We Can Build You

17

When my father and Chester got me back to Boise, the next day, they discovered that Doctor Horstowski could not--or did not want to--treat me. He did however give me several psychological tests for the purpose of diagnosis. One I remember involved listening to a tape of voices which mumbled at a distance, only a few phrases now and then being at all distinguishable. The task was to write down what each of their successive conversations was about.

I think Horstowski made his diagnosis on my results in that test, because I heard each conversation as dealing with me. In detail I heard them outlining my faults, outlining my failings, analyzing me for what I was, diagnosing my behavior... . I heard them insulting both me and Pris and our relationship.

All Horstowski said was merely, "Louis, each time you heard the word 'this' you thought they were saying 'Pris.' That seemed to make him despondent. "And what you thought was 'Louis' was, generally speaking, the two words 'do we.' "He glanced at me bleakly, and thereupon washed his hands of me.

I was not out of the reach of the psychiatric profession, however, because Doctor Horstowski turned me over to the Federal Commissioner of the Bureau of Mental Health in Area Five, the Pacific Northwest. I had heard of him. His name was Doctor Ragland Nisea and it was his job to make final determination on all commitment proceedings originating in his area. Single-handed, since 1980, he had committed many thousands of disturbed people to the Bureau's clinics scattered around the country; he was considered a brilliant psychiatrist and diagnostician and it had been a joke for years among us that sooner or later we would fall into Nisea's hands; it was a joke everyone made and which a certain percentage of us lived to see come true.

"You'll find Doctor Nisea to be capable and sympathetic," Horstowski told me as he drove me over to the Bureau's office in Boise.

"It's nice of you to take me over," I said.

"I'm in and out of there every day. I'd have to make this trip anyhow. What I'm doing is sparing you the appearance in court and the jury costs... as you know, Nisea makes final determination anyhow, and you're better off in his hands than before a lay jury."

I nodded; it was so.

"You're not feeling hostile about this, are you?" Horstowski asked. "It's no stigma to be placed in a Bureau clinic... happens every minute of the day--one out of nine people have crippling mental illness which makes it impossible for them..." He droned on; I paid no attention. I had heard it all before, on the countless TV ads, in the infinitely many magazine articles.

But as a matter of fact I did feel hostile toward him for washing his hands of me and turning me over to the mental health people, even though I knew that by law he was required to if he felt I was psychotic. And I felt hostile toward everyone else, including the two simulacra; as we drove through the sunny, familiar streets of Boise between his office and the Bureau, I felt that everyone was a betrayer and enemy of mine, that I was surrounded by an alien, hating world.

All this and much more had of course shown up in the tests which Horstowski had given me. In the Rorschach Test, for instance, I had interpreted each blot and picture as full of crashing, banging, jagged machinery designed from the start of time to swing into frantic, lethal motion with the intention of doing me bodily injury. In fact, on the drive over to the Bureau to see Doctor Nisea, I distinctly saw lines of cars following us, due no doubt to my being back in town; the people in the cars had been tipped off the moment I arrived at the Boise airport.

"Can Doctor Nisea help me?" I asked Horstowski as we slid to the curb by a large, modern office building of many floors and windows. Now I had begun to feel acute panic. "I mean, the mental health people have all those new techniques which even you don't have, all the latest--"

"It depends on what you mean by help," Horstowski said, opening the car door and beckoning me to accompany him into the building.

So here I stood at last where so many had come before me: the Federal Bureau of Mental Health, in its diagnostic divison, the first step, perhaps, in a new era of my life.

How right Pris had been when she had told me that I had within me a deeply unstable streak which someday might bring me into trouble. Hallucinated, weary and hopeless, I had at last been taken into tow by the authorities, as she herself had been a few years ago. I had not seen Horstowski's diagnosis, but I knew without asking that he had found schizophrenic responses in me... . I felt them inside me, too. Why deny what was obvious?

I was lucky that help, on a vast collective scale, was available for me; god knew I was wretched in such a state, close to suicide or to total collapse from which there might be no recovery. And they had caught it so early--there was a distinct hope for me. Specifically, I realized I was in the early catatonic excitement stage, before any permanent maladjustment pattern such as the dreaded hebephrenia or paranoia had set in. I had the illness in its simple, original form, where it was still accessible to therapy.

I could thank my father and brother for their timely action. And yet, although I knew all this, I accompanied Horstowski into the Bureau's office in a state of trembling dread, conscious still of my hostility and of the hostility all around me. I had insight and yet I did not; one part of me knew and understood, the rest seethed like a captured animal that yearns to get back to its own environment, its own familiar places.

At this moment I could speak for only a small portion of my mind, while the remainder went its own way.

This made clear to me the reasons why the McHeston Act was so necessary. A truly psychotic individual, such as myself, _could on his own never seek aid_; he had to be coerced by law. That was what it meant to be psychotic.

Pris, I thought. You were like this, once; they caught you there in school, picked you out and separated you from the others, hauled you off as I'm being hauled off. And they did manage to restore you to your society. Can they succeed with me?

And, I thought, will I be like you when the therapy is over? What former, more adjusted state in my history will they restore me to?

How will I feel about you then? Will I remember you?

And if I do, will I still care about you as I do now?

Doctor Horstowski deposited me in the public waiting room and I sat for an hour with all the other bewildered, sick people, until at last a nurse came and summoned me. In a small inner office I was introduced to Doctor Nisea. He turned out to be a good-looking man not much older than myself, with soft brown eyes, thick hair that was well-combed, and a cautious, apologetic manner which I had never encountered outside the field of veterinary medicine. The man had a sympathetic interest which he displayed at once, making sure that I was comfortable and that I understood why I was there.

I said, "I am here because I no longer have any basis by which I can communicate my wants and emotions to other humans." While waiting I had been able to work it out exactly. "So for me there's no longer any possibility of satisfying my needs in the world of real people; I have to turn inward to a fantasy life instead."

Leaning back in his chair Doctor Nisea studied me reflectively. "And this you want to change."

"I want to achieve satisfaction, the real kind."

"Have you nothing at all in common with other people?"

"Nothing. My reality lies entirely outside the world that others experience. You, for instance; to you it would be a fantasy, if I told you about it. About her, I mean."

"Who is she?"

"Pris," I said.

He waited, but I did not go on.

"Doctor Horstowski talked to me briefly on the phone about you," he said presently. "You apparently have the dynamism of difficulty which we call the Magna Mater type of schizophrenia. However, by law, I must administer first the James Benjamin Proverb Test to you and then the Soviet Vigotsky-Luria Block Test." He nodded and from behind me a nurse appeared with note pad and pencil. "Now, I will give you several proverbs and you are to tell me what they mean. Are you ready?"

"Yes," I said.

"'When the cat's away the mice will play.'"

I pondered and then said, "In the absence of authority there will be wrong-doing."

In this manner we continued, and I did all right until Doctor Nisea got to what turned out for me to be the fatal number six.

"'A rolling stone gathers no moss.'"

Try as I might I could not remember the meaning. At last I hazarded, "Well, it means a person who's always active and never pauses to reflect--" No, that didn't sound right. I tried again. "That means a man who is always active and keeps growing in mental and moral stature won't grow stale." He was looking at me more intently, so I added by way of clarification, "I mean, a man who's active and doesn't let grass grow under his feet, he'll get ahead in life."

Doctor Nisea said, "I see." And I knew that I had revealed, for the purposes of legal diagnosis, a schizophrenic thinking disorder.

"What does it mean?" I asked. "Did I get it backward?"

"Yes, I'm afraid so. The generally-accepted meaning of the proverb is the opposite of what you've given; it is generally taken to mean that a person who--"

"You don't have to tell me," I broke in. "I remember--I really knew it. A person who's unstable will never acquire anything of value."

Doctor Nisea nodded and went on to the next proverb. But the stipulation of the statute had been met; I showed a formal thinking impairment.

After the proverbs I made a stab at classifying the blocks, but without success. Both Doctor Nisea and I were relieved when I gave up and pushed the blocks away.

"That's about it, then," Nisea said. He nodded to the nurse to leave. "We can go ahead and fill out the forms. Do you have a preference clinic-wise? In my opinion, the best of the lot is the Los Angeles one; although perhaps it's because I know that better than the others. The Kasanin Clinic at Kansas City--"

"Send me there," I said eagerly.

"Any special reason?"

"I've had a number of close friends come out of there," I said evasively.

He looked at me as if he suspected there was a deeper reason.

"And it has a good reputation. Almost everyone I know who's been genuinely helped in their mental illness has been at Kasanin. Not that the other clinics aren't good, but that's the best. My aunt Gretchen, who's at the Harry Stack Sullivan Clinic at San Diego; she was the first mentally ill person I knew, and there've been a lot since, naturally, because such a large part of the public has it, as we're told every day on TV. There was my cousin Leo Roggis. He's still in one of the clinics somewhere. My English teacher in high school, Mr. Haskins; he died in a clinic. There was an old Italian down the street from me who was on a pension, George Oliveri; he had catatonic excitements and they carted him off. I remember a buddy of mine in the Service, Art Boles; he had 'phrenia and went to the Fromm-Reichmann Clinic at Rochester, New York. There was Alys Johnson, a girl I went with in college; she's at Samuel Anderson Clinic in Area Three; that's at Baton Rouge, La. And a man I worked for, Ed Yeats; he contracted 'phrenia and that turned into acute paranoia. Waldo Dangerfield, another buddy of mine. Gloria Milstein, a girl I knew; she's god knows where, but she was spotted by means of a psych test when she was applying for a typing job. The Federal people picked her up... she was short, dark-haired, very attractive, and no one ever guessed until that test showed up. And John Franklin Mann, a used car salesman I knew; he tested out as a dilapidated 'phrenic and was carted off, I think to Kasanin, because he's got relatives in Missouri. And Marge Morrison, another girl I knew. She's out again; I'm sure she was cured at Kasanin. All of them who went to Kasanin seemed as good as new, to me, if not better; Kasanin didn't merely meet the requirements of the McHeston Act; it genuinely healed. Or so it seemed to me."

Doctor Nisea wrote down _Kasanin Clinic at K. C._ on the Government forms and I breathed a sigh of relief. "Yes," he murmured, "Kansas City is said to be good. The President spent two months there, you know."

"I did hear that," I admitted. Everyone knew the heroic story of the President's bout with mental illness in his midteens, with his subsequent triumph during his twenties.

"And now, before we separate," Doctor Nisea said, "I'd like to tell you a little about the Magna Mater type of schizophrenia."

"Good," I said. "I'd be anxious to hear."

"As a matter of fact it has been my special interest," Doctor Nisea said. "I did several monographs on it. You know the Anderson theory which identifies each subform of schizophrenia with a subform of religion."

I nodded. The Anderson view of 'phrenia had been popularized in almost every slick magazine in America; it was the current fashion.

"The primary form which 'phrenia takes is the heliocentric form, the sun-worship form where the sun is deified, is seen in fact as the patient's father. You have not experienced that. The heliocentric form is the most primitive and fits with the earliest known religion, solar worship, including the great heliocentric cult of the Roman period, Mithraism. Also the earlier Persian solar cult, the worship of Mazda."

"Yes," I said, nodding.

"Now, the Magma Mater, the form you have, was the great female deity cult of the Mediterranean at the time of the Mycenaean Civilization. Ishtar, Cybele, Attis, then later Athene herself... finally the Virgin Mary. What has happened to you is that your anima, that is, the embodiment of your unconsciousness, its archetype, has been projected outward, onto the cosmos, and there it is perceived and worshiped."

"I see," I said.

"There, it is experienced as a dangerous, hostile, and incredibly powerful yet attractive being. The embodiment of all the pairs of opposites: it possesses the totality of life, yet is dead; all love, yet is cold; all intelligence, yet is given to a destructive analytical trend which is not creative; yet it is seen as the source of creativity itself. These are the opposites which slumber in the unconscious, which are transcended by gestalts in consciousness. When the opposites are experienced directly, as you are experiencing them, they cannot be fathomed or dealt with; they will eventually disrupt your ego and annihilate it, for as you know, in their original form they are archetypes and cannot be assimilated by the ego."

"I see," I said.

"So this battle is the great struggle of the conscious mind to come to an understanding with its own collective aspects, its unconsciousness, and is doomed to fail. The archetypes of the unconscious must be experienced indirectly, through the anima, and in a benign form free of their bipolar qualities. For this to come about, you must hold an utterly different relationship to your unconscious; as it stands, you are passive and it possesses all the powers of decision."

"Right," I said.

"Your consciousness has been impoverished so that it no longer can act. It has no authority except that which it derives from unconsciousness, and right now it is split off from unconsciousness. So no rapport can be established by way of the anima." Doctor Nisea concluded, "You have a relatively mild form of 'phrenia. But it is still a psychosis and still requires treatment at a Federal clinic. I'd like to see you again, when you get back from Kansas City; I know the improvement in your condition will be phenomenal." He smiled at me with genuine warmth, and I smiled back at him. Standing, he held out his hand and we shook.

I was on my way to the Kasanin Clinic at Kansas City.

In a formal hearing before witnesses Doctor Nisea presented me with a summons, asking if there was any reason why I should not be taken at once to Kansas City. These legal formalities had a chilly quality that made me more anxious to be on my way than ever. Nisea offered me a twenty-four-hour period in which to conclude my business affairs, but I declined it; I wanted to leave at once. In the end, we settled on eight hours. Plane reservations were made for me by Nisea's staff and I left the Bureau in a taxi, to return to Ontario until it was time for me to take my big trip east.

I had the taxi take me to Maury's house, where I had left a good part of my possessions. Soon I was at the door knocking.

No one was home. I tried the knob; it was unlocked. So I let myself in to the silent, deserted house.

There in the bathroom was the tile mural which Pris had been working on that first night. It was done, now. For a time I stood staring up at it, marveling at the colors and the design itself, the mermaid and fish, the octopus with shoe-button bright eyes: she had finished him at last.

One blue tile had become loose. I plucked it entirely off, rubbed the sticky stuff from its back, and put it in my coat pocket.

In case I should forget you, I thought to myself. You and your bathroom mural, your mermaid with pink-tiled tits, your many lovely and monstrous creations bobbing and alive beneath the surface of the water. The placid, eternal water... she had done the line above my head, almost eight feet high. Above that, sky. Very little of it; the sky played no role in the scheme of creation, here.

As I stood there I heard from the front of the house a thumping and banging. Someone was after me, but I remained where I was. What did it matter? I waited, and presently Maury Rock came rushing in, panting; seeing me he stopped short.

"Louis Rosen," he said. "And in the bathroom."

"I'm just leaving."

"A neighbor phoned me at the office; she saw you pull up in a cab and enter and she knew I wasn't home."

"Spying on me." I was not surprised. "They all are, everywhere I go." I continued to stand, hands in my pockets, gazing up at the wall of color.

"She just thought I ought to know. I figured it was you." He saw, then, my suitcase and the articles I had collected. "You're really nuts. You barely get back here from Seattle-- when did you get in? Couldn't be before this morning. And now you're off again somewhere else."

I said, "I have to go, Maury. It's the law."

He stared at me, his jaw dropping gradually; then he flushed. "I'm sorry, Louis. I mean, saying you were a nut."

"Yes, but I am. I took the Benjamin Proverb Test and the block thing today and couldn't pass either one. The commitment's already been served on me."

Rubbing his jaw he murmured, "Who turned you in?"

"My father and Chester."

"Hell's bells. Your own blood."

"They saved me from paranoia. Listen, Maury." I turned to face him. "Do you know where she is?"

"If I did, honest to god, Louis, I'd tell you. Even if you have been certified."

"You know where they're sending me for therapy?"

"Kansas City?"

I nodded.

"Maybe you'll find her there. Maybe the mental health people caught up with her and sent her back and forgot to let me know about it."

"Yeah, maybe so," I said.

"Coming up to me he whacked me on the back. "Good luck, you son of a bitch. I know you'll pull out of it. You got 'phrenia, I presume; that's all there is, anymore."

"I've got Magna Mater 'phrenia." Reaching into my coat I got out the tile and showed it to him, saying, "To remember her. I hope you don't mind; it's your house and mural, after all."

"Take it. Take a whole fish. Take a tit." He started toward the mermaid. "No kidding, Louis; we'll pry a pink tit loose and you can carry that around with you, okay?"

"This is fine."

We both stood awkwardly facing each other for a time.

"How's it feel to be 'phrenic?" Maury said at last.

"Bad, Maury. Very, very bad."

"That's what I thought; that's what Pris always said. She was glad to get over it."

"That going to Seattle, that was it coming on. What they call catatonic excitement, a sense of urgency, that you have to do something. It always turns out to be the wrong thing; it accomplishes nothing. And you realize that and then you have panic and then you get it, the real psychosis. I heard voices and saw--" I broke off.

"Whet did you see?"

"Pris."

"Keerist," Maury said.

"Will you drive me to the airport?"

"Oh sure, buddy. Sure." He nodded vigorously.

"I don't have to go until late tonight. So maybe we could have dinner together. I don't feel like seeing my family again, after what happened; I'm sort of ashamed."

Maury said, "How come you speak so rationally if you're a 'phrenic?"

"I'm not under tension right now, so I've been able to focus my attention. That's what an attack of schizophrenia is, a weakening of attention so that unconscious processes gain mastery and take over the field. They capture awareness, very archaic processes, archetypal, such as nonschizophrenics haven't had since they were five."

"You think crazy things, like everyone's against you and you're the center of the universe?"

"No," I said. "Doctor Nisea explained to me that it's the heliocentric schizophrenics who--"

"Nisea? Ragland Nisea? Of course; by law you'd have to see him. He's the one who sent Pris up back in the beginning; he gave her the Vigotsky-Luria Block Test in his own office, personally. I always wanted to meet him."

"Brilliant man. And very humane."

"Are you dangerous?"

"Only if I'm riled."

"Should I leave you, then?"

"I guess so," I said. "But I'll see you tonight, here at the house, for dinner. About six; that'll give us time to make the flight."

"Can I do anything for you? Get you anything?"

"Naw. Thanks anyhow."

Maury hung around the house for a little while and then I heard the front door slam. The house became silent once more. I was alone, as before.

Presently I resumed my slow packing.

Maury and I had dinner together and then he drove me to the Boise airfield in his white Jaguar. I watched the streets go by, and every woman that I saw looked--for an instant, at least--like Pris; each time I thought it was but it wasn't. Maury noticed my absorption but said nothing.

The flight which the mental health people had obtained for me was first-class and on the new Australian rocket, the C-80. The Bureau, I reflected, certainly had plenty of the public's funds to disburse. It took only half an hour to reach the Kansas City airport, so before nine that night I was stepping from the rocket, looking around me for the mental health people who were supposed to receive me.

At the bottom of the ramp a young man and woman approached me, both of them wearing gay, bright Scotch plaid coats. These were my party; in Boise I had been instructed to watch for the coats.

"Mr. Rosen," the young man said expectantly.

"Right," I said, starting across the field toward the building.

One of them fell in on either side of me. "A bit chilly tonight," the girl said. They were not over twenty, I thought; two clear-eyed youngsters who undoubtedly had joined the FBMH out of idealism and were doing their heroic task right this moment. They walked with brisk, eager steps, moving me toward the baggage window, making low-keyed conversation about nothing in particular... . I would have felt relaxed by it except that in the glare of the beacons which guided the ships in I could already see that the girl looked astonishingly like Pris.

"What's your name?" I asked her.

"Julie," she said. "And this is Ralf."

"Did you--do you remember a patient you had here a few months ago, a young woman from Boise named Pris Frauenzimmer?"

"I'm sorry," Julie said, "I just came to the Kasanin Clinic last week; we both did." She indicated her companion. "We just joined the Mental Health Corps this spring."

"Do you enjoy it?" I asked. "Did it work out the way you had expected?"

"Oh, it's terribly rewarding," the girl said breathlessly. "Isn't it, Ralf?" He nodded. "We wouldn't drop out for anything."

"Do you know anything about me?" I asked, as we stood waiting for the baggage machine to serve up my suitcases.

"Only that Doctor Shedd will be working with you," Ralf said.

"And he's superb," Julie said. "You'll love him. And he does so much for people; he has performed so many cures!"

My suitcases appeared; Ralf took one and I took the other and we started through the building toward the street entrance.

"This is a nice airport," I said. "I never saw it before."

"They just completed it this year," Raif said. "It's the first able to handle both domestic and extra-t flights; you'll be able to leave for the Moon right from here."

"Not me," I said, but Ralf did not hear me. Soon we were in a 'copter, the property of the Kasanin Clinic, flying above the rooftops of Kansas City. The air was cool and crisp and below us a million lights glowed in countless patterns and aimless constellations which were not patterns at all, only clusters.

"Do you think," I said, "that every time someone dies, a new light winks on in Kansas City?"

Both Ralf and Julie smiled at my witticism.

"Do you two know what would have happened to me," I said, "if there was no compulsory mental health program? I'd be dead by now. This all saved my life, literally."

To that the two of them smiled once more.

"Thank god the McHeston Act passed Congress," I said.

They both nodded solemnly.

"You don't know what it's like," I said, "to have the catatonic urgency, that craving. It drives you on and on and then all at once you collapse; you know you're not right in the head, you're living in a realm of shadows. In front of my father and brother I had intercourse with a girl who didn't exist except in my mind. I heard people commenting about us, while we were doing it, through the door."

Ralf asked, "You did it through the door?"

"He heard them commenting, he means," Julie said. "The voices that took note of what he was doing and expressed disapproval. Isn't that it, Mr. Rosen?"

"Yes," I said, "and it's a measure of the collapse of my ability to communicate that you had to translate that. At one time I could easily have phrased that in a clear manner. It wasn't until Doctor Nisea got to the part about the rolling stone that I saw what a break had come about between my personal language and that of my society. And then I understood all the trouble I had been having up to then."

"Ah yes," Julie said, "number six in the Benjamin Proverb Test."

"I wonder which proverb Pris missed years ago," I said, "that caused Nisea to single her out."

"Who is Pris?" Julie asked.

"I would think," Ralf said, "that she's the girl with whom he had intercourse."

"You hit the nail on the head," I told him. "She was here, once, before either of you. Now she's well again; they discharged her on parole. She's my Great Mother, Doctor Nisea says. My life is devoted to worshiping Pris as if she were a goddess. I've projected her archetype onto the universe; I see nothing but her, everything else to me is unreal. This trip we're taking, you two, Doctor Nisea, the whole Kansas City Clinic--it's all just shadows."

There seemed to be no way to continue the conversation after what I had said. So we rode the rest of the distance in silence.