The Winston Affair

by Howard Fast

  It was signed, “Winston.”

  She finished reading and looked at Adams, now for the first time with tenderness and hopelessness. Then she looked past him at Winston, who leaned his elbows on the table and covered his face with his hands.

  “After Lieutenant Winston gave you the letter and you had read it, what did you do with it?”

  “I showed it to Major Kaufman. He read it and then he gave it back to me.”

  “Did Lieutenant Winston make any further reference to the letter?”

  “No—he made no reference to it ever again.”

  “Did you ask him to show you where the bleeding was—the bleeding referred to in the letter?”

  “I asked the wardsman to look for it But there was no wound, no bleeding.”

  “Thank you,” Adams said. And to the court, “May it please the court, I have no other questions of this witness.”

  Major Smith’s cross-examination was brief. He asked a series of questions as to the rationality of Winston’s conversation and actions. Was he able to tell time? Read a newspaper? Discuss events? Remember things that had happened the day before? Adams raised no objections, and Sorenson answered practically all of the questions in the affirmative.

  It was twenty minutes after eleven when Lieutenant Sorenson had finished her testimony for Smith. Adams waived any redirect examination, and Thompson instructed the witness to stand down.

  Then Thompson said, “I am releasing this witness from any further responsibility to this court, since she is under travel orders for this afternoon. Does either counsel have reason to object to this—or further require her presence?”

  Both Adams and Smith shook their, heads.

  Thompson said to Adams, “I understand, Captain, that you have only one more witness to examine?”

  “That is correct, sir.”

  “Very well. In that case, we will recess immediately and reconvene a half-hour past noon. This court will now recess.”

  Adams went to his table, where Moscow was gathering the papers and repacking the briefcase. Adams said to Bender, “Get an empty room here where I can talk to Winston.”

  “The MP?”

  “Let him be there—I don’t care about that. And Lieutenant Moscow, suppose you see if you can find us a few sandwiches and some beer or something. We won’t have time to go out to eat. Get enough for Winston, too. I think they have a mess of some sort in the basement here.”

  “I’ll get the sandwiches, sir, don’t worry.”

  Adams hurried from the room just as Kate Sorenson was leaving.

  Tuesday 11.30 A.M.

  Adams had to push his way through the reporters and outside before he found a place to have a moment alone with Kate Sorenson, and then, with a sense of utter despair, she said to him, “What good is it, Barney? We can’t say anything that will make it any better.”

  “Will it make it worse, Kate?”

  “Don’t argue now.”

  “I am not going to argue,” he said. “I am not going to try to change your mind at all. I just want to spend a moment with you and say good-by decently.”

  “We can’t say good-by decently, Barney.”

  “Give me a chance.”

  “I’m trying to give myself a chance.”

  “All right, it will be the way you want it to be. Let Baxter take you back to the hospital or to the airport—or wherever you must go now. The jeep is right over there.”

  He took her arm and they walked toward the jeep. She began to cry quietly, as if this were a reaction apart from herself. She could not control it and said, “I didn’t want to cry, you see.”

  Adams shook his head hopelessly. He helped her into the jeep, while Baxter watched both of them silently and curiously.

  “Take Lieutenant Sorenson wherever she has to go. She’ll have her valpack. Help her with it. Stay with her until the plane leaves, Corporal, and then come back here.”

  “O.K., Captain.”

  “I hope England is good for you,” Adams said. “It’s a nice place, cool and kind.”

  “Thank you, Barney,” she whispered. “I don’t want it to be dark all around you.”

  “It has been for a long time.”

  “It will change.”

  “I hope so,” he said.

  Tuesday 12 Noon

  “Why are you trying to prove that I’m crazy?” Winston demanded of him.

  “I’m not trying to prove that. I am defending you on the grounds that you are sick. You are sick, you know.”

  “Don’t defend me! What mother-friggen right you got to defend me? I don’t want to be defended!”

  “You have to be defended. Neither of us have any choice about that, Lieutenant Winston. Now, I want to ask you some questions, and I want you to answer them.”

  “Go to hell!”

  “That doesn’t get either of us anywhere.”

  The corner of Winston’s mouth began to twitch again. He covered his face with both hands.

  “I want to know as well as you can tell me exactly what happened between you and Quinn on the night you killed him—what happened before he left you?”

  Winston’s skinny body began to shake spasmodically. He kept his hands pressed to his face. A minute went by. Adams repeated his question.

  “It’s no use, Captain,” Bender said. “Oscar and I tried to question him. It’s no use.”

  Winston let his hands drop. His eyes were listless now, as if a film had been drawn across them.

  “Try to eat something,” Adams said.

  He didn’t respond. He was alone now.

  There was a note of pity in Adams’ voice as he asked Winston whether he would have a cigarette. It made both Bender and Moscow glance at him sharply. Adams lit the cigarette and handed it to Winston.

  “It’s all right, Lieutenant,” Adams said, thinking: As right as it will ever be.

  Tuesday 12.45 P.M.

  After Major Kaufman had been sworn in and had given details of rank and position, Adams asked him to describe the events of the morning in question.

  There was an electric quality in the courtroom on this afternoon. Outside, the clouds were gathering for rain. The heat was heavy and oppressive, and the ceiling fans, moving so slowly, appeared to be turning in liquid. Major Kaufman sat erect and withdrawn, the object of the whole population of the room, the officers of the court watching him seriously and intently, Major Smith and his two assistants sitting with the impatient frustration of hunters. The observers also watched and waited. Even Winston was intermittently held by the quality and mood of the place.

  The thought came to Adams that this was a sanctuary—the only sanctuary in a world torn and twisted with every conceivable violence and hurt. But history was full of sanctuaries that crumbled.

  Major Kaufman spoke to the court, yet he spoke through’ them and past them. Before he took the stand, he had offered no word or greeting to Adams. Adams could only wonder what his thoughts were—but such wonder and doubt were not a new experience during the last few days. Adams had come to ponder a great deal on the problems of a great many people.

  “Lieutenant Winston,” Major Kaufman said, “was brought to the hospital by two military policemen. That was early in the morning. These two policemen had been instructed by Major Kensington to bring their prisoner to the psychiatric section of the hospital. When the prisoner had been brought into our receiving room, Lieutenant Sorenson called for me. I came immediately, and as soon as I saw the prisoner, Lieutenant Winston, I realized that he was in a state of acute depression and, to some degree, shock.”

  “Mr. President?” Major Clement said to Thompson.

  Thompson nodded, and Clement asked Kaufman, “How were you able to see that immediately, Major?”

  “There were unmistakable signs. Depression translates into a condition of indifference. But the indifference is profound and pathological. The drive to live, to exist, a very important part of man’s emotional structure, is submerged. When you have seen acute dep
ression, you recognize it. Also, his breathing was labored. He sweated excessively. His facial muscles were without tone. And he was only in part aware of his surroundings—and therefore able to respond to those surroundings in a most limited sense. You must understand, sir, that I am attempting to describe a medical phenomenon in lay language.”

  “I realize that,” Clement replied.

  Colonel Winovich wanted to know exactly what Major Kaufman meant by depression. “I have heard that term for two days now, like someone might say cholera. I’ve been depressed. I imagine you have, Major. Why treat it like some hellish disease?”

  “Because it can be more hellish than most diseases, sir, and because it is a disease. When a normal person is depressed, he is not experiencing what we call, in a medical sense, depression—and, happily, most people never have that experience. I’ll try to explain this as simply as I can. Depression, pathologically, is a combination of fear and hostility turned inward against the organism which is experiencing this fear and hostility. In its extreme form, it is a condition of total repression, total frustration, and total hopelessness. That is why we speak of the very deep depression as being suicidal. Most suicides are the result of this type of pathological depression, although many different mental conditions can bring about depression.”

  “Is this a physical condition, Major?” Thompson asked him. “Like heart disease or kidney trouble?”

  “It has its physical aspects. It affects the entire organism rather than any single organ, and it is accompanied by changes in blood pressure, pulse beat and so forth, But the profound physical changes, I imagine, are chemical and have to do with various ductless glands and probably with the basic adrenaline-histamine balance.”

  “You say you imagine? Are you guessing? Don’t you know?”

  “There is a great deal about all disease that we don’t know, sir, a great deal about the body that baffles all physicians. We grope and guess and attempt to learn. As for diseases of the mind, well, until a generation ago they were for the most part treated no better or more wisely than in the Middle Ages.”

  “Did you examine the patient, Major?” Adams asked now.

  “I did.”

  “How often?”

  “I examined him physically when he was admitted—that is, I took blood pressure, pulse—listened to heartbeat and breathing, tested reflexes, examined his eyes and ears—the whole procedure of a thorough physical examination. I ordered a cardiogram, since his pulse was rapid and his blood pressure dangerously high, and a blood test and urine analysis. This was repeated two days later. Each day, he had a superficial physical. In addition to this, I examined him verbally each day for five days.”

  “What do you mean by verbally, Major?”

  “That is a method of conversation or interview by which we attempt to more fully diagnose the nature of a psychosis. Actually, I ask questions. The patient answers them. I attempt to lead the conversation and to elicit salient points of knowledge.”

  “Now, when the patient was admitted, he was sick, was he not?”

  “I should not have admitted him if he was not sick.”

  “Was his sickness at the time of admittance mental or physical?”

  “There is no separating the two, Captain. A man’s mind is a part of his body—his brain and nervous system, these are parts of the body. Lieutenant Winston was a very sick man when we admitted him. He has recovered in some part from the fatigue and shock which he was suffering then, and I managed to bring his blood pressure down somewhat, but he is still a very sick man.”

  Major Smith rose with this and objected that Major Kaufman had no right to a diagnosis of a man he had not examined for weeks.

  Mayburt put the objection aside, telling Smith, “We will not get into a dispute over this use of competence. The witness is a physician, and physicians are entitled to their observations as part of diagnosis.”

  “What is the nature of Lieutenant Winston’s disease?” Adams then asked.

  “Lieutenant Winston is suffering from paranoia. Paranoia is a generic term for a group of mental diseases which fulfill the terms of a general description. Medically speaking, I would describe paranoia as an organized irrational system of mentation and response—which is characterized by projecting into external society causation by unreal factors. It is persecutory in its direction and usually accompanied by intermittent depression.”

  “Could you describe it in lay terms, making the description at least in part a direct diagnosis of the defendant?”

  Winston’s interest had at last been wholly caught, and he watched witness and counsel with intense, trembling concentration.

  “I can try, sir. Our habit is not to think these things through in ordinary language, and perhaps that is a fault. Let me begin by saying that the paranoid personality is not uncommon; but we do not consider people who have this personality pattern to be psychotic. We differentiate and ascribe the psychotic factor to the mind which organizes an entire irrational system. I am trying to simplify, but it is not easy.

  “In the case of the defendant, the paranoid roots go back to childhood, and even in childhood the irrational system was in process of organization. In other words, Lieutenant Winston began to create in his mind a picture of society in general and human beings in particular that departed more and more from the reality, until at last he was utterly incapable of coming to grips with reality. At this point, he became the prisoner of his own system.

  “Why this happened, I cannot say. There are factors in our society that do this to children, but, I would speculate, only to children who have an area of specific weakness. These children develop a fear of people, a fear which increases with growth and intensifies itself constantly. And since this fear is unreal, without any foundation in society, it can be handled and controlled only with unreal defenses. Thus we get the persecution complex, which is the common and vulgar explanation of the paranoiac. But the paranoiac is basically afraid, and his fear is a disease, a sickness which so far society has not been able to cure.

  “The paranoiac, as he matures, has only two choices—either to cope with his fears or to destroy himself. When he sets out to cope with his fears, he begins to fulfill a pattern which has come to be known as the power compulsion. Again, a misleading vulgarization. It is not power in itself which the paranoiac is driven to command—for power in itself is meaningless—it is power over those whom he fears. And since he fears all mankind, the accomplishment of power can never cure or even balance the paranoiac. It is only an analgesic, a temporary assuagement of his terrors.

  “The other alternative is depression—and its ultimate conclusion, suicide. When the paranoiac’s defenses of power and authority over others finally crumble beyond hope of repair or reconstruction, then the fear begins to submerge his personality. His personality begins to disintegrate, and this disintegration is progressive. In a manner of speaking, he retreats into himself, cuts his connections with the outer and real world, turns his fear and hatred upon himself—and destroys himself. Even if prevented from suicide, this disintegration will continue and the soul will die. It is usually during this stage that he becomes delusionary. Bereft of real power, he invents power and sometimes comes to believe that he is a tool of God, or more usually, he the master of God and God the tool. Thus, he frequently places God within him, as part of himself.”

  They were all listening intently, Winston’s face staring and fixed, only the tic on his mouth breaking the immobility, the court leaning forward over the table—even Smith caught, attentive and silent.

  It was not Adams but Colonel Mayburt who broke the silence after Kaufman had finished, asking, “Did this breakdown—the beginning of this disintegration you speak of—did this come as a result of the murder of Sergeant Quinn?”

  It was to the point, the key to the point; and Kaufman considered it before he answered. Then he said, “No. It was the other way around. Lieutenant Winston was the only commissioned officer at Bachree. He had the power and th
e authority. But Sergeant Quinn broke down this authority. He undermined Lieutenant Winston. He laughed at him and mocked him, and the process of disintegration began. The murder of Sergeant Quinn was the last desperate effort of Lieutenant Winston to defend himself with the exercise of power. But already, at that point, he was insane. Yes, he was insane then and he is insane now,” Kaufman finished coldly.

  Winston rose, pointed a shaking finger at Kaufman, and screamed, “You’re a lousy, mother-friggen Jew bastard liar! I’m sane! Sane! Sane—do you hear me, sane!”

  Tuesday 1.40 P.M.

  Major Kaufman had identified his report and had read two paragraphs from it on the social connotations of paranoia. During this, there was no one in the courtroom who could forbear to glance at Winston. But they looked at a shell. The withdrawal of Charles Winston’s soul and personality was almost an apparent physical fact. Beaten down and back by the scathing anger of Thompson, who had finally found an outlet and direction for his frustration and annoyance, Winston collapsed upon himself. His eyes became empty, his face slack. He sat at the defense table, his left hand upon the table, his right hand probing and examining his left hand.

  Outside, the rain had started, strong and steady. Adams had just asked Kaufman what the purpose of his report was.

  “It’s main purpose, of course, is as a medical record—that is, a part of diagnosis and treatment. No physician worthy of the name will treat a patient without making a record of the case. In a situation like ours, with hundreds of patients entering and leaving the hospital each week, the report is essential. It goes with the discharged patient when further treatment is indicated, or it remains in our records for reference. Its secondary purpose is to supply information and data to the hospital command.”