‘Depends, Stone. I read a valley-scene in Des Moines as a spiritual allegory. Road rounding the foot of a bluff, tiny figure on it, heavy rockmass overhead threatening but not falling, menace but no sweat, weird bright light around the bend right, out of his sight, he doesn’t know he’ll make it but he’s willing to try and in fact he’ll make it. Like you and me maybe, me this time.’
‘Never been in Des Moines. Had an insolent review there once. How do you come to be writing about art anyway?’
‘They’d been looking for a man for years, they said, and wrote to me out of the blue, just on the chance, after some remark I threw off on a talk-show.’
‘Quite the Universal Man, aren’t you?’ Jasper Stone was sneering, not slightly. ‘Alberti and Pico della Mirandola bit. Leonardo bit. How does it feel to be omnicompetent, Doctor?’
‘Screw you too,’ Severance smiled at the poet. ‘I know practically nothing, my boy. Take Hebrew. Never minded my Jewish friends knowing Hebrew but when Edmund Wilson took it up—after Russian—at fifty-odd, I thought God damn it. Visiting job at Indiana eighteen years ago, nothing to do but drink, made friends with the Hebrew instructor (an interesting guy, Hamburg Arabic scholar, greatest expert living on the date of the Alhambra, asked to lecture on it at Madrid and Cambridge England, when Israel got independence thought it his duty to go there and work as an architect—he was trained at that too—for ten years, built houses exactly ten years, quit and brought his mother to the U.S. and began teaching elementary Hebrew at Indiana)—okay, I sat in. Only two students, one couldn’t learn the alphabet and dropped it the first week, the other was a dope who had to take it for Divinity School; and me. I did six lessons each assignment, Ivreet Chayah. But Peretz’s responsibility was to the dope, not me, so he had him recite the whole hour, and I gave up. No staying power, Stone. Same with Classical Chinese. I ordered a new Introduction from Oxford and sailed into a passage by Meng-Tzu. What a textbook. No translation, only linguistic notes and a glossary in the back. It was when I learnt that in order to look up a character you had to know the order in which its strokes were made, I tell you my mind reeled. Not like an English professor one of my students once told me about: decided to learn Mandarin: walled off part of his livingroom, laid in books and a toilet, left an opening for his wife to pass food in, and set to. Seven weeks later, walked out saying, “I know Chinese.” ’
‘Your name is against you,’ the poet said thoughtfully.
Severance stared at him. ‘What?’
‘Your name, old boy. We might render it as “The Harmonious Inter-breaker.” Not so good. Epithet hangs not with noun. Plink.’
Severance did not follow, but he heard satire and being as sensitive as the next man about his name (he didn’t like it much himself, but he had made it a going concern and moreover children, who never got it right though, liked it) he thrilled resentment. ‘Explain,’ he said coldly.
‘“Alan” is harmony, right? Celtic, I believe. Your last name is wide open. Tearer-apart of people, disrupter.’
Stung, the scientist ran through a dozen counterstrokes. He felt an absolute horror for those sinners. ‘Sowers-of-Discord’ Dante had a circle for, deep deep down. He often thought of a monster named Rainey—couldn’t recall her first name—who had gained the confidence of a simple young housewife in uptown New York and persuaded her to arrange the husband’s murder for his insurance. They put it up to a cabdriver, to crush him against an El pillar on his evening walk with the dog, but the cabbie lost his nerve, and testified against them after a second cabbie was less—say, scrupulous? He shuddered. Nothing like that, at least, on his awful conscience. One thing he was—His mind stopped. Eve’s husband had finally left her for one of their friends, and worse still, Harvey just last year had walked out on Bea and shacked up with a twenty-year-old psychiatric patient of his. Long afterward, it’s true, and Eve had had at least one other lover since, to his knowledge—but even if neither husband had suspected (one did, though—‘Bea, there just can’t be any more of this,’ when she got home once again at 4 a.m.) what responsibility could he escape for these ghastly breakups? He wondered if he was sweating.
He was. Jasper was offering a paper napkin across the table. ‘You look ill. Get the nurse?’ Even Jeree had an expression, wide light eyes.
Northeast Hospital’s first Repeater’s Group slunk together at the appointed hour—la Roche de dix heures overhanging Courbet’s village, by which the peasants told time, the existential hour in Ward W when one’s fate hung in a balance until noon or even on past noon, the bastards. Severance looked round the room at the other old lags. Jeree lifted him a glance half-recognition. The others were strangers, except, to his mingled sense of challenge support fight, Keg G——, the Knife, most fearsome of confronters, who had been with Vin in the Spring as counsellor-trainee. On the whole, Severance was glad to see him; an ally against himself. Bony, with bright eyes, a sharp intellectual teutonic look, a high narrow forehead under brush-hair, a new goatee. It was hard to imagine Keg drinking—it was hard to imagine most of them drinking (Jeree? grandmotherly-groomed Letty?)—though he had only been out of treatment a few months when he came back for training. Thirty years old maybe, Severance’s height (five-ten), leashed. The Counsellor was apparently named Harley, new from Renton or somewhere but a legend. It was not hard to imagine Harley drinking, and word was he had been jailed 256 times, not to speak of hospitals from Nevada to Kentucky, lost wives, near-deaths. Droopy-eyed, hardbitten, long-chinned, with a loose slouch and nervous fingers; ageless; you’ll get away with nothing, I’ve been there before you. After the Serenity Prayer, and everybody had said his name around in turn, he began casually.
‘It’s been decided on high,’ he said slowly, looking slowly from one tense face to another, ‘that you Repeaters need special treatment. I’m a Repeater myself, been in treatment five times in three States, so maybe we can work something out. But this is your Group. Keg and I are just here to help out. And Group is not just here in this room two hours a day five days a week. Don’t you believe it. Or you’ll believe till Easter. Treatment goes on every minute you’re awake. Only you won’t believe till Easter. Every one of you is on trial: if you don’t show definite progress by the end of three weeks, you’re out. You can go somewhere else, if they’ll take you, or you can drink, just as you like. You’ve all got to seek each other out and level with each other and take the risk of confronting each other, namely give each other hell. It’s your only chance to get well. Well, we don’t say “well”: weller. Now the first thing is that nothing said in this room goes outside. Nothing. Got that? Nothing. And the other thing is that we’re not going to do any treatment today.’ Severance seethed amazement and chagrin: why the hell not? ‘Keg will take over from here.’
Keg rose and stood with his back to the blackboard. He looked bitter. ‘You’ve got to have some disciplines. The other patients may not need them—in my opinion they do—but certainly you do. I want everybody to think and write out whatever things he thinks he or she ought to do every day. Don’t take on too much, but take on anything you think is necessary to create a chance for your sobriety. Tomorrow I’ll tally the results. That’s all for now, people. Get to work on your Programmes.’
The patients seemed, some uneasy, more stunned, by the rapidity and unexpectedness of this development—or lack of development, as Severance put it angrily to Mary-Jane in the corridor, ‘What do you think about it?’
‘I suppose they know what they’re doing,’ she said looking up at him in a reserved, friendly way. She did not seem at all sure of herself, and he felt a moment’s pity for this low-voiced ruin of a young gentlewoman, haggard and elegant even in old jeans, a shapeless sweater over thin shoulders. Thirty-two, say? surely she had been beautiful and recently, with her highpiled rich brown hair wispy over a pale creased forehead and large concerned brown eyes. ‘It’s a cinch we’re no judge of anything, or I know I’m not.’
‘It’s a goddamn waste of Group-time
,’ he said savagely. ‘And it’s so unlike Keg. I don’t know anything about this Harley but I was in Vin’s Group with Keg last Spring, He’s not about to let anybody off any hook. Why this vacation? I’m very busy myself.’
She smiled. ‘Don’t be, Alan. Easy does it, if anything. When did you come back in?’
‘Sunday night. How about you?’
‘This is my second week. End of it.’
‘How does it seem to be going?’
‘I didn’t get anywhere for ten days.’ She paused and then went on reluctantly, ‘But I made a breakthrough last Friday.’ She sounded dubious.
Severance heard reality, though, and spurted excitement. ‘Marvellous. What happened, if you want to tell me? Come on in my room five minutes if you’re free. We’ve got the whole damn morning.’
She sat gently on the side of his unmade bed, crossing her narrow jeans and locking one meagre ankle behind the other. Her cheeks were hollow, less pale than her brow. She looked very calm. He tapped her out a cigarette and lighted it.
‘I was having a war with Julitta. I hated her guts. I wasn’t thinking of leaving, but really I felt awful, pure bitter. Then a friend I made at Howarden last year came to see me and gave me the word: Julitta was trying to help me. My God, that was hard to accept. But somehow she seemed all different the next day—Friday—or I just was seeing her with different eyes; and we made friends, and I broke down, and that was it. I’ve felt changed since. I have a long long way to go, new friend, but I’ve got some hope. I love Julitta.’
‘Well, Christ, I can’t imagine loving Julitta, but I see what you mean. The same thing happened to me with Vin, or even more so. I admired him all right—he’s spectacular, blazing with invention and knowledge of life, wonderfully creative and quick—but I thought he was arrogant and cruel and I wasn’t at all clear that he was sincere. I’d watched him and Keg brutalize first a poor woman and then two men, one a high Administration official whom Vin made Indian-wrestle with a pathetic young schoolteacher, a guy named Jim who hated the Administration from the word go, and of course crumpled the official, twice. It was ghastly. I couldn’t understand it. Then, in the most dramatic way possible, the exact opposite happened —to me. I was in a crisis—not psychological—it was exterofective (forgive my jargon)—real life I mean, not Group-stuff; and Vin came to my rescue, my worst enemy. At first I couldn’t believe it, and when I finally had to, I burst into tears and cried like a baby for two hours. I’ll tell you the whole story some time. Anyway—’
‘Why don’t you tell me now?’ Mary-Jane said. ‘I’m interested. You don’t look as if you would cry very easily.’
‘Well, I do and I don’t.’ He looked at her doubtfully through his bifocals. He was moved by her interest, though long and sufficiently used to people’s being interested in him, but he wasn’t sure he could make himself clear. He found he wanted to. After all, they had both been through Howarden and not made it, and they had both had breakthroughs, only his hadn’t stuck, would hers? He felt close to her. ‘All right, but I’ll have to abbreviate it. Besides there were things I didn’t find out until later. The situation was this: I was giving an odd course over in the Arts College and I had permission from my psychiatrist to taxi across town, give my afternoon lecture, and come back. Two hours, that’s all. I’ve done the same thing from two other hospitals. Well, the first thing Vin did in Group that morning—second Tuesday in treatment it was—was turn to me and say, “I’ve just talked to Dr Gullixson on the phone and he’s withdrawn his consent to your pass.” I was horrified. I am not sure I have ever been so shocked in my life. I said, “You and he have no authority over me, I’ll just call a cab and go.” Then the heat began. “You’re shaking like a leaf.” I said, “I don’t shake when I lecture” (and on the whole that’s true). “You can’t walk.” “I can walk well enough. There’s an elevator.” “We’re afraid you may have a convulsion.” “A convulsion,” I said grimly, “That’s science-fiction, I’ve never had a convulsion in my life.” (Ha ha, I had my first seizure a week later, alone in the lounge at midnight, and might have died if people hadn’t been in the kitchen ten feet away from my chair behind the wall. In the third week of withdrawal, mind you. Another one and Dr Rome telling me I’d have had it.) Well, then the whole Group was at me for an hour and three-quarters while I tried to make up my mind what to do. The special trouble was that my students were in crisis themselves, the nation-wide wave of strikes had just hit the University, of my seventy-five kids only one-third had shown up the preceding Thursday and my assistant was lost, he didn’t know what to tell them, I had to hear them and tell them myself, the President is a very capable guy but he was handling this particular business all wrong, in fact he was not handling it, he had just put students and staff alike on their “consciences,” what a way to run a vast institution. Well, I couldn’t get anybody to see that. They said, “What if you were flat on your back with cancer, what about your duty then?” I said, “Friends, I’m not.” The Chief Counsellor, sitting in, after some speech of mine about my duty to the kids, said, “I read: grandiosity and false pride.” Later he described me as a blind man who has hold of an elephant by the tail and gives a description of it; I looked at him bitterly and said, “You’re witty.” “Judgmental as ever,” he smiled at me. I can’t describe that phantastic time, Mary-Jane. It’s like a girdle on the old Times building in New York telling the crowd some night “JESUS RETURNS 10:37 EDT SPEAKS ONLY ARAMAIC CHICAGO SCHOLAR SOUGHT.” It was the most intense two hours maybe I ever put in. At one point the schoolteacher said to me, “Here we are, all trying to help you, and you just sit there.” I can see the face of the empty son-of-a-bitch. “I’m busy,” I said. During the first five minutes I had appealed to the official, as a responsible outside authority, indirectly in fact over me, and even he had said I ought not to go. Santa Maria. It seemed years. At last, about a quarter to twelve, I gave up. I turned to Vin and said, “All right, I submit to your judgment. I won’t go.” ’ He drew a deep breath and looked at the woman, whom he hadn’t seen for some time.
‘Why?’ she said earnestly, leaning even further forward.
‘God knows. It wasn’t them. Maybe I just got worn out with the dreadful back-and-forth passage between. I must —I mustn’t. Anyway, then I was really in despair. The goddamn class met at one-fifteen, it wasn’t even clear that I could get my secretary on the phone in time, much less the Director, and besides what could they do? I sweated. Meanwhile the tone of the Group had metamorphosed in one second. They were all consolation, advice, sympathy, even praise. I couldn’t understand it and did not give two ounces of gerbil-dung. I simply did not know what to do, in my opinion nothing could be done. In response to some suggestion from Billie Rome, I said angrily, “We don’t even have a Department of Religion, there’s no Divinity School as they have at Harvard and Chicago, there’s nobody to replace me.” You see the lecture was on the Fourth Gospel, I give a weird course over there sometimes, outside my own College. Somebody suddenly said, “Vin’s trained in divinity!” and there was Vin looking hot-faced at me saying, “I’ll give your lecture for you.” I felt stunned. I said, “You’re not serious.” “Oh yes I am,” he said. I still couldn’t believe him—him. I had hit him very hard two times that morning. “You’re not kidding me?” I said, having a sense of about to fall off my chair or just fly out the window backward. “No, no, I’ll do it—if necessary, I’ll teach it in Greek!” I saw he meant it, Mary-Jane, God Almighty. I said, “I could kiss you!” He said—he’s a maniac—“Well, do,” and so help me I leaned across Keg (who, it vaguely and irritably even in that moment came to me, was laughing) and Vin and I embraced and kissed cheeks. “Well!” I said sobbing, “Come down to my room, I’ll go over my notes with you, it won’t take two minutes, they’re full and my texts are marked.” Everything was confused, but I heard somebody say as we all stood up, “He really cares about his students,” and I thought as if far away, “Damn you so you doubted it.” I thought Keg was
going to crush my knuckles during the Lord’s Prayer and somebody told me later there wasn’t a dry eye in the room and I briefed Vin, who said he was “scared to death” (Vin scared). I said, “Some of my kids are marvellous, you’ll be completely at ease with them,” and described several in the front seats, with their names, and off he went, in plenty of time, and I went and sat in the Lounge and wept and wept. Everybody was at lunch, but Keg came from somewhere and knelt down by my chair and gripped my knee. “You were so cruel to Phyllis and Amos,” I got out between sobs, “I don’t understand.” “We’re hard on delusion.” For the first time I saw what treatment was about.’
The man and woman sat in silence in the dishevelled room.
‘It’s an amazing story, Alan,’ she said softly. ‘I have a feeling you didn’t finish it.’
‘Oh no. I hadn’t even reached the point. That afternoon as I thought over what had happened I saw that a direct intervention had taken place and I recovered one particular sense of God’s being I lost as a child. My father shot himself when I was twelve. I didn’t blame God for that, I just lost all personal sense of Him. No doubt about the Creator and Maintainer, and later it became quite clear to me that He made Himself available to certain men and women in terms of inspiration—artists, scientists, statesmen, the saints of course, anybody in fact—gave them special power or insight or endurance—I’d felt it myself: some of my best work I can’t claim any credit for, it flowed out all by itself, or in fact by His moving. But I couldn’t see Him interested in the individual life in the ordinary way. Now I did. Vin was his angel if you like—emissary, agent—I’ve never had any trouble with angels. Or what they call “miracles” either. I became a different man.’
After a little, ‘How,’ she asked, ‘did you come to get in trouble again?’
‘Well, the First Step,’ he said but he felt a strange uncertainty as he heard himself say it.
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