Collected Short Fiction, page 61
II
MISS GRANT came in, hesitantly and highly scented. Dr. Scott was relieved. It was easy to carry off the confidence trick with Miss Grant, because the lady had none at all herself. Too, she had something of a fellow-feeling with Miss Grant, perhaps because they were the only two women in this present concern, or because they were both unsure of themselves and scared of people.
Miss Grant was forty-seven, thin, small, flat-chested, with an ugly beak of a nose and a mustache, all of which would have quite spoiled her chances of matrimony even if she were rich, intelligent, and gracious—and she was none of these.
Poor Miss Grant, thought Dr. Scott, she’s never had a chance. Miss Grant thought so too, and was very anxious about it, especially as her ovary cycle had ended. So she screened her drawbacks as best she could with layers of cosmetics, clouds of scent, and continual chatter designed to divert attention from her physical defects and direct it to the various calamities surrounding her.
“Oh, dear, Doctor, what is it? Why have you sent for me at this time? I thought I was only supposed to come in the afternoons. Have I got to lie on that dreadful couch again and answer all those questions? I don’t think that couch is very safe. One of the legs is broken, I think. Yesterday, I distinctly felt it swaying—”
“No, Miss Grant, we’re through with the couch. We’re moving on to the next stage. You’re progressing so well, you see. Please take a chair.”
Miss Grant perched herself on the edge of a chair, dubiously. Then she changed her mind and chose another chair. Dr. Scott watched her dithering and wondered how this bundle of nerves ever came to tie her pet cat on an ironing board and operate on it with a knife. She’d not got to the bottom of that yet. Miss Grant said “Tut-tut” and moved again.
“Dear me, there seems to be an awful draft wherever I sit. I can’t—”
The door opened. It was Grandis and Walker together—a beautiful contrast.
In a rare whimsical moment she’d penciled “Delusions of Grandis” on the margin of the actor’s report. He was sixty, a tall fellow with a fine figure and a graying, leonine head. Wherever he was, he projected his voice to the back of the balcony. It was a resonant voice. He had an excellent stage presence, good health, energy, enthusiasm. He had everything an actor needed—except acting ability.
He’d been on the boards for over forty years, never once made Broadway, never risen out of the stock companies. He’d achieved this record solely by his knack for throwing himself wholly into a part, making it entirely his own, with no resemblance to the author’s creation. Hamlet, Algernon Moncrieff, Dick Dudgeon, the Reverend Davidson—they all somehow became Martin Grandis, loudmouth and show-off. He shouted and went through the motions.
Recently, however, he’d developed a tendency to go through the motions offstage. He was grieved that he hadn’t been “discovered” yet, and as time was running out he put on a continuous performance, tirelessly exhibiting his talent. When someone had recognized this talent and offered him a job as a fairground barker, Grandis had fled over the border and joined the 42%.
He made an imperial entrance now, confiding in a bellow to Walker that “Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look.”
Actually, it was Walker who looked lean and hungry. He’d been a clerk, and looked apologetic about it. He didn’t think he’d ever been a good clerk. He didn’t think he was good at anything. He’d been told this so many times since infancy by his step-mother that he believed it, and slouched and drooped about, apologizing for his existence.
When his boss had sacked him, Walker had become doubtful of his ability to do anything at all, like shaving, or eating, or talking. They sent him to the clinic.
“Please sit down,” said Dr. Scott. “We’re doing it a little differently from now on. We’re going to tackle it together.”
AS THEY sat down, Heinz came in cautiously. He peered around the room first before inserting himself, in case the man with the bomb was there waiting for him. There was no doubt that they were out to get him: he knew too much. He wasn’t quite sure what he knew, but it was too much. And their spies were everywhere.
Miss Grant, Walker, and Grandis were spies, of course, but that Dr. Scott—she was the real brains of the espionage set-up. He allowed her to think she was fooling him. Never by any hint did he let on that he knew what was really going on, and when she told him to sit down he answered civilly “Yes, Doctor,” and took the chair in the corner with its back to the wall.
Orvello not so much came in as was carried in by an attendant, who deposited him in a chair and left. Orvello couldn’t be expected to do anything of his own volition, as he believed that nothing was worth doing. Absolutely nothing. Not any more.
“All is vanity and vexation of spirit,” saith the preacher! and Orvello would have said it too, only he didn’t believe it worth saying—or that anything was worth saying. He believed that “The paths of glory lead but to the grave,” but he didn’t believe in glory. We start dying from the moment we’re born. All is dust. Effort is futile. Nothing lasts, neither our works nor ourselves.
If Walker looked sorry for himself, Orvello looked sorry for the whole human race. His face was dark, sagging, like a bloodhound in mourning. Melancholy had marked him for her own, and he wasn’t even pleased at this distinction.
Dr. Scott knew that somewhere there was a cause for this frame of mind, but she hadn’t discovered it yet. It was difficult to discover anything about a man who refuses to speak a word. That was why his file was the thinnest. Not that the others had thick ones . . . She was, she knew, beginning this thing with dismally inadequate knowledge.
She braced herself. She had to weld this mixture into a group.
First, the pep talk routine:
“Now that we’re all here, we can start getting properly acquainted. All you people are going to know one another well before we’re finished. You’re going to be good friends. And you’re going to learn that real friendship springs only from helping one another. This is where we psychologists fall back on the old wisdom . . .”
Some of them had met briefly before, but she introduced them properly and talked on about mutual aid for a while. The audience sat silently—even Miss Grant—and watched her. Except Orvello, who thought the floor was less effort to regard.
SHE SWITCHED to another line of confidence building. “You’ve all had thorough medical examinations. The reports are open for your inspection. You’ll see that in a physical sense you’re all perfectly healthy and normal. Thus you have no fear that your mental troubles spring from organic defects. So to begin with, you all already have one thing in common—good health. It’s not by any means universal these days, so you see that you’re a very lucky group of people.
“Another thing you share is the habit of misusing your energy. There are all kinds of ways of misusing our energies, and each of you does it differently. It’s just these differences that will enable you to spot one another’s mistakes and help out.
“Each of us contains a dynamo, figuratively speaking, that continuously provides energy through metabolism. If we’re tired of life, as Mr. Orvello imagines he is, we can make a closed circuit and let the energy chase itself round and round in futile circles. If we’re frightened of life, as Mr. Walker is, we can bottle it up, sit on it. Which is a dangerous practise, because the pressure only increases until the top is liable to blow off. Or we can fritter it away in worry, as Miss Grant does. Or use it to fight imaginary enemies, as Mr. Heinz does. Or let it flow in full force, as Mr. Grandis does, but without proper control or direction.
“Freud’s teaching is that this energy build-up may find release through one of two main channels, Libido or Mortido. Libido means the energy being used in constructive and creative work, in organization, bringing people together, friendship—as we’re doing here. It also means the preservation of the race through the sexual urge. In short, the life instinct. Mortido means the energy being used for destruction, discord, isolation, and the preservation of the individual through the elimination of rivals or enemies, sometimes by murder. In short, the death instinct.
“Mortido has been having far too much of its own way in the world lately, and you and I are going to get together to fight it. Now . . .”
As she talked they were all very quiet. Strangely quiet. It disturbed her. When she’d taken them separately they’d all, except Orvello, had plenty to say. Perhaps they were shy of each other?
But when she’d concluded her talk and dismissed them for the day (there were no questions) she’d realized it wasn’t that. She didn’t have to try any more to build up a fellow-feeling among them: they already, somehow, had it. They were banded together in insanity, watching her from the other side of the fence.
III
SHE SLEPT badly that night. She lay there in the dark little room, endlessly going over the world’s problems. People just didn’t have a chance to attain mental stability these days. Almost from the cradle they were importuned and plagued by authority to learn this and know that. School-children didn’t play happily together in the evenings any more. They had a minimum of four hours’ homework every day, including week-ends. The teachers explained: “New knowledge, new techniques are increasing all the time. The problem is how to get it all into their heads.”
Nobody seemed to question the necessity for knowing so much, not even the children. Which was odd, because what was scientific fact when you were at school had become a scientific fallacy by the time you were married. Behavior that was free yesterday was frowned upon today and punishable tomorrow.
Scientists and lawyers were arrogant and made their pronouncements as though they were saying the last word about the subject.
But the last word was continually changing all through your life, ever more frequently, bewilderment upon bewilderment. Civilization had fashioned for itself a world to live in which was a constantly altering maze, like those its research workers built to torture rats into a state of neurosis: every time the rat thought it had learned the way through, that way mysteriously changed again. It was never done learning what always turned out to be false. Eventually it believed in nothing, nothing at all, not even itself—and went either quietly or violently mad. As civilization was doing now.
This wasn’t the first time these reflections had made her sleepless and nearly desperate. Once she’d been driven to the point of telling Dr. Alexander himself about them. It had been in the lounge, after the day’s work. He’d been approachable, indeed, almost benign.
“My dear Dr. Scott,” he said, leaning back in the armchair, fingertips together, “don’t disturb yourself so. We can’t have the staff deserting to the patients’ side. There’s no need to worry. You’re right in your diagnosis, of course—civilization is having an attack of neurosis because its frames of reference keep changing too rapidly. But it’s only a phase—growing pains. A complete breakdown can be avoided if we work hard enough.”
“What do you mean, Doctor—‘growing pains’ ?”
“Exactly that. Mankind is reaching the stage where it’s becoming self-conscious—conscious of itself as a race-entity. You know that babies are at first quite unself-conscious. But when they’re weaned, and have to change from instinctive behavior to behavior conditioned artificially from without, they gradually become aware of themselves. It’s not always a happy phase. Indeed, happiness almost always resides in self-forgetfulness.”
“But mankind—isn’t a baby—”
“It is, historically speaking. If a wall thirty feet thick represents the age of the world, then the thickness of a dime is equivalent to the whole duration of man’s existence, and the thickness of a postage stamp represents the length of time in which he’s been slightly civilized. On the same scale, the period in which life will still be possible on Earth is perhaps a mile.”
“Good heavens!”
DR. ALEXANDER smiled indulgently. “Up till recently we’ve achieved only a partial self-consciousness, as individuals. As a leaf may become aware of itself as a leaf, and then later as an inseparable part of a tree. And then, because the sap flowing in its veins is the same sap as that in the tree’s roots, the leaf will enter gradually into the whole being of the tree. First the leaves become self-conscious, then the twigs, branches, boughs and finally the tree is self-conscious, conscious of itself as a whole. Get it?”
“But my mind is quite different from yours—”
“My dear Dr. Scott, all you mean is that our present opinions may disagree. Please remember that your own opinions are always changing, with experience. And you’re often in two minds about them. Note that—literally in two minds. Your mind—and another. Sometimes three minds. That’s where the mental conflicts, the growing pains, begin. People are trying to get too many minds into the compass of their own brain. In time, they’ll learn that they can’t absorb the huge mind of mankind itself—but that they can let it absorb them. The leaf can’t be the tree, but the tree can be the leaf—and all leaves.”
She’d reflected awhile. “I think I begin to see. Of course, Horgen and Burke, following the work of Dr. Rhine on extra-sensory perception, have shown that there are no sharp divisions between individual minds—they overlap, are part of a great sea of thought, so to speak. I’d accepted that in theory—”
“Yes, that’s the trouble. We accept things in theory, and then continue to act on the old habits of thought, because habits are the very devil to grow out of. But we do grow out of them, and if the new theory’s right it becomes the new habit of thought. We’re in the painful transition stage, all of us—that’s what I’ve been explaining.”
And she’d gazed at him with wonder and admiration. He sat there, patient and all-seeing, above the battle. Thank heaven for the great characters, the calm and omniscient, to whom the ordinary people turned for reassurance and guidance in times of stress. Shakespeare, Goethe, Jesus of Nazareth, Dr. Alexander—they were the safe, firmbased rocks in a turbulent sea that threatened to smother you.
Even so, there were times when we lost faith and spent dark nights of doubt.
This was one of them. She lay curled up under the blankets in the little bedroom like an eyrie on the rear cliff of the hospital, hating the night and dreading the day.
The faces of Orvello, Miss Grant, Grandis, Walker, and Heinz seemed to float like luminous balloons in the darkness about her. She was scared of them all in a way she’d never been scared of anyone before. And the worrying thing was that there seemed no solid reason for it. Separately, they were harmless. Together, they seemed to amount to something altogether different—and sinister.
SHE FACED them again in the daylight.
“Today we have permissive treatment. That means you stand up in turn, if you wish, and get all your troubles off your chest. Beef as much as you like—we’re all interested in your pet hates. The others may listen—sympathetically, we may be sure—and make notes and use them to comment helpfully. As I’ve said, we’re all helping one another in this . . .
Orvello, of course, ignored her, as usual. It didn’t matter: the others had plenty to say.
Miss Grant leaped up with an impetuosity that sent invisible waves of scent rolling around the room. A certain lively eagerness rescued her face from repulsiveness.
“I hate my sister!” she burst out, and went into a long tirade. It appeared that she had a younger and incomparably more attractive sister, who, she believed, had usurped her (Miss Grant’s place in the affections of her parents, her brother, her friends, and—most of all—her fiance. For, improbable though it seemed, once a man had cared for Miss Grant. But her sister had stolen his love away and married him. Now it was too late. Miss Grant had lost her chance of marriage, of ever having children, of ever being loved by anyone again.
At the end of it, Dr. Scott asked: “By the way, Miss Grant, what was your sister’s name?”
“Pam,” said Miss Grant, bitterly, and sat down.
Dr. Scott nodded gravely. Pam was also the name of Miss Grant’s cat, which she’d tied to a board and worked on with a knife. That tied up.
“Now, has anyone any comments to make?” said Dr. Scott.
“I have,” boomed Grandis, standing up to his full, respectable height, and throwing back his leonine head so that the balcony could both see and hear him. “Miss Grant was unjustly treated by a small-hearted, jealous woman, and so was I.”
That was all he had to say with regard to Miss Grant; the rest concerned a female theater critic on the Times who had maliciously torn his Hamlet to pieces. Apparently it had been a very witty notice, and was syndicated throughout the States.
“Not only that,” he thundered, “but she reprinted it in a book of her collected reviews—she made me a laughing stock all over again. It killed my career! No manager would take me seriously after that. She’d saved up all her cattiest cracks to unload on me. It wasn’t a criticism at all—only an exercise in what she fancied was her wit. It was all sarcasm and spitefulness and steals from Oscar Wilde. Yet it made her—and finished me. She stabbed me in the back and made a stepping stone of my dead body.”
His voice became hoarse, bellowing. “If I ever get hold of her, I’ll kill her!”
HE STOPPED, breathing heavily, sweating a little and white-faced with rage. They all looked at him—except Orvello.
“Thank you, Mr. Grandis,” said Dr. Scott. “Please sit down . . . any comments?”
“Yes,” said Heinz, getting up and casting a swift look over his shoulder to ascertain that no one had crept through the wall behind him. “I read that notice. It was by Ursula Reigmann. I happen to know she’s a dangerous spy. She’s caused many deaths. I’ve several times warned the Government of her, but they can’t see it—they’re blind, blind. Unfortunately, she’s not so blind—she got to know that I’d found out about her, and she’s out to get me. She’s put the whole spy ring on me. But I’m not blind, either. I know who they are. Some of them are here in this hospital.”
