My Heart Laid Bare

by Joyce Carol Oates

  But he’s well. Himself again. In the person of Dr. Moses Liebknecht (of Vienna, Zurich, Paris, London) he carries himself both elegantly and forcefully; a man of mysteries, yet a man aligned with science; a psychotherapist, yet (it’s sometimes hinted) a man who’d begun his career as a biologist, or perhaps a physicist, in Vienna in the 1880’s. A man of mature years—in his early sixties. (In fact, Abraham Licht is sixty-five years old. A face he contemplates with perpetual disbelief, like a man gazing into a mirror and seeing two heads.) And the monkey-gland transplant has worked out very well . . . indeed.

  Unfortunately, he and Dr. Bies have been quarreling often.

  For though Moses Liebknecht owns only 37 percent of the Parris Clinic and isn’t precisely a cofounder, he’s certain that his ideas about running the establishment and about mental health in general are superior to Bies’s. He would screen prospective patients far more scrupulously not only in terms of health and finances but in terms of family background: there’s an obvious advantage to admitting primarily patients without immediate relatives. (For relatives invariably cause trouble. The more relatives, the more heirs; and the more heirs, the more trouble.) In principle, Bies agrees; in practice he’s become careless and greedy. Business is all that absorbs him, making the most money in the shortest period of time; and unhealthy quantities of food and drink. (Now that Abraham can drink only sparingly, he’s disapproving of his partner’s excesses.) There’s a rumor among the staff that Dr. Bies injects himself with morphine . . . but Abraham, that’s to say the rather taciturn Moses Liebknecht, isn’t the sort to bring up so private a subject.

  Like most business partnerships, this one has had seasons of relative health, and decided unhealth. In early 1924, when Abraham Licht made the decision to invest $42,400 in the Parris Clinic, at that time in debt, Bies had been extremely eager to oblige him. Giving over to him the largest office in the former mansion, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a view of the English topiary garden; assuring him he wouldn’t make any decisions without consulting him; flattering him by declaring that, with Licht’s business sense, and his own medical-professional background, they couldn’t fail to become millionaires within a few years. “It’s only a matter of time, ‘Moses.’ The right patients, and a good, reliable staff of therapists, masseurs, nurses, aides—the Clinic will practically run itself. For Autogenic Self-Mastery is the cure to most ills. Of that, I’m convinced.” Dr. Bies spoke with such smiling confidence and boyish idealism, Abraham found himself believing . . . wishing to believe. (Hadn’t he read that most psychological ailments cure themselves, in time? So long as the Clinic didn’t admit seriously ill patients like schizophrenics, manic-depressives, paranoids and the like; and as few patients as possible with organic, medical ailments.) Abraham had checked out the background of Felix Bies, M.D., and confirmed that the man had a medical degree from the Medical School of Rutgers University, in New Jersey; he’d been a resident at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center; he’d even studied psychiatry in Edinburgh. (At least, Abraham thought uneasily, a man named “Felix Bies” was so trained.)

  Bies knew of Abraham Licht from the flamboyant era of the Society for the Reclamation & Restoration of E. Auguste Napoléon Bonaparte; one of Bies’s in-laws had invested, and lost, a considerable amount of money in the scheme, to Bies’s amusement. He’d much admired the mastermind behind the Society, he told Abraham when they first met, and knew that, one day, they must meet—“Our paths would cross, and we would know each other. Yes!”

  So it was of the utmost importance, Abraham Licht insisted to Bies, in these later, more difficult days when they found themselves in frequent disagreement, that, as partners, but more importantly as friends, they speak the truth to each other at all times. And Bies vehemently agreed. “As if, ‘Moses,’ one so clumsy as I should hope to deceive you.”

  Yet it seems to be happening that Bies more and more often ignores Liebknecht’s recommendations. Or doesn’t consult him at all. His prescribed treatment for some patients is, in Liebknecht’s judgment, negligent; he has admitted near-moribund men and women to the Clinic who clearly haven’t any chance of recovery. A ninety-year-old blind man, dazed and sputtering, delivered over to the Clinic by a brusque son in his sixties, whose Rolls-Royce idled in the drive; an obese woman in a wheelchair, wheezing and gasping for breath, suffering from the delusion that she was awaiting a “train for home” in Pennsylvania Station, delivered over by a glamorous woman in mink and tinted glasses identified only, on the official admitting form in Bies’s office, as “Daughter-in-Law”; a wizened, prematurely aged child of nine brought to the Clinic by a sullen nursemaid who claimed that the child’s parents, wealthy residents of Tuxedo Park, had instructed her to “enroll” him here and to remain with him “for the duration”; a rail-thin woman in her thirties, wife of a prominent Manhattan attorney, so nervous her teeth chattered, and her eyes bulged in her skeletal head, under the delusion that she was at a clinic “to have my baby” . . . “Surely it’s bad judgment and bad for the morale of all, to accept so many hopeless patients at the same time,” Moses Liebknecht said worriedly, but Bies, sighing expansively, shrugged and said, “Ah, they will outlive us, ‘Moses.’ And if they don’t, where’s the harm? As the great Santayana, who was once my patient, has said, ‘There is tragedy in perfection, because the universe in which perfection arises in itself imperfect.’” “‘Perfection’! Where, hereabouts, do you see ‘perfection,’ Felix?” (Between Liebknecht and Bies there was a feud of sorts, playful at the start but lately fairly hostile, for the former much admired William James, the very essence of native American philosophy, and the latter admired, or claimed to admire, the Spanish-born George Santayana, James’s antithesis.) Bies smiled at the wincing expression on his partner’s face, and offered him a drink—“The smoothest Scotch whiskey, lovely as death”—from his silver flask, unpleasantly warmed by the heat of his fleshy body. Liebknecht politely declined.

  Am I being stricken by conscience, so late in The Game?

  God help me, if it’s so.

  Lately the partners were inclined, too, to disagree on the composition of the “Parris elixir.” This was a secret medicine to be administered solely at the Clinic under the aegis of Felix Bies, M.D., who had patented it in his name in 1921; it was prescribed to patients in carefully modulated doses, for it was a powerful and potentially addictive formula consisting of blackstrap molasses, oil of coconut, finely ground thyme, almonds, dried seaweed and tincture of opium in varying degrees. (In truth, the precise nature of the elixir depended upon the whim of Dr. Bies’s assistants, who created the elixir in large steaming pots on a kitchen stove.) Moses Liebknecht, sympathizing with the infirm who so unquestioningly and hopefully drank down the elixir, convinced of its magical powers, argued that the elixir should contain a fixed amount of nonaddictive matter and a minimum of opium; he’d had some experience (of which he spoke evasively, for Dr. Liebknecht wasn’t one to share intimate secrets even with his partner and friend Dr. Bies) with opium addiction, and knew how malevolent it could be. “Above all, the elixir shouldn’t smell and taste repellent, which is sometimes the case—it’s a discouraging sight to see patients gagging on it even as, with tears in their eyes, they proclaim its magical powers.” It seemed inevitable that certain of the patients as they grew sicker and weaker and less certain of their surroundings begged for heavier dosages of the elixir even when, in the most literal sense, they couldn’t stomach it. Dr. Liebknecht, that’s to say Abraham Licht, recalling Katrina’s herbal medicines, which had helped restore his health more than once, had been experimenting with a rival medicine: it would be called the Liebknecht Formula, consisting primarily of sweet, heavy cream into which cherries had been ground to create a smooth, blood-tinctured texture intended to stir in the patient’s unconscious idyllic memories of nursing at his mother’s breast; there was no practical way to avoid tincture of opium, but Dr. Liebknecht made sure that only delicious ingredients were ground into the formu
la—cinnamon sticks, brown sugar, pistachio nuts, cocoa, Swiss chocolate, and so forth. In some patients the Liebknecht Formula acted as a gentle soporific, in others as a stimulant; in others, a powerful emetic; in one patient, Mrs. Deardon, the neurasthenic wife of the Manhattan attorney, it had an alarming aphrodisiac effect resulting in Mrs. Deardon’s pregnancy after only five weeks at the Clinic. (As there were no provisions for pregnant patients at the Parris Clinic, Mrs. Deardon was obliged to hurriedly depart. The father, or fathers, of the unborn child were not named by Mrs. Dearborn, and did not come forward to identify themselves; but Mrs. Dearborn was reportedly very happy with the pregnancy, speaking of it as an autogenic conception involving no crude sexual “act” for which she might be blamed.) Bies, normally indifferent to the atmosphere of the Clinic, began to take exception to the fact that a number of patients were choosing the new medicine over the old; while others insisted upon having both, with sometimes unfortunate results. So, the Liebknecht Formula was causing division at the Clinic where tranquility of mind was necessary, if Autogenic Self-Mastery was to retain its potency.

  Half in jest, yet half seriously, Moses Liebknecht observed to Felix Bies one day that the distinction between the new elixir and the old was that the new might well have curative powers—“I’m taking it myself in experimental doses. And I must say, Felix, I’ve never felt so—healthy, and happy.” Bies regarded him with searching eyes, and a sly spiteful smile, saying, “Yes? There is a sort of luminous glow about you. As there is about our patient Miss Grille. Is she, too, taking the Liebknecht Formula? Like Mrs. Deardon?” Liebknecht flushed at this remark with its lewd innuendo, and would have departed Bies’s presence in dignity, except Bies added, quickly, as if to placate him, “Moses, do you think the Liebknecht Formula would work for me, too? I am in need of some sort of—restoration.”

  Moses Liebknecht smiled politely, and laid an assuring hand on the other man’s shoulder. “Dr. Bies, recall the words engraved over the entrance to Hades: Caveat emptor.”

  3.

  Full of scorpions is my mind.

  And who will purge it?

  After Abraham Licht’s nervous collapse in Philadelphia in December 1916 he didn’t plunge of his own volition but fell helpless and terrified to the bottom of the marsh; to the rich slimy-black bottom of the marsh; where Katrina grown old now, gaunt and altered, her once-firm skin finely creased as an eggshell with myriad cracks, and of that pallor, nursed him for many months; Katrina, and Esther his youngest child whom he scarcely knew; until by Katrina’s judgment he was well—“And fit now to return to the world of Time.”

  In Katrina’s mouth these words had the effect of a statement of health that was simultaneously a kind of curse. For the “world of Time,” to Katrina, the world beyond Muirkirk, was no paradise.

  But for those months, in her care, Abraham Licht thought nothing of the world of Time, nor even of Philadelphia society which, he’d had every reason to believe, he had conquered; instead he slept like an infant again in his mother’s breast; slept, and woke; and slept again; and took sustenance from sleep, as from Katrina’s vigilant care; no matter that Katrina’s smile slipped cruelly from her gums and her eyes in their deep sockets blazed with an unearthly light; waking, Abraham might see that in the shadows only a few feet from him there crouched a wizened featherless bird, sharp-beaked, of about the size of a sparrow hawk: he wanted to cry out in terror, but could not. He wanted to whisper her name but could not. He wanted to shut his eyes to dispel the vision but could not. Help help help me I am not fit to die. I have not fulfilled my destiny on this earth.

  In such fever-states Abraham was certain he could remember his lost mother across a space of . . . could it be six decades? Six? Recalling not the exact image of the woman but the aura, the radiance of her abiding love.

  Waking another time, to see Katrina quite ordinary, an aging but still capable woman, a woman to whom one might babble of nightmares; Fortnum & Mason tins crammed with flesh, blood, body hairs, the ooze and reek and shame of it, a body that was Abraham’s own served up to him like one of those hideous cannibal-feasts of antiquity; a son of Abraham Licht’s prepared as for a holiday meal in tinsel-wrapped packages with crinkly bows. And Katrina seemed to listen, and to humor him; saying, as she pressed a cool damp cloth against his burning forehead, that it was only a dream, and dreams are to be forgotten.

  And Abraham raged to Katrina of his daughter, his beautiful angel-daughter whose name he could no longer speak, his daughter who’d betrayed him at last as her mother had done, eloping with a man Abraham Licht scarcely knew, eloping and marrying without Abraham Licht’s blessing, and now the girl was dead; and her name must never again be uttered.

  And Katrina said, more somberly, that this too was only a dream, and dreams are to be forgotten.

  All these follies you must forget for the Past is but the graveyard of the future; and no place for Abraham Licht.

  4.

  So it happened that Katrina, with young Esther’s help, saw to it that Abraham ate when he hadn’t the appetite, and slept when he protested his thoughts raged too wildly for sleep; and had nothing to do with Muirkirk, nor the great world beyond.

  Protesting only mildly, Abraham gave in to her; slept as many as twelve hours at a time; made an effort to eat all the food she prepared; and, when he was feeling stronger, contented himself with walking in the marsh, or through fields, or along deserted country roads where he wasn’t likely to meet anyone who knew him. (Even those older inhabitants of Muirkirk who’d known Abraham Licht in the prime of his young manhood, as the city-dweller who’d galloped into their midst to buy, at auction, within minutes, the derelict Church of the Nazarene, seemed not to recognize this gaunt, longhaired man in seemingly good-quality but soiled and rumpled clothes, a battered fedora on his head so slanted to partly hide his eyes, with a bristly graying-white beard sprouting on his face like lichen.) If Abraham saw another person approaching—usually a farmer driving a horse-drawn wagon, or boys on foot—he quickly retreated and hid in the woods; in this way giving rise in the course of his eighteen-month sojourn in Muirkirk to a number of rumors and tales. The most persistent was that of a supernatural marsh creature, half-man, half-demon, who couldn’t bear the gaze of a human being but had to flee back into the marsh.

  A cryptic tale that endures in Muirkirk to this day, though Abraham Licht has vanished long ago.

  BY DEGREES, REGAINING his health, he regained as well his old zest for reading. Don Quixote . . . the dialogues of Plato . . . Home Cures & Emetics . . . A History of the Chautauqua Region . . . P. T. Barnum’s Illustrated News (for August 1880: featuring the sultry Zalumma Agra, “Star of the East,” a lovely “Circassian” girl who quite distressed Abraham Licht by so closely resembling, despite her brunette coloring, his lost daughter Millicent) . . . and volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica whose mildewed pages he turned in nervous haste as if seeking a revelation that might alter his life. He reread the great tragedies of Shakespeare—Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, Othello—which he’d first encountered years before in the wretched isolation of a county jail (though which county, and for what reason he was there incarcerated, he couldn’t now recall); he studied Milton’s great poem of paradise lost to man by way of God’s cruelty; he discovered, to his delight, the melancholy wisdom of Schopenhauer—

  Suicide, the wilful destruction of the single phenomenal existence, is a vain and foolish act, for the thing-in-itself—the species, and life, and will in general—remains unaffected by it, even as the rainbow endures however fast the drops which support it for the moment may chance to fall.

  “As I’ve always surmised,” Abraham thought, slowly closing the book of yellowed and torn pages, as if he feared it might crumble to dust in his hands, “—suicide is pointless! One must be the rainbow, and exult in its prismatic ever-changing colors, that live forever, and cannot be destroyed.”

  5.

  It was a happy omen, which both men laughingly acknowledged even as the
y shook hands like old friends or brothers—Abraham Licht and Gaston Bullock Means were each wearing a Palm Beach suit, a white shirt with gold studs, and a straw hat that gave off an air of cheery affluence; and white shoes only very slightly scuffed. Abraham Licht’s bow tie was a conservative jade green, while Gaston Bullock Means’s bow tie was red and green polka dots. “Ah, Abraham, I am so relieved to see you, here,” Means said, gripping his old friend’s hand and gazing, with rather protuberant red-veined eyes, into Abraham Licht’s face, “for so many men are flooding into Washington these days, and so much is happening every day—every hour!—we desperately need someone in our office whom we can trust.”

  The year was 1919; the month, June—a half year already since the signing of the Armistice, and the restoration of peace to Europe; and Abraham Licht, by way of his renewed contact with Gaston Bullock Means, was being hired by the Burns Detective Agency as a “special consultant,” a position he would hold until August of 1923, the month of President Harding’s death. With the passage of time Abraham Licht’s official duties were to vary widely, and, like numberless gentlemen brought to Washington during these heady years, he would make a good deal of money; yet, if the truth be told, his work for Burns, Means, the Justice Department, etc. never greatly excited him, or aroused in him any feelings of pride. For whether he operated as an agent for Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer (under Democrat Woodrow Wilson), or Attorney General Harry Daugherty (under Republican Warren Harding), or worked with Means on special assignments for the Prohibition Bureau (where considerable sums of money routinely changed hands, as prominent bootleggers paid their fees for immunity from federal prosecution), Abraham Licht was rarely in a position to immerse himself in a project of his own but was accountable to other men, and their projects. (And, under Harding’s administration in particular, the schemes they devised were so transparent, so lacking in subtlety, originality, and grace—a matter, really, of simple theft from public funds—he saw very little point to it, and gradually lost interest in his career. “Why, they are mere pigs at the trough, nothing more,” Abraham Licht realized, one day in 1922, “—and what pleasure is there for a gentleman, in competing thus?”)