Selections

by Theodore Sturgeon

  Right.

  And you were away at the time. Sick leave! Phil--are you all right?... but all the same, you weren't there.

  Nothing came of it this time but there can be others; there will. Now I'm way on your side about your George, and you've dredged up a whole mess of internal garbage, and he's sicker than I thought he was. But--get him out of there.

  To end on a different note, thanks for sending George's drawings along with the report. Very interesting, as my dear old mother used to say. (She used to say it at art galleries, every time. It's something to say, and it hurts no one's feeling no matter what.) But what interested me even more, my head-shrinking friend, is your identification of all those succulent shapes as pears.

  Granted we all have our preoccupations... but to me the little animal on the end is nothing in the world but a titmouse.

  Pears indeed. You want the name of a good doctor? Or are you becoming a vegetarian?

  Al

  Manor Depressive, O-R

  Dementia, Cal. April 11

  Dear Al:

  It might seem small of me to pull rank on you, and it's damn rude, I know, to quote a guy's compliment back at him; but you yourself once said that professionally I outrank you six ways from Sunday, or some such. And, Al, it is my considered opinion that our George is potentially more dangerous than anything else in the place.

  I'll forestall your demand: can I prove it? by conceding that I can't. I just know, that's all. Nobody could boil off the stuff he does without being loaded and armed, and if he goes bang, I want it to be in top security.

  Now it could be that what he's got is dangerous like a sword and not like a gun or a bomb. Thing is, I don't know yet what kind of thing it might be. I will, and I think soon; but until I do I'd as soon turn a Bengal tiger loose in the halls.

  Leave me commit the further enormity of reminding you that I have been right so far.

  They are so pears. But I admit it is subject to spelling changes.

  You could be right.

  Phil.

  P. S. No, damn you, I wasn't sick. I confess I went to the Big Town and credentialed myself into the cell under the library where they keep the really sensatonal doity books. Just to irritate you, I enclose my notes.

  P. O.

  A Sheaf of handwritten notes on yellow paper.

  von Krafft-Ebing, the old peeper... walking around the hind end of the nineteenth century, tattling. Had no use for Freud. By him, everything "hereditary taint." "Bore out his fixed idea that there are certain things nice people don't do. But indefatigable researcher all the same so shaddup keep yr prejudices to yrsif.

  LUST-MURDER

  Lust potentiated as cruelty, murderous lust extending to anthropophagy. Boy what a litry style von K-E had... lookit:

  "1827. Leger, vine-dresser, aged twenty-four. From youth moody, silent, shy of people. He started out in search of a situation. Wandering about eight days in the forest he there caught a girl twelve years old, violated her, mutilated her genitals, tore out her heart, ate of it, drank the blood, and buried the remains. Arrested, at first he lied, but finally confessed his crime with cynical cold-bloodedness. He listened to his sentence of death with indifference and was executed. At the post mortem examination, Esquirol [who he? Famous nineteenth century psychiatrist--ed.] found morbid adhesions' between the cerebral membranes and the brain.

  "Vincenz Verzeni, born in 1849 in Spain; since Jan. 11, 1872, in prison; was accused

  (1) of an attempt to strangle his nurse Marianne, four years ago, while she lay sick in bed;

  (2) of a similar attempt on a married woman, Arsuffi, aged twenty-seven; (3) of an attempt to strangle a married woman, Gala, by grasping her throat while kneeling on her abdomen; (4) on suspicion of the following murders:...

  [Well, most of these don't matter, but here's one:]

  "In December a fourteen-year-old girl, Johanna Motta, set out for a neighboring village between seven and eight o'clock in the morning. As she did not return, her master set out to find her, and discovered her body near the village, lying in a path in the fields. The corpse was frightfully mutilated with numerous wounds... The nakedness of the body and erosions on the thighs made it seem probable that there had been an attempt at rape; the mouth filled with earth, pointed to suffocation. In the neighborhood of the body, under a pile of straw were found a portion of flesh torn from the right calf and pieces of clothing. The perpetrator of the deed remained undiscovered.

  "When caught, Verzeni confessed to this and many other murders. He was then twenty-two years old, bullnecked... [Oh-oh. Here we go on the Krafft-Ebing hobby-horse]... as seemed probable, Verzeni had a bad ancestry--two uncles were cretins, a third, microcephalic... The father showed traces of pellagrous degeneration... his family was bigoted and low-minded [!]... there was nothing in his past that pointed to mental disease, but his character was peculiar."

  [He'd probably describe the Marquis de Sade as downright odd.] "...Verzeni was silent and inclined to be solitary... admitted the murders gave him an indescribably pleasant (lustful) feeling, which was accompanied by erection and ejaculation. As soon as he had grasped his victim by the neck, sexual sensations were experienced. It was entirely the same to him, with reference to these sensations, whether the women were old, young, ugly, or beautiful. Usually simply choking them had satisfied him.

  "But in the case of the girl, Johanna Motta, and, it was discovered later, other women, he had done more. The abrasions of the skin on Johanna's thigh were caused by his teeth whilst sucking her blood in most intense, lustful pleasure.

  "These statements of this modern [to Krafft-Ebing, modern, that is] vampire seem to rest on truth. Normal sexual impulses seem to have remained foreign to him. Two sweethearts that he had, he was satisfied to look at; it was very strange to him that he had no inclination to strangle them or press their hands, but he had not had the same pleasure with them as with his victims.

  "Verzeni stated in his confession, 'I had an unspeakable delight in strangling women... It was even a pleasure only to smell female clothing... I took great delight in drinking Motta's blood. It also gave me the greatest pleasure to pull the hairpins out of the hair of my victims... after the commission of the deeds I was satisfied and felt well. It never occurred to me to touch or look at the genitals or such things. It satisfied me to seize the women by the neck and suck their blood. To this very day I am ignorant of how a woman is formed. During the strangling and after it, I pressed myself on the entire body without thinking of one part more than another.' "

  [Backing off from the sheer horror of it, it strikes one how Verzeni's indifference to his genitals, his failure to think of a woman's body as having parts and the sucking of blood--all child-like, infantile, like a wildly hungry baby.]

  And a response:

  Base Hospital HQ

  Office of the Administrator O-R

  Portland, Ore. April 12

  Phil:

  All right, I'll stand by my compliment since I meant it, at least at the time. I'll give you an indefinite but short extension in the matter; so whatever you plan to do about it you'd better do. Because the next time I mention it there will be no arguments.

  A. W.

  P. S. Your library notes range all the way from distasteful to disgusting, and fail to make your case.

  X

  10 April 14: Therapy session.

  Q: George, you trust me, don't you?

  A: Uh-huh, I guess.

  Q: Why do you suppose it's so hard to talk to you?

  A: Is it?

  Q: Remember when we were doing the Thematic--you know, the pictures where you made up the stories? You were talking a blue streak.

  A: Don't rightly remember.

  Q: If you could talk straight to me like that, we'd get through real fast.

  A: Well I could try.

  Q: Attaboy! Man, I like working with you. Okay, let's go... George--.

  A: Hm?

  Q: What was in the letter you wrote Anna
overseas?

  A: --.

  Q: George?

  A: --.

  Q: George, I thought you were going to help.

  A: Well I just don't remember. (Very surly.)

  Q: Okay, we'll forget that. George, when you go hunting--.

  A: Ah-h-h... not that again.

  Q: (After a long pause.) You see how something makes you clam up? George, that something's no friend of yours. That something doesn't want you to leave here.

  A: (Plaintive.) Well I just can't help it.

  Q: (Warmly as possible.) I know you can't, George... I can, though.

  A: You can what?

  Q: I know a way to help you remember better so you can talk better.

  A: How? (Warily.)

  Q: Take off your shoes.

  A: My shoes? (But takes them off.)

  Q: Attaboy. Now lie down on the cot. No, on your back.

  A: (Reluctantly.) Well--all right.

  Q: Close your eyes... You're all tensed up. Relax your hands. That's it. Make your feet go limp.

  A: You going to make me go to sleep?

  Q: No. That's a promise. You'll be awake the whole time and every minute you'll know you can get right up and stop it if you want to. Close your eyes again. That's it. Now the hands, the feet. You are not sleepy, you're just relaxed, limp all over. Feel how limp your toes are, your ankles. No, don't move 'em! Just let them go limp; feel how limp. Now that same limpness is in the calves of your legs and your knees, they're like oiled they're so limp. Unwind that fist, there, feel your fingers--no, don't move 'em. The thumb is One, the pointer is Two; now feel each one go limp as I count them, One Two Three Four Five. One Two Three Four Five. One Two--how do you feel?

  A: (Subdued.) Pretty good. Very good. Like on my aunt's farm.

  Q: Now I'm going to show you just how well you can remember. I bet I can make you remember something you forgot and didn't even know you'd forgotten... George, can you remember a happy time when you were a little boy? Say when you were four years old. Four years old. Four years old. Remember a quiet time in the kitchen at home, maybe? Before your mother was very sick?

  A: (Contentedly.) Mmm Q: You are four years old. In the kitchen at home. Four years old. Does your head come up to the top of the table?

  A: (Wonderingly) N-no...

  Q: Is it warm in the kitchen when you are four years old?

  A: Warm.

  Q: Now look around you. Slowly. Look on the shelves. Look at the chair. Look at the cracks in the floor. Look around you, four years old. Look at what you forgot all these years. Look along the window sill. Look around your...

  A: (Quiet, absolute astonishment) There's... my... plate! (Leaps off the cot, bolt upright, face inflamed, mouth open. Laughing. Shouts:) I seen my goddam plate!

  Q: You did?

  A: Look, when I was a little kid I had a plate, it was blue around the edge and white inside, down in the bottom was a blue picture of a cow. Why, I didn't think of that goddam plate now since the whale puked up Jonah!

  Q: Well, good! Now get back on the cot

  A: I seen it so good I seen the craze around the edge near the top.

  Q: Shh. Relax now and close your eyes. This is a kind of game, and one of the rules is that if I put you back to four years old I have to bring you out again. Shh now... Now you are four years old, in the kitchen. Feel how warm in the kitchen, four years old. You're just a little boy four years old. Now stand there in the kitchen but don't look for anything. Just feel warm. Now in a minute I'm going to clap my hands. As soon as you hear the handclap you will be twenty-three. You will be twenty-three right here and now in the room with me. I'm going to count backwards from five to one and then clap my hands. Understand?

  A: Mmm...

  Q: Five, Four, Three, Two, One. (Clap.) Okay. You can open your eyes. How do you feel?

  A: Like I slept two hours. Phil, what did you do?

  Q: It's just a remembering trick. You do it just fine.

  A: That is the damndest thing I seen yet. My plate, you imagine?

  Q: I'm glad... Close your eyes.

  A: You going to do it again?

  Q: Not right away. But you are so comfortable now. Take it easy, like the feller says. You're taking it easy. Easy.

  A: Yeah.

  Q: They feed you all right?

  A: Feed good. I had worse and paid for it.

  Q: You take it easy, easy like that, you can talk real good to me, you know that?

  A: I guess.

  Q: You like the movies?

  A: I didn't see no movies in a long time. Yes, I like movies.

  Q: What kind you like best?

  A: Western movies.

  Q: So do I... George, you know how you can always tell the good guy from the bad guy?

  A: Sure. If the good guy gets shot it's always in the chest or shoulder and if the bad guy gets shot it's always in the belly.

  Q: (Laughs. A lot.) By God George. I never knew that! And you know, now I think of it, you're right? I was going to say about moustaches.

  A: Oh yeah, that.

  Q: George, close your eyes. Take it easy, easy now. I want you to remember a bad time you had, but I want to see if you can remember it easy, easy.

  A: Oh... Okay.

  Q: Close your eyes. Take it easy. I want you to remember when they sent for you and you went to see the major, the one had your letter. George, you've got a frown right there over your nose. Iron it out. You can't take it easy with a frown over your nose. Good. Oh, real good. Now I just want you to remember that time, and how it was. How you felt. How mad you were. When you took the glass. When you broke the glass.

  A: (Suddenly raises and clenches right hand. Muscles knot under the shirt. Face twists. Breath hisses.)

  Q: You never got the chance, George. What did you want to do then? Suppose you'd had the chance, nobody around by you and him?

  A: Kill 'im. I'd 'a killed 'm.

  Q: How? What would you do? What would he do?

  A: I'd take that broken glass or a knife, I'd let 'im have it. He--.

  Q: Go on.

  A: He'd back off but I'd go after him. I'd cut a big hole and the blood would jump out all over the place.

  Q: Mm-hm. And then...

  A: And then the old man would look at me like he didn't know what hit him. He'd go nuts. His eyes pop out, scared to death... It wouldn't do him no good if he was mad at me now. He's so weak. He can't stand up no longer. Before you know it he's on the floor, choking, like he can't breathe. He shakes his head back and forth a minute... That's it. He finally got his!

  Q: (!) And what then, George?

  A: I guess that's all. He wouldn't bother me no more. He'd leave my mother alone now, too.

  Q: Yeah.

  A: Yeah.

  Q: George... Did you ever see a man die that way, with the blood jumping out all over the place?

  A: (Without hesitation.) That old watchman. By the paper box factory.

  Q: Was it an accident?

  A: Hell no. I hit him over the head with a pipe first. I must have knocked him cold because he didn't put up no fight. Or maybe he was too drunk. Then I cut his chest like a damn rabbit. The old bum didn't have much blood.

  Q: George, where did you cut him? Show me exactly where you put the knife.

  A: Right here. (Grasps his chest with his right hand between the right nipple and the armpit.)

  Q: What did you do after the old man died?

  A: I pushed him behind the big tank.

  Q: And then what did you do?

  A: I went back into the woods. But it was too dark to do anything. I got lost a while, I guess. (He pushes his hands flat under his belt and down inside his trousers.) Get hot thinking about it.

  Q: Hot? You mean for a woman?

  A: (Snorts.) O God no! Here--here! (He is clutching his lower belly.)

  Q: What happens when you get hot like that, George?

  A: I like to hunt. Rabbit, look out.

  Q: Like hungry.

>   A: It's different.

  Q: (Looks at watch.) Which reminds me, I better cut out of here or I won't get any lunch. Missed the first two shifts already.

  A: Me too, I wish I had a horse let alone rabbit.

  Q: (Knocks on door for guard.)

  A: Hongry hongry hongry!

  Q: Take it easy; easy now.

  A: You got me all churned up, Phil.

  Q: (Pounds on door.)

  A: They all gone to lunch. Nobody but you and me here now.

  Q: (Pounds on door.)

  A: (Kneading lower belly.) Turble to feel like this, you cain't kill yourself a possum or a rabbit.

  Q: You just take it easy, George... here's Gus now. Gus, I thought you'd never get here!

  XI

  Comments: This is the day, the breakthrough, and man, man, man, the number of times I almost blew it. (Later) Had to go for a walk and come back. Too excited to write for a while. Now let's see where we suddenly are.

  First of all, George's suggestibility. I don't know why, but I am always surprised when some shingle-bundled busted-hinge ego turns out to be a good hypnotic subject. Clinical data bear it out and I should not be amazed, but I always am. You always think the integrated phlegmatic type is going to go under easiest. Why, George slips under like a saucer in a dishpan. And he regressed, at least in light trance, to four years old as if he had a head start.

  Next was the experiment to see if the trance episode had increased rapport between us in the waking state. That was another time I almost tipped everything over with one wild whoop of joy. He chatters like a lil ole jaybird.

  And then there was the test of Ferenczi's "forced fantasies"--catching up a wish, no matter how casual or ardent, and leading the patient to the next step and the next until, like any good natural function, the wish-fantasy is achieved and peace settles in. Peace would have settled in if it hadn't been for that undignified scramble for lunch. For a while I thought it was going to be the peace you rest in.

  But of course the most important achievement today was the watchman episode. What a perfectly beautiful (clinically speaking, of course!) slide that was, effortlessly from the major to the father image to the old watchman... come to think of it, it's right there in George's autobiography. Will look that up. I bet it's there to be read. I bet there are other things to be read in it now that we know the language... and George will fill in the gaps for us.