The Madman's Tale

by John Katzenbach

  Francis was unable to respond, but felt a slight sense of encouragement in the man’s words. For the first time since that horrible morning had begun with so many loud voices, shouts and recriminations, he felt as if he wasn’t completely alone. It was a little like the harsh noise and constant racket that had been filling his ears all day had diminished, like a radio’s blaring volume turned down slightly. He could hear some of his voices murmuring approval in the background, which relaxed him a bit more. But he did not have time to dwell on this thought, for he was abruptly wheeled out of the office, into the corridor, and the door shut resoundingly behind him. A cold draft made him shudder and reminded him that as of that moment all that he had once known of life had been changed and all that he was to know was elusive and hidden from him. He had to bite down on his lower lip to keep the tears from returning, swallowing hard to remain quiet and let himself be diligently steered away from the reception area and deep into the core of the Western State Hospital.

  chapter 3

  Limp morning light was just sliding over the neighboring rooftops, insinuating its way into my sparse little apartment home. I stood in front of the wall and saw all the words I’d written the previous night crawling down a single long column. My handwriting was pinched tight, as if nervous. The words were arranged in wavering lines, a little like a field of wheat as a breath of warm wind passes over. I asked myself: Was I truly that scared, the day I arrived at the hospital? The answer to that was easy: Yes. And far worse than I had written. Memory often blurs pain. The mother forgets the agony of childbirth when the baby is placed in her arms, the soldier no longer remembers the pain of his wounds when the general pins the medal on his chest and the band strikes up some martial tune. Did I tell the truth about what I saw? Did I get the small details right? Did it happen quite the way I remembered it?

  I seized the pencil, dropped to my knees on the floor to the spot where I’d ended my first night at the wall. I hesitated, then wrote:

  It was at least forty-eight hours later that Francis Petrel awakened in a dingy gray padded cell, tightly encased in a straitjacket, his heart racing, his tongue thick, thirsting for a drink of something cold and some companionship…

  It was at least forty-eight hours later that Francis Petrel awakened in a dingy gray padded cell, tightly encased in a straitjacket, his heart racing, his tongue thick, thirsting for a drink of something cold and some companionship. He lay rigidly on the steel cot and thin dark-stained mattress of the isolation room, staring up past the burlap-colored padded walls, to the ceiling, doing a modest inventory of his person and his surroundings. He wiggled his toes, ran his tongue over parched lips, and counted each beat of his pulse until he could detect a slowing. The drugs he’d been injected with made him feel entombed, or at least blanketed with some thick, syrupy substance. There was a single glowing white lightbulb encased in a wire screen high above him, far beyond his reach, and the glare hurt his eyes. He knew he should be hungry, but wasn’t. He pulled against the restraints, and knew instantly that was futile. He decided he should call out for help, but first he whispered to himself: Are you still here?

  For a moment, there was silence.

  Then he heard several voices, all speaking at once, all faint, as if muffled by a pillow: We’re here. We’re all still here.

  This reassured him.

  You need to keep us hidden, Francis.

  He nodded to himself. This appeared obvious. He felt a contradictory set of criteria within himself, almost like a mathematician who sees a complicated equation on a chalkboard that could have several possible answers. The voices that guided him had also landed him in the current fix and there was little doubt in his mind that he needed to keep them concealed at all times, if he ever hoped to get out of the Western State Hospital. As he assessed this dilemma, he could hear the familiar sounds of all the people who traveled in his imagination agreeing with him. These voices all had personalities: a voice of demand, a voice of discipline, a voice of concession, a voice of concern, a voice that warned, a voice that soothed, a voice of doubt, and a voice of decision. They all owned tones and topics; he had grown to know when to expect one or the other, depending upon the situation around him. Since the angry confrontation with his folks, and the police and ambulance had been summoned, the voices had all clamored for attention. But now he had to continue to strain to hear them, which made him furrow his brow with concentration.

  It was, in a way, he thought, part of getting himself organized.

  Francis remained on the bed uncomfortably for another hour, feeling the closeness of the narrow room, until a small porthole in the only door opened with a scraping noise. From where he lay, he was able to see by lifting himself up like an athlete doing a stomach crunch, a difficult position to hold for more than a few seconds, because of the straitjacket. He did see first one eye, then another, peering in at him, and he managed a weak: “Hello?”

  No one responded and the porthole slammed shut.

  It was another thirty minutes by his reckoning before the porthole opened again. He tried another hello and this one seemed to work, because seconds later he heard the sound of a key being worked in the lock. The door scraped open and he saw the larger of the two black attendants, pushing his way into the cell. The man was smiling, as if caught in the midst of a joke, and he nodded at Francis not unpleasantly. “How you doing this morning Mr. Petrel?” he asked brightly. “You get some sleep? You hungry?”

  “I need something to drink,” Francis croaked.

  The attendant nodded. “That’s the medications they gave you. Make your tongue all thick, kinda like it be all swollen, huh?”

  Francis nodded. The attendant retreated to the corridor, then returned with a plastic cup of water. He sat on the side of the cot and held Francis up like a sickly child, letting him gulp at the liquid. It was lukewarm, almost brackish, with a slight metallic taste, but at that moment, just the mere sense of it pouring down his throat, and the pressure of the man’s arm holding him, reassured Francis more than he had ever expected. The attendant must have realized this, because he quietly said, “It gonna be all right, Mr. Petrel. Mr. C-Bird. That what that other new man called you, and I’m thinking that’s a fine name to go by. This place a little rough at first, take some getting used to, but you gonna be just fine. I can tell.”

  He lowered Francis back to the bed, and added, “The doctor gonna come in to see you now.”

  A few seconds later, Francis saw Doctor Gulptilil’s round form hovering in the doorway. The doctor smiled, and asked, in his slight singsong-accented voice, “Mr. Petrel. How are you this morning?”

  “I’m all right,” Francis said. He didn’t know really what else he could say. And, at the same time, he could hear the echoing of his voices, telling him to be extremely careful. Again, they were not nearly as loud as they could be, almost as if they were shouting commands to him from across some wide chasm.

  “Do you remember where you are?” the doctor asked.

  Francis nodded. “I’m in a hospital.”

  “Yes,” the doctor said with a smile. “That is not difficult to surmise. But do you recall which one? And how it was that you arrived here?”

  Francis did. The mere act of answering questions lifted some of the fog he felt was obscuring his vision. “It is the Western State Hospital,” he said. “And I arrived in an ambulance after having some argument with my parents.”

  “Very good. And do you recall what month it is? And the year?”

  “It is still March, I believe. And 1979.”

  “Excellent.” The doctor seemed genuinely pleased. “A little more oriented, I would suspect. I think today we will be able to remove you from isolation and restraint, and begin to integrate you into the general population. This is as I’d hoped.”

  “I would like to go home now,” Francis said.

  “I am sorry, Mister Petrel. That isn’t yet possible.”

  “I don’t think I want to stay here,” Francis said. S
ome of the quavering which had marked his voice the day he’d arrived threatened to reemerge.

  “It is for your own good,” the doctor replied. Francis doubted that. He knew he wasn’t so crazy to be unable to see that it was clearly for other people’s good, not his. He didn’t say this out loud.

  “Why can’t I go home?” he asked. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Do you recall the kitchen knife? And your threatening words?”

  Francis shook his head. “It was a misunderstanding,” he said.

  Doctor Gulptilil smiled. “Of course it was. But you’re going to be with us until we come to the realization that we cannot go around threatening people.”

  “I promise I won’t.”

  “Thank you, Mister Petrel. But a promise isn’t quite adequate under the current circumstances. I must be persuaded. Utterly persuaded, alas. The medications you have been given will help you. As you continue to take them, the cumulative effect they have will increase your command of your situation and help you to readjust. Then, perhaps, we can discuss returning to society and some more constructive role.”

  He spoke this last sentence slowly, then added, “And what do your voices think of your presence here?”

  Francis knew enough to shake his head. “I don’t hear any voices,” he insisted. Deep within him he heard a chorus of assent.

  The doctor smiled again, showing slightly uneven rows of white teeth. “Ah, Mister Petrel, again, I’m not completely sure that I believe you. Still”—the doctor hesitated—“I think that you can succeed in the general population. Mister Moses here will show you around and fill you in on the rules. The rules are important, Mister Petrel. There are not many, but they are critical. Obeying the rules, becoming a constructive member of our little world here, these are signs of mental health. The more you can do to show me that you can function successfully here, the closer you will step each passing day toward returning home. Do you understand that equation, Mister Petrel?”

  Francis nodded vigorously.

  “There are activities. There are group sessions. From time to time, there will be some private sessions with myself. Then there are the rules. All these things, taken together, create possibilities. If you cannot adjust, then, I fear, your stay here will be long, and often unpleasant …”

  He gestured at the isolation cell. “This room, for example”—and he pointed at the straitjacket—“these devices, and others, remain options. They always remain options. But avoiding them is critical, Mister Petrel. Critical to your return to mental health. Am I being quite clear about this?”

  “Yes,” Francis said. “Fit in. Obey the rules.” He repeated this inwardly to himself, like a mantra or a prayer.

  “Precisely. Excellent. Do you not see, already we have made progress? Be encouraged, Mister Petrel. And take advantage of what the hospital has to offer.” The doctor rose up. He nodded at the attendant. “All right, Mister Moses. You can release Mister Petrel. And then, please, escort him through the dormitory, get him some clothing, and show him the activities room.”

  “Yes sir,” the attendant snapped off with a military crispness.

  Doctor Gulptilil waddled off through the door to the isolation room, and the attendant went about the task of unsnapping the bonds of the straitjacket, then unwrapping the sleeves from around Francis, until he finally came free. Francis stretched awkwardly, and rubbed his arms, as if to restore some energy and life to the limbs that had been locked so tightly. He placed his feet on the floor and stood unsteadily, feeling a sensation of dizziness overcome him. The attendant must have noticed, for a huge hand grasped his shoulder, preventing Francis from stumbling forward. Francis felt a little like a baby taking his first step, only without the same sense of joy and accomplishment, equipped only with doubt and fear.

  He followed Mister Moses down the corridor on the fourth floor of the Amherst Building. There were a half-dozen six-by-nine padded cells arranged in a row, each with a double-locking system and portholes for observation. He could not tell whether they were occupied or not, except in one case, when they must have made some sound passing by, and from behind a locked door he heard a cascade of muted obscenities that dissolved into a long, painful shriek. A mixture of agony and hatred. He hurried to keep pace with the immense attendant, who didn’t seem fazed in the slightest by the otherworldly noise, and who kept up an impressive banter about the layout of the building, the hospital, and its history, as he passed through a set of double doors, leading down a wide, central stairway. Francis only vaguely remembered ascending those steps two days earlier, in what seemed to him to be a distant, and increasingly elusive past, when everything in what he had thought of his life was totally different.

  The building’s design seemed to Francis to be every bit as crazy as its occupants. The upper floors held offices that abutted storage rooms and isolation cells. The first and second floors held wide-open dormitory-style rooms, crowded with simple steel framed beds, with an occasional footlocker for possessions. Inside the dormitory rooms there were cramped bathrooms and showers, with multiple stalls that he immediately saw delivered little in the way of privacy. There were other bathrooms off the corridors, spaced up and down the floor with MEN or WOMEN marked on the doors. In a concession to modesty, the women were housed on the north end of the corridor, the men on the south. A large nursing station divided the two areas. It was confined by wire mesh screens and a locked steel door. Francis saw that all the doors had two, sometimes three double deadbolt locks on them, all operated from the exterior. Once locked, he noticed, there was no way for anyone inside to unlock the door, unless they had a key.

  The ground floor was shared by a large, open area, which Francis was told was the primary dayroom, and a cafeteria and kitchen large enough to fix meals and feed the Amherst Building’s residents three times each day. There were also several smaller rooms, which he gathered were devoted to group therapy sessions. These dotted the ground floor. There were windows everywhere, which filled the Amherst Building with light, but every window had a locked wire mesh screen on the outside, so that the daylight that filtered into the building penetrated past bars tossing odd gridlike shadows on the slick, polished floors or the glowing white painted walls. There were doors seemingly placed willy-nilly throughout the building that sometimes were locked, requiring Mr. Moses to pull out a massive key chain from his belt, but other times were left open, so that they simply pushed through unimpeded. Francis could not immediately detect what the governing principles were for locking the doors.

  It was, he thought, a most curious jail.

  They were confined, but not imprisoned. Restrained but not handcuffed.

  Like Mr. Moses and his smaller brother, whom they passed in the hallway, the nurses and the attendants wore white outfits. An occasional physician, or doctor’s aide, social worker or psychologist passed them by. These civilians wore either sports coats and slacks, or jeans. They almost all, Francis noted, carried manila envelopes, clipboards, and brown folders under their arms, and they all seemed to walk the corridors with a sense of direction and purpose, as if by having a specific task in hand, they were able to separate themselves from the general population of the Amherst Building.

  Francis’s fellow patients crowded the halls. There were knots of people, pressed together, while others stood aggressively alone. Many eyed him warily, as he passed. Some ignored him. No one smiled at him. He barely had time to observe his surroundings as he kept pace with the quick march that Mr. Moses adopted. And, what he saw of the other patients was a sort of motley, haphazard collection of folks of all ages and sizes. Hair that seemed to explode from scalps, beards that hung wildly down like the people in old, faded photographs from a century earlier. It seemed a place of contradictions. There were wild eyes everywhere that fastened upon him and measured him as he passed by, and then in contrast, muted looks, and faces that turned to the wall and avoided connection. Words and snatches of conversation surrounded him, sometimes spoken to
others, sometimes spoken to inner selves. Clothing seemed to be an afterthought; some people wore loose-fitting hospital gowns and pajamas, others dressed in more regular street garb. Some wore long bathrobes or housecoats, others jeans and paisley shirts. It was all a little disjointed, a little out of whack, as if the colors were unsure what matched what, or the sizes were just off, shirts too loose, pants too tight or too short. Mismatched socks. Stripes conjoined with checks. There was a pungent smell of cigarette smoke virtually everywhere.

  “Too many folks,” Mr. Moses said, as they approached a nursing station. “Got beds for two hundred maybe. But got nearly three hundred peoples crowded in. You’d think they’d figured that part out, but no, not yet.”

  Francis didn’t reply.

  “Got a bed for you, though,” Mr. Moses added. At the nursing station, Mr. Moses stopped. “You gonna be A-OK. Hello, ladies,” he said. Two whiteclad nurses behind the wire mesh, turned toward him. “You looking ever so sweet and beautiful this fine morning.”

  One was old, with graying hair and a well-lined, pinched face, but who still managed a smile. The other was a stocky black woman, far younger than her companion, who snorted her reply like a woman who had heard nice words that amounted to false promises more than once. “You always talking so sweet, but what it be you need this time around?” This was said in a mock-gruff tone, that caused both women to crack smiles.

  “Why, ladies, I’m always looking only to bring a little joy and happiness into your lives,” he said. “What more?”

  The nurses laughed out loud. “Ain’t no man ever not looking for something,” the black nurse said. The white nurse quickly added, “Sweetheart, that’s the God’s truth.”

  Mr. Moses also laughed, while Francis suddenly stood awkwardly, unsure what he was to do. “Ladies, may I be presenting you with Mister Francis Petrel, who be staying with us. Mister C-Bird, this fine young lady be Miss Wright, and her lovely companion, there, be Miss Winchell.” He handed over a clipboard. “The doctor listed out some meds for this boy. Look to be pretty much the usual.”