Oh, stop, whispered the old man silently to himself, and he could feel his body vibrating uncontrollably. The President faltered, smiled, shrugged and began again: “More than that, your humanitarian love for all mankind is a priceless—”
Stop, whispered the old man again, and realized with horror that he was not whispering at all. He was screaming. “Stop!” he bawled, and found himself trying with withered muscles to stand erect on his useless feet. “Stop!” The cameras deserted the President and swung in to stare, with three great glassy eyes, at the old man; and for old Sidorenko tenor struck in and fastened on him. Something erupted. Something exploding and bursting, like a crash of automobiles in flame; someone shouted near him with a voice that made him cringe. He saw the nurse run in with a hypodermic, and he felt its bite.
Endless hours later (though it took less than 60 seconds for the blood to pump the drug to his brain) he felt the falling, spiralling falling that he remembered from other needles at other times, and there was the one moment of clearness before sleep. Maureen was staring down at him, the needle still in her hand. “I’m sorry I spoiled the party, dear,” he whispered, his eyes closing, and then he was firmly asleep.
It really wasn’t worth the trouble. Why should they want to waste so much effort on curing him?
The nurse fussed: “There’s nothing to worry about, Doctor. A fine, big man like you. Sure you had a bad spell. What’s that? Do you think the President himself has never had a bad spell?”
“Why don’t they leave me alone, Maureen?” he whispered.
“Leave you alone, is it! And you with twenty good years Inside of you.”
“You’re a good girl, Maureen,” he said faintly, hoarding his strength. It was really more than they had a right to expect of him, he thought drowsily. He couldn’t afford many blowups like this morning’s, and it seemed they were always happening. Still, it was nice of the President. .
He was a little more alert now, the effects of the needle, and its later measured, balancing antidotes, beginning to wear off. This was Wednesday, he remembered. “Do I have to go in with the Group?” he whined.
“Doctor’s orders, Doctor,” she said firmly, “and doctor as you may be, you’re not doctor enough to argue with doctor’s orders.” It was an old joke, limp to begin with, but he owed her a smile for it. He paid her, faintly.
After lunch she wheeled him into the Group meeting room. They were the last to arrive.
Sam Krabbe, said, surly as always in the Group though he was pleasant enough in social contacts, outside: “You take a lot of hostility out on us, Sidorenko. Why don’t you try being on time?”
“Sam forgets,” said the Reynolds woman to the air. “It isn’t up to Sidorenko, as long as he and Maureen act out that master-slave thing of having her push his chair. If she doesn’t want to pay us the courtesy of promptness, Sidorenko can‘t help it.” Maria Reynolds had murdered her husband and four teenaged children; she had told the Group so at least 50 times. Sidorenko thought of her as the only legitimate lunatic the Group owned—except himself, of course; the old man kept an open mind about himself.
He struggled to hold his head up and his eyes open. You didn’t get any benefit out of the Group’s sessions unless you participated. The way to participate started with keeping the appearance of alertness and proceeded through talking (when you didn’t really want to talk at all), to discharging emotion (when you were almost certain you had no emotion left to discharge). This he knew. Dr. Shugart had told him, in private analysis and again before the entire Group.
The old man sighed internally. Sam Krabbe could be relied on to interpret everyone’s motives for them; he was doing it now. Short, squat, middle-aged … well, “middle-aged” by the standards of Dr. Sidorenko. Actually Sam Krabbe was close to 70. Sidorenko glanced up at the attentive, involved face of his nurse and let the conversation wash over him.
Sam: “What about that, Maureen? Do you have to focalize your aggressions on us? I’m getting damned sick and tired of it, for one.”
Nelson Amster took over (35 years old, a bachelor, his life a chain of false steps and embarrassments because he saw his mother in every other female he met): “It’s a stinking female attention-getting device, Sam. Ignore it.”
Maria Reynolds: “That’s fine talk from a pantywaist like you!”
Eddie Atkinson (glancing first at the bland face of Dr. Shugart for a cue): “Come on, you old harpies. Give the girl a break. What do you say, Dr. Shugart? Aren’t they just displacing their own hostilities onto Maureen and the doctor?”
Dr. Shugart, after a moment’s pause: “Mmm. Maureen, do you have a reaction to all this?”
Maureen, her eyes lively but her voice serious: “Oh, I’m sorry if I’ve made trouble. I didn’t think we were late. Honestly. If there was any displacement it was certainly on the subconscious level. I love you all. I think you’re the finest, friendliest Group I ever—-and—well, there just isn’t any ambivalence at all. Honestly.”
Dr. Shugart, nodding: “Mmm.”
The old man tinned restlessly in his chair. Pretty soon, he thought with a familiar and tolerable ache, they would all start looking at him and prodding him to participate. All but Dr. Shugart, anyway; the psychiatrist didn’t believe in prodding, except in a minor emergency as a device to pass along the burden of talk from himself to one of the Group. (Though he always said he was part of the Group, not its master: “The analyst is only the senior patient. I leam much from our sessions”) But the others would prod, they had no such professional hesitations, and Sidorenko didn’t like that. He was still turning over inside himself the morning’s fiasco; true, he should voice it, that was what the Group was for; but the old man had learned in nearly a century to live his life his own certain way, and he wanted to think it out for himself first. The best way to keep the Group off him was to volunteer a small remark from time to time. He said at the first opportunity: “I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
Everyone looked at him.
Ernie Atkinson scolded: “We’re not here to apologize, Sidorenko. We only want you to know your motives.”
Maria Reynolds: “One wonders if all of us know just why we are here? One wonders how the rest of us are to get proper attention, if some of us get first crack at the doctor’s thought because they are more important.”
Sidorenko said weakly: “Oh, Mrs. Reynolds—Maria—I’m sure there’s nothing like that. Is there, Dr. Shugart?”
Dr. Shugart, pausing: “Mmm. Well, why are we here? Does anyone want to say?”
The old man opened his mouth and then closed it. Some evenings he joined with these youngsters in the Group, as demanding and competitive as any of them, but this was not one of the nights. Energy simply did not flow. Sidorenko was glad when Sam Krabbe took over the answer.
“We’re here,” said Sam pompously, “because we have problems which we haven’t been able to solve alone. By Group sessions we help each other discharge our basic emotions where it is safe to do so, thus helping each other to reduce our problems to dimensions we can handle.” He waited for agreement.
“Parrot!” smirked Ernie Atkinson.
“The doctor doesn’t like our using pseudo-psychiatric double-talk,” Maria Reynolds accused the air.
“All right, let’s see you do better!” Sam flared.
“Gladly! Easily!” cried Atkinson. He hooked a thumb in his lapel and draped a leg over the arm of the chair. “The institution is a place where very special and very concentrated help can be given to a very few.” (“Snob,” Nelson Amster hissed.) “I’m not a snob! It’s the plain truth. We get broad-spectrum therapy here, everything from hormones to hypnosynthesis. And the reason we get it is that we deserve it. Everybody knows Dr. Sidorenko. Amster created a whole new industry with mergers and stock manipulations. Maria Reynolds is one of the greatest composers—well, the greatest woman composers—of the century.” (“Damn some people!” grated Maria). “And I myself—well, I ne
ed not go on. We are worth treating, all of us. At any cost. That’s why the government put us here, in this very expensive, very thorough place.”
“Mmm,” said Dr. Shugart, and considered for a moment. “I wonder,” he said.
Ernie Atkinson suddenly shrank a good two sizes. His dark little face turned sallow. The leg slid off the aim of the chair. “What’s that, Doc?” he asked dismally.
Dr. Shugart said: “I wonder if that’s a personal motivation.”
“Oh, I see,” cried Atkinson, “it’s what each of us is here for that’s important, eh? Well, what about it? How about your motivations, Sidorenko?”
The old man coughed.
It always came to this, reliably. He would put out the weak decoy remarks but it would do no good, one of the Group would pounce past the decoys to reach his flesh. Well, there was no fighting it.
“I—” he began, and stopped, and passed a hand over his face. Maureen was close beside him, her eyes warm and intent. “I know I shouldn’t apologize,” he apologized, “but it has been a bad day. You know about it. The thing is, I’m an old man, and even Dr. Shugart tells me that the old cells aren’t in quite the shape they used to be. There was,” he said mildly, as though he were reading off a dossier from a statistical sample, “a stroke a few years ago. Fortunately it limited itself; they’re not operable, you know, when you get to a certain age. The blood vessels turn into a kind of rotten canvas and, although you can clamp off the hemorrhage, it only makes it pop again on the other side of the clamp, and —I’m wandering. I apologize,” he finished wryly.
“Mmm,” Dr. Shugart said. “There’s no such thing as totally undirected speech.”
“Of course. All right. But that’s why I apologize, because I‘m not getting around very rapidly to an answer.
“I had my—trouble—a few years ago. I don’t remember much about it, except that I gather I was delusional. Thought I was God, was the way it was expressed to me once. Well, if I had been a younger man I suppose I could have been treated more easily. I don’t know. I’m not. Time was, I know, when most doctors wouldn’t bother with a man of ninety-five, even if he did happen to be,” he said wryly, “celebrated not only for his scientific attainments but for his broad love for mankind. I mean, there’s a point of obsolescence. Might as well let the old fool die.”
He choked and coughed raspingly for a second. The nurse reached for him, but he waved her off.
“Mmm,” said Dr. Shugart.
And the nurse whispered in a hard bright voice: “I love you, Noah Sidorenko.”
He sat up straight, suddenly struck to the heart.
“I love you,” she said stubbornly, “and I’ll make you get well. It can’t hurt you if I tell you I love you. I’m not asking for anything. It’s a free gift.”
The old man swallowed.
“Don’t argue with me, old sport,” she said tenderly, and patted his creased cheek. “Now, how about some psychodrama? Let’s do the big one! The slum you lived in, Doctor —remember? The night you were so scared. The accident. Stretch out,” she ordered, wheeling him to a couch and helping him onto it. He went along, dazed. She scolded: “No, curl up more. You’re four years old, remember? Maria, pull that chair over and be the mother. Ernie, Sam. Let’s go out in the hall. We’ll be cars speeding along the elevated highway outside the window. And let’s make some noise! Honk, honk! Aooga!”
But it hadn’t been like that at all, he told himself a few hours later, trying to go to sleep. It had been a big frightening experience in his childhood. Very possibly it was the thing that had caused his later troubles (though he couldn’t remember the troubles well enough to be sure). But it was not what they were portraying in psychodrama. They were showing a frightened child, and the old man was stubbornly certain there was more to it than that. But very likely it was lost forever.
It was only natural that at the age of 95 a great many experiences should be lost forever. (Such as meeting a sophomore who asked for an autograph, when you could have had no idea that the sophomore would grow up to be President.)
He thought of the white man, wondered who the white man was, and shifted restlessly in the bed. He could feel his old muscles tensing up.
Curse the fool thing, the old man said to himself, referring to his own body; it has lost the knack of living. But it wasn’t the body that was at fault, really. It was the brain. The body was only crepe and brittle sticks, true, but the heart still beat, blood flowed, stomach acids leached the building-blocks they needed from the food he ate. The body worked. But the brain worked against it; it was brain, not body, that tautened his muscles and shortened his breath.
That fantastic girl, the old man thought ruefully, she had said: I love tjou. Well. Let’s interpret what she meant, he commanded, it could only have been an expression of the natural affection a nurse has for a patient. Still, it was ridiculous, the old man told himself, striving to catch a free and comfortable breath.
That was the worst thing about the tension. You couldn’t breathe. With much effort Noah Sidorenko wedged his elbows under him and raised his chest cage a trifle, not quite off the mattress, but resting lightly on it, relieving some of the pressure his shriveled body exerted. It helped, but it didn’t help enough. He thought wistfully of free-fall. Rocket jockies, he dreamed, floated endlessly with no pressure at all; how deeply they must be able to breathe! But, of course, he couldn’t live to get there, not through rocket acceleration.
He was wandering, when he wanted most particularly to think clearly.
He turned on one side and pressed the tip of his nose lightly with a finger. Sometimes opening the nostrils wide helped to get a breath. He thought of what the microphones taped to rib and throat must be recording, and grinned faintly. Funny, though, he thought, that Maureen hadn’t come in to check on him. The purpose of the microphones was to warn the nurse when he needed attention. Surely he needed attention now.
He listened critically to his thumping heart. Ka-hump, ka-bump, ka-bump. It made a little tune:
The bear went over the mown-tain
The song was very disturbing to him, though he did not even now know why. Somehow it was connected with that scene in his youth, the crashing cars and the white man. The old man sighed. He had come very close to remembering all of it once. They had put him in silence. “Silence” was an acoustically dead chamber, 20 feet cubed, hung with muffling fabric and strung with spiderwebs of the felt; there was no echo and no sound from outside could come in. It was a conventional tool of study for mental disorders; strapped in a canvas cot, hung in the center of the cube, eyes closed, hearing deadened, a subject began very quickly to seek within himself. Fantasies came, delusions came. And ultimately knowledge came, if the subject could stand it; but three out of five reached hysteria before they reached any worthwhile insight, and the old man was one of the three. He had nearly died …
He paused to count the times he had nearly died under therapy of one kind or another, but it was too hard. And besides, he was beginning to think that he was nearly dying again. He pushed himself back on his elbows and fought once more for breath.
This one was very bad.
He slumped back on the bed and reached out for the intercom button. “Maureen,” he whispered.
She slept in the room next to him, and though he seldom woke in the night—there was something in the evening cocoa to make sure of that—when it happened that he did, if he called, she was there promptly, sometimes in a pink wrapper, once or twice in lounging pajamas. But not tonight. “Maureen,” he whispered to the intercom again, but there was no answer.
The old man, with an effort, rolled onto his side. The movement dislodged one of the taped microphones. He felt it tear his skin and, simultaneously, heard the sharp alarm ping in Maureen’s room. But the alarm didn’t bring her.
The old man opened his eyes wide and stared at the intercom. “I have to get up,” he told it reasonably, “because if I lie here I think I will die.”
It
was impossible, of course. But what could he lose by trying? He pushed himself to the edge of the bed. The chair was within reach, but very remote to Noah Sidorenko, who had not stood on his own feet in years …
And then he was in the chair. Somehow he had made it! He sat erect and gasping, for a moment. The pain was bad, but it was better sitting up. Then his hand found the buttons of the little electric motors.
He spun slowly, navigated the straits between the nurse’s desk and the comer of the bed, went out the door, as it opened quietly before him.
Maureen’s room was empty. The outer door opened, too.
That was good, he thought; he hadn’t been sure it would open; it was never very clear to him whether he was a prisoner or not. It was, after all, a sort of madhouse he was in … But it opened.
The hall was empty and silent. He listened for the familiar grunch, grunch of Ernie Atkinson grinding his teeth in his sleep, but even that was stilled tonight. He rolled on. The lift rose silently to meet him.
He let it carry him gently down, and turned inward. The lower hall was blindingly bright. He made his way to Dr. Shugart’s office.
He paused. There were voices.
No wonder he hadn’t heard Ernie Atkinson’s grinding teeth! Here was Atkinson, his voice coming plain as day: “I don’t care what you say, we weren’t getting through to him. No. The Group and psychodrama aren’t working.”
And Dr. Shugart’s voice: “They have to work.” Yes, the old man thought dazedly, it was Shugart’s voice all right. But where was the hesitation, the carefully balanced, noncommittal air? It cracked sharp as a whip!
And Maureen’s voice: “Do I have to go on building up this emotional involvement with him?”
Shugart crackled: “Is it so distasteful?”
“Oh, no!” (The old man sighed. He found he had stopped breathing until she answered.) “He’s an old dear, and I do love him. But I’d like to give him little presents because I want to, not because it’s part of his therapy.”
In the Problem Pit Page 10