A Vision of Fire

by Gillian Anderson

  He reached into his backpack under the table. Feeling his way through the lentils and onions, he found the sunflower oil. He grasped the small plastic bottle and held it tight to his chest with his left hand.

  Ulzii. He somehow knew he needed oil. Now he had to go as fast as he could.

  The young man rose unsteadily, the legs of the wooden chair dragging again on the floor. He drew annoyed glances from half a dozen students at different tables. Atash was oblivious to their presence. He was walking now, bumping into the edge of the next table, pressing past it, bumping into another, slipping through a door.

  “You cannot go there!” a student hissed as the door eased shut behind him.

  Atash heard his words but they did not make sense. He saw glimpses of dark stone through a haze of red and black. He saw sheer fabric, white and yellow, spinning hypnotically as if caught up in a cyclone. This was where he had to be.

  Ignoring pinpricks of pain on his cheeks and hands, the young man reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out cigarettes. He dropped the package to the floor and fished again blindly, pulling out a lighter. He flicked it open, uncapped the bottle of oil, released it spewing at his feet. He ignited the lighter and let it fall from his fingers. The flames crawled and then leaped up his pant legs.

  He bellowed from deep in his throat.

  Niusha Behnam, the librarian, jerked open the door and ran toward an orange shadow that could be seen among the stacks. Several students ran in after her as the smell of smoke reached the main room. They crowded the narrow alleys of books, pushing and shouting but also just staring. The students in the rear were forced back as Niusha called for the fire extinguisher. Someone yanked it from the wall and the crowd passed it toward her like an old-fashioned bucket brigade, and she turned the spray toward the fiery column. The flames had reached the paper-filled shelves and it took some strength and great sweeping movements to soak the rapidly expanding inferno. But at the heart of it, at the center of its blazing anonymity, was Atash, a boy, on fire and screaming.

  CHAPTER 6

  Caitlin woke to the sound of Jacob drumming on the wall that separated their bedrooms.

  It had started a year earlier and it happened on average once a week. She’d naturally considered a number of psychological explanations, from recurring dreams to unexpressed emotions, but he was usually asleep when she went to him, tapping hard with his fingertips, like he was hitting a bongo. It ceased when she woke him, and he had no memory of having done it. After several weeks Caitlin tried a different tack: she rapped back, hard enough for him to feel the vibrations. He immediately stopped and fell back to sleep. She realized then that this was his way of connecting with her when he felt alone. It was a common feeling among children, who, after all, were vulnerable on every conceivable level, hence the very crux of her practice. The world had little patience or concern for innocence.

  Though Jacob slumbered on, Caitlin did not. Her restlessness poisoned her sleep. She couldn’t recall the nightmares but was left with the familiar feeling of hot, ashy, gritty mud. She reached for her cell phone and saw a text: So either the date was so amazing u disappeared with him for 2 days or it was a dud and ur avoiding talking about it.

  Caitlin had forgotten to text Abby back. She quickly typed: Dud. And life is crazy right now, promise I’ll call soon.

  OK love u

  Love u 2

  Gradually Caitlin calmed and drifted off.

  The alarm on her cell phone snapped her awake.

  “Crap.”

  That was the Beep of Death, the last warning. She had slept through sunrise, through Jacob using the bathroom, and through the first “ocean wave” alarm on her clock.

  Dressing while hurrying into the living room, Caitlin caught Jacob waggling his arms at his fish like a giant squid instead of putting on his shoes. He didn’t acknowledge her arrival.

  Well, a squid wouldn’t, she thought. Jacob’s imagination was nothing if not immersive and absolute.

  When they eventually left their building he ran ahead of her to the subway and forgot to hug her good-bye when they reached his school on East Twenty-Third. Maybe that’s impending tweenitude too, Caitlin thought. Left alone, she realized that she had felt sad all morning. But it would pass, she told herself in the same tone she might a patient.

  And as a matter of immediate fact she had a breakfast appointment with Ben. She speed-walked the eleven blocks to the rendezvous. Since this was taking up her gym time, that would have to pass as her exercise for the day.

  She was first to arrive at the French bistro in Murray Hill, a ten-minute walk from the United Nations. The warmth of the restaurant steamed the corners of the street-side windows and made Caitlin feel like she was walking into a protective bubble. She hung her coat on the booth-side rack, sat with a thump on the well-worn seat, and ordered coffee for two.

  Then she could not resist checking her e-mail again. She found that an addendum to the adolescent schizophrenia newsletter had been e-mailed to the list—an item odd enough, and tragic enough, not to wait for the next scheduled newsletter. A college student in Iran, Atash Gulshan, had set himself on fire in a library and was now hospitalized. The act did not appear to be politically or religiously motivated, although two days before, his older brother had been hanged by the government for an unspecified crime. Little other information was available, but one sentence jumped out at her: “Witnesses reported that Gulshan exhibited logorrhea shortly before attempting suicide.”

  “Logorrhea”—saying nonsense words. Maanik’s father mentioned that Maanik had spoken gibberish at one point. Caitlin made a mental note of it.

  Then Ben arrived, with a huge smile, and Caitlin’s tense concentration happily dissolved.

  “Thanks for that smile,” she said.

  “You’re welcome,” he replied, lifting her small coffeepot. “Coffee in your lap?”

  “Please.” She laughed at their old joke. Though they had become firm friends nine years ago when Ben taught Caitlin how to sign, their first meeting had occurred years before, when they were both English majors at NYU. Ben had accidentally spilled a cup of coffee on her in a crowded diner and, after purchasing a replacement, spilled that on her too.

  “How was your night?” he asked as he poured himself a cup.

  “I live with a ten-year-old,” she said. “When I’m with him, I’m fine. We live in a wonderful little biosphere.”

  Ben turned suddenly somber. “How do you do it, Caitlin?”

  “What?”

  “Maanik,” he whispered to protect her anonymity. “She isn’t my kid and yet I’ve been so worried about her I couldn’t sleep. How do you have a child without being terrified all the time?”

  “Well, that’s the big secret to parenting, Ben.” Caitlin whispered. “You are terrified all the time. You get used to it. It becomes part of the background. Except for the times when it stabs you through the heart.”

  He gazed at her a moment, then looked down at his menu.

  “That was probably the worst sales pitch ever for having kids,” he said.

  Caitlin laughed. “You were never really tempted anyway.”

  “I’m tempted all the time,” Ben said to his menu.

  “Oh?”

  Ben allowed the silence to stretch until the server appeared. Caitlin let it rest. Ben would talk if and when he was ready. Thinking of Barbara’s culinary suggestions, she ordered roasted vegetables and an omelet. Ben stuck with coffee.

  He sat back. “I’m tempted by the same desire for stability that I guess everyone wants. Home, family. But I’m chin-deep in the world’s worst crises, every day, so there’s not much point in letting my mind go there.”

  “Your current boss does it.”

  “The ambassador has a staff, he has a bunch of years on me, he has experience, and he’s still stressed.”

  “Maybe i
f you looked at it as adding to the world at large, rather than taking away from yours . . .”

  “Adding what? Besides worry,” Ben said.

  “I didn’t say it was free,” Caitlin told him. “You can’t understand until you actually experience the parts that are transcendent.”

  “Is it worth what our friend is going through with his child?”

  “You tell me. You’ve seen them when she was her normal, happy self.”

  Ben was silent. Eventually he nodded.

  “All parents have challenges,” Caitlin said quietly.

  The server arrived with Caitlin’s meal. Ben leaned in after the woman walked away. “What kind of a challenge is he looking at? Is she schizophrenic or something similar?”

  “I can’t make that diagnosis yet, and I shouldn’t tell you anyway.”

  “But you will, right?”

  “I will say she’s missing some key symptoms,” Caitlin confided. “There are usually warning signs for a psychotic break. But in this case, by all accounts she hasn’t shown a progressive disconnect from her life. This girl was very suddenly ripped from her reality.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning I’m not sure what to make of that yet.”

  “There is such a thing as sudden onset, though.”

  “I won’t say there’s no such thing, but not this sudden, not usually. And there’s something else.” Caitlin took a bite of omelet as she collected her thoughts. “This is harder to describe. Typically, schizophrenics attempt to apply order to the disorganized information they’re receiving. That’s when you get diagrams, notebooks full of things that don’t make sense. In this case, there seems to be something very organized about what she’s experiencing.”

  “Organized,” he said. “You mean this is making sense to her?”

  “Perhaps on some level. The cycles of stimuli she’s reacting to are producing clear, repetitive effects.”

  “The effects being fear.”

  “I’m not convinced that’s what we’re seeing. It may be part of the mix, but it’s not the external part.”

  “You lost me.”

  “We don’t know what’s going on with her, other than her expression seems disorganized. We’re reading that confusion as panic, fear.”

  Ben brightened. “I think I get what you mean. I’ve seen it in linguistics. She’s like a small child who doesn’t have enough language to communicate what she needs to say so there’s a huge amount of frustration, almost anger. But inside, things make sense.”

  “Mm-hmm.” Caitlin had a mouthful of egg. She swallowed and nodded.

  “What can you do to treat that?” Ben asked.

  “Ideally, as I tried to explain to her father last night, we do another round of hypnosis and try to find and quarantine the problem, keep it from expressing itself as we saw yesterday.”

  “ ‘Tried to,’ ” Ben said. “I take it he was not enthusiastic about that?”

  “He was diplomatic, but no.”

  “I’ll see if I can help the idea take root.”

  “He’s sensitive to the pressure put on him,” Caitlin said as she bit into her toast.

  “Yes,” said Ben, concerned for his friend.

  “So, how’s Marina?” Caitlin grabbed a different subject. “Has she changed your man cave unrecognizably?”

  “She started to,” Ben replied as he sipped his coffee. “I’ve changed it back.”

  Caitlin paused her chewing. “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged. “It was a good seven months. She went home to Ukraine. I was specifically disinvited to come along.”

  Caitlin continued eating. “You shouldn’t have kept pouring coffee on her.”

  There was a glimmer of laughter in Ben’s eyes. “With her, it was tea. She had a tea press.”

  “Oooh, heavy-duty.”

  Ben smiled, gazing at her. “I’ve never actually asked you out, have I?”

  Caitlin fired him a look and immediately waved a Stop! Cease! Desist! hand at her old friend.

  “Ben, you”—she motioned you over there—“and me”—she motioned me over here—“are perfect as we are. Let’s keep it perfect.”

  “Okay,” he agreed readily. “It was just a question, it wasn’t a proposal.”

  She laughed. “Oh, it wasn’t, huh?”

  “No! I couldn’t remember. I was asking.”

  “Uh-huh. Do you really want me to analyze that ‘question’?”

  “No. Okay, fine. Maybe I was talking about possibly asking you out. Dinner, movies, a concert? I get a lot of invites from consulates and now I have no one to go with.”

  “Events, yes. Dates, no. ‘Friends’ ”—she tapped the table for ­emphasis—“means we don’t let things get deep and messy.”

  “Messy?” He grinned. “Who says the past has to inform the future?” He picked up a fork and dug into her cold omelet. “Anyway, the Friend Zone doesn’t exist after forty.”

  “Put a sock in it, Moss.” She smiled.

  Before he could answer, her phone rang in her bag. Someone was calling from the Pawars’ number. Her expression changed and she held up a finger to Ben as she answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Dr. O’Hara”—Mrs. Pawar’s voice was taut—“can you please come to us immediately?”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Please,” the woman said.

  “I’m on the way,” Caitlin said.

  CHAPTER 7

  They shared a cab to Forty-Eighth Street, then Ben went on to join the ambassador at the UN. Today marked the beginning of the second week of talks; Ben said they were expecting the Indian and Pakistani delegates to shed what little politeness they had managed to maintain thus far. It was not likely to be a pleasant week at the negotiating table.

  When the housekeeper ushered Caitlin into Maanik’s bedroom, Caitlin resisted the urge to recoil. Maanik was standing upright in her pajamas, fighting against her mother’s restraining arms. The young woman was absolutely silent, even though the muscles in her neck were straining and her mouth was stretched so wide that her lower lip had split. Her abdomen was pushing in a controlled rhythm, timed with the straining of her neck. Maanik was clearly screaming as hard as she could—but without a sound. Kamala backed from the room, fighting sobs.

  Caitlin started into the room just as Maanik wrenched herself forward so hard that Hansa lost her grip and fell to her knees. The girl remained where she stood, trembling from head to toe, leaning ­forward—not toward Caitlin but toward the windows. Caitlin could just make out the small shape of Jack London behind the curtains. Then she looked back at the girl.

  For one second Maanik’s eyes rolled to meet hers and Caitlin felt raw horror wash down her spine. She had seen young people trapped in terrible circumstances—held hostage by a parent, pinned by a ­landslide—but here she felt as if she were looking at someone who had wakened in a coffin and found herself buried alive. The girl took an uncertain step and her eyes rolled to the ceiling. She was still trying to scream.

  Caitlin grasped the girl’s shoulders. “Maanik, I’m here. You hear my voice, feel the weight of my hands . . .”

  The girl stopped moving and stood shaking. Suddenly her hands whipped into the air, throwing Caitlin off balance, forcing her to break her fall against the four-poster bed. Maanik’s hands remained in front of her, her left hand clutching at the air and her right hand curled, the forefinger and thumb pinched tightly together. Her arms were jerking and spasming but the hands stayed front and center. Caitlin grasped Maanik’s shoulders and gently moved her from side to side to break her rigid stance. The spasms decreased slightly but she was still screaming in silence.

  “That’s good, Maanik,” Caitlin said. “Mrs. Pawar, what is your daughter’s dominant h
and?”

  “Her left,” she said, tears streaming from her eyes.

  “She writes with her left hand?” Caitlin said, not sure the woman had understood.

  “Yes, yes!”

  That’s not what I would have guessed, Caitlin thought. So why was Maanik pinching her right hand? Was she trying to pull at something?

  No . . . that isn’t it.

  Caitlin decided to try something. If a split personality were forming here, new or once-latent personalities sometimes switched the hand they wrote with.

  “Mrs. Pawar, can you please get me paper and a pen?”

  The woman was frozen as though she were in a trance of her own, staring at Caitlin but seemingly uncomprehending.

  “Hansa!” Caitlin overenunciated for effect without volume. “Pen and paper please!”

  Mrs. Pawar stood clumsily, wiping her face, and moved to Maanik’s desk to search through the mess there. Soon she held out a pad of turquoise paper and a black marker. Caitlin took the marker and instructed the woman to stand in front of her daughter with the paper. Caitlin then moved behind Maanik so that she could support the girl’s torso with her side. She reached around her and inserted the marker into Maanik’s right hand, uncurling the forefinger and thumb and pinching them together on the marker. She beckoned for Mrs. Pawar to hold the pad of paper under the nib. Jack London began to whine from behind the curtains.

  Maanik touched the marker to the paper, had a moment of physical recognition, then scrawled across its surface, long swooping lines, then short jerks, more long lines. She then released the marker and her full weight dropped in Caitlin’s arms. Caitlin struggled to brace herself as she helped the girl’s body gently to the floor.

  With one arm under Maanik’s shoulders, she reached up for the pad of paper and inspected it. The drawing looked like a steep cliff with wavy lines around its base like water. Caitlin turned the pad around and now the lines meant nothing, just chaos. She kept turning it but nothing stood out. When she returned it to its original position, Caitlin was no longer sure there was a cliff and water.