“So,” Carling said at last as he let the chart drop on its cord and replaced his pen in the pocket of his white coat, “how are all the little LITs down at the children’s hospital?”
“LITs?”
“Loonies-in-training.”
“Oh,” I said, and smiled. “They’re loony, all right, and some of them aren’t so little. How did you know I’d been down there?”
“I’m friendly with a couple of the cottage workers there. We were having a beer last night, and they mentioned this superdwarf who had come in to substitute. How many superdwarfs can there be wandering around here? You made quite an impression—on kids and staff.”
“It’s the natural ham in me,” I said, and suddenly felt sad. It was the kind of thing my brother would say.
“You’ve got some very dangerous kids over there, Mongo,” Carling said seriously.
“Yeah, but you’ve also got some very pleasant and bright ones—a lot of the suicidals are like that. I really enjoy working there, Tommy.”
“A little different from college teaching, huh?”
“To say the least.”
Being careful not to disturb the tape player or the earphones on my brother’s head, Tommy Carling rolled Garth over on his right side, facing away from me. “Are you hungry, Mongo? I can bring you something to eat.”
“No, thanks,” I replied. The male nurse headed for the door. I cleared my throat, said, “Tommy?”
Carling paused in the doorway, turned back. “Yes, Mongo?”
“The music. Do you think I could be harming Garth in any way by playing it for him?”
Carling laughed good-naturedly. “There are some people who’d claim that listening to Richard Wagner would damage anybody’s brain.” He paused, continued seriously: “No. On the contrary; if I’m right about there being a bit more life in his eyes, it’s probably good for him. What harm could music do?”
“In that case … I didn’t ask anybody about this, and maybe I should have. If there’s any possibility that Garth really is getting something out of the music, I’d hate to see it taken away from him just because I didn’t ask permission and somebody’s nose got out of joint.”
Tommy Carling smiled easily. “I won’t mention it to Slycke, Mongo. Don’t worry about it.” He gave me a thumbs-up sign and walked from the room.
I wanted to play the entire Ring cycle through, opera by opera, with as few interruptions during the course of each opera as possible, and nights seemed the best time to do this. The next day I stopped by the clinic early in the morning, before my third straight day of substituting, and sat and talked with Tommy Carling while he shaved and bathed my brother. I stopped by again after school, then left just before six.
I ate dinner in a pleasant Italian restaurant in nearby Orangeburg, then went back to the apartment, set my alarm clock to wake me at midnight, and went to bed. At midnight I rose, made myself some coffee and shaved, then packed the Walkman and tapes of Die Walküre into my leather shoulder bag, headed over to Building 26.
It seemed there was no guard in the kiosk outside the building at night, and I used my own keys to gain entry to the building, took the elevator up to the fourteenth floor. Three male nurses I hadn’t seen before were standing and talking in the vestibule in front of the elevator, and they seemed startled when the elevator door sighed open and I stepped out. However, after one glance at the ID badge clipped to my shirt pocket, they resumed their conversation.
I couldn’t find any psychiatrist around, so I signed my name on a piece of paper I got from one of the nurses, slipped it under Slycke’s door. I didn’t note the time.
I found Garth rolled over on his left side, staring—as always—at nothing. I covered his face with a towel to protect his eyes, then quietly closed the door and turned on the lights. I uncovered his face, put on the earphones, then loaded the cassette player with the first tape and turned it on. Then I sat down with a magazine to wait through the three hours of Die Walküre.
Siegfried.
The next night I checked the chart at the foot of Garth’s bed; there was no indication that chemotherapy had begun. I put the earphones on Garth’s head, snapped the first tape of the third opera in the Ring cycle into the cassette player, turned it on.
I’d brought a book with me to read, but I must have nodded off; when I woke up, the book was on the floor by my feet and I had the urgent, distressing feeling that something was wrong—no, not wrong; but different. Strange. I quickly got up, looked around the room; there was no one there, and the door was still closed. Garth, of course, hadn’t moved; he was still in the same position, turned away from me on his side, with earphone and half his face hidden by the sheet. I yawned, stretched, glanced at my watch; it was almost time to put in the next cassette. I took the second tape out of my bag, walked around to the other side of the bed—and almost cried out.
Tears were streaming from Garth’s eyes, dripping from his face, soaking the sheet beneath him.
“Garth!”
My brother’s bloodshot eyes rolled, then came into focus on my face.
“Garth?!” I cried, snatching the earphones from his head. “Are you all right?! Can you hear me?! Can you talk?!”
The fact that he could indeed hear and understand me was now clearly reflected in Garth’s eyes—but that was all. He still couldn’t—or wasn’t prepared to—talk.
But he was coming back, I thought, slowly riding wave after sonic wave of the most profoundly moving music ever written, dripping tears as evidence of his long, tortuous passage. I would settle for that, not be impatient.
After gently trying and failing for close to twenty minutes to elicit some response in addition to his tears, I put the earphones back on his head, changed the cassette, turned on the Walkman. I sat on the edge of the bed, holding his hand and smiling down into his tear-streaked face, until the opera was finished. I packed up the tapes and the Walkman, hugged and kissed my brother, then went back to Building 18 and contentedly went to bed. I was confident that I would see some change in Garth in the morning.
I was wrong, and bitterly disappointed.
At eight o’clock, it was impossible to tell that Garth was the same man I had seen copiously weeping only a few hours before; his eyes were once again glassy and vacant, and the only change was that he seemed even paler than usual. I debated whether I should tell Slycke, or Tommy Carling, about what had happened during the night, decided not to. It would have meant trying to explain why the Ring—and only the Ring—could elicit such a response from Garth, and I was not yet prepared to do that, at least not until the complete cycle of four operas was finished.
Despite Garth’s present unresponsiveness, I had seen unmistakable evidence that the music of the Ring—combined with the images of horror and unrelenting cruelty that he and I would always associate with it—was a bridge that had reached across the unfathomable void in his mind and touched his consciousness. Now that bridge had to be maintained—and expanded. Now, more than anything, I was afraid of being second-guessed and interfered with. Charles Slycke might be a fine psychiatrist, if not so fine a person, and the D.I.A. facility might be a fine psychiatric clinic, but Der Ring des Nibelungen evoked a realm of consciousness shared by only Garth and me in a way no one else would ever be able to understand. I had now taken Garth back three-quarters of the way through that realm, and I felt I had no choice but to take him the rest of the way. Whatever happened at the end of the journey, if anything, would be my responsibility.
Götterdämmerung.
As the lush, revolutionary music of the final opera in the Ring cycle flowed through the earphones into Garth’s brain and mind, he again began to weep. After a few minutes I realized that I, too, had begun crying. I brushed his wet cheek, then rose from the edge of the bed and walked to the Plexiglas window. I stood looking out over the moonlit grounds of the Rockland Psychiatric Center, remembering the horror …
“What are you doing?!”
I wheeled around, a
nd was thoroughly startled to see Charles Slycke standing over my silently weeping brother and glaring at me. He abruptly snatched the earphones off Garth’s head, ripped off the sheet covering him, and grabbed the Walkman. The psychiatrist’s unruly gray hair stuck up from his head as if an electric current were running through him, and his rheumy eyes glinted with rage. I started to say something, but the man was obviously in no mood to listen to any explanations, even if he had requested them.
“What are you doing here?!”
“Just a minute, Doctor. I’ve signed in every time—”
“Signed in?! That didn’t tell me you were here in the middle of the night! That was left for somebody else to tell me!” Slycke’s moon face was almost crimson as he marched around the bed, marched up to me, and shook the Walkman in my face. “Now I see what you’ve been up to! What on earth do you think you’ve been doing?!”
“I think I’ve been playing some music for my brother,” I replied evenly, stepping away from Slycke so that I could see Garth. “In case you haven’t noticed, Garth is responding.”
“The man is crying!”
“So what? Aren’t signs of sorrow better than the vacuum that was there before?”
“That’s not for you to say!”
“It’s for anybody to say!”
“You’re not a doctor!”
“And my brother isn’t a Goddamn turnip!” I paused, took a deep breath, lowered my voice. “The tears show that Garth’s mind is still there; it hasn’t been burned out of him. Whatever door it’s locked behind has been opened, even if just a little bit, by the music. I’d think you’d be pleased.”
“What you’ve done is unauthorized! How do you know what effect that music has had on him?”
“We can both see the effect; he’s awake, and he’s aware.”
“You had no right to do something like this! He is my patient!”
“He’s my brother, and I’ve done absolutely nothing but play some music for him. Instead of standing around and screaming at me, why don’t you consider the implications of the fact that the music elicited a response?”
“Just because you’re a friend of Lippitt’s doesn’t give you the right to do something like this without my permission! This is my clinic, and in medical matters I have supreme authority! I’ll have your pass removed, Frederickson!”
Garth settled the argument when he suddenly sat up in bed. Slycke and I stared, dumbfounded, as my brother swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. He swayed for a few moments, supporting himself with one hand on the edge of the bed, finally steadied himself. Then, without really looking at either Slycke or me, he walked forward, almost casually pried the Walkman from Slycke’s stiff fingers, turned around, walked back to the bed, and got in. He put the earphones on his head, turned on the player, lay down on his back, and pulled the sheet up to his chin.
I let out a whoop of joy and excitement that must have been earsplitting, because it brought the three male nurses into the room on the run. They stopped just inside the doorway when they saw Slycke and me, exchanged puzzled looks.
Garth was going to be all right, I thought, elation welling up in me and overflowing as tears as I stared at my brother. I let out another whoop, even louder than the first, just for good measure, then did a little hopping dance of celebration. I picked up my shoulder bag, which contained the rest of the tapes and an ample supply of batteries, triumphantly set it down on Garth’s stomach.
“Batteries for the Walkman and the rest of the tapes are in here, brother,” I said.
I waited, my breathing shallow. Slowly, Garth’s hands came out from under the sheet, wrapped themselves around the bag. I wheeled around to face Slycke, who was continuing to stare at Garth with an expression of disbelief.
“You want the tapes and the player, Doctor,” I continued, unable to wipe a very large grin off my face, “you take them away from him.”
“Frederickson—?!”
“Keep up the good work, Doctor,” I said, skipping around the three stupefied male nurses and heading for the door. “I’ll see you all later.”
7.
At seven fifteen I found Garth sitting up in bed eating breakfast off a tray by himself. He was wearing his earphones, and the Walkman was on the pillow just behind him; the leather bag was sitting at the foot of the bed. Tommy Carling was leaning against the wall, ankles and arms crossed, looking bemused.
“Yo, brother!” I shouted, running up to the side of the bed and pounding Garth’s shoulder. “Welcome back to the land of the living!”
There was no response; Garth simply waited until I had stopped thumping his shoulder, then resumed eating his scrambled eggs. I leaned over the bed, waved my hand in his face. “Hey, Garth,” I continued with just slightly less spirit, “it’s me—your favorite only brother. Remember me? How about a little ‘hello,’ just for old times’ sake?”
My brother stopped chewing, looked at me. His eyes were clearly in focus on my face, but it was as if he didn’t recognize me—or simply didn’t care. He studied me without interest for a few moments, then once again resumed eating. Chewing slowly and methodically, he finished his eggs, swallowed some coffee, patted his mouth with a paper napkin, lay back in bed. Bewildered and not a little hurt, I looked inquiringly at Tommy Carling.
“What can I tell you?” the burly male nurse said with a shrug. “What you see is what you get. I can understand how you might be a little disappointed at his lack of response, but you’ll have to admit that the overnight change is absolutely remarkable. Garth just isn’t ready to talk yet; it’s what we call VMS—‘Voluntary Muteness Syndrome.’ We see it quite often in certain kinds of patients. But the improvement is incredible. I think I’ll suggest that we pipe Wagner into the rest of the clinic so all the patients can listen to it.”
“Garth?” I said in a voice that had suddenly grown hoarse. I found myself wanting to reach out and take the earphones off his head, demand that he acknowledge my presence, but knew that probably wasn’t such a good idea. “Can you speak? Will you speak?”
Garth’s eyes momentarily darted to my face, but then he went back to staring at the ceiling as he listened to the music. I peered in the plastic window of the Walkman, saw that Act One of Das Rheingold was playing; he was beginning the cycle of operas all over again.
“How long has he been like this?” I asked Carling.
“Since sometime after five this morning. I came on duty at six, and the night guys told me about what had happened earlier between you and Dr. Slycke. When they’d checked Garth an hour earlier, he’d been like you’d left him—lying on his back and clutching that bag. I came here first, and I found him sitting up in bed with his earphones on. He’d removed the tube from his nose and the needles from his arms, which I took as a not so subtle sign that he was ready for some solid food and wanted to feed himself. You saw how he handled breakfast—and that was his third helping of eggs. If he keeps this up for another day or two, I’m sure they’ll remove the colostomy tube and sew him up.”
“Does Slycke know?”
“He left about a half hour after you did. He’s supposed to attend a symposium in New York today, but I called him right after I found Garth sitting up. He should be here any minute.”
“Garth obviously knows what’s going on,” I said tersely, looking directly—perhaps a bit defiantly—at my brother. The hurt I’d felt was now melting into a sourish sense of betrayal; I knew I was losing sight of the proverbial big picture, and was ashamed of myself for my feelings. I’d found more than a bit of Charles Slycke in myself, and I didn’t much like it. “Why won’t he talk?”
Carling shook his head. “That’s not a useful question at this point. We don’t really know whether he won’t talk, can’t talk, or doesn’t comprehend nearly as much as we think he does at the moment. I tried to get him to communicate by blinking his eyes, but I didn’t get anywhere. He didn’t ask me for solid food; I brought it to him, and he ate it. Right now, all we know for
certain is that he can move, he can feed himself, and that he constantly listens to the tapes you brought him. Don’t assume anything more. Remember that your brother was poisoned with a substance having properties we know virtually nothing about when it is ingested. Garth is obviously better, but he’s a long way from being well.”
“I understand that, but—”
“You may not understand it as well as you think you do,” Tommy Carling interrupted gently. “Understandably, you’re also dealing with a lot of emotion. Everything we know about the short- and long-term effects from this drug we’re learning now, minute by minute and day by day, as we observe Garth. His EEG has never shown any signs of brain damage, so now we may be looking at just another stage of a chemically induced psychosis. It’s quite possible he would have come out of his catatonic state—perhaps last night—even without the music. We can’t be certain one way or the other. We can’t be certain he recognizes us, understands anything we’re saying, or even hears the same thing we’d hear if we were listening to the tapes.”
“He hears the same thing,” I said, looking hard at Garth. Saw the same images, had the same associations.
Carling shrugged again. “You can never be sure what’s going on in the mind of a psychotic, and Garth is still psychotic. Incidentally, I heard that Dr. Slycke was really upset when he found you here last night.”
“Oh, yeah. And then some.”
The first side of the tape had run out. Garth sat up, unhurriedly flipped the cassette, turned the player back on. Then he lay back, put his hands behind his head, and resumed his careful scrutiny of the square meter of ceiling directly above him. He didn’t appear to me to be psychotic or disoriented, but like a man who was simply very, very deep in thought. Try as hard as I might, I couldn’t shake my feelings of hurt and betrayal. Garth, I thought, was just being Goddamn … rude.
“You’re taking Garth’s behavior much too personally, Mongo,” Tommy Carling said, as if he had been reading my thoughts. “You can’t do that. Your brother is still a very sick man, perhaps just as sick as when he was catatonic; catatonia is just one symptom of psychosis, not the psychosis itself.”
The Cold Smell of Sacred Stone Page 9