The Most Beautiful Night of the Soul

by Sandor Jaszberenyi

  “If he can’t sleep, why is he still alive? I read that a person can live at most for a week without sleep, and then he’ll die.”

  “The disease activates at a certain age. The patient slowly, over a number of years reaches the stage at which he can’t sleep at all. I’m afraid that this has now occurred in Ronald’s case, just as earlier in his father’s.”

  “His father died of this disease?”

  “Yes. And when the disease had Ronald in its grips and he was no longer able to care for himself, he left his entire estate to African orphans, I think.”

  “Did your clinic accept Ronald as a patient out of charity?”

  “I was Ronald’s student. What I know about somnology, I learned from him. I owe him this much. Come on now, let’s go in, because you’ll catch a cold. I believe you have a stress test this afternoon.”

  The hallway clock read 4:30 AM when I left the sleep lab. The light was again on in the dining room, and I smelled cigarette smoke. Ronald Helms was sitting at one of the tables, holding an English translation of Crime and Punishment. Beside his left hand was a paper cup he was using as an ashtray. He looked up from the book when I stepped in.

  “I hear you upset Dr. Evans.”

  “I heard that you’re going to die.”

  I sat down across from him and lit a cigarette. He put down the book.

  “So Patrick thinks you’ll persuade me that another coma will help me.”

  “He didn’t ask for any such thing.”

  “But that’s what he wants.”

  “It didn’t seem like he wanted anything at all.”

  “Pay attention. He wouldn’t have said a thing to you about me if he didn’t want something.”

  I was silent. He continued reading.

  “If you’re really dying, why do you reject treatment?”

  “Why do you?”

  “I’m not sick.”

  “Nor am I.”

  “According to Mitchells, you will die.”

  “Yes, that is rather likely.”

  “And then?”

  “No treatment will help my condition.”

  “Why not?”

  “If I tell you, you’ll think I’m crazy, just as Mitchells and everyone else in this bloody institution does.”

  “I already think you’re crazy.”

  “Now that’s different.”

  He rose from the table, stepped to the drink machine, poured in some change, pressed a button, and returned with two teas, placing one before me.

  “Do you believe in curses, Daniel Marosh?”

  “No. I’ve tried them in vain. No one died.”

  “My father didn’t believe in them, either. For that matter, he didn’t exactly believe in the Hippocratic Oath, either. When he finished university in the fifties, at first he couldn’t get a job anywhere. He then became director of the clinical department of a pharmaceutical factory. From 1957 to 1960 he worked in Zimbabwe, as the chief physician for testing at the hospital in a village called Mbuma. There he met my mother, who was a nurse. I was born in 1961, in London.”

  “What does this have to do with your dying?”

  “Don’t rush me. As I said, I was born back in England. We lived a normal family life, in Gypsy Hill. Both my parents worked in the same laboratory. As regards my death, nothing noteworthy happened all the way until May 5, 1969. That’s when that black man came to our house.”

  “Black man?”

  “Nganga was his name, as I only later figured out. A witch doctor with the Shona tribe. My parents were unwilling to talk about what had happened back in Africa. By the time my father finally did, it was already way too late.”

  “So then, a witch doctor arrived at your place straight from Africa.”

  “Yes. I remember clearly. I was nine years old. It was afternoon when the doorbell rang. I went to answer it, since I thought it was Tom, the neighbor boy. Well, it wasn’t Tom. A fiftyish black man stood in the door wearing a striped black wool suit and a bowler hat. His eyes were surrounded by big white stripes of paint. On seeing me, he flashed his teeth. They were gold. He asked, ‘Is this where the Helms family lives?’”

  “What did he want?”

  “He just stood there, looking at me. I couldn’t say a word. After a while my father came down the stairs, too. When he saw this black man, he went pale. He said to me, ‘Come back inside, Ronnie.’ I was numb; I couldn’t even move.”

  “‘What is it you want?’ my father asked the man.”

  “‘I bring greetings from the women of Mbuma and their yet unborn children,’ said the man, who then lit a cigarette and blew the smoke at us. ‘Since you took away our dreams, now we will take yours.’”

  The old fellow lit the cigarette he’d been crinkling in his hand.

  “My father told him to go to hell. Not as if it took much doing to persuade him to leave, since he went on his own, having said what he’d wanted to say.”

  “And this is why you’re dying?”

  “Not exactly. Even my great-grandfather had been a doctor. I myself was enrolled in medical school in London when my father got sick. It began with poor sleep. At first he couldn’t sleep through the night. He took sleeping pills but they didn’t help. He got fewer and fewer hours of sleep each night, and three years later he barely got an hour. Of course he went from one examination to another, but back then somnology had not even come to the point of effectively diagnosing fatal insomnia. My father died in 1990. On his final night, he summoned me to his bedside and, in the presence of my mother, who’d been there already and was seeking in vain to keep him from such talk, he declared that the witchdoctor was standing by his bed and whispering. He’d been seeing him there in his final days. My father had been having constant fits of rage.”

  “So this is why you became a psychiatrist?”

  “Yes, among other reasons. I devoted all my energy to understanding what it was that had killed my father. Since the subject had a dearth of researchers, soon I was an expert.” “And what conclusion did you reach?”

  “Nothing. Not even when the symptoms began emerging in my mother. She was ten years younger than my father; she fell ill later. By then I was a practicing somnologist, a clinical psychiatrist, but I could do nothing to save her. I kept trying various medicines, but not one did a thing. It was in the third year of her illness that my mother also began seeing the witchdoctor. She was convinced that she’d been cursed. One night I was at her bedside when she told me why. The pharmaceutical firm that had worked with my father in Africa had tested a new contraceptive on the people there. Since modern-day Zimbabwe did not even yet exist, the chaotic political situation allowed for this sort of thing; it was a matter of money. So then, on May 5, 1960, my father and his team tested the new serum on three hundred women—a village’s entire population of women of child-bearing age. Since the serum had seen good test results in previous, animal experiments, not for a moment did they imagine that such problems would arise. All three hundred women died of internal bleeding within a week.”

  “I suppose that as per proper, colonialist custom no one was ever held responsible.”

  “Of course not. My parents returned to England and the matter was swept under the rug, with no one held to blame. After all, who would have represented an African village in an international court?”

  “Well, that witchdoctor, for example.”

  “My mother was convinced that she was dying on account of the witchdoctor. She wanted to find him and clarify the situation, to pay him off or otherwise settle the matter.”

  “From London?”

  “No. We traveled to Zimbabwe and went to the hospital building where the women had been killed.”

  “I assume you found nothing there.”

  “Only the hospital walls were left, and everything was overgrown with weeds. We made inquiries at nearby villages. They nearly lynched us on learning who we were.”

  “And?”

  “They saw that my mother was dying,
so they left her alone. When we asked the survivors about the witchdoctor, they couldn’t say who it was. They said that they hadn’t sent any curse.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Yes. After we returned to London, I did a bit of research. Three people in all from that village had gone to Europe. Two women and one man. The man was called Patrice, and he’d wound up in England with the help of foundations.”

  “He was the witchdoctor?”

  “Yes, though by the time I identified him, I could no longer show his picture to my mother, since she died.”

  “You talked to him?”

  “No. Patrice N’botu has been dead for years. He died in a car accident as an old man. Those who’d known him said he’d been obsessed with that drug testing, that he sought by any means to bring those responsible to justice. But the authorities were uninterested in a decade-old crime with no evidence.

  “That’s too bad.”

  “You’re telling me. I tried figuring out what could be done with this type of insomnia. I prepared case studies, I practiced medicine. Then I, too, began to see the witchdoctor. I tried explaining the situation to colleagues, but they all thought I was hallucinating on account of the insomnia.”

  “You see him now, too?”

  “Yes. He’s sitting beside you.”

  “What is he doing?”

  “Laughing.”

  “I thought you can’t stay awake for years.”

  “You can’t. This, however, is a unique condition. The alpha waves characterizing the relaxation necessary to drift off to sleep and are essential to the normal working of the brain don’t cease all at once, but steadily over a long period of time until they finally vanish altogether. I figure I still have about thirty minutes a day, hence I still have six months left.”

  “Have you seen other such cases?”

  “Aside from my parents? No. Cases have been described in the literature, however, though even the diagnosis itself has existed only since the middle of the twentieth century.”

  “Mitchells said you were an exceptional psychotherapist.”

  “Oh, yes. I believe I counted as one of the foremost experts in posttraumatic stress disorder until I went mad. My success rate was outstanding and I earned a great deal of money. For example, I had a patient who was an Iraq War veteran tormented by terrible nightmares. The poor wretch begged me to take away his dreams. He said, ‘Doctor, take away these dreams. I don’t want to dream at all.’ He didn’t let go my hand until I said to him, ‘Alright, I’ll take them away.’ The next day he showed up at therapy with gratitude, having slept well.”

  “I never heard of such a thing.”

  “Nor had I. And yet it worked with others, too. With more than two hundred patients. Of course I had to maintain the appearance of the scientific rigmarole. I got a couch for my office and over the course of four or five months each I listened to the grateful patients’ crap, for an hourly fee of one hundred pounds. I tried finding an explanation. It seems this was a side-effect of the curse. I was able to take away other people’s bad dreams, because my punishment was keeping vigil.”

  “Or else you have delusions on account of the insomnia.”

  “Or that. And yet I have the boundless gratitude of two hundred people and their families. I had to open a separate folder on my computer for the thank-you letters. Do you have bad dreams?”

  “No, I don’t. I dream of angels who breathe whipped cream.”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  “I don’t sleep much.”

  “Do you want me to take away your dreams?”

  “I wouldn’t want to burden you with my problems for all the world. You’re crazy enough as it is.”

  “One more or one less, it’s all the same.”

  “Like I said, I have no nightmares.”

  “Believe me, it’s much easier if someone keeps vigil for you. Most of us die because no one does so for us. I’ll keep vigil for you, Daniel Marosh.”

  “Well, that’s terrific.”

  Take my hand.

  I took it.

  “Someone is keeping vigil for you,” he said. For several seconds I stared into his delirious, bloodshot eyes.

  “OK, now you can let go of my hand.”

  “Someone is keeping vigil for you,” he repeated, and let it go. I stood up from the table.

  “I’m going off to take a shower,” I said.

  Dawn was breaking.

  Breakfast comprised croissants with plum jam. Chewing away all around me were the faces I’d seen at group therapy. The old fellow was nowhere in sight. After finishing breakfast, I knocked on the door to Mitchells’s office, but no one answered.

  “He’s in the sleep lab,” said an orderly who noticed me in front of the door.

  I went over. The room was open. The old fellow was now lying on the bed I’d been on earlier. He was strapped down. An IV was attached to his right arm. He was breathing through a mask. Electrodes were patched to his chest and head, the wires running to the machine beside which stood Dr. Mitchells, who knit his brows anxiously.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Mr. Marosh! Come in.”

  “What happened?”

  “Ronald attacked John, the orderly who came for his morning shift. He had to be sedated.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I am, too,” said Dr. Mitchells. “Take a look at this,” he added, turning the monitor my way. Various readouts were jumping about on it, with symbols I couldn’t understand.

  “What am I looking at?”

  “The readout on top shows the brain function. See how active it is.”

  “I see. Shouldn’t it be that way?”

  “No. Ronald’s brain is right now working just as if he were awake and, say, was having a conversation with someone. Judging from the amount of haloperidol he was given, practically speaking he should be in a vegetative state.”

  “So he’s not sleeping even now?”

  “No.”

  We fell silent.

  “I assume you came to check out.”

  “Yes.”

  “Come with me to my office, where you can sign the paperwork.”

  Mitchells sat down at his desk and I sat across from him.

  “Your test results are in,” he said.

  “And what is my problem?”

  “You suffer from sleep apnea.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Your breathing stops in the deep sleep stage, causing you to wake up.”

  “I understand. And is this dangerous?”

  “Persistent insomnia is. You should make changes to your diet, you should quit smoking, and you should avoid stress. All those factors can induce it.”

  “I see. Where do I sign?”

  “Here is your discharge form,” he said, sliding a paper across the desk. I signed it.

  “There are also medications that could help with sleep. I sent the information to your psychiatrist in London. Sure you can’t stay longer? There would be a few more tests we’d need to perform.”

  “Sure.”

  “Well then, glad to have made your acquaintance.”

  I arrived in London at 4 PM. After checking in at the hotel, I turned on my laptop. Among my emails, there was the doctor’s “satisfactory” evaluation and a private message in which she asked me to phone her before returning to the Middle East. On getting the good news, I opened the minibar and downed two little bottles of Jack Daniels, whereupon I went out to Hyde Park and sat about on a bench.

  Once it began getting dark, I stood up and went to the same Irish bar I’d been in a few days earlier. I had dinner, but I was not in the mood for the crowd that flooded in for the 9 PM match on the tele. By 9:30 I was back in my room, plugged my phone in to charge, and sprawled out on the bed.

  I slept like a baby.

  Crow Soup

  The mist was rising from the freshly plowed farmland. The fog lights of the Ford Focus illuminated the bare trees bordering
the fields. There was no traffic on the road. Kristóf’s dad gripped the steering wheel with both hands. He was anxious. He waited for the man’s silhouette to finally appear by the side of the road. More than once he raised a cigarette to his mouth, but he always returned it to its pack when he reached to pull down the window. He didn’t want to let the early morning wind into the car, which was warm from breathing.

  Kristóf saw nothing of daybreak. He was asleep, curled up on the back seat under a striped blue blanket, his hands tucked under his head as a makeshift pillow. His father often looked back to be sure the kid didn’t push the blanket off himself. The little boy sometimes stirred and mumbled something in his sleep.

  It was a cool, early spring day. They were just six kilometers from Vitnyéd, a village on the plains of western Hungary.

  The time on the dashboard above the radio read 5 AM. The cell phone rang. Taking his right hand off the steering wheel, Kristóf’s dad reached into the pocket of his jacket on the passenger seat.

  “We’ll be there soon,” he said into the phone.

  “Where are we going?” came Kristóf’s voice from the back seat.

  His dad glanced into the rearview mirror. The kid was with him for three days, on a parental visitation.

  “We’re going to visit an old lady,” he replied.

  “What lady?”

  “A lady who’s very sick.”

  “Why is the lady sick?”

  “Because she’s old,” said Kristóf’s dad.

  “I don’t like old people.”

  “Compared to you I’m old, too. The lady we’re going to visit is like a second mother to me.”

  A man’s silhouette loomed on the right side of the road, just beside the sign that read, “Vitynéd.” Kristóf’s dad slowed, stopped, and got out of the car. Kristóf watched through the window as his dad stepped over to the figure outside. For a couple of seconds the two men just stood there, staring at each other with bemused expressions, but then they hugged and together returned to the car. Kristóf’s dad opened the door and removed his jacket from the passenger seat. The other man got in. Only now could Kristóf get a closer look at him. He was a large, dark-skinned man, in a scuffed leather jacket and a checkered flannel shirt.