
Corporal Baxter was waiting with the jeep. When Barney Adams climbed in, Baxter asked him, did he want to eat now? Adams shook his head. “No, there’s time for that, Corporal. Take me to the Provost now. After that, I’ll go to my quarters and dean up.”
“Do you want me to wait, Captain?”
“I think so.”
Adams sat in silence as they drove to the Provost. Baxter made a few attempts to engage him in conversation, and then gave it up. Barney Adams ranged in his own thoughts. The memory of Bachree became more distant, more spacious.
The prison was an old one, an ugly building of yellow stone which the British had turned over to the American Command; but if it was damp inside, its heavy walls also gave it a certain amount of protection from the sun. There was a visiting room of sorts, where Barney Adams waited after he sent his name in. A Captain Freeman came out to take him to the prisoner.
As they walked down a long corridor of barred doorways—which reminded Adams of a medieval dungeon—Freeman explained that most of the cells were empty. “Only the worst cases. We keep the small-time offenders in the divisional guardhouses. We had a kid here who wrote home that he was languishing in a dungeon. It raised a real stink. What the hell, we have worse jails in the States.” He was a cheerful man of about thirty. “I hope this won’t be long, Captain,” he said. “I’m to stay with you, but I got a date tonight.”
“It won’t be too long.”
“You know, I been waiting all afternoon.”
“I’m sorry,” Adams said. “I’ll try not to keep you any longer than I have to. But I want to see Winston alone. Can you wait outside?”
“My instructions are to be in the cell whenever a third party enters.”
“I don’t think that applies to defense counsel.”
Freeman shrugged. They were at the cell now. A military policeman stood on guard duty at the door. “Open up,” Freeman said. “This is Captain Adams, defense counsel.”
The military policeman took a key from his pocket and opened the cell door. Adams entered with a curious sense of expectancy. Winston was sitting at a wooden table, his head in his hands. There was another chair in the cell, a cot, a tin basin of water on a stand, and a crockery chamber pot. A small bulb burned in a ceiling socket, and there was a small barred window, about seven feet up.
Winston looked up as Adams entered, but on his face there was neither anticipation nor curiosity. He was a skinny man, long-faced and balding. He had pale green eyes, and he wore metal-rimmed glasses. Adams’ immediate impression was of a commonplace man, an unimaginative and not overly-intelligent man, but not a man marked by any stamp of brute or criminal. Sitting there in his coverall fatigues, he did not command attention; if the room had been filled with people, he would not have been noticed at all.
“Good evening, Lieutenant Winston,” Adams said. “I’m Captain Barney Adams. I’ve been appointed counsel for your defense.”
Winston watched him without interest or awareness.
“Did you hear me, sir?”
Still there was no response from Winston.
His voice hard and insistent, Adams said, “I am speaking to you, sir! You will reply when spoken to!”
Winston blinked his eyes and then clenched them shut. When he opened them, he said, “Leave me alone.”
“I don’t intend to take up too much of your time, Lieutenant. But I must speak to you. I am counsel for your defense. You understand what you are charged with?”
“Damn it, don’t try to make a fool of me!”
“I am only trying to help you as best I can.”
“You can’t help me.”
“I can defend you in court. I must do that, and I propose to do it.”
“Why?”
“Because you are entitled to such defense. No matter what you have done, you are entitled to a fair trial and to an earnest and intelligent defense.”
“I killed a man, Captain. What defense is there for that?”
“Let me find a way to defend you,” Adams said more gently. “I’ll find a way. I only want you to help me.”
“It too late. I can’t help you or anyone.”
“No—it’s never too late. I can help you, and you can help me by answering my questions—straightforwardly and truthfully. You must begin by trusting me.”
A long moment went by while Winston watched him—with fear, with doubt and with suspicion.
“Well?”
“What kind of questions?” Winston whispered.
“Did you kill Sergeant Quinn?”
“I told you I killed him.”
“Why did you kill him?”
“Because he had to die.”
“What do you mean by that? Why did he have to die?”
Winston shook his head tiredly.
“You said he had to die.”
“I knew about it then. I don’t remember now.”
“Are you trying to remember, Lieutenant Winston? I told you that I am trying to help you. Are you trying to help me?”
“Yes, damn you!” Winston cried out.
“Then try to remember.”
Winston strained across the table toward Adams, and whispered hoarsely, “Will you believe me?”
“If you tell me the truth.”
Winston relaxed for the first time since Adams had entered the cell. Almost matter-of-factly, he said, “When Quinn left, I just waited until I was told. Then I did what I was told.”
“What were you told to do?”
“To kill Quinn.” He was picking at a pimple on the back of his hand, and examining it intently as he picked at it.
“Who told you to kill Quinn, Winston?”
“God,” he replied flatly, still picking at the pimple.
“God told you to?”
“Oh, yes. Yes.”
“Where was God when he told you this?”
“Where?” He glanced at Adams, almost in surprise. “In the same place.”
“And where is that place?”
“Here,” putting his hand on his side. “Right here. He stays here and burns. Not now. After I did it, he went away. It’s the same damned thing, all the way down the line.”
“You know you are telling me something to make me believe you to be insane,” Adams said evenly.
“That’s why I don’t tell them,” Winston nodded, glancing at the door. “I’m not insane.”
“Did you tell this to Dr. Kaufman at the hospital?”
Suddenly excited, Winston cried, “I told that lousy Jew bastard too much. He was with them all the time. I should have known. Oh, Jesus Christ, I should have known.”
“What, Winston? What should you have known?”
“That he was with them! With them! All the time with them! God damn you to hell, mister, wh
at are you? A lousy kike in disguise?”
Adams stared at Winston in silence now. The anger disappeared. The slight flush faded from Winston’s sallow face. There seemed to be almost a physical process of deflation. The eyes saw nothing in particular. They began to blink.
“Is there anything else you wish to tell me, Lieutenant Winston?” Adams asked.
There was no response.
“Lieutenant Winston—”
Still no response. Then Adams saw that Winston was crying. His face did not move or change, but the tears rolled down the flat, sallow cheeks.
Adams turned around and left the cell.
Friday 9.20 A.M.
If Barney Adams had met Major Kaufman under other circumstances, it would not have entered his mind to consider whether or not Kaufman looked Jewish. Even with the name, the thought would not have presented itself to Adams. He was simply not concerned with whether or not any man looked Jewish or was Jewish. It did not resolve itself into a matter of principle or tolerance; the problem had been absent in his formative years, and in his maturity he did not approach it as anything that excited either his interest or his curiosity. He had never cared nor had he ever found any reason to care—until the last three days.
Now he studied Kaufman in terms of two men, Lieutenant Winston and Colonel Burton. He deliberately attempted to see Kaufman as a Jew, but his frame of reference was insufficient. He could not make any reliable connection between Kaufman and the Jews in his company, nor could he reliably separate Kaufman from other army doctors he had been in contact with.
Kaufman was of medium height. He was dark, with gray eyes. He had a round face that was badly scarred from a youthful acne, a flat nose, full lips, and a New York City inflection in his speech. He was somewhere in his middle forties. He was neither friendly nor unfriendly, and he was on his guard. He also impressed Barney Adams with the fact that he was a very busy man.
Of the Winston case, he observed briefly, “That’s over and done with, so far as I am concerned. It’s been taken out of my hands, Captain. I am not interested, and I have no desire to discuss it.” As he spoke, he was glancing through the papers on his desk. He signed two documents and put them into a box labeled Outgoing.
Then, pointing his pen at Adams, he said, “There’s small virtue in thoroughness, Captain. No one will commend you for it. You tell me that you have to defend Winston. Good. That’s your job. I have finished with mine, so far as Winston is concerned. I have over a hundred patients to see today. I don’t know what you have to do.”
“Very little,” Adams replied softly, “and I am afraid nothing of the importance of having to see sick people and help them.”
Back at his papers, Kaufman looked up sharply. He studied the ribbons Barney Adams wore and asked about his wounds.
“I was very lucky. A grenade exploded behind me, and I got five pieces in my shoulders.”
“There’s all kinds of luck. Why did you come here?” he asked bluntly.
“That’s too long a story to tell now.”
“And how do you think I can help you?”
“Well—I suppose the core of it is this. I want to know whether Charles Winston is insane.” Then he told Kaufman about the incident in the prison the day before. “I’m asking you because it seems to me that you are in the best position to know. You admitted Winston to your ward. You examined him. You treated him.”
Kaufman did not reply at once. He watched Adams thoughtfully for a long moment before he said, “Do you think he was shamming?”
“I don’t know. I felt it was too much like a literary notion of how an insane man would act.”
“You can put your mind to rest, Captain. Winston is an incurable psychopath. In other words, he’s insane. Not only that, but his condition is progressive, with very little hope for even a temporary remission.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that as a personality, Winston is disintegrating. He is very quickly losing touch with all reality. How can I put that to you? His consciousness—his soul, if you will have it that way and admit to a soul in such a man—is turning in upon itself, shortening its lines of defense in a desperate search for survival. But in that search he will be destroyed.”
“Physically?”
“No—he won’t die. Not yet. Unless he kills himself—which is not unlikely. But as an inhabitant of our world, he will die.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow you,” Adams said.
“Do you know much about insanity, Captain?”
“Almost nothing.”
“That’s honest, and if most physicians were equally honest, they would admit to the same thing. The science of the mind is very young, very new, very uncertain of its conclusions. Even our terminology is awkward and unspecific. Winston is suffering from what we classify as dementia paranoides. One might think of this particular case as a formal or almost classical paranoides. Paranoia is a generic term for a whole group of mental disease, but Winston’s case is specific and unmistakable.”
“And is this organic? Was Winston born with this?” Adams asked.
Kaufman shrugged. “That’s something we can’t answer with certainty yet. My own opinion is no. My belief is that what we call the ‘paranoid personality’ comes into being in very early childhood, as a result of the child’s environment. Of course, such a thing is not a psychosis—or, insanity, as you might say. It’s a neurotic personality pattern which establishes the groundwork for later development. Nor does it by any means always lead to a psychotic, state or insanity, with consequent personality disintegration. The paranoid personality is all too common in every walk of life, and the grief and heartache it brings to mankind is almost beyond calculation. But by far the greatest number of such personalities live out their entire lives without ever being committed to an institution.”
Adams was intrigued, wholly captivated. “Could you describe such a personality to me?” he asked. “I mean in general terms.”
Kaufman smiled and leaned back in his chair. “Only if you accept what I say without argument and accept what you don’t understand without explanation.”
“I’ll try, sir.”
“All right. We’ll begin with a hypothetical norm. I specify hypothetical because we have no real notion of the normal man as an abstraction. We can only establish a norm out of our own torn and distorted world, and in a general sense we hold that a man who can live in this world, face its realities and cope with them sensibly is a normal human being. That’s a loose and amorphous definition, but it’s the best we have at the moment. Now, within this situation, a man defends himself against real dangers because he is afraid of real dangers. If he is to survive, he must take care of himself. Do you follow me?”
Adams nodded. “So far—yes. No arguments.”
“Now—on the question of the neurotic, a hell of a damn lot has been written. But the simplest approach is to think of the neurotic as a person who compulsively defends himself against unreal dangers—that is, against dangers that do not exist. The mechanism of defense is a natural mechanism; it is the perception of danger that has gone awry. The most frequent, timeworn example is that of the old maid who looks under the bed for a man each night before going to sleep. The old saw is that she hopes to find a man there, but actually she doesn’t. She has a great fear of men—one of the reasons why she is a spinster. And since this fear is based on no reality—she would live a more fruitful life with a man than without one—it is part of a neurotic pattern. Her looking under the bed is compulsive. She knows by reason and experience that she won’t find a man there, but she cannot resist the force of her unreal fear.
“Of course this is a vulgar simplification of a profound and complex pattern of mental organization.”
“But she isn’t insane?” Adams asked.
“By no means. She is still in touch with reality. All neurotics are. She knows there is no one under the bed. She recalls experiences. And she is still able to function, in spite of he
r fears. She simply goes through a compulsive neurotic pattern, and is even able to be somewhat amused at her own nonsensical behavior. But if she should become hysterical upon entering the room, if she should be unable to look under the bed because she knows the man is actually there, and if she sees the man where he is not—well, at that point her ability to deal with the nonexistent danger is collapsing; her neurotic organization of defenses is breaking down, and she is passing into the psychotic state. Of course, this is not a case we are discussing, but a bit of folklore, and therefore it has no clinical validity.”
“But even as folklore,” Adams said, “are you describing a paranoid personality?”
“Oh, no—far from it. Just from what you have read or heard, Captain, how would you describe a paranoiac?”
“Well—I suppose the way anyone else would, delusions of grandeur, a persecution complex—”
“Yes. That underlines the fact, but it tells us too little. As in all neuroses, your paranoid personality is motivated by fear. He is afraid of people—all people. Somehow or other, the circumstances of his childhood combine to set up a very deep belief that humanity is committed to his destruction.”
“Does he know this?”
“Of course that question is basic, isn’t it? And the answer is that he does not know it; it is buried too deep in his consciousness. It compels him, directs him, guides him, but for every neurotic action he takes, he must devise some sort of rationalization in terms of reality. Such people are suspicious. They calculate and inhibit every action because they are always afraid of placing themselves in the power of another. They are not capable of love in any full sense; love is dangerous; they fear it. They can make relationships with superiors, out of fear, or with inferiors, out of the security of power, but they can form no deep friendships in the full sense of the word. They are lonely men. For them, war is always. It never ends. And very often, indeed most often, they organize their defense against these neurotic fears of nonexistent dangers in two patterns: total and degrading submissiveness or a compulsive, terrible drive for power. Curiously, these two seemingly opposite patterns of defense are often found in the same person—as, for example, the sergeant who cringes and crawls before his platoon commander but becomes a monster of a tyrant over his own men. You’ve met that type?”
