Every time I think of what Delgado suggested about Verity and me, I go cold with rage. The very idea is appalling, and yet also laughable in a way, to me, who cannot even be sure if he should put his arms around his daughter, or not. And how he knows she is not my flesh and blood, I do not know. Dexter must have told him, but I cannot believe Dexter would have betrayed me so. At least, I do not want to believe that.
* * *
This evening, after supper, I told Verity she could go down to the respectable library that the asylum houses, on the sixth floor, and choose something to read. I let her out of the gate on the seventh floor.
“I’ll join you very shortly, dear,” I said, and she went straight off. I must trust her to do what I say. I cannot be there for her all the time; with only me to look after her, she needs to be able to look after herself.
She trotted down the stairs and I heard her cross the sixth-floor landing to the door to the library, which sits at the back of the building, equally placed between the male and female wings, another service for the more capable inmates to use. I heard the door close again, and only then did I go back to our rooms, wondering, not for the first time, if I should try and find a mother for Verity. A wife for me.
But there is Caroline, still.
Dexter’s words came into my mind.
I can get rid of her.
But do I want that? It’s true that she haunts me, but can I actually bear to get rid of her from my mind, and from my heart?
* * *
I fiddled and itched around my study for a while, trying to write my report for Doctor Phillips, but finding myself unable to concentrate, I set off for the library myself, to see what Verity had chosen.
It is true that there are no children’s books in the asylum library and it has a limited choice of reading materials, but I thought Verity might like to flick through some illustrated encyclopaedia or set of maps. Perhaps there was a volume or two of fairy tales, the ones Dexter reads from.
“There’s nothing to read in here,” she said, when I approached.
She was sitting in front of an open book, so that didn’t seem to be entirely true.
“What did you find?” I asked, coming round the table beside her.
“Only this. It’s very sad.”
Looking over her shoulder, I was reminded of leaning over Caroline’s shoulder to read, in just the same way. It was as if she was that miniature version of my wife.
“It’s sad,” Verity said again, and I started to read.
It seemed to be an account of the trial of a witch, somewhere in England. There was a picture of a young woman hanging from the branch of a tree, one of those old-time woodcuts. They always give me the creeps for some reason, no matter what they’re depicting. This was no exception, so clumsy in its execution, so casual about something absolutely horrific.
“You shouldn’t be reading that,” I said.
I reached down and looked at the cover of the book; it was called Witchcraft in England.
“Why not?” asked Verity, but, in all truth, I had no explanation for her.
So I opened the book again and read over her shoulder.
It seemed that the witch, or the woman accused of witchcraft at least, had been a young woman. She had become what her mother had been before her; that is to say, a cunning woman. She had been found guilty of various crimes: of causing demonic possession in her brother, of causing the sickness of a nobleman’s son, of murdering a rival’s baby. Of using her familiars to steal jewelery from a lady.
After the hanging of the young woman, it appears that a chain of executions occurred in the small community, including some of those who had first testified against her. A girl who had lost a baby in infancy. Her parents. Others. All this happened in a village called Welden, a name whose meaning the book took some pains to explain. That alone chilled me, and mystified me, until I looked at the picture again, and saw something curious; in the background, just a short way beyond the tree, there was some sort of carving in the landscape: a large spiral. People were dancing along it.
I read the caption under the illustration but there was no mention of the spiral, of what it was, or why people were dancing on it.
“Here,” I said to Verity, “read this part. At least some good came of this.”
I pointed at a section of the text further along, where the book explained how this trial, relatively late in the course of witch hunts in Europe, had been partly responsible for bringing an end to the whole business. Outrage at the actions of a certain infamous priest had led eventually to changes in the law. An Act of 1736 declared witchcraft impossible and, therefore, to accuse people of it became illegal. The priest in question was dead long before then; the book left one tantalizing line saying he “became sorely vexed as a consequence of his actions, and died a madman in the York madhouse.”
“Time for bed,” I said to Verity, “maybe we can find you something better to read tomorrow.”
“This book is fine,” she said. “Sad. But I like it.”
* * *
Just as we were leaving the library, I noticed the periodicals displayed on a table by the door, and saw that a recent copy of the Journal of the AMA lay there. Among the crowded type on the cover, listing the contents of the week’s papers, one word leaped out at me: malarial.
It was all I needed to make me grab the journal from the table.
Back in my study, I turned quickly to the paper on the malarial treatment of General Paralysis of the Insane.
I read about the procedure: approximately one fluid ounce of malarial blood is injected intravenously between the spine and shoulder blade.
Between four to twelve days later, the subject takes on a very high fever as a result of the malaria. The subject is treated with quinine to combat the malaria, and when the fever abates, the whole process is repeated. Up to twelve times.
The paper described a number of cases, including those where the outcome was not successful.
Case II:
Male aged 33, admitted July 24, 1925. Patient complained of loss of memory. His wife stated that for the last year he had been mentally confused and had an attack, several months before admission, in which he lost his speech for twenty minutes without loss of consciousness.
On examination, the cardio-vascular, respiratory, alimentary and genito-urinary systems appeared normal. The pupils were unequal and did not react to light, but did on accommodation; pinprick was diminished generally; motor power good; knee-jerks absent.
Mentally he was very confused and childish; memory bad; emotionally very unstable. He gave a very poor account of himself, and was a very poor witness.
On August 7, the patient was inoculated intravenously with benign tertian malaria. A fever developed October 12. From this time the patient’s mental condition deteriorated with each daily rise of temperature. On October 18, an attempt was made to stop the malaria on account of the progressive prostration of the patient, but the patient died October 21.
There were other, similar reports.
All in all, in a trial of twelve subjects, five had died as a result of this supposed cure.
Saturday, April 16
I went to see Doctor Phillips, straight away. First thing this morning, I knocked on his door and demanded to speak to him about the malarial treatment he had planned for Dexter.
I told him that, with mortality rates as high as the paper in the AMA Journal reported, what he was intending to do was at the very best highly questionable.
At this, Doctor Phillips grew angry.
“I don’t like what you are insinuating,” he said, and then all his game-playing and taunting and callousness must have got to me, because I was angry in return.
“Good,” I declared. “I’m glad you don’t like it, because you shouldn’t. And I’m not insinuating. I am telling you plainly that inflicting this procedure on Dexter is too much of a gamble, and that if the outcome proves as disastrous for him as it did in forty-two percent of the Lond
on cases, then you ought to be accountable for manslaughter.”
That was really going too far.
“The success rates have changed since the work in London,” he said, and for a moment he threw me off my stride, until he added, “Mortality has fallen to thirty-five percent now.”
“Thirty-five? Just thirty-five? My remark still stands. Have you ever operated under such extreme lethal conditions before? This must not be allowed to happen, you cannot sanction such a monstrous plan!”
“Monstrous?” cried Phillips. “Let’s not lose our sense of the situation here. Dexter is close to losing all mental faculties worth calling that. We must cure him.”
“Or kill him? Is that your intention?”
I glared at Phillips long and hard, staring him down, forcing him to look away, and finally he did, meekly pushing some papers into neater order on his desk.
“Furthermore,” I said, “When did you last see Dexter? I have been speaking with him at length and I can report that his symptoms are lessening somewhat. All in all, he is more lucid than when I met him first.”
“Nonsense,” said Phillips.
“Not at all,” I said, as calmly as I could. “It is clear to me that what he needs is more time and the chance to work on his writing.”
“Writing? Don’t be ridiculous, how could that ever help anyone?”
“Perhaps with Dexter it has. I tell you, he is getting better and to try this dangerous routine on him now could be a mistake, a fatal mistake.”
“Getting better? What proof do you have of that?”
Now, I saw a glimmer of a final chance for Dexter.
“If I can prove it to you, will you agree to relent? Delay your procedure for the time being?”
Doctor Phillips raised his eyebrows a fraction, as he contemplated the sight of me begging for a patient’s life. Or so I saw it.
“How could you?”
I made a wild statement, one that I hope I will not come to regret.
“Dexter’s morbid phobias,” I said. “There is one which drives all the others, does it not? His fear of spirals. The spiral staircase.”
“What of it?”
“If Dexter can walk to the top of the staircase, given that two weeks ago he could not place his foot on the very first step, you would have to agree that his mental well-being is significantly improved, yes?”
Phillips waited a moment before replying.
“Yes,” he said. “I would.”
“Do you agree then? If he can visit you up here, you will delay your procedure?”
“Yes,” said Phillips. He nodded. “I agree. Tomorrow evening, I will await Dexter in my office.”
He smiled, and I shook his hand warmly.
“Thank you!” I said. “Thank you!”
I left him then, and headed back to my rooms, and it was only after I left that I thought to myself, What have I done?
Monday, April 18
I know now what I have done, and it will not be easy to bear.
* * *
After my interview with Doctor Phillips, I realized the stupidity of my bargain with him. There was no way Dexter would be able to climb the stair, and Doctor Phillips knew it. It would only serve to drive Dexter all the sooner to his doom, and undermine what little authority I have in the case, not that I cared about that much by that time. Now I care even less.
I clung to the idea, foolish perhaps, that though I could not cure Dexter overnight, I might be able to reason with him about spirals. If I could get to the bottom of that reaction of his, I thought, I might get him to the seventh floor and buy him a little time, and I had an idea of how to do that.
I needed facts, and so I found myself in the asylum library once more, hunting out what books I could find on archaeology. There were two volumes that helped me, books, which, along with a vast number of irrelevant stories about the past and our investigations into it, contained some images of spirals.
There were spirals all round the world it seemed, in all times, from all cultures. Dexter was right about that. I read feverishly, and gazed at various carvings, but I could find nothing that spoke of their meaning.
But, despite that, I myself could not believe that the spiral was a sinister design, and I was determined to convince Dexter.
I found him in his room, and told him plainly how I saw the matter.
“Look!” I said, and flourished the open pages of the archaeology books in front of him. It was pitiful to see how he shrank from even the sight of what was in the books. His eyes fell on a page where there was a photograph of marks on a cave wall. Next to it was another of a series of handprints, which seemed disturbing in some way I could not fathom. Then I realized they disturbed because they were made by hands with half fingers missing, stumps for one or more fingers, in some deliberate ritual mutilation. I withdrew the books from Dexter, not wanting to do him harm.
“I cannot believe the spiral means anything evil,” I said. “And you are a logical man. I can see that in the conversations we’ve had. Consider the paintings on the walls of rocks in Australia, or the carvings of Newgrange in Ireland. They are both sublime. Beautiful. They must have held some spiritual meaning for these ancient people, but not a malevolent one. There is too much care, too much beauty, for them to be signs of evil.”
Dexter did not answer. He had his eyes fixed on the books as if they might leap up and bite him.
“At least, consider nature. The natural world is full of spirals, from the shells of snails, to the heads of sunflowers. The curls of my daughter’s hair! Elegant, and once again, beautiful. There are also whirlwinds and tornadoes, I grant you, but these things, while bad, are not evil. Nature does not know good and evil, it merely is. How can you consider this shape to be guilty of anything? It makes no sense.”
Dexter sighed.
“What are you trying to do, Doctor?” he said.
“I’m trying to help you, I…”
“I appreciate that,” he said. “I can see you have been trying to help me since you arrived at Orient Point. What I mean is, what’s happening? Why have you come here on a Sunday morning to talk to me about spirals?”
I held his eye for a moment, then hung my head. Was it that obvious that something was happening? Either that, or I am very bad at lying. Time was against me. And so I felt it was worth trying to shock Dexter into action, to save himself. He reached a hand over his shoulder, furiously scratching his back for a moment, and I could see the terrible tremble in his hands, worse than ever. My mind was made up.
“I have to tell you something,” I said, and so I told him what Doctor Phillips had planned. I told him about the malarial treatment, and the survival rate. And then I told him about the deal I had struck with Doctor Phillips.
When I finished there was silence.
For a long time, there was silence. Dexter stood, then went to the barred window of his cell, staring out at the bright April morning sky over Long Island Sound. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, so quiet I could barely hear him.
“Have you ever suffered from a sickness of the mind?” he asked. He didn’t turn round to hear my answer, and answer had I none. I think he knew that, and he went on speaking.
“What is the connection we have to the world, Doctor? Is it our hands? Our sense of touch? Our eyes and ears? Our sense of smell, perhaps all these things? Are these the connections we have to the world around us? No. They are not. The only true connection we have to the world is our minds. Yes, our senses can feed us information, but the information means nothing on its own. It is our minds that give things meaning. It is our minds that create the world for us. And minds can be mistaken. Minds can become confused. Damaged. What then of the world? How does it appear then? It, too, appears confused and damaged.
“When that starts happening,” Dexter went on, “it is a frightening thing. A truly, deeply frightening thing. It is like running in circles, seeking answers that don’t exist, only to come back to where you began, and no wiser than you we
re before. Like a mad dog in the sun, running in circles. And yet, with each completed circle, you do not come back to exactly the same place, because you have sunk a little further into madness. You are one level farther down on a spiral, and the spiral, unlike all other shapes you can draw, is infinite. It can never be depicted complete. You can draw a circle, or a square or a triangle. A star. You can draw it and it is done, but you can only ever show part of a spiral, you can only ever hint at it, because truly, it goes on forever. And when you feel your mind sliding down the spiral ramp to oblivion, to wild and dark and utterly terrifying oblivion, to an oblivion that you know full well to be endless, that you will suffer for all eternity as in some medieval hell of the mind; well, Doctor, it can be enough to destroy the strongest bravery.”
He finished, and now I saw what it was that terrified him about the spiral; it was the endless slide into the void. The void of madness.
“Charles,” I whispered. “What are we going to do?”
He turned away from the window then, and came and sat by me on the bed.
“Thank you, Doctor,” he said.
“What for?”
“For using my name.”
I remember blinking. Thinking.
I held out my hand.
“Perseverance,” I said.
For perhaps the only time in our short friendship, I saw Dexter confused.
“Perseverance?” he asked.
I flushed, as I still always do when this comes up.
“It’s my name,” I said. I shrugged. “Parents with strange notions about the days of the Puritans.”
He smiled.
“Perseverance,” he said. He shook my hand. “This is what we’re going to do. I’m going to climb to the top of that spiral stair. And then you have to promise to make me well again.”
“Charles,” I said, “I can’t do that. But, I promise you, I will try.”
He closed his eyes, and nodded.
Then his eyes slowly opened and he even winked at me.
“When am I to perform this miraculous feat?” he asked, and for the first time, I actually thought he might be able to do it.
The Ghosts of Heaven Page 17