Through Streets Broad and Narrow

by Gabriel Fielding

  At the opposite end of the room there was a bricked-in fireplace with a black marble mantelpiece on which there rested a large blued Victorian mirror reflecting an accurate but dark light from the windows. On the top of the mirror, leaning against the green distempered wall was a notice with the single word SILENCE printed on it.

  The room was heated by radiators beneath two of the six windows and each radiator was enclosed behind a perforated cast-iron screen. The electric lights were nearly flush with the ceiling and enclosed with wire grilles. There were no switches anywhere on the walls.

  The view from the windows on either side was almost identical, sparse laurel bushes and wet grass lawns spanned by asphalt paths which were quite without curves. John tried to find a different view by going to each of the windows in turn. He thought that he might see the hospital wall and entrance gate; beyond them, some recognizable landmark; the spire of a church or one of the city’s gasometers. But he could see nothing but the lawns and laurel bushes, the diminishing paths and, in the distance, the grey of falling rain, some hedges of yew and more laurels. He then attempted to open one of the sash windows so that by sticking out his head he might at least identify some other part of the building, but none of the windows would open more than six inches, since the grooves in which they ran were blocked by cast-iron slugs affixed by heavy screws.

  There was no clock in the room and by his wristwatch the time was passing very slowly; but at last, at about five minutes to four, the porter unlocked the door and showed nine or ten National University students into the room. They were of a quite different stamp from the Trinity men, not having cultivated any Englishness in their dress or accent. They came in quietly and they all had heavy notebooks, while two of them carried pocket textbooks with them. They ignored John and sat down on the chairs, some of them in small groups and one or two of them deliberately sitting apart as Groarke might have done, reading hard at their books or making notes. They looked far more concerned about their Finals than would an equivalent group of Trinity men, and when they had been in the room about five minutes they talked even more quietly together, not far above whispering. When this stage had been reached, John decided that he would stay no longer. Although all these men were in the same town and he must surely have passed some of them dozens of times in Grafton Street or in the Green he could not recognize a single one of their faces. They seemed to be quite without curiosity about him and after the absorbed anonymity of his time alone in the room their carelessness seemed to be less than an insult; it seemed to suggest that his total experience in Dublin had been of no importance at all, even that he might have imagined it.

  He said to the nearest of them, “It looks as though I’ve come on the wrong day.”

  “You’re Trinity?”

  “Yes; I think I’ll get back there.”

  “You can’t, not until the porter comes. We’re doing the epileptics today and they’re firm on the locking of the doors.”

  “Surely there’s a bell or something?”

  “There’s no bell.”

  But at this moment Dr. Lesselbaum, the American, came in with the case book under his arm and accompanied by two male nurses in blue trousers, black ties and white coats.

  The doctor had very thick glasses which distorted his eyes, making them look large if he looked directly at the class and suddenly extremely small if he glanced away to the side. His skin was yellow and his hair black and springy; he had heavy whiskers in his nostrils and ears. When John went forward to ask him if he had any objection to his staying he waved him back to his place and in a soft monotone began to outline the history of the first case. While he was reciting this with the dates of the major incidents of the man’s life, a description of his delusions and of the varying types of aura he experienced, one of the male nurses went out to fetch in the patient himself.

  The man was quite cheerful when he was shown in. He smiled round at the class, stood easily between the two white-coated nurses and answered Dr. Lesselbaum’s few set questions politely and quickly. As he was going out he waved to everybody and at nearly the same instant took a flying leap at Dr. Lesselbaum’s waist. The doctor dodged him, the attendant beside him grabbed him in a special grip of some sort and walked him away through the door with the man shouting extraordinary sentences into the air.

  Lesselbaum took no notice of this incident at all. He simply turned over a page in the large case book and began to read the history of the next man.

  “Aged fifty, no siblings, mother an alcoholic. This man developed typical epileptiform seizures during puberty. There is a significant family history of migraine on the paternal side, a maternal aunt suffers from recurrent urticaria. The patient’s father is an habitual criminal with intense religious convictions, confessing to delusions of personal mystical experience including levitation, colloquial prayer and hallucinations within the Christian ambience. When not in prison he frequents religious houses and communities and takes an active part in various forms of imagined apostolate.

  “The patient himself will admit of no sexual experience though it is probable that from an early age he centred erotic fantasies about his mother since he insisted on taking an extra pillow to bed with him. He is resistant to the suggestion that he disliked his father, stating that the latter was always, I quote, ‘good to me, giving me money when he was drunk and sweets when he was not!’ He will not acknowledge any juvenile sexual experience though on questioning he alleges close friendship with a schoolfellow and to early difficulty in micturating from the standing position. It is considered that in addition to his epilepsy with its congenital basis, this case also presents mixed features of latent schizophrenia with additional paranoid elements. He has made little progress on heavy sedation with phenobarbitone and the newer epanutin, though as yet there are no signs of psychocerebral degenerative change.”

  At this point the patient was shown in, another man in a grey suit who stood a little behind the two attendants, only the top of his head visible since he was evidently looking at his feet.

  Glancing up at him, his eyes swelling for a moment and then, as he turned his head, swivelling into smallness behind their lenses, Dr. Lesselbaum went on smoothly, “Physically this man presents the typical pyknic build associated with affective disorder, shows signs of premature aging and endocrine insufficiency in his early obesity and has what the Germans describe as the ‘Schnauzkrampf facies.’ ” He looked up to make his first joke, “The nearest English equivalent being the ‘nipped pile expression.’ ” But nobody laughed and the doctor resumed. “He is unmarried and posits no positive sexual attitude towards his own sex. He states that his occupation is that of casual labourer in an agricultural capacity.”

  There was a pause while the doctor adjusted his spectacles and sat down on his high stool to think over the questions he would put. The two male nurses motioned the patient forward and John saw that he was Groarke.

  Groarke stood there in the grey suit, his unpolished shoes covered with dusty abrasions, his once red face a little greyer, his heavy hands at his sides and his chin up; his whole head tilted up so that with the extra height of the rostrum he looked over the heads of everyone else, out through a window or beyond it.

  John got up immediately. He was going to have gone forward until he realized that everyone else was looking at him with sharp hostility and that the doctor was already speaking. He had not heard the first words of the question, he heard only, “—anyone speaking against you lately, Heggatty?”

  Groarke did not answer for a moment; he was absorbed in his regard of John. He smiled as he had so often smiled, with a great bitterness, and said, “Thanks for the letters. Sometime I’ll answer them. I’ve to catch up on things first.”

  John began, “Mike, for God’s sake—”

  But Groarke interrupted him. “They make mistakes in here; this American’s all whirled up, we expect him to abreact any day.”

  Dr. Lesselbaum said to John, “Would you mind resuming your
seat? You, sir, over there? This patient gets a little confused, don’t you, Heggatty?”

  John said, “I’m sorry, Doctor, but there’s been a mistake. This patient is a friend of mine, he’s a fellow—” He was going to have said “fellow student at Trinity,” but remembered in time that this would embarrass Groarke, who said, “There are certain subject to be avoided, conversationally, Blaydon. I’m catching up on a lot of things in here. Remember the green baby?”

  Signalling to John again, Dr. Lesselbaum asked, “Are you quite sure you’re feeling all right. Is this your first visit? You, sir, the Englishman over there?” and he added to the others, “Occasionally a mental hospital triggers something off in a visitor. He thinks he’s been there before.”

  “Déjà vu,” said Groarke with fatigue. “Same old jargon. What price another paper?”

  John went over to the doctor’s desk. “Excuse me, sir, but there really has been a mistake. Look at your notes. This man is not fifty, he’s the same age as myself. I know him well.”

  Lesselbaum ignored him, “Now what was this about a green lady, Heggatty? We are all mighty interested in that little piece of local colour. Where did you see a green lady and how long ago?”

  Groarke said, “I said baby, not lady.”

  John said, “You’re doing incalculable harm to this man, sir.”

  “I am, am I? Now who the hell are you?”

  “He should ask me that,” said Groarke, laughing.

  John said, “The remark about the green baby was quite rational under the circumstances, sir. Mike was referring to Herbert Read’s book, The Green Child. We discussed it together some time ago; it was a private reference between friends. If you will read this, sir, I think you’ll understand.”

  The psychiatrist was disposed to humour again, “Gentlemen,” he said to the class, “the way things are going you’d certainly think this was a mad house.”

  This time they did laugh and Lesselbaum read what John had scribbled on a piece of foolscap.

  “This patient is a medical student of Trinity College. His name is Michael Groarke. Your staff have made a grave mistake.”

  The doctor referred immediately to his notes and then asked Groarke which ward he was in.

  “That’s for you to find out,” Groarke said. “I find this instructive, particularly the Schnauzkrampf expression. You made other minor mistakes in my history: I am attracted by women, I have always disliked my father and I have never worked on a farm in my life. If you want my own opinion of my case I’m a psychopath with mildly paranoid features. I have every intention of recovering as soon as it suits me. Incidentally, I’m a voluntary patient and was on my way to the canteen when one of your gorillas insisted on my joining your clinic.”

  Dr. Lesselbaum took Groarke’s arm at this. “You’re from the voluntary wing, are you, Mr. Groarke?”

  “I’ve been there six months.”

  “I really am covered with confusion. I owe you an apology. Though most things have happened to me in my seven years of psychiatric practice, this is a new one, and, sir, I’m not enjoying it one little bit. You do realize that, don’t you, Mr. Groarke?”

  “I’m quite sure it is worse for you than for me,” Groarke said.

  “You’re a philosopher then?” A little abashed, the doctor raised his voice. “Gentlemen, I feel I scarcely need to ask you to keep this little incident to yourselves on your return to your faculty. I think that the terms of the Hippocratic oath apply very strongly in this particular case.”

  “It’s a question of the name only,” Groarke said. “If that could be kept out of it—?”

  “Why certainly, Mr. Heggatty,” said Lesselbaum with a quick swell of his eyes. “I know you can rely on that. And if I might come around to your room at teatime maybe we could straighten things out a little further?”

  He walked Groarke towards the door and signalled one of the male nurses. Before the door shut Groarke called out to John, “Don’t think after this you’ll get a visiting ticket. You’ll get nothing. It’s what you came for: it’s the great solution.”

  Lesselbaum was very calm after the door had shut. He spoke to the remaining attendant.

  “For that sort of ineptitude you’d get the sack if I were anyone but the man I am. You just about sabotaged the clinic and my local reputation.”

  The man protested: “But Doctor Lesselbaum, sir, he’d got himself into ‘A’ Block. He never denied the name of Heggatty.”

  “Heggatty is his name, fellow! From now on just you remember that.”

  “Well I wasn’t to know, sir, not when he answered to—”

  “That’ll do, if you don’t mind,” sighed Lesselbaum. “Go out and check up on the three others.”

  He turned to John. “After that maybe you’d like to go? I don’t know what the hell you’re doing here anyway, but to a lesser extent I owe you an apology too. This game gets you down, how was I to twig a reference from way back to The Green Child? If you take anything out of context, any damn thing at all—”

  “What context, sir?” Someone asked.

  “That,” said Dr. Lesselbaum, “is the point. If you can answer that one you’ll be contributing.”

  With a private key he let John out into the corridor by which he had entered. He left the building and caught a tram back into College Green.

  There was no one to tell about it all. He knew no one well enough to make sweet so evil a communication. So he slept with it for several nights and then wrote to Groarke’s parents asking them if they could arrange for him to visit Michael. He wrote:

  … For some reason, he imagines he does not want to see me. I think this must be part of his illness; for, as I explained to you some weeks ago, we have always been very close friends and I have the greatest affection for your son. In addition I owe him a debt as he has always encouraged me to work.

  I am going to send him oddments like cigarettes and books, of course; but I feel that this is not enough; that I could perhaps help him to recover from this temporary breakdown which is obviously due to overwork.

  Mike is a very brilliant man. He has an assured future; and though he did not make friends easily I know that those of us who knew him and still know him would be willing to do anything to help him at this time.

  Please reply by return of post.

  The days passed in which he was increasingly aware of Groarke in the incomplete world of the asylum with its tapless washbasins, blocked windows and viewless views. Groarke arrested in a nearly moodless mood, bitter but amused; more alive than dead, deader than alive; catching up on things, and thinking what sort of thoughts about his present and past?

  When four or five days had elapsed without bringing any reply from either Mr. or Mrs. Groarke, John was seized by a demon of energy and wrote first to Cloate care of the War Office, then to the Superintendent of the asylum and, finally, by registered post, to Groarke himself.

  Until you arrange for me to come and see you I cannot possibly complete my course in psychological medicine. We seem to be linked in some way that I cannot explain. You were the first man I met on my arrival at Trinity and though since then we’ve had our difficulties, principally over Dymphna, I’m certain they were vital ones: the sort that maintain a relationship rather than destroy it.

  I can talk to no one else in the way I talk to you; I suspect that you, at any rate in the old days, found this true of yourself as well. Therefore, I’m convinced I could help you as much as anyone in the hospital—and incidentally, help myself as well.

  Write back as soon as possible; and in the meantime, if you don’t feel like making a full reply just yet, let me know if there is anything you want?

  When he had finished this letter he re-read it: phrases like “we’ve had our difficulties,” “linked in some way I cannot explain,” and “if there is anything you want,” filled him with scorn and a ready sort of despair.

  He thought that there must be something about tragedy which stereotyped the vocabulary. Where
did I get such words from? They read like an obituary and would sooner reach a corpse in a coffin than Mike.

  No matter how many times he rewrote the letter it turned out more or less the same. In the end he decided to get a little drunk before trying to write the final version at all. So he swallowed three large glasses of brandy and ginger ale in the Ranelagh and then went up to the Club library where there was a large writing-desk hidden behind one of the bookshelves. Few people ever came up there; it was filled with old political biographies bound in calf; it was still and silent, rich with the scent of rubbed leather and worm-riddled pages.

  The writing-table swayed but he held it down with his arms and, catching it at the zenith of a roll, pinned it down with a sheet of the club notepaper.

  Speaking. The journey is past not-doing. She is the rock on which we supposed we foundered; not so. We jam on selves. You look at you and say “Refuge in refusal because I, Michael, did not; therefore will do not!” Paralysis. Loving what you hate. Must love what you love and so continue. John knows, his word is true. Recall him for he has once been past your place. Love is: please.

  He rang the bell and gave this to the page-boy to post, with sufficient money to register it. But Groarke did not reply. Instead John got a brief typewritten letter from the Superintendent of the asylum.

  Dear Mr. Blaydon,

  Michael Groarke.

  I regret that it is not at present possible to allow you to visit this patient. Apart from the fact that neither his parents nor the patient himself wish you to do so, my colleague, Dr. MacBrien feels that such a visit would be against the patient’s own best interests. He has therefore asked me to return to you the letter you recently sent Mr. Groarke, and suggests that you should confine yourself only to practical matters in any future letters you may send. He adds that should you yourself feel the need to consult him at any time he is willing to try and help you.