The Journey of Joenes

by Robert Sheckley

  “Mr. Joenes,” the first truckman said, “you must leave us here. For now we turn down this road to the east, to our warehouse. And there is nothing beyond that but forest and ocean.”

  Joenes got down. Just before the truck drove off, he asked the three men a final question.

  “You have each lost the most important thing in the world to you,” Joenes said. “But tell me, have you found anything to replace it?”

  Delgado, who had once believed in justice, said, “Nothing can ever replace my loss. But I must admit that I am becoming interested in science, which seems to offer a rational and reasonable world.”

  Proponus, the Swede who had forsaken science, said, “I am a totally bereft man. But occasionally I think of religion, which is surely a greater comfort than science, and more comforting.”

  Schmidt, the German who had lost religion, said, “I am inconsolable in my emptiness. But from time to time I think about justice, which, being man-made, offers laws and a sense of dignity to men.”

  Joenes perceived that none of the truck drivers had really listened to the other, since each was so taken up with his own troubles. So Joenes waved good-bye to the truck drivers and walked off, thinking of their various stories.

  But soon he forgot about them, for he saw a large house ahead of him. Standing in the doorway of that house was a man, and the man was beckoning to him.

  VII

  JOENES’S ADVENTURES IN A MADHOUSE

  (As told by Paaui of Fiji)

  Joenes walked towards the entrance of the house, and then stopped to read the sign over the door. The sign read: the hollis home for the criminally insane.

  Joenes was considering the implications of that when the man who had beckoned to him rushed out of the door and seized him by both arms. Joenes prepared to defend himself when he saw that the man was none other than Lum, his friend from San Francisco.

  “Joenesy!” Lum cried. “Man, I was really scared for you after you came on with the fuzz back on the coast. I didn’t know how you, a stranger and maybe a little simple too, would make out in the States, which is to say the least a complicated place. But Deirdre told me I shouldn’t worry about you, and she was right. I see you found the place.”

  “The place?” Joenes said.

  “Sanctuarysville,” Lum said. “Come on in.”

  Joenes entered the Hollis Home for the Criminally Insane. Inside, in the Day Room, Lum introduced him to a group of people. Joenes watched and listened attentively, but he could detect nothing insane about these people. He said as much to Lum.

  “Well, of course not,” Lum replied. “That sign outside is merely the technical or square name for the place. We insiders prefer to call it the Hollis Writers and Artists Colony.”

  “Then this isn’t an insane asylum!” Joenes asked.

  “Sure it is, but only in a technical sense.”

  “Are there any insane people here?” Joenes asked.

  “Look, man,” Lum said, “this is the most desirable artist colony in the east. Sure, we got a few nuts here. We need something to keep the doctors occupied, and of course we would lose our government grant and our tax-free status if we didn’t let in some nuts.”

  Joenes looked quickly around him, for he had never seen a madman before. But Lum shook his head and said, “Not here in the Day Room. The nuts are usually kept chained in the cellar.”

  A tall, bearded doctor had been listening to this conversation. Now he said to Joenes, “Yes, we’ve found the cellar very good. It’s moist and dark, and that seems to help the excitable types.”

  “But why do you keep them in chains?” Joenes asked.

  “It gives them a sense of being wanted,” the doctor said. “Also, the educational value of heavy chains must not be underestimated. Sunday is visitors’ day and when we bring people past our howling, filth-laden madmen, it creates an unforgettable picture in their minds. Psychology concerns itself as much with prevention as with cure, and our statistical samplings show that people who have viewed our underground cells are much less likely to go insane than the population at large.”

  “That’s very interesting,” Joenes said. “Do you treat all madmen in this way?”

  “Heavens, no!” the doctor said with a merry laugh. “We workers in psychology cannot afford to be rigid in our approach to mental illness. The form of insanity often dictates its own treatment. Thus, with melancholics, we find that slapping them in the face with a scallion-stained handkerchief usually has beneficial results in terms of the general excitation level. With paranoids, it is often best to enter the patient’s delusion. Accordingly, we set spies on them, and ray machines, and similar apparatus. In that way the patient loses his insanity, since we have manipulated his environment in order to make his fears a part of reality. That particular approach is one of our triumphs.”

  “What happens then?” Joenes said.

  “Once we have entered the paranoid’s world and made it a reality, we then try to alter the reality framework, so as to bring the patient back to normality. We haven’t quite worked that out yet, but the theoretical line is promising.”

  “As you can see,” Lum said to Joenes, “the Doc here is quite a thinker.”

  “Not at all,” the doctor said, with a modest laugh. “I simply try not to be set in my ways. I try to keep my mind open to any hypothesis. It is simply the way I am, and therefore nothing exemplary.”

  “Aw, come on, Doc,” Lum said.

  “No, no, really,” the doctor said. “I merely have what some call a questioning mind. Unlike some of my colleagues, I ask questions. For example, when I see a grown man crouched with shut eyes in a foetal position, I do not instantly apply massive radioactive shock therapy. I am more likely to ask myself, ‘What would happen if I constructed a huge artificial womb and put this man inside?’ That is an example from an actual case.”

  “What happened?” Joenes asked.

  “The guy suffocated,” Lum said with a laugh.

  “I have never pretended to be an engineer,” the doctor said stiffly. “Trial and error are necessary. Besides, I count that case a success.”

  “Why?” Joenes asked.

  “Because just before the patient died, he uncurled. I still do not know whether the healing agent was the artificial womb, or death, or a combination of the two; but the experiment is of obvious theoretical importance.”

  “I was only kidding you, Doc,” Lum said. “I know you do good work.”

  “Thank you, Lum,” the doctor said. “And now you must excuse me, because it is time for me to attend one of my patients. An interesting delusional case. He believes he is a physical reincarnation of God. So strong is his belief that, by some ability that I don’t pretend to understand, he is able to make the black flies in his cell form a halo around his head, while the rats bow before him, and birds of the field and forest come from miles around to sing outside his cell window. One of my colleagues is very interested in this phenomenon, since it implies a hitherto unknown communication channel between man and beast.”

  “How are you treating him?” Joenes asked.

  “My approach is environmental,” the doctor said. “I am entering his delusion by pretending to be a worshipper and disciple. For fifty minutes every day I sit at his feet. When the animals bow before him, I bow too. Every Thursday I take him to the infirmary and let him cure the sick, because this seems to give him pleasure.”

  “Does he really cure them?” Joenes asked.

  “He has a hundred per cent record so far,” the doctor said. “But of course so-called miracle cures are nothing new either to science or religion. We don’t pretend to know everything.”

  “Can I see the patient?” Joenes asked.

  “Of course,” the doctor said. “He loves visitors. I’ll arrange it for this afternoon.” And with a cheerful smile, the doctor hurried off.

  Joenes looked around at the bright, well-furnished Day Room and listened to the erudite conversation on all sides of him. The Hollis Ho
me for the Criminally Insane seemed not a bad place to him. And a moment later it seemed all the better, for walking toward him was Deirdre Feinstein.

  The beautiful girl threw herself into his arms and the scent of her hair was like sun-ripened honey.

  “Joenes,” she said in a tremulous voice, “I have thought of you ever since our premature parting in San Francisco when you interceded so rashly and lovingly between me and the fuzz. You have haunted my dreams and my waking moments until I scarcely knew one from the other. With the help of my father, Sean, I have instituted a search for you throughout America. But I feared that I would never see you again, and came to this place solely to rest my nerves. Oh, Joenes, do you think it was fate or chance that brought us together now?”

  “Well, Joenes said. “It seems to me—”

  “I knew it would,” Deirdre said, clasping him more tightly to her. “We will be married two days from now, on July 4, since I have become patriotic in your absence. Does that date suit you?”

  “Well,” Joenes said, “I think we should consider—”

  “I was sure of it,” Deirdre said. “And I also know that I have been a wild girl in the past, what with needle parties, and the month I spent hidden in the men’s dorm at Harvard, and the time I was queen of the West Side Boppers and killed the former queen with a bicycle chain, and other childish escapades. I am not proud of these things, my darling, but I am also not ashamed of the natural wildness of my youth. That is why I have confessed these things to you, and will continue to confess things as quickly as I can remember them, since there must be no secrets between us. Don’t you agree?”

  “Well,” Joenes said, “I think—”

  “I was positive you would see it that way,” Deirdre said. “Luckily for us, all that is in the past. I have become a responsible adult, and have joined the Junior League of Conservatives, the Council Against Unamericanism In Any Form, the Friends of Salazar Society, and the Women’s Crusade Against Foreignism. Nor are these mere surface changes. Inside me I can feel a deep loathing of the things I have been guilty of, as well as a hatred of the arts, which are frequently nothing but pornography. So you see that I have grown up, my change is genuine, and I will make you a good and faithful wife.”

  Joenes had a glimpse of his future life with Deirdre, in which loathsome confession alternated with unbearable boredom. Deirdre prattled on about the arrangements she would make for the wedding, then hurried out of the Day Room to telephone her father.

  Joenes said to Lum, “How does one leave here?”

  “Well, man,” Lum said, “I mean like you just got here.”

  “I know. But how do I leave? Can I simply walk out?”

  “Certainly not. This is, after all, a Home for the Criminally Insane.”

  “Can I ask the doctor for a release?”

  “Sure. But you better not ask him this week, what with the full moon approaching. It always makes him jumpy.”

  “I want to leave tonight,” Joenes said. “Or tomorrow at the latest.”

  “That’s pretty sudden,” Lum said. “Is it maybe little Deirdre and her wedding plans got you jumpy?”

  “It is,” Joenes said.

  “Don’t worry about that,” Lum said. “I’ll take care of Deirdre, and I’ll also have you out of here by tomorrow. Trust in me, Joenesy, and do not worry about a thing. Lum will fix.”

  Later in the day the doctor returned to take Joenes to see the patient who thought he was a physical reincarnation of God. They went through several gigantic iron doors and down a grey corridor. At the end of the corridor they stopped in front of a door.

  The doctor said, “It would do no harm, and possibly a great deal of good, if you adopted a psychotherapeutic attitude during this meeting and let the patient think that you believed his delusion.”

  “I’ll do that,” Joenes said, and found himself filled with sudden apprehension and hope.

  The doctor unlocked the cell door, and they stepped inside. But there was no one in the cell. On one side was the neatly made cot, and on the other was the heavily barred window. There was also a little wooden table, and beside it stood a field mouse, who wept as though his heart would break. On the table was a note which the doctor picked up.

  “This is very unusual,” the doctor said. “He seemed in good spirits when I locked his door half an hour ago.”

  “But how did he escape?” Joenes asked.

  “Undoubtedly he utilized some form of telekinesis,” the doctor said. “I cannot pretend to know much about this so-called psychic phenomenon; but it shows the extent to which a deranged mind will go in trying to justify itself. In fact, the very intensity of the effort to escape is our best indicator of the degree of upset. I am only sorry that we could not help the poor fellow, and I hope that wherever he is, he remembers some of the fundamentals of insight we have tried to teach him here.”

  “What does the note say?” Joenes asked.

  The doctor glanced at the piece of paper and said, “It seems to be a shopping list. Very strange sort of shopping list, though, because I don’t know where he would buy—”

  Joenes tried to peer at the note over the doctor’s shoulder, but the doctor snatched it away and shoved it into a pocket.

  “Privileged communication,” the doctor said. “We can’t let a layman read this sort of thing, at least not before the note has been thoroughly analyzed and annotated, and certain key terms have been substituted to preserve the anonymity of the patient. Now shall we return to the Day Room?”

  Joenes had no choice but to follow the doctor to the Day Room. He had seen the first word of the note, which was: REMEMBER. It was little enough, but Joenes would always remember.

  Joenes spent a restless night wondering how Lum would be able to fulfill his promises concerning Deirdre and a release from the asylum. But he had not realized the resourcefulness of his friend.

  Lum took care of the impending marriage by informing Deirdre that Joenes would have to be treated for a tertiary syphilitic condition before contracting marriage. Treatment might take a long time; and if it were not successful, the disease would attack Joenes’s nervous system, reducing him to a human vegetable.

  Deirdre was saddened by this news, but declared that she would marry Joenes on July 4 anyhow. She told Lum that ever since her reformation, carnal relations had become extremely repugnant to her. Because of that, Joenes’s ailment could be looked upon as an asset rather than a liability, since it would tend to enforce a purely spiritual union between them. As for finding herself married to a human vegetable, this possibility was not displeasing to the high-spirited girl; she had always wanted to be a nurse.

  Lum then pointed out that no marriage license could legally be obtained for a person with Joenes’s ailment. This made Deirdre desist, since her recently acquired maturity made it impossible for her to contemplate doing anything that was forbidden by state or federal law.

  In that fashion, Joenes was saved from an unpromising alliance.

  As for leaving the asylum, Lum had taken care of that. Shortly after the noon meal, Joenes was called into the Visitors’ Room. There Lum introduced him to Dean Garner J. Fols who, together with several colleagues, formed the Faculty Committee of the University of St. Stephen’s Wood.

  Dean Fols was a tall and stringy man with a mild academic eye, a gently humorous mouth, and a heart as big as all outdoors. He put Joenes at ease with a remark about the weather and a quotation from Aristophanes. Then he spoke of his reason for requesting the interview.

  “You must understand, my dear Mr. Joenes, if I may use that term, that we in the field of—shall we call it education?—are continually on the lookout for talent. In fact we have been likened, perhaps not unkindly, to persons in the baseball profession who perform a similar function. However, that is as it may be.”

  “I understand,” Joenes said.

  “I should further add,” Dean Fols added, “that we prize not so much the possessor of the proper academic requirements, such
as myself and my colleagues possess, as one with a thorough understanding of his subject and a dynamic approach to imparting that subject to whosoever shall undertake to take his course. Too often we academics find ourselves cut off from, shall I call it, the mainstream of American life? And too often we have ignored those who, without pedagogic background, have performed with great luster in their work. But I am sure that my good friend Mr. Lum has explained all this in far better words than I could hope.”

  Joenes glanced at Lum, who said, “Like you know, I taught two semesters at USSW on “The Interrelatedness of Jazz and Poetry.” We got quite a scene going, man, what with the bongos and such.”

  Dean Fols said, “Mr. Lum’s course was a great success, and we would gladly repeat it if Mr. Lum—”

  “No, man,” Lum said. “I mean I don’t want to put you down but you know I’m off that.”

  “Of course,” Dean Fols said hastily. “If there is anything else you would care to teach—”

  “Maybe I’ll give a retrospective seminar in Zen,” Lum said. “I mean Zen is back in. But I’ll have to think about it.”

  “Certainly,” Dean Fols said. He turned to Joenes. “As you no doubt know, Mr. Lum telephoned me last night and gave me to understand of your background.”

  “That was very good of Mr. Lum,” Joenes said guardedly.

  “Your background is splendid,” Fols said, “and I believe that the course you propose will be a success in the fullest meaning of that word.”

  By now Joenes understood that he was being offered a University position. Unfortunately he did not know what he was supposed to teach, or indeed what he could teach. Lum, now contemplating Zen, sat with eyes downcast and gave him no clue.

  Joenes said, “I will be delighted to come to a fine University as yours. As to the course I will teach—”

  “Please don’t misunderstand,” Dean Fols broke in hastily. “We fully understand the specialized nature of your subject matter and the difficulties inherent in presenting it. We propose to start you at a full professor’s salary of one thousand six hundred and ten dollars a year. I realize that that is not very much money, and sometimes I ruefully contemplate the fact that an assistant plumber in our culture earns no less than eighteen thousand dollars a year. Still, university life has its compensations, if I may say so.”