A Cure for Suicide

by Jesse Ball

  —This is practice. We would be practicing. Shall we try?

  —All right.

  —I’m going to go around that bend there. When I come back over, I will be a different person, someone you have never met. I want you to speak to me as if you don’t know me, and as if you are simply a human being like any other, meeting someone for the first time. You might contrive some reason to speak to me. Or, perhaps, I will have a reason to speak to you. That is how it is in the world. Ready?

  —I am.

  The examiner jumped down from the rock and walked away. His eyes followed her as she walked with a certain light grace between the roots of trees and the tall grasses. Soon she was out of sight. A sudden shyness and fear rose in him. He gathered himself.

  —WHY, HELLO.

  The claimant looked at her. She was wearing some kind of coat over her clothes and a different hat. Her eyes were painted.

  He thought about this, and tried to remember what she had looked like before. Had she been wearing those same clothes before…

  She was saying something to him. He was supposed to be speaking to a new person, and she looked like a new person. She was saying,

  —Do you know the way to Calistor Avenue?

  —I haven’t been there, he said.

  And then he was thinking that he had been there. It was the one by the lake, not around the lake, but you passed it there, he thought. He had remembered looking at the sign, seeing the name, and not trying to pronounce it. But when you pronounced it, that’s how it came out. Calistor. When he looked up, the woman was gone.

  Oh, dear. How had he done?

  THE EXAMINER came back around the corner, looking just as she had at the outset.

  —Anders, she said. Anders, Anders, Anders. That won’t do at all.

  He looked at the ground near his feet.

  —You were very convincing, he said. I really felt that you didn’t know me.

  —It is hard, isn’t it, said the examiner, to have someone look at you as if they don’t know you—when you feel they do or should.

  —I don’t like it. I felt very…

  —Alone?

  —Yes, alone.

  —Maybe, she said. It would be easier for you if it were actually someone else.

  —I think so, he said.

  —There is someone over there, down the way a bit. Why don’t you walk down there and speak to them.

  HE WALKED down the road a bit. Sure enough, up ahead, there was a little house, a sort of tollhouse, with a long plank that lowered to block the road.

  A man appeared as he approached.

  —Papers, said the man.

  —Papers?

  —I need to see them. I need your papers, said the man.

  —I don’t, I don’t have any, said Anders.

  The man started for the tollhouse, as if to take some action, and right then, the examiner came up from behind.

  —It’s all right, she said. He’s with me.

  The toll minder nodded, and sat down on the bench where he had been. To him it was suddenly as though they were not there.

  The examiner put her arm around the claimant.

  —Let’s go back, she said. You did just fine.

  —Why did he ignore us like that? the claimant asked.

  —Oh, that’s what people do. He was just returning to the little world he inhabits when no one’s around. At certain conversational junctures it’s perfectly fine to do that. What you need to do is discover where such junctures lie.

  SHE WAS WRITING her report and sipping a glass of sherry. She had been leafing through a score of Stravinsky, and it leaned on the back of the writing desk, its fine black lines radiating outward as if to cover the room.

  ++

  The claimant has recovered most general function. He can wash himself, dress himself, eat, drink, cook, and govern his natural hours, sleeping at regular times. He has a tendency to drift, and fall into confusion, and he cannot yet discriminate between what is real and what is not.

  The integration appears to be working. He speaks to me of his memories as I have invoked them—that is, as my memories which I have seeded into his dreams. This provides him with a level of remove that may permit him some grace.

  All the same, the nightmares continue unabated. Here is the text of the last two:

  _ _

  Where the buses all end up, I have gone there, somehow I’ve ended up there. The bus drivers all leave their buses wherever they can. It is a large yard in a sort of depression, surrounded by trees. Perhaps it was once a sump. It is enormous, and the buses are everywhere. Many of them are out of service, or have been forever. They don’t even have wheels. The bus drivers get out of their buses one by one as they arrive, I didn’t see this, but I know it, they get out and they walk to a wall at the back of the yard and they all stand facing the wall with their noses nearly touching it. There are hundreds of them. It is how they sleep. I am one of the bus drivers. I pull my bus into the yard and stop it wherever I like. I get out. I walk slowly across the yard, as slowly as I like, and when I reach the wall, there is a place there, an empty spot, and I ease myself into it. I am so near the wall, I can feel the cold radiating from the stone. I am basking in that cold. I feel myself falling back into sleep.

  *

  I am driving again, this time I am driving a car, an open car, in the countryside. There is someone beside me in the car, but I cannot turn my head to look at her. We are going tremendously fast, and the road is curved. We are moving back and forth on the road, the wind is pushing us, and it requires all of my skill just to continue. I want to turn my head and look at her, but I cannot. The light is going out of the countryside that I am in. The whole thing is going dim; the sun is not seeing—it’s more that, someone is closing her eyes, and the light will soon be gone. Just as the light is gone, I turn my head to look and I see her, there, she flashes briefly in the dimness, and the car spills off the road, rolling and rolling and rolling and my body is racked with pain.

  _ _

  Yesterday, he woke confused; he had forgotten our speech about his dreams. He told me that he wanted to go back to where he had been. He named the city. He asked me if I knew the way. I told him that I did know the way. He should listen to me and follow my instructions. I led him through a breathing exercise and he fell back into sleep and slept through the morning. When he woke the second time, he remembered nothing…

  ++

  She paused in her writing. The claimant was stirring in the next room.

  —I’M HERE, she said.

  —Rana, he said. Rana.

  —There is no Rana.

  —Rana. Where are you?

  The claimant sat up in bed. His face was pallid. The window was wide open and the room was full of the night air. There was so much of it, it rolled back and forth over them. The examiner shut the window, and then they were there in the room again.

  —I’m here, she said.

  The claimant began to cry.

  —In the last week, I didn’t know, he said. I didn’t know. She was sick and she hid it from me. I promise you, if I had known, I would have, I would have…

  —Go back to sleep, said the examiner.

  She knelt by him on the bed and eased him down into a sleeping position. He reached for her, and clutched at her arm, pulling her to him. She lay for a second against him, and his breathing, at first ragged, grew regular. She came out from under his hand, and left the room.

  THE EXAMINER sat long into the night thinking. She did not want to make this decision. She would delay it as long as possible. If he were to be processed again…it pained her to think of it. She remembered her first work, with a claimant who had been processed three times. He could hardly speak. She had taught him to take care of himself, and had helped him to learn a simple vocation.

  It wasn’t that the process made the brain function less well. It only removed a capacity for action. Each time, a person became less likely to follow an intuition, or take up an ide
a or a challenge. Those who lost all or nearly all of this impulsiveness, as it was called, a reuse of the word, became the basic workers, the deed-doers in the gentle villages. It was they whom one saw through windows, people who would never go out of themselves, or leave a house unbidden, it was they who stood in simple uniforms, gardening or sweeping in the streets. They were a staple of the gentle villages, a staple, a tool, a mechanism, and its result.

  Others, who could be helped with one processing—went on to do what they liked. Such a person could return to regular life, or stay within the system. Some, as she had told the claimant, even became examiners. They never seemed to be bothered by learning the methods—never seemed to guess that those same methods might have been employed to alter their own minds. It is only natural, supposed the examiner. In an extreme case, I suppose, I might have even been…

  She shuddered.

  It was the nineteenth day. There was scarcely any time left. When the sun rose, the examiner was still sitting where she had been. Her eyes were open, and focused on some point on the wallpaper. But which point it was, even she couldn’t say. Light had stood in the sky for an hour or two when she heard something in the next room, a sort of battering, a crash, and a low moan.

  —ANDERS!

  The bedroom and all its elements were overturned.

  He must have lifted the bedframe up and knocked it over. Was he asleep when he did it? The dresser was on its side. The mattress was over him, bent practically in half. He was shaking, curled in the corner under the mattress. She pulled it off of him.

  —Anders!

  The claimant looked at her strangely, as if she were mad.

  —Who are you talking to? he said. Who is Anders? Where am I?

  His voice was different—his inflections had changed. He looked at her and it was as if he did not know her at all—as if he had just appeared that moment, from some other place.

  The examiner looked at him in horror. Be calm, be calm.

  He had cut his hands badly, and the blood was smeared on his face and chest. He looked up at her, and his face was wet. He was crying, but he was angry.

  —Anders! she said, I need you to calm down.

  —Who are you? Who are you?

  He burrowed his head into his arms, pushed himself into the corner, and screwed his eyes shut.

  —Anders! Anders!

  He did not respond.

  The examiner rushed from the room.

  2

  A BRIGHT LIGHT WOKE HIM. Something was shining through the window, and his face felt very hot. He rolled over and slowly looked around. He could scarcely manage it, but he looked around. His eyes failed him and drifted shut. He was curled in a quilt with the sheets in disarray.

  The claimant lay in a bed that was set against a wall. A chair had been pulled up next to the bed. A chair had been pulled up, and there was someone in it.

  It was an old woman. Her face creased in a smile.

  The claimant squinted and struggled to open his eyes and see her.

  She leaned her face in close to his, seeming to etch his features into her mind.

  His eyes shut and he slumped in the bed.

  With a strength that belied her age, she pushed his body into a sleeping posture, and stepped away.

  IT WAS A GOOD SITUATION, thought the examiner. He appears young and strong. He had woken remarkably soon after the shot—only eighteen hours, if the report was to be believed. The examiner had been at this job long enough to know that not all information was correct.

  In fact, she thought, often it is wrong on purpose.

  She busied herself making some tea. How should she start with this one?

  The usual method? Or another approach? Lately she had been favoring the original way, the first way, although she had made her career with her unusual treatments. This time, she would stick to the original method. No speech until the claimant speaks. It was a measurement of sorts. The examiner believed very fervently in measurement.

  She set the teapot down on the table and took a pen and paper off a shelf on the wall.

  ++

  Arrived in Gentlest Village P6.

  Received claimant. He appears healthy and ready for treatment.

  ++

  THE TWO COULD BE SEEN through any window of the house, sitting together. He would sit in one chair and she would sit in another. They would sit for long hours, practically motionless.

  Through another, they might be seen practicing skills. The old woman would mime the donning of clothes, and help him again and again and again to perform the basic tasks. No matter how he tried, the man could not button the buttons of his shirt. He failed again and again. But, if he was failing, the expression of the old woman seemed to say: This, what we are doing, it is the hardest thing in the world. No one has ever done it. No one until you. And now it has fallen to you to try. Let us try. Let us try again.

  One could see them practicing the use of the stairwell, a thing to which one clung with both arms, while lowering leg after leg up and down. It was used for getting to and fro—for going from the top of the house to the bottom.

  One could see the man standing in a tub while the old woman poured water over him and scrubbed and scrubbed until he was clean. And soon, he had learned to scrub as well. Soon, he could do it by himself.

  If one waited some days and looked through the bottom windows, a different scene might present itself. The two sat at a long table, and blocks with pictures of things were passed back and forth. Large bound sheets full of pictures were shown and shared.

  Sometimes a task would be terribly difficult—terribly, terribly difficult, and the man would cry. He would sit down on the floor and cry. Then the old woman would sit down beside him on the floor and wait, and when he was done crying, they would try again.

  Her patience was the heart of it. She was as patient as a person could be.

  THE HOUSE was a tall Victorian house. That meant it was nicely made, and with good proportions. The rooms had high ceilings. The windows were large and bore many panes within their cavities. The floors had long wooden boards that ran the length of each room. Many were covered with fine carpets. When a person trod on the floors, the boards creaked, and in this way the house was a little bit alive.

  Along the stairs there were photographs. At each step there was another photograph. By walking up and down the stairs one could find a sort of history—but of what it was hard to say. There were many photographs of machines. Winged machines, wheeled machines, farm machines. There were many people with somber clothing and blurry faces. Sometimes there were many people together in one photograph, and when there were, they usually all stood facing in the same direction. How could the photographer stand in front of them—so many, and not be noticed?

  The banister was of a swooping brown wood and felt very pleasant under the hand. One could run the hand along it, all the way down the stairs, and then one would be at the bottom. All the way from the top to the bottom.

  The bottom of the stairs faced a long, narrow hall—and at its end a door that was never open. This door was set with colored glass of every sort. It would be a nice place to lie, to lie flat on the back in the hall and be covered with the colored light.

  There were two paintings in this hall—one of a bird with long feathers, and another of a woman who wore clothing that made her look very much like a bird. She was angry, and her face was cruel, and she filled the area around the door with her anger.

  Many of the windows in the house had seats in them. The seats were covered in cushions, and a person could sit there as long as they liked. Eventually, the sun might become blinding. Or, the sky would become dark. Then it would be time to go to a different place.

  The woman who walked about in the house was very old. She was always watching everything that happened, and always listening. She was a comfort because she would be there in an instant to help, or she would wait for hours until the next time she should be there in an instant to help. She wore dark stockings
of wool and no shoes. Her clothes were the same color as the walls.

  The kitchen was the airiest room in the house. It had many windows, and they looked out on a garden full of plants. Some things from the garden would end up in the kitchen. There were many times when one could leave the kitchen happily, and one would often come into it with great happiness, too. The kitchen was the best room in the house.

  There were many places in the house for putting things. One could put things from one place to another, and they would go back to the place they had been before. This was a sort of game. As many times as one would do it, the things would return. Even paintings that were tilted, or hairs placed under small statues.

  The man would get up and go to the stairs at first, and he would wait there, and wait until she came and then they would go down the stairs together. Or, later, he would go down sitting, go down sitting all the way. He had a hard time making his legs and arms work like the old woman could. Whenever she wanted to do something, she did it.

  Finally, he could go down the stairs just like her. In fact, he could go down faster than that. He would go down the stairs and the old woman would find him and they would have things to do all day and then it would be time to sleep.

  Whenever he didn’t have things to do, the old woman found something for him to do. But when he had something to do, she was never there.

  The man liked the pants that he wore, and there was a day when he put all the clothes on by himself and came down the stairs by himself, and worked on a thing he had decided to do by himself and ate by himself and it was not until the evening that he saw her. Then they sat on the closed porch and she lit a candle and it was a sort of celebration.

  AND ON THE SEVENTIETH DAY, the man spoke.