by Hugo Wilcken
“You once described to me the interior of Dr. Manne’s apartment. Your description matched the photos I was shown in the police file. You told me Manne had a gramophone player, and that he liked Beethoven. Gramophone recordings of Beethoven sonatas were found in his apartment. How did you know these things?”
“It’s not hard to guess the layout of a Manhattan apartment. As for Beethoven, I have no idea. He must have told me himself.”
“Did he tell you about the painting on his bedroom wall? The bottle of whiskey in the cupboard?”
“I suppose he must have.”
“Have you ever been in Manne’s apartment?”
“No.”
“You’ve never been in Manne’s apartment.”
“No. Does it matter?”
“You’ve been there. I know. Why don’t you tell me about it?”
“All right … if it means so much to you. One day I followed Manne from only four or five paces behind. I don’t know why. Perhaps I’d actually wanted him to turn around and see me. He never did. When he finally went back home, I’d sneaked into the building behind him. I waited at the bottom of the stairs as he climbed up to the second floor. I could hear him fumbling around in his pockets for his keys, and not finding them. He’d left them somewhere, or had maybe accidently shut them inside. I quietly climbed up a little until I could see him. Now he was crouched down, halfway up the next flight of stairs. He took a key from under the carpet, then went back to his door and opened it. So now I knew where he kept his spare key.”
“And you used it?”
“Yes. That was a Sunday. The next morning I waited until Manne had left for his office. I got into his building and dug out the key from under the carpet. I opened his front door and walked in. It was a weird thrill to be there. The apartment was stark and bare, just how I’d imagined it. His bed was neatly made, I noticed, whereas I rarely made mine, unless I was sleeping with someone. On the wall was a large portrait of a nude. I wondered whether it was Manne’s former wife, but I wasn’t sure. She was pictured standing in a doorway, looking through to a room you couldn’t see, and perhaps to another person there. It seemed to capture the moment before or after something. The eroticism was at odds with the severity of the rest of the apartment, and gave me a new sense of who Manne might be. For a second I had the impression that the room the woman was looking into was real, that I might go through the canvas and discover its secrets myself. I walked back to the front room, then through to a tiny kitchen, maybe to escape the picture. There was a cupboard. In it I found a half-empty bottle of whiskey, and poured some into a tumbler. I opened a drawer. A pack of cigarettes was shoved down the back. I pulled one out. I lit it with a book of matches that had the name “Le Zinc” printed on its cover. Under that was an address I knew, a place I drank at in the East Fifties, not far from Manne’s apartment. It wasn’t called Le Zinc, though. It was Albert’s Bar & Grill. Perhaps I was mistaken. But I knew the street well, since I’d once worked there, and there was nothing called Le Zinc on it. I pondered that for a moment. I’d had no breakfast, and the whiskey was going to my head. I went back to the sitting room. In the corner was a gramophone player, with a dozen or so records stacked up against it. I pulled one out at random, cranked up the player and put it on. A mournful piano piece barely broke through the clicks and scratches. It added to my sense of foreboding. I didn’t know why I’d put it on, because I’ve never liked gramophone recordings. There’s something ghostly about them. I stood there feeling transfigured, as if in a scene or a photograph. The apartment was no projection of Manne, it was Manne. The painting of the nude, the whiskey, the matchbook, the music, the scratches of a record that had been played a thousand times before. The special intimacy of a room seen and lived in by one person only. I threw up my hands in front of me and felt I barely recognized them. I resisted the desire to look at myself in the mirror. I pushed my hands back into my pockets as if to banish them from sight. I could feel my lucky coin in my left pocket. It had been given to me by a Portuguese sailor, for the drink I’d bought him. I pulled it out and placed it on Manne’s table. And then I left.”
6
Perhaps I’d passed some kind of test, because soon after Untermeyer’s visit I was allowed into the communal room. The scene there was familiar to me from my time as a psychiatric intern, even if I was now seeing it all from the other side of the looking glass. The dozen or so men sunk deep into shabby armchairs, dozing or staring at the garish wallpaper; a few more playing a desultory game of cards around a green table; others absorbed in their often eccentric hobbies; the dirty net curtains hanging over the barred windows. I recognized the different types of patient, too—an arc that stretched from the newcomer (anxious, nervy, solitary) to the regular (more vocal, sociable, highly sensitive to status), then finally to the old-timer, who’d slipped into a deathly routine from which he would now never be shaken. I was surprised at how easily I slotted into this scheme of things: how I too would sink into my armchair, refusing to meet the eyes of the others or enter into conversation with them.
Occasionally I’d glance through one of the magazines lying about, invariably an ancient copy of Life or Look, never anything remotely current. The radio, too, would warble old show tunes from before the war, forever shrouding the patients in a forgetful nostalgia. On the walls were faded pictures of New York landmarks—the Empire State Building, Brooklyn Bridge, Central Park—like images from a collective dream. A large map of New York hung above the mantelpiece. When the mood struck me, I could spend hours staring at it, daydreaming about places I’d been to or tracing out past journeys. Living in Manhattan, I’d sometimes found its grid-like cityscape oppressive, but now I marveled at the simplicity and perfection. In my state of incarceration, it seemed to me that the map was real and the city a mere abstraction of it. There was a shiny blank spot in the midtown area, not far from where my old apartment was—the ink had rubbed off because so many people had put their finger there. It was no doubt where we were located. I’d always assumed we were somewhere downtown. I knew all the psychiatric hospitals in Manhattan, and could think of none where this was supposed to be. It was a shock to realize how close I was to where I used to live. In my mind, the hospital and the apartment were almost metaphysically different worlds. They couldn’t possibly be only twenty minutes’ walk from each other.
I noticed the slurring speech and shuffling gait of a couple of the inmates. It might have been early onset dementia—common enough among middle-aged psychiatric patients—or any number of other things. But I knew it was evidence of leucotomy. The procedures could have been done in another hospital, but why not right here? Perhaps they’d already done it to me. After all, the doctor would never tell the patient about the leucotomy, either before or after. The patient was of course aware that something had been done to him, but not what. In my case, such a procedure could have been carried out while I was anaesthetized, and they were taking the staples out of my head. Objectively, how could I tell? Perhaps it was consistent with this vacuum I now felt inside me, this sense of being no one or anyone.
A privilege of the “communal” patients was that they were allowed to receive mail. That, too, marked out the different categories of patients. The newcomers would be desperately keen to receive their letters, and nervy if the mailman was late or there was nothing for them that day. The regulars were more ambivalent; they didn’t jump up and pester the mailman like the newcomers, they patiently waited until he came around to them. But the old-timers were indifferent to the whole ritual. They got fewer letters than the others, and more often than not left them on the table unopened for the nurses to collect when they returned to their rooms. It was easy enough to understand why. For them, the outside world had simply ceased to exist. It had been squeezed out by the intense life of the mind peculiar to the psychiatric ward.
“Stephen Smith? Letter for you.”
“Couldn’t be. No one knows I’m here.”
“Take a look for y
ourself, bud.”
The name was carefully printed on the envelope, which had already been opened. I pulled out a single sheet of paper. The uncertain scrawl was hard to make out:
Dear Son,
They tell me your being treated in a hospital and I can write you there. I hope you recover from whatever ails you. Son, I know I been a no good father to you. I remember when you was a baby. I remember when you was a little boy and it brings tears to my eyes. I know you have had troubles. If your ever tiring of life in the city, you have a home right here in Somerville. I live out here with my new wife and her son. There is a bed for you.
Your Loving Father
I put the letter down on the table by my armchair, then shoved it between the pages of a magazine. My hand was trembling as I did it, and I was also repeatedly shaking my head—a tic I seemed to have picked up from the other patients. I stared at the map of New York again, before shutting my eyes. I knew the layout of the city better now than I ever had when I’d actually walked its streets; I could visualize its avenues, subway stations, parks, districts. I fixated on the blank spot where the ink had rubbed off, and entertained a whimsy that the corresponding area in Manhattan might have disappeared as well.
In another part of my mind, though, I was working out the implications of the letter I’d received. The hospital people, or perhaps the police, had tracked down Smith’s father and, who knows, perhaps other members of his family. The letter did nothing to contradict the story I’d given the doctor. If anything, it confirmed it too well. What were the chances that Smith’s father might turn up in New York? Minimal, I supposed, given that the man was a barely literate alcoholic. I pulled myself up short: how did I know he was alcoholic? That was only a colorful bit of gloss I’d given Dr. Peters. Nonetheless, it felt true. Absurdly, the letter had moved me greatly, had almost brought me to tears, and another corner of my mind had conjured up a silly fantasy. What if I replied to the letter, taking the man up on his offer to stay with him and his wife? Perhaps it would be my ticket out of here. I’d be living in a family, as part of a family, something I’d never really experienced. It might give me that emotional anchor I’d always lacked. My father had mentioned a stepson. Perhaps I could be an older brother to the boy, a mentor, which would give some shape to my own life. After all, my father had had his second shot at life. He’d remarried, moved to a new town. Why couldn’t I do the same?
I shook this ridiculous fantasy from my mind. At the same time, a new idea had taken root. Maybe this letter wasn’t real at all. Dr. Peters had fabricated it as some kind of trick or test, to see how I’d react. I worked my way back from this premise, trying to see why it might be true and how it might play out. But the line of thought quickly fizzled to nothing. It was too easy to get lost in speculation, with such a slender thread to follow. Too easy to succumb to the paranoia of the psychiatric ward, so contagious that even the doctors and nurses ended up infected by it.
A pudgy-faced, corpulent man tapped me on the shoulder: “Remember me?”
I scrutinized his features. For a moment I thought he might be an old patient of mine: the possibility of bumping into one here was something that had haunted me.
“No, I don’t.”
“You’re Smith, aren’t you?”
“That’s right.”
“We worked together a few years ago. On the waterfront. Coimbra Shipping Company.”
“I … yes, I remember the job, don’t remember you.”
“Well, I’ll be … Guess I must have changed, even more than I thought. You really don’t know who I am?”
“I really don’t.”
“We used to go out drinking together. Say, whatever happened to that girl you were seeing? The foreign one? Pretty little thing.”
“She … she … we stopped seeing each other. I don’t know what happened to her.”
“I just can’t believe you don’t remember me. Torma. Joe Torma. We shared a flophouse room. On the Bowery. For a good month or so. You must remember that.”
“Yes. I remember that. I remember Joe Torma. You’ve put on weight. You look different. That’s all.”
“You had a fight with the boss, didn’t you? And then you took off. That’s the last I heard of you. What happened? How’d you smash up your face like that?”
“Things got bad. You know, same old story. Couldn’t find work, lost my girl. Couldn’t see a way ahead. Ended up throwing myself on the rails. Somehow I survived and they put me here … What about you?”
“Me? I stayed with the Coimbra people. Then one day I got slammed in the head with some timber we were loading. Fished out of the river and out cold for hours, so they tell me. Been in and out of hospitals ever since. I’m getting better though. I’ll be outta here soon. I’ll be back at work.”
I looked him over. One shoulder was slightly lower than the other, and so was one side of his face. He spoke hesitantly, out of the corner of his mouth. It wasn’t easy to understand what he was saying, and he seemed to have trouble saying it. All quite consistent with some severe craniocerebral trauma. I doubted he’d be back at work, not soon, not ever. In fact, I could already map out the rest of his existence, based on the life stories of patients I’d had. If lucky, they’d let him stay here in the hospital, which didn’t seem such a bad place, all things considered. But probably they’d let him go at some point. Without any support, he’d last a year or two on the streets at most. Or perhaps he had family to look after him, and then it would be longer. He wouldn’t be able to hold down a job, and he’d end up sitting at home all day listening to the radio. He might take to drink. His personality would start to change. He’d become disinhibited, angry, violent, too fresh with the girls. Consequently he’d be increasingly left alone, which would only exacerbate the symptoms. He was perhaps around thirty now, and the serious decline would set in in around five years’ time. He’d be dead by forty, of a seizure, stroke, alcohol poisoning, or something else.
“Good luck, Joe. I’m sure you’ll be out soon.”
“Thanks. And good luck to you too.”
He loped over to one of the other armchairs. Strange how they were all arranged in a semicircle around the fireplace, even though it had clearly long been boarded up and wallpapered over. I watched him from a distance. Joe Torma. I knew no one of that name. He’d mistaken me for some other Smith—not exactly an uncommon surname. Or else, it was another of Dr. Peters’s ruses. He’d briefed Torma, asked him to pretend he knew me, as part of my ongoing treatment. There was that line about the Coimbra Shipping Company. Hadn’t I come up with something like that for Dr. Peters? There were times when it felt like I’d interiorized the doctor, that he was somehow observing me from the inside.
It was midafternoon. Torma was now dozing in his armchair. I rose from mine, and walked over to the window. The view was the same as from my room, only we were three floors below. Down in the courtyard there was an annex with a glass roof—it housed a printing press, one of the other patients had told me. The bright winter sunlight bounced off the roof, dazzling me. If I shaded my eyes a little, I could see the tiny reflection of myself in the glass down below, haloed by white light. I’d heard of a gruesome tragedy that had taken place here, a few years back. A patient had somehow gotten the bar frame off and jumped out, crashing through the glass below and impaling himself on a machine lever.
If I craned my head at a certain angle and looked up, I could just about see the balcony opposite my own room. Something was fluttering above the ledge. Was the woman out there? Difficult to tell, but I suddenly felt certain that she was. I moved away from the window, then made my way out of the communal room and up the stairs. If you left before the bell, you were supposed to tell the nurse in charge, and I’d probably get in trouble for not doing so, but I wasn’t thinking about that. Instead I was replaying in my mind a dream I’d recently had. I was in her apartment. I could see it all precisely, with a most undreamlike lucidity: the portrait on the wall, the corner kitchen with the icebox
, the door through to the bedroom, the bed on which she lay. I was getting undressed, excited. She was waiting for me, I was eager to join her. At the same time, I’d felt an urge to go out on the balcony first. I stood there naked. Across the courtyard was the small window. I strained to make out the blurry figure staring through the bars.
Now I was walking along the corridor to my room. Just as I was about to go in, I heard a muffled thump that seemed to come from inside. It was as though someone had lightly banged the wall with his fist. A sense of unease invaded me, and I waited for a moment outside the door, but I couldn’t hear anything else. I turned the handle slowly. The room was cloaked in a gray light. I noticed a mark on the wall that I didn’t think had been there before. My notebook was on the floor. There was some white substance on the chair. I felt the presence of something, even before I saw it.
A small bird, a swallow I thought, lay on my bed, one wing tucked to its body, the other unfurled. Its head was cocked in my direction. I could see its eyes swivel as I moved into the room. Other patients would leave breadcrumbs for the birds on their windowsills, but I’d never done that. How had it gotten in here? The window was firmly shut, just as I’d left it. Perhaps the nurse or cleaner had been in while I’d been downstairs. Perhaps she’d opened the window to air the room, then closed it upon leaving, without noticing that a bird had flown in. Not a very likely story, but I could think of no better one.