The Madman's Tale (9 page)

“The nurses outside behind the bars, Miss …”

“Ah, Miss Wrong and Miss Watchful?”

“Wright and Winchell.”

“Correct. And there are other nurses as well, like Nurse Mitchell, who is Nurse Bitch-All and Nurse Smith, who is Nurse Bones because she looks a little like Lanky, there, and Short Blond, who seems quite beautiful. There’s a social worker named Evans—called Mister Evil—whom you’re going to meet soon enough, because he’s more or less in charge of this dormitory. And Gulp-a-pill’s nasty secretary’s name is Miss Lewis, but someone dubbed her Miss Luscious, which she apparently hates, but can’t do anything about, because it has stuck to her as tightly as those sweaters she likes to wear. She seems to be a real piece of work. It might all seem very confusing, but you’ll get it all straight in a couple of days.”

Francis took a quick look around, then he whispered, “Are all the people in here crazy?”

The Fireman shook his head. “It’s a hospital for crazy folks, C-Bird, but not everyone is. Some are just old, and senile, which makes them seem a little odd. Some are retarded, so they’re slow on the uptake, but precisely what got them landed here is a mystery to me. Some folks seem merely depressed. Others are hearing voices. Do you hear voices, C-Bird?”

Francis was unsure how to answer. It seemed as if deep within him there was a debate going on; he could hear arguments suddenly swinging back and forth, like so many electric currents between poles.

“I don’t want to say,” Francis replied hesitantly.

The Fireman nodded. “Some things it’s best to keep to oneself.”

He put his arm around Francis for a moment, steering him toward the exit door.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you what there is of our home.”

“Do you hear voices, Peter?” Francis asked.

The Fireman shook his head. “Nope.”

“You don’t?”

“No. But it might be a good thing if I did,” he replied. He was smiling as he spoke, just the slightest touch at the corners of his mouth, in a way that Francis would come to recognize soon enough, that seemed to mirror much about the Fireman, for he was the sort of person who seemed to see both sadness and humor in things that others would see as merely moments.

“Are you crazy?” Francis asked.

Again the Fireman smiled, this time letting out a little laugh. “Are you crazy, C-Bird?”

Francis took a deep breath. “I might be,” he said. “I don’t know.”

The Fireman shook his head. “I don’t think so, C-Bird. Didn’t think so when I first saw you, either. At least, not too crazy. Maybe a little crazy, but what’s wrong with that?”

Francis nodded. This reassured him. “But what about you?” he continued.

The Fireman hesitated, before replying.

“I’m something far worse,” he said slowly. “That’s why I’m here. They’re supposed to find out what’s wrong with me.”

“What’s worse than being crazy?” Francis asked.

The Fireman coughed once. “Well,” he said, “I guess there’s no harm. You’ll find out sooner or later. I kill people.”

And with those words, he led Francis out into the corridor of the hospital.

A
nd that was it, I suppose.

Big Black told me not to make friends, to be cautious, to keep to myself, and obey the rules, and I did my very best to follow everything he advised except that first admonition, and, when I look back, I wonder if he wasn’t right about that, as well. But madness is also truly about the worst sorts of loneliness, and I was both mad and alone, and so when Peter the Fireman took me aside, I welcomed his friendship along the descending road into the world of the Western State Hospital, and I did not ask him what he meant when he said those words, although I guessed that I would find out soon enough because the hospital was a place where everyone had secrets but few of them were kept close
.

My younger sister questioned me once, long after I was released, what was the worst aspect of the hospital, and after much consideration, I told her: the routine. The hospital existed as a system of small disjointed moments that amounted to nothing, that were established merely to get Monday to Tuesday, and Tuesday to Wednesday and so on, week after week, month after month. Everyone at the hospital had been committed by allegedly well-meaning relatives, or the cold and inefficient social services system, after a perfunctory judicial hearing where we often weren’t present, under thirty- or sixty-day orders. But we learned quick enough that these phony deadlines were as much delusions as were the voices we heard, for the hospital could renew the court orders as long as a determination was made that you continued to be a threat to yourself or to others, which, in our mad states
,
seemingly was always the determination. So, a thirty-day commitment order could easily become a twenty-year stay. A simple downhill path, marching steadily from psychosis to senility. Shortly after our arrival we all learned that we were a little bit like aging munitions, being stored out of sight, deteriorating with every passing moment, rusting and becoming increasingly less stable
.

The first thing one recognized at the Western State Hospital was the biggest lie of them all—that no one was truly trying to help you get better, no one was actually trying to help you go home. A lot was said, and a lot was done, ostensibly to help you readjust to society, but these were mostly shows and fictions, like the release hearings that were held from time to time. The hospital was like tar on the road. It stuck you in place. A famous poet once quite elegantly and naively wrote that home was the place where they always took you in. Maybe for poets, but not for madmen. The hospital was about keeping you out of the sane world’s eyes. We were all bound by medications that dulled the senses, stymied the voices, but never did completely away with anything hallucinatory, so that vibrant delusions still echoed and resounded throughout the corridors. But what was truly evil about our lives was how quickly we all came to accept those delusions. After a few days in the hospital, it didn’t bother me when little Napoleon would stand next to my bed and start talking energetically of troop movements at Waterloo, and how if only the British squares had cracked under the assault of his cavalry, or Blücher had been delayed upon the road, or had The Old Guard not withered under the hail of grapeshot and musketry, how all of Europe would have been changed forever. I was never exactly sure that Napoleon actually thought he was the emperor of France, though at moments he behaved that way, or whether he simply obsessed with all these things because he was a small man, shunted away in a loony bin with the rest of us, and he more than anything wanted to signify something in life
.

All of us mad folks did; it was our greatest hope and dream, we wanted to be something. What afflicted us was the elusiveness in achieving that goal, and so, instead we substituted delusion. On my floor alone, there were a half-dozen Jesuses, or at least folks who insisted they could communicate with Him directly, one Mohammad who fell to his knees three times a day, praying to Mecca, although he was often pointed in the wrong direction, a couple of George Washingtons or assorted other presidents, from Lincoln and Jefferson right up to LBJ and Tricky Dick, and more than a few folks, like the truly harmless but occasionally terrifying Lanky, who were on the lookout for signs of Satan or any of his minions. There were folks obsessed with germs, people terrified of unseen bacteria floating in the air, others who believed that every bolt of lightning during a thunderstorm was aimed directly at them, and so they cowered in the corners. There were patients who said nothing, spending days on end in total silence, and others who blasted obscenities right and left. Some washed their hands twenty or thirty times per day, others never bathed. We were an army of compulsions and obsessions, delusions
and despairs. One of the men that I came to like was called Newsman. He wandered the hallways like some present day town crier, spouting headlines, an encyclopedia of current events. At least, in his own mad way, he kept us connected to the outside world, and reminded us that events were taking place beyond the walls of the hospital. And there was even one famously overweight woman, who occupied hours playing a mean game of Ping-Pong in the dayroom, but who spent most of her time considering the issues connected with being the direct reincarnation of Cleopatra. Sometimes, however, Cleo only thought she was Elizabeth Taylor in the movie. One way or the other, she could quote virtually every line from the film, even Richard Burton’s, or the entirety of Shakespeare’s play, as she slammed another winner past whoever dared play the game against her
.

When I think back, it all seems so ridiculous, I think I should laugh out loud
.

But it wasn’t. It was a place of unspeakable pain
.

That is what the people who have never been mad cannot understand. How much every delusion hurts. How reality just seems beyond one’s grasp. A world of desperation and frustration. Sisyphus and his boulder would have fit in well at the Western State Hospital
.

I went to my daily group sessions with Mister Evans, whom we called Mister Evil. A wiry psychiatric social worker with a sunken chest and an imperious attitude that seemed to suggest that he was somehow superior because he went home at the end of the day, and we did not, which we resented, but which was unfortunately the truest kind of superiority. In these sessions, we were encouraged to speak openly about why we were in the hospital, and what we would do when we were released
.

Everyone lied. Wonderful, unbridled, optimistic, runaway, enthusiastic lies
.

Except Peter the Fireman, who rarely contributed. He sat beside me politely listening to whatever fantastic fiction either I or one of the others came up with, about getting a regular job, or returning to school, or maybe joining an uplifting program that might serve to help others afflicted as we were. All these conversations were lies with one singular and hopeless desire at their core: to appear to be normal. Or, at least normal enough to be allowed to go home
.

At the start I sometimes wondered if there hadn’t been some private but very tenuous agreement between the two men, because Mister Evil never called on Peter the Fireman to add something to the discussion, even when it turned away from ourselves and our troubles into something interesting, like current events such as the hostage crisis, unrest in the inner cities, or the Red Sox aspirations for the upcoming year—all subjects that the Fireman knew a great deal about. There was some malevolence the two men shared, but one was patient, the other administrator, and at the beginning it was hidden away
.

In an odd way, I very shortly came to think as if I was on some desperate expedition
to the farthest, most desolate regions of the earth, cut off from civilization, traveling deeper and farther away from all that was familiar into uncharted lands. Harsh lands
.

And soon to be harsher, still
.

The wall beckoned me, even as the phone in the corner of the kitchen started to ring. I knew it would be one of my sisters, calling to find out how I was, which was, of course, the way I always am, and, I presume, the way I always will be. So, I ignored it
.

Within a few weeks, what remained of the winter seemed to have retreated in sullen defeat, and Francis moved down a corridor at the hospital, searching for something to do. A woman to his right was mumbling something plaintive about lost babies, and rocking herself back and forth, holding her arms in front of her as if they contained something precious, when they did not. Ahead of him, an old man in pajamas, with wrinkled skin and a shock of unruly silver hair, stared forlornly at a stark white wall, until Little Black came along and gently turned him by the shoulders, so that he was now staring out a barred window. The repositioning with its new vista brought a smile to the old man’s face and Little Black patted the man on the arm, reassuring him, then ambled over toward Francis.

“C-Bird, how you doing today?”

“I’m okay, Mister Moses. Just slightly bored.”

“They are watching soap operas in the dayroom.”

“Those shows don’t do much for me.”

“You don’t get behind that C-Bird? Start in to wondering just what’s gonna happen to all those folks with all those strange lives. Lots of twists and turns and mystery that keeps folks tuning in. That don’t interest you?”

“I suppose it should, Mister Moses, but I don’t know. It just doesn’t seem real to me.”

“Well, there’s also some people playing some cards. Some board games, too.”

Francis shook his head.

“Play a game of Ping-Pong with Cleo, maybe?”

Francis smiled and continued to shake his head. “What, Mister Moses, you think I’m so crazy I’d take her on?”

This comment made Little Black laugh out loud. “No, C-Bird. Not even you that crazy,” he replied.

“Can I get an outdoor slip?” Francis asked abruptly.

Little Black looked at his wristwatch. “I got some folks going outside this
afternoon. Maybe plant some flowers on this fine day. Take a little walk. Get some of that fresh air. You go see Mister Evans, he fix you up, maybe. It’s okay with me.”