by Mark Helprin
Dr Rufus looked intently at his patient. He was much interested in what Freddy had to say. “Tell me what you miss,” the doctor said. “Tell me what you love. Tell me what you want to go back to when you leave this place, no matter how long from now that may be.”
Freddy looked up, as if he could see through the ceiling and the rooms above straight into the spirit-blue sky. “I miss Fredericka. She’s close by. I miss her very much.”
“Naturally you do. Our object is to make you and her better, so you can live happily together. But tell me of your past life. Your recollections seem so exact and concrete.”
“But you don’t believe me,” Freddy protested.
“What we try to do in psychiatry,” said Dr Rufus, “is to reconcile objective reality—as far as we can know it—with the reality of the heart. Our patients come to us with broken hearts. That’s what interests us. Whether it be actually true or not, I will believe what is in your heart, which is often a much finer thing, distilled from the world around it, than what the world around it actually is.”
“I would have to agree,” Freddy said. “Would you like me to free-associate or something?”
“Yes, please,” said Dr Rufus, so graciously that Freddy was put at ease.
“I’ve never done it.”
“What about before you fall asleep?”
“But then I sleep.”
“Just tell me what comes to mind.”
“Melons,” said Freddy. “I don’t like melons except in France, where they’re so magnificently sweet.”
“Go on.”
“Because they inject them with cane sugar. Damn Frogs, they use too much makeup, too. They’re trained in betrayal from an early age, in little things, but little things become big things, don’t they, and you go from sugaring melons to Marshal Pétain. What I really can’t abide, and have not been able to abide ever since I was a child, are pictures of melons, in all forms.”
“What kind of pictures?”
“Every kind. In the fifties I used to see a lot of too brightly coloured representations of bisected watermelons. Then in the sixties it was Kodachromes of cantaloupes. Those I could avoid, but not the old master paintings, still lifes of bloody fucking melons: Juan Sánchez Cotán, a great painter, but why so many melons? Rintel Vorhuis Van Loopen the Elder, melons with flies buzzing about. Giovanni Pizzabianca, melons, melons, melons.”
“Melons are a vaginal symbol,” Dr Rufus stated.
“Not when they’re served as two balls flanking a banana.”
“Have melons made up an important part of your life?”
“Of course they haven’t. What kind of a question is that?”
“Were you happy?”
Freddy calmed, as if he were seeing invisible beauties. “Sometimes.”
“When?”
“I was happy . . .” he said, closing his eyes and infused with memory, “when I would mow hay in a sun-drenched, golden field from which grasshoppers would rise literally by the millions and stream against me like a gravelly wind. Sometimes they would even bite, but their jaws are square and weak, and it was only a nibble.
“When, at Balmoral, I was alone in a cold stream. The sound and smell of mountain water brings you to the innocence of the world’s beginnings. Never have I been more content. A long day by a stream—wading to the rocks, feet planted in shallow rapids, rod and line undulating like kelp in a storm (not even the greatest dancer in the world can move as beautifully as a good fly line)—is worth a kingdom. As much as I love Fredericka, and as much as I think she loves me, we know not what we are capable of, not having spent time together in the streams of Scotland. Should we ever get back there, we’ll have our chance.
“And whisky and hors d’oeuvres upon returning from a day of cold wind and rain. You sit in a chair with a light plaid blanket drawn up around you, a fire three-quarters front, a tumbler of single malt, and—for example—Plutarch. The thunder cracks outside; the dog is sleeping at the hearth, his golden fur now fluffy and dry; meat and potatoes are roasting in the kitchen; and Fredericka comes in, perfumed and half-naked in an exquisite gown. Was I happy? Yes, often.
“Have you ever heard a girls’ choir in a cold but luminous chapel with marble floors as smooth as ice, and jewelled light aflame in the windows like rubies and amber? At university I would go quietly to the most obscure pew and, hiding from all, as I had to, listen to their practice. It didn’t hurt to have been in love with this or that girl in the line, but with their voices, their faces, their intensity, and their goodness, you could not help but love them all. They would sing a portion, and the choirmaster would stop them. I loved their expressions as they listened intently to him, taking instruction, embarrassed by what they thought was their lack of skill. And then they would start up again like angels of God. What a deep love I had for them, and for what they did.”
Dr Rufus listened intently as well. Whereas most patients remembered fear, humiliation, violence, and abuse, Freddy seemed to run on love and beauty. “Go on.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Freddy said, closing his eyes again. “I see myself looking out the high windows of Buckingham Palace, at five o’clock, in December. The lights are moving busily in the cold and dark. My heart is pounding, my face burning. Fredericka appears. Her face is hot, the colour of rose petals. You can hear the silence, and the darkness seems to glow.
“Which reminds me of the way the sun lifts me from despair at times, by sending signals about the real nature of things that I have overlooked—by illuminating them truly. It happened with a map once, and it happened with a chop on my desk—a Chinese block of alabaster with an ornamentally sculpted top and a character engraved at the bottom, which I had always thought was dull, until very early one morning, just as the sun rose on a summer day, it was caught in a thin and short-lived ray of sunlight.” Freddy stood and went to the window, resting his left hand against the left upright of the window frame, so that his hospital gown, which was of the cheapest blue cloth, extended like a coronation robe. The fall of even this fabric was noble and beautiful, like a curtain draped by an all-pervading and splendid force, and it brightened in the diffusion of sunlight that flooded into the room after having skipped across the golden hills. “Like this,” he said. “It almost came alive. The qualities within left on a beam of warm light and filled the room as if with butterscotch and gold. Lovely thing it was. It said to me that even souls of grey are gifted and good, if only they will collide with a glorious and accidental ray. It happens with people, you know. It really does.”
FREDERICKA WAS EXQUISITE in her straitjacket. Of white muslin, cut with raglan sleeves, bulky shoulders, and a martial-arts fullness, it was quite chic, and her hair, naturally bleached in the mountain sun and now relaxed in the cicada-dry climate of Loma Poya, was regal. She sat on a clunky enamelled chair in her little cell, eyes fixed on a beam of sunlight that had stolen in through the open window and striped the wall with the pattern of the bars, and she prayed, running through the finer and nobler parts of the services, dwelling on the special prayers for kings lost in foreign lands, and for their chaste and patient queens.
The door opened, and in walked a woman who was Fredericka’s opposite. Whereas Fredericka’s expression was soft and gracious, hers, despite an obviously fraudulent smile, was hard and tight. Whereas Fredericka’s face itself was large, full of planes, sharpness, and firmness, this woman’s face was soft, round, and fallow. Whereas Fredericka’s mien was graceful and feminine, hers was stiff and defensive. Whereas Fredericka’s body was muscular and firm, hers was soft and blowsy.
“Hello,” she said. “I’m Tammy Braunschweiger, a doctor on staff. You’ve been assigned to Dr Rufus, but I thought I’d stop in just to see how you are.”
“I don’t understand your costume,” Fredericka said.
“My costume?” The doctor was offended when she shouldn’t have been.
“Your clothing.”
“Oh,” the doctor said, lifting her serape and ti
pping her bowler hat. “It’s to express my solidarity with the women of Baba Ru. And these beads,” she said, lifting a heavy rope of multi-coloured beans, “were strung by the imprisoned rifle-women of Tupac Wenceslas.”
“Tupac Wenceslas,” Fredericka repeated.
“Dr Rufus is your doctor,” Dr Braunschweiger said conspiratorially, “but he’s a man.”
“Am I going to get a gynaecological exam?”
“No. We’re psychiatrists. I thought you might be more comfortable with a woman. If you want a gynaecological exam, it can be arranged.”
“I do. I’m pregnant.”
“I’ll have to put that on your chart. Do you want to carry the pregnancy to term?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Do you want to carry the pregnancy to term or do you want to abort?”
Fredericka appeared so upset that Dr Braunschweiger suspected the worst. “Did he make you?”
“Did who what?”
“Did your ‘husband’ make you pregnant?”
“Of course he did.”
“With your consent?”
“Yes, with my consent.”
“Is he making you carry the foetus to term?”
“Making me?”
“Forcing you.”
“Madam, are you mad?”
“No, no, you’re the one who’s mad, remember? I’m the doctor. You’re the one in the straitjacket.”
“The world is full of injustices,” Fredericka said, “and always has been.”
“Absolutely,” said the doctor. “You might consider that, in view of your situation, you can’t judge whether or not you’re being coerced by your husband.”
“My husband didn’t put me in a straitjacket, you did.”
“Yes, and it’s within my authority to remove it.”
“Then do so, please.”
Dr Braunschweiger undid the straps, and Fredericka burst free, throwing off the jacket with great relief. She strode up and down, lifting her arms, taking deep breaths. How noble and statuesque she was, like an exaggerated bronze in the courtyard of a French museum, or a marble in a Florentine piazza, that struggles with a serpent while pouring water from an amphora that never runs dry. For the doctor, it was like being in the same room as a newly awakened tiger.
“I’m going to put you on a thousand milligrams of Proclorox, four times a day,” she said, writing out the order on a clipboard.
“No, thank you,” Fredericka told her, firmly and royally.
The doctor looked up over her ruler-edged reading glasses. “You have to,” she said.
“No, I don’t have to. I hate drugs, and won’t take them.”
“You’ll take them if so ordered.”
“Sorry.”
“Then we’ll have to put you back in restraint.”
Fredericka knew that the doctor would now summon an orderly, whether by the panic button in her left hand or the one on the wall, and that the orderly—a woman as big as a Melanesian chief—would brutally wrestle her into the jacket. And Fredericka knew that Dr Braunschweiger would watch this with feigned professional detachment and unconcealable personal satisfaction. Why, Fredericka thought, should the doctor get off so lightly? And the doctor didn’t.
“YOUR WIFE,” said Dr Rufus, opening his second conversation with Freddy, “is a very violent woman.”
Freddy jerked his head up. “Is she all right?”
“She’s all right, but she’s still in the jacket, and sedated.”
“That’s not all right,” Freddy said. “What happened?”
“She attacked a colleague of mine who, because of a mistake in the schedule, went to see her before I did.”
“For no reason?”
“Apparently.”
“I don’t believe it,” Freddy said. “She’s not like that at all. Let me see her. I must see her.”
“She’s fine, and she’s resting. She’s not far from here. We’ll bring you together eventually. You may even be allowed conjugal visits. . . .”
“Like rats?”
“In complete privacy.”
Freddy said no more, not wanting to prejudice his chances of being with Fredericka. He understood that if they were brought together they would, indeed, make love, even were the whole world watching, because this was the primordial act of survival.
“Soon,” said Dr Rufus. “But if one of you is sedated, there can be no visit. The conditions must be parallel.”
“Then sedate me.”
“We don’t do it that way. We move only toward what’s better.”
Freddy put his head in his hands.
“Have patience. You’re making progress. If you and she could control yourselves, your delusions would be harmless and you wouldn’t have to be here.”
“What delusions?” Freddy asked.
“I spoke to Buckingham Palace itself,” Dr Rufus reported. “The Prince and Princess of Wales are on holiday in Scotland, at Balmoral, as you said. He’s fly-fishing, and she’s making a tour of the crofts.”
“It’s a lie,” Freddy said. “I can prove it.” He sat up in his chair with alarming urgency. Dr Rufus was used to such things. “Call the palace, ask for my batman. He’ll corroborate details I can tell you that no one else would know.”
Freddy had been speaking so fast that Dr Rufus heard not “my batman,” but Batman.
“Batman?” Dr Rufus asked.
“Yes, Robin,” who was the best batman in England and had been at Freddy’s side for decades.
“You’d like me to call Buckingham Palace again, to speak to Batman.”
“My batman.”
“Your Batman.”
“Yes.”
“You have a special relationship with Batman.”
“I do. He’s mine.”
“He’s yours.”
“Until his retirement.”
“And then, I presume,” Dr Rufus said, “Robin will take his place?”
“He is Robin.”
“Batman and Robin are one in the same?”
“Yes. My batman is Robin.”
“But why are there two of them?”
“There aren’t two of them. There’s only one of them: Robin, my batman.”
“But I’ve seen them,” Dr Rufus asserted firmly, “together, talking to one another.”
“You’ve seen them?”
“Many a time.”
Perhaps, Freddy thought, everyone had always been right, and he was insane.
“You know,” said Dr Rufus, “with the big ears.”
“No, no,” said Freddy, moving his finger to and fro like a metronome, “I’m the one with the big ears.”
“You’re Batman, and he’s Robin?”
“Yes, my batman. And he is Robin.”
“No, I mean, you yourself are Batman.”
“No, again,” Freddy said with exasperation. “I am not my batman. Robin is my batman. I am I,” and then Freddy added, because it was such a famous line, and he couldn’t help it, “Don Quixote, the Man of La Mancha.”
Dr Rufus was boxed in. He thought and thought, and then he said, hopefully, “Is it a gay thing?”
“It’s sometimes gay,” Freddy said, used not to the twenty-year appropriation of the word but the meaning of a thousand years, “after rough exercise—you know, all the standard stuff: sliding down buildings on ropes, rescuing people, all that—when Robin draws my bath and pours me a neat Scotch. I often invite him to have one for himself, or two, and then it does get rather gay. I should say, we’ve been through a lot together.”
“So, he’s Robin.”
“He is.”
“Therefore, you are Batman.”
“No, Doctor,” Freddy said, slowly and with pity. “He is Robin. He is my batman. And I am I”—he just couldn’t help it—“Don Quixote, the Man of La Mancha.”
“All right,” said Dr Rufus. “Batman and Robin are one and the same.”
“Yes. You’ve got it.”
“What do you do
with them? Who’s the dominant one?”
“I’m the dominant one, of course. I’m the bloody Prince of bloody Wales. He,” said Freddy, “lays out my clothes, helps me dress and undress, polishes my boots and leather, runs dispatches, brings lunch and tea, will go to the shops if I need something, keeps the weapons in order, buffs the saddles, and also serves as a guard and general aide-de-camp.”
“Leather,” said Dr Rufus.
“Boots, belts, straps, saddles,” said Freddy, clarifying, he thought.
“On whom is the saddle placed?”
“Saddles.”
“Saddles.”
“Mainly on Vercingetorix, but sometimes on Clemençeau, and sometimes on De Gaulle.”
“All men,” Dr Rufus said.
“Not men,” Freddy replied, amused, “stallions. But not only stallions. Sometimes, especially if children are present, I mount Christine.”
“THESE ARE TWO of the strangest patients I’ve ever encountered,” Dr Rufus said at a staff meeting ten days after his first interviews with Freddy and Fredericka, “and I think we’ll probably have to keep them forever.”
“I second that,” said Dr Braunschweiger, bandaged, black-eyed, and split-lipped. “She almost killed Jolo, and look what she did to me.”
“Is she still on Proclorox?” asked the physician-in-charge.
“Yes,” said Dr Rufus.
“But they were so resistant.”
“Submission is the price they paid for being together. Now they’re as placid as two lakes at dawn.”
“Good,” said the physician-in-charge, “but I see that you have no diagnoses.”
“I haven’t been able to arrive at any.”
Looking over the folder before him, as Dr Braunschweiger tried, painfully and unsuccessfully, to smile, the physician-in-charge said, “A patient believes that he is the Prince of Wales and his mother is the queen of England, that he is also Don Quixote, and the gay companion of Batman and Robin, who are the same person. . . .”
“I know,” said Dr Rufus.