Love in the Ruins: The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World

by Walker Percy

  “How?”

  “Don’t you see? You don’t even move your MOQUOL. Say you take a reading at the red nucleus and find a plus-five millivolt pathology. All you do is swing your dial to a minus-five Chloride charge and ionize.”

  “And what will that do?”

  “Tranquilize red-nucleus rage.”

  “Sure.”

  “You don’t believe me? Where are you going?”

  “To get a drink.”

  “That’s the point, Doc. Drink this drink and you’ll never want a drink. Let me show you something.”

  “What?”

  “Sit down here.”

  As I sit on the lower platform, Art holds the machine to my head. It feels like barber’s clippers.

  “Now. Using your diagnostic circuit, I observe that you are registering a plus-three on the anxiety scale. A little high but not unusual considering the pace of modern living. Now suppose I keep the MOQUOL in place and switch over to a plus-two ion emission. You should feel a bit worse.”

  The machine hums like a tuning fork against my head.

  I begin to shiver. My shoulders are rounded and I am gazing at my hands clenched in my lap. At last I raise my eyes. A horrid white light streams through the frosted window and falls into the glittering porcelain basins of the urinals. It is the Terror, but tolerable. The urinals, which are the wall variety, are shaped like skulls. The dripping water sounds hollow like water at the bottom of a well.

  “Now. Well reverse and give you a minus-seven Chloride dose, which should throw you over into minus-two anti-anxiety.”

  My head is leaning against the metal support of the treadle. Again the machine hums.

  When I open my eyes, I am conscious first of breathing. Something in my diaphragm lets go. I realize I’ve been breathing at the top of my lungs for forty-five years. Now my diaphragm moves like a piston into my viscera, pulling great drafts of air into the base of my lungs.

  Next I become aware of the cool metal of the support against my neck.

  Then I notice my hand clenched into a fist on my knee. I open it slowly, turning it this way and that, inspecting every pore and crease. What a beautiful strong hand! The tendons! The bones! But the hand of a stranger! I have never seen it before.

  How can a man spend forty-five years as a stranger to himself? No other creature would do such a thing. No animal would, for he is pure organism. No angel would, for he is pure spirit.

  “Feeling better, Doc?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s quite a device, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the Director doesn’t appreciate it, does he?”

  “No.”

  “Now.” Art is at my head again, fiddling about, pressing bony protuberances, measuring salients of my skull with a cold metal centimeter scale. It feels good to be measured. “I’m going to show you something I think will interest you. I’m going to stimulate Brodmann 11 mildly. You know what that is?”

  “Yes, but I’d like to hear what you think it is.”

  “It lies in the frontal-temporal sulcus of course, betwixt and between the abstractive areas of the frontal and the concrete auditory radiation of the frontal. It is the area of the musical-erotic.”

  “Hm, that’s not my terminology.”

  “But you know what I mean. Here the abstract is experienced concretely and the concrete abstractly. Take women, for example. Here one neither loves a woman individually, for herself and no other, faithfully; nor does one love a woman organically as a dog loves a bitch. No, one loves a woman both in herself and insofar as she is a woman, a member of the class women. Conversely, one loves women not in the abstract but in a particular example, this woman. Loves her truly, moreover. One loves faithlessly but truly.”

  “Truly?”

  “Loves her as one loves music. A woman is the concrete experienced abstractly, as women. Music is the abstract experienced as the concrete, namely sound.”

  “So?”

  “Ha! Old stuff to you, eh, Doc? Well, that’s not the end of it. Don’t you see? Stimulate this area and you stimulate both the scientist and the lover but neither at the expense of the other. You stimulate the scientist-lover.”

  “I see.”

  But it is Art himself who interests me. How does Art, who looks like the sort of fellow who used to service condom vendors in the old Auto Age, know this?

  “So that in the same moment one becomes victorious in science one also becomes victorious in love. And all for the good of mankind! Science to help all men and a happy joyous love to help women. We are speaking here of happiness, joy, music, spontaneity, you understand. Fortunately we have put behind us such unhappy things as pure versus impure love, sin versus virtue, and so forth. This love has its counterpart in scientific knowledge: it is neutral morally, abstractive and godlike—”

  “Godlike?”

  “In the sense of being like a god in one’s freedom and omniscience.”

  “You surprise me, Art.”

  “Hold still, Doc.”

  Again the cold steel hums like a tuning fork against my skull.

  The tone of the tuning fork turns into music: first, a plaintive little piping, the dance of happy spirits in a high meadow; the flute trips along, hesitates, picks up again, and here’s the beauty of it, in the catch, the stutter, and starting up again. Now comes the love music of man in particular for women in general: happy, faithless, seductive music: the race and rip of violins dancing, whipping, tricking, fizzing in a froth of May wine, sunshine sunshine, and cotton dresses in summertime.

  Who am I?

  I am he who loves. I am in love. I love.

  Who do you love?

  You.

  Who is “you”?

  A girl.

  What girl?

  Any girl you please. You.

  How can that be?

  Because all girls are lovable and I love them all. I love you. I can make you happy and you me.

  Only one thing can make you happy and it is not that

  Love makes me happy. Knowing makes me happy.

  Love is God, because God is love. Knowing God is knowing all things.

  Love is not God. Love is music

  “Who are you talking to, Doc?”

  “What?”

  “Why don’t you sit down?”

  “What was I doing?”

  “It doesn’t matter, as long as you feel good.”

  Art pushes up the frosted window. We gaze out into the gold-green. Fat white clouds are blown by map winds. Swallows dip. Cicadas go zreeeee.

  “You look good, Doc. Look at yourself. You’re not a bad-looking guy. You’re still young, you got a good built if you took care of yourself. Here, wash your face in cold water and comb your hair.” He hands me his pocket comb. “Now, no need to look like a hairy elf.” In a flash he produces a pocket klipette, clips the hair in my nose, ears, and eyebrows. “Tch, your fingernails!”—and gives me a manicure on the spot. In two minutes my nails become glossy watchglasses like Buddy Brown’s. Art comes close and sniffs: “Pardon, Doc, but you’re a little high, you know. Here’s a man’s deodorant. Now!”

  Art gazes at me. I gaze at the green-gold summer.

  “How do you feel, Doc?”

  “Fine.”

  “Isn’t it better to feel good rather than bad?”

  “Yes.”

  “Isn’t it better to be happy than unhappy?”

  “Yes.”

  “How can you take care of unhappy patients if you are unhappier than they are? Physician, heal thyself.”

  “Yes.”

  “Your terror is gone, you’re breathing well, your large bowel should be slack as a string, clear as a bell. How is it?”

  “Slack as a string, clear as a bell.”

  “O.K., Doc, now what?”

  “I don’t know. What?”

  “Well, what is the purpose of life in a democratic society?”

  “A democratic society?” I ask him, smiling. />
  “Sure. Isn’t it for each man to develop his potential to the fullest?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “What is your potential?”

  “I don’t know, what?”

  “Doc, you have two great potentials: a first-class mind and a heart full of love.”

  “Yes.”

  “So what do you do with them?”

  “I don’t know, what?”

  “Know and love, what else?”

  “Yes.”

  “And win at both.”

  “Win?”

  “Is there anything wrong with being victorious and happy? With curing patients, advancing science, loving women and making them happy?”

  “No.”

  “Use your talents, Doc. What do you know how to do?”

  “I know how to use this.” I pick up the lapsometer.

  “What can you do with that?”

  “Make people happy.”

  “Who do you love, Doc?”

  “Women, knowing, music, and Early Times.”

  “You’re all set, Doc. One last thing—”

  “Yes?”

  “Where is your crate of MOQUOLs?”

  “In a safe place.”

  “Let me have them. The situation is critical and I think we ought to get them in the right hands as soon as possible.”

  “No. I’d better not. That is not part of our contract.”

  “Why not?”

  “They are dangerous. I can’t be too careful.”

  “What dangers?”

  “Physical and political dangers.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think you know what I mean. If one of these falls into the wrong hands, it could produce a chain reaction in the Heavy Sodium deposits hereabouts or a political explosion between the Knotheads and the Lefts. Do you realize that the President and Vice-President will be here tomorrow?”

  “Realize it! Why do you think I want your MOQUOLs?”

  Coming close, he opens and closes his wallet, giving me a glimpse of a metal shield.

  “F.B.I.?”

  “A bit more exalted. Let’s just say I make security reports from time to time. That’s why we’re interested in making sure your invention stays in the right hands.”

  “This seems a bit far afield from your work with mental health and the foundations.”

  “Everything is interdisciplinary now, Doc. As well as being third-generational. You understand.”

  “No. But don’t worry about my invention.”

  “O.K., Doc. Now. Sign here.” He nods to the contract on the windowsill. A ballpoint pen leaps to his hand, clicks, and backs toward my chest.

  “Very well.” Standing at the windowsill, which seems to be his place of business, I sign the blue-jacketed contract.

  “You won’t be sorry, Doc.” All in one motion he takes pen and contract clicks pen, stuffs both into his inside breast pocket. As usual, he stands too close and when he buttons his coat it exhales a heavy breath. “Now you can use your talents for the good of mankind and the increase of knowledge. All you have to do is never look back and never be sorry, as per agreement.”

  “As per what agreement?” I ask vaguely, frowning. But my colon is at peace and my heart beats in time to Mozart.

  “We’re in business, Doc.”

  “Yeah. Let’s have a drink.”

  “What? Oh. Well—”

  The bottle of Early Times passes between us. The whiskey catches hold in my stomach, gear engaging gear. Art chokes, his eyes water.

  “That’s good stuff,” says Art, blinking. I could swear it was his first drink.

  “Yes,” I say, laughing.

  It’s like being back in Charlottesville, in the spring, in the men’s room, at a dance, at old Saint Anthony’s Hall.

  6

  The Pit is in an uproar. Students roost like chickens along the steep slopes of the amphitheater, cackling and fluttering their white jackets as they argue about the day’s case. Bets are placed, doctors attacked and defended. The rightwing Knothead Christian students occupy the right benches, the Lefts the left.

  The lower reaches are reserved for professors, residents, consultants, and visiting physicians. The Director, for example, sits in the front row, elbows propped on the high retaining wall, next to his fellow Nobel laureate Dr. Kenneth Stryker, who first described the branny cruciform rash of love. Gottlieb is directly behind them, erect as a young prince, light glancing from his forehead. His eyes search mine with a questing puzzled glance, seeking to convey a meaning, but I do not take the meaning. In the same row sit Dr. Helga Heine, the West German interpersonal gynecologist; Colley Wilkes, the super-Negro encephalographer, and his wife, Fran, a light-colored behaviorist and birdwatcher; Ted ’n Tanya and two visiting proctologists from Paradise: my old friend Dr. Dusty Rhoades and Dr. Walter Bung, an extremely conservative albeit skillful proctologist recently removed from Birmingham.

  The pit itself, a sunken area half the size of a handball court and enclosed by a high curving wall, is empty save for Dr. Buddy Brown, the patient, Mr. Ives, in a wheelchair, and behind him a strapping blond nurse named Winnie Gunn, whose stockings are rolled beneath her knees. Where is Moira? Ah, I see: sitting almost out of sight in the approach tunnel with no more of her visible than her beautiful gunmetal legs. Is she avoiding me?

  I enter not through the tunnel but from the top, walking down the steep aisle like a relief pitcher beginning the long trek from the left-field bullpen. As I come abreast of successive rows of students, there occurs on the left a cutting away of eyes and the ironic expression of the fan confronted by the unfavorite. These are by and large Buddy’s fans and mostly qualitarians (= euthanasists).

  From here and there on the right comes a muted cheer, a vigorous nodding and lively corroborative look from some student who remembers my small triumph and imagines that he and I share the same convictions.

  I don’t pay much attention to left or right.

  Students are, if the truth be known, a bad lot. En masse they’re as fickle as a mob, manipulable by any professor who’ll stoop to it. They have, moreover, an infinite capacity for repeating dull truths and old lies with all the insistence of self-discovery. Nothing is drearier than the ideology of students, left or right. Half the students here revere Dr. Spiro T. Agnew, elder statesman and honorary president of the American Christian Proctological Society; the other half admire Hermann Hesse, Dr. B. F. Skinner, inventor of the Skinner conditioning box, and the late Justice William O. Douglas, a famous qualitarian who improved the quality of life in India by serving as adviser in a successful program of 100,000,000 abortions and an equal number of painless “terminations” of miserable and unproductive old folk.

  People talk a lot about how great “the kids” are, compared to kids in the past. The only difference in my opinion is that kids now don’t have sense enough to know what they don’t know.

  On the other hand, my generation is an even bigger pain.

  It seems today in The Pit I am favored by the Christian Knothead anti-euthanasic faction, but I’m not sure I like them any better than the Hesse-Skinner-Douglas qualitarians.

  But I do not, on the whole, feel bad. My large bowel is clear as a bell, my coeliac plexus is full of blood. Anxiety flickers over my sacrum but it is not the Terror, rather a useful and commensurate edginess. What I fear is not nothing, which is the Terror, but something, namely, getting beat by Buddy Brown in front of Moira. Otherwise I feel fine: my heart is full of love, my mind is like a meat grinder ready to receive the raw stuff of experience and turn out neat pattycake principles.

  The thing to do, it occurs to me halfway down into the pit, is to concern myself with the patient and what ails him, and forget the rest.

  In the pit itself a casual air is cultivated. Mr. Ives’s bright monkey eyes snap at me. Buddy Brown leans against the high wall talking to the Director, who hangs over, cupping an ear. Nurse Winnie Gunn, who stands behind the wheelchair, gives me a big smi
le and shifts her weight, canting her pelvis six degrees starboard. Moira? Her face swims in the darkness of the tunnel. Are her eyes open or closed?

  The uproar resumes. The doctors are free to unhorse each other by any means fair or foul. The students are free to boo or cheer. Last month one poor fellow, a psychiatrist who had diagnosed a case as paranoia, was routed and damned out of his own mouth, like Captain Queeg, by Buddy Brown, who led the man to the point of admitting that yes, he was convinced that all the students and the faculty as well had it in for him and were out to get him. Jeers from the students, right and left, who have no use for weakness in their elders.

  The door opens at the top and in strolls Art Immelmann and perches in the back row. In the same row but not close sit two women. The two women are—good Lord!—my two women, Lola Rhoades and Ellen Oglethorpe. What are they doing together?

  There is no time to speculate. The uproar subsides and Buddy Brown begins, flipping through the chart held above Mr. Ives, who sits slumped in his string robe, head jogging peacefully, monkey eyes gone blank for once and fixed on the wall in front of him.

  Buddy presents the medical history, physical examination, and laboratory findings. He stands at his ease, looking fondly at Mr. Ives.

  “My differential diagnosis: advanced atherosclerosis, senile psychosis, psychopathic and antisocial behavior, hemiplegia and aphasia following a cerebrovascular accident.”

  Murmurs and nods from the students.

  “Doctor.” With a flourish Buddy hands me the chart.

  The Early Times is turning like a gear in my stomach. I am looking at my hand again. What a hand.

  “Doctor?”

  “Yes. Oh. By the way, Dr. Brown. You made no therapeutic recommendations.”

  Buddy spreads his fingers wide, shrugs an exaggerated Gallic shrug (he is part Cajun and comes from Thibodeaux).

  “You have no recommendations?”

  “Do you, Dr. More?”

  “Then you plan to transfer him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “To the Happy Isles Separation Center.”

  This is what the students have been waiting for.

  “Euphoric Switch! Euphoric Switch!” cry the euthanasists.

  “Button! Button!” cry the right-benchers. “Not to Georgia!”