The Interrogation

by J. M. G. Le Clézio

  By this time the girl was bolt upright on her chair. Her eyes were shining like spectacles; she was frowning, as though in thought. The weighty appearance of her brow and nose had altered a little, deviating into a kind of snobbish pleasure at the incongruous encounter between elements reputed to be incompatible; it was like writing whimsical associations of words right in the middle of a blank page. This kind of thing:

  ‘proton – already’

  ‘Jesus – bather’

  ‘grandmother – cracker’

  ‘island – belly’

  One would have said she was now showing the reverse side of her mask; she seemed like, heaven knows what, a young Methodist girl who’d discovered a spelling mistake in a paragraph of the Bible – she looked half amused and half disgusted.

  The boy in dark glasses leant forward and said:

  ‘But you – you’re not a child any longer!’ The others giggled; the doctor cut them short by saying:

  ‘Please, please. We are not here to amuse ourselves. I suggest you go on with your interview. Though I warn you that so far it’s not very satisfactory. How can you expect to form any interesting ideas unless you manage the questions and answers better? You put your questions anyhow, at random, you pay no attention to the patient’s behaviour, and then you’re surprised that you can’t diagnose the trouble. You let the clues escape you.’

  He got up, took the spectacled student’s notebook from him, glanced at it briefly and handed it back.

  ‘You don’t know how to set about the thing,’ he said, and sat down again. ‘You jot down a whole lot of useless details in your notebooks. You put “doesn’t remember how long he’s been in hospital – three or four days”, and further on, “doesn’t remember why he left home”, and then, “doesn’t like wearing clothes. Reason: dislikes buttons”. That’s all quite pointless. Whereas what might have been interesting, you don’t mention – instead of writing all that, you need only have put: lapses of memory – sexual obsession accompanied by rejection of responsibility through fabulization – and there you would have had the beginnings of a diagnosis. But never mind, go ahead.’

  Turning to Julienne R., he added:

  ‘Come along, Mademoiselle. You’d made a good beginning.’

  Julienne R. thought for a moment. During this time, there was silence except for the creaking of chairs, the rustle of one or two exercise-book pages, the swallowing of saliva, and a curious smell of sweat and urine given off by the walls of the infirmary, or perhaps by Adam himself. He had managed to prop his elbows on his knees without hunching his shoulders too much, and in this position, with his right arm quite vertical, his hand was level with his chin and the butt-end of his cigarette just opposite his mouth. It was a pose carefully calculated to involve the minimum of effort. Allowing for the uncomfortable effect, in this company, of striped pyjamas and hair cut too short, almost shaved, and for the general chilly atmosphere of the infirmary, Adam was getting along fairly well. With his long, lanky body, thin arms and closed mouth, he gave an impression of exceptional, eccentric intelligence together with a slight tendency to pose. Moreover, his bare feet in their felt slippers were exactly parallel. One could see he had ceased to expect anything much – a breath of air, perhaps, a little fresh-turned soil, the sound of a wash-basin emptying; he had been a long time in the world, there was nothing about him that could be restored to life or firmly resist the heavy gaze of the fair-haired girl with the pair of blue eyes, deep as bottles, strained, avid to encircle the whole world, himself included, in the power of knowledge. He could read her, and the rest of the group, like a postcard. But he stopped at that. And he was outstripped, carried away on a black stream, amid whirlpools of pulverized granite, between the shifting layers of immense zinc plates where he was reflected an infinite number of times, a solitary, weedy man.

  Julienne R. did not look at the others again. It was difficult to tell whether she was ashamed, afraid, or what. She said:

  ‘Why are you here? Why are you here?’

  It might pass for just another question; but it was almost a compassionate appeal, almost a diffuse love-formula. She repeated:

  ‘Can you tell us – Will you tell me why? Why you’re here? Do try to tell me…’

  Adam refused. He took another cigarette out of the packet and lit it from the stub of the first; then he dropped the stub on the floor and crushed it out, lingeringly, with the toe of his slipper. The girl watched him, her fingers clenched on her exercise-book.

  ‘You won’t – tell me why you’re here?’

  The other girl, Martin, put in:

  ‘You don’t remember.’

  One of the young men nibbled the end of his pencil.

  ‘Just now you were saying something interesting. You were talking about children, about minimization, etc. Don’t you think – don’t you think that may be an obsession with you? I mean, mightn’t it be that you assimilate yourself to these children? That is – I mean – ’

  ‘How old are you?’ asked the boy with the dark glasses.

  ‘Twenty-nine,’ said Adam; then, turning to the first speaker:

  ‘I see what you mean. But I don’t feel one can answer that kind of question. I think – Unless that belongs to the general attitude of a lunatic, a nut. In which case it wouldn’t matter much if I answered yes or no.’

  ‘Well then, why did you mention it to us?’ asked the young man.

  ‘To explain,’ said Adam. ‘I’d mentioned the solitary spirit of children. I wanted to explain it. Perhaps it wasn’t worth while.’

  ‘But it was you we were talking about.’

  ‘Yes, of course – anyhow, it answered your question.’

  ‘Because you’re a case of micromania.’

  ‘Or perhaps because one may still have something childish about one even at twenty-nine.’

  The girl opened her mouth to say something, but she was forestalled:

  ‘Have you done your national service?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And your job?’

  ‘What work were you doing?’

  ‘Before?’

  ‘Yes, before – ?’

  ‘I did all kinds of things,’ said Adam.

  ‘You had no settled job.’

  ‘No – ’

  ‘What things have you done?’

  ‘I don’t know, really…’

  ‘What work did you have that you enjoyed doing?’

  ‘Odd jobs, I enjoyed them.’

  ‘What odd jobs?’

  ‘Well, washing cars, for instance.’

  ‘But you – ’

  ‘I enjoyed being a bathing attendant, too. But I’ve never been able to do what I’d have liked. I’d have liked to be a chimney-sweep or a grave-digger or a lorry driver. But one needs references.’

  ‘You wanted to do that all your life?’

  ‘Why not? You do find old grave-diggers, you know…’

  ‘But you’ve had a good education, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you any qualifications?’

  ‘Yes, a few.’

  ‘Wh – ’

  ‘I have a diploma in Regional Geography, for one thing…’

  ‘Why didn’t you make use of it?’

  ‘I wanted to be an archaeologist – or an excavation overseer, I don’t quite remember which…’

  ‘And – ?’

  ‘It didn’t last…’

  The fair-haired girl looked up and said:

  ‘Honestly, I can’t think what you’re doing here – ’

  Adam smiled. ‘You mean you don’t think I’m a nut? is that it?’

  She nodded. Her eyes were unfocused, inscrutable. She turned towards the head doctor and asked:

  ‘Who said he was insane?’

  The doctor stared hard at her and then slowly drew his legs in under his chair.

  ‘Listen, Mademoiselle. This should be a lesson to you. You always jump to conclusions before you have collected all the fact
s. At least wait till you have finished this conversation. You know what he did?’

  She nodded, her brow slightly furrowed. The doctor’s expression was amused.

  ‘You know. Not all cases are equally simple. Not all cases are as simple as the last one. You remember, the sailor? This may surprise you, but the fact is that there are no extremes in madness. There is no real boundary between a madman who commits murder and one who seems perfectly harmless. You came here expecting to see extraordinary people, taking themselves for Napoleon or unable to utter two coherent words, and you’re disappointed to find nothing of the kind. Sometimes, like today, you even come across a patient who is extremely intelligent.’

  He paused, cautiously.

  ‘Well, as this is an exceptionally difficult case, I will help you. According to you, the patient is quite sane. But let me tell you that the first psycho-pathological tests for which I gave instructions when he was admitted showed him to be not merely abnormal, but definitely insane. I’ll read you the results…’

  He picked up a sheet of paper and read:

  ‘Systematized paranoid delirium.

  Tendency to hypochondria.

  Megalomania (sometimes reversing to micromania).

  Persecution mania.

  Theory of justified irresponsibility.

  Sexual deviations.

  Mental confusion.

  In short, the patient is in a permanent manic-depressive state which may evolve towards confusion or even to acute psychotic delirium. In such cases as his the delirium takes on what I might call an orderly appearance, owing to memories of culture and to the patient’s potential intelligence. But his condition is dominated by frequent changes of mood, relapses and depressive states, and most of all by mythomania, confusion, and the different phases of sexual obsession.’

  The doctor passed his hand over the back of his neck, which was rather greasy although he rubbed it with lavender-water several times a day. He seemed to relish more and more the embarrassment he had brought upon his audience. In the case of Julienne R. he was particularly pleased. He leant slightly forward in her direction.

  ‘So you see, Mademoiselle, we have come to very different conclusions. Try to check mine by continuing your conversation with M. Polio. I am sure you will persuade him to say some very interesting things – No, seriously, depressive patients respond tremendously to a sympathetic attitude. What do you say to that, M. Polio?’

  Adam had only heard the last words, all the rest having been uttered in a confidential tone intended only for the students. Adam glanced for a moment at the doctor and then at the tip of his cigarette, projecting, white and slender, from his fingers; and said:

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t hear the beginning of your question.’ Then he lapsed into a kind of torpor. He could already feel himself slipping away from his real surroundings. Julienne R. cleared her throat and said:

  ‘Very well – let’s go on.… What do you think? I mean, what do you think is going to happen to you?’

  Adam looked up:

  ‘What did you say?’

  Julienne repeated: ‘What do you think is going to happen to you now?’

  Adam looked into the girl’s eyes, two cavities that were almost familiar by this time; she had prominent brow ridges, so that the light falling from above cast two grey-blue shadows on her white cheeks, like the eye-holes of a plaster skull. Adam sighed faintly.

  ‘I’ve just remembered a queer thing,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what reminded me of it – it’s funny…’

  Looking at the edges of Julienne’s eyelids, he went on:

  ‘It was – let’s say when I was twelve. I knew a funny chap, his name was Tweedsmuir, but they called him Sim, because his first name was Simon. Simon Tweedsmuir. He’d been brought up by the Jesuits, so there was a kind of style about him. He was friendly enough, in his own way, but he didn’t talk much to the rest of us. He liked to keep himself to himself. I think it was because he knew that all we other fellows knew his father used to beat him with a stick. He would never talk about it to anyone. He was certainly the cleverest chap I’ve ever known, and yet he was always at the bottom of the form. But you could feel he could have been top if he’d wanted to. Once he had a bet with another boy that he would come out top in Latin composition and algebra. And he did. And the funny thing is that nobody was surprised. Not even the boy who’d had the bet. I think Sim regretted it afterwards, because the masters began trying to take an interest in him. He got himself expelled from school on purpose and no one ever heard of him again. The only time he ever really spoke to me was at the end of the Christmas term, just before he left the school. He’d turned up that morning black and blue with bruises, and in the cloakroom at break he told me about his way of praying. He said he thought the only way to get nearer to God was to do over again, in spirit, what God had done in the material sense. One must gradually rise up through all the stages of creation. He had already spent two years as an animal; when I knew him he’d just got up to the next level, the Fallen Angels. He was going to have to worship Satan out and out, until he managed to establish perfect communication with him. You understand. Not merely what one might call a physical relationship with the Devil, like most saints or mystics. Like St Anthony or the Curé d’Ars. Complete communication, that’s to say a state where he would understand the Works of the Evil One, their aim, their relation to God, to the beasts and to mankind. Put it this way, God can be understood as well through his opposite, his Devil, as through Himself, in his own essence. Every evening for two and a half hours, Sim was giving himself up entirely to Satan. He had written prayers and hymns of praise to him; he made him offerings – sacrificing small animals, and sins. He’d tried magic too, rejecting what he felt to be too childish or too daring, in view of his age and of the twentieth century. It was a stage in the manner of the Khlystys, you know, or Baron Samedi. But the difference was that for Sim this was only one step in the religious life. Taken entirely for love of God. From a wish to re-enact the Creation in the spiritual sense. He’d determined – ’

  Adam paused, then decided to go on. The fair-haired girl was sitting very stiffly on the edge of her chair, and trembling. Her fingers had made damp sweat-marks on the cover of the exercise-book. Every now and then a shadow travelled along the line of her eyebrows, thrown by a flight of birds passing the window; after so many long-drawn-out words and memories there was no difference any more between her and the fabulous characters in dreams. The words were alive, or she was, or the unicorn and the Yink, or anything.

  ‘Yes – he’d determined to get through his worship of Satan by the time he was about sixteen – sixteen or seventeen. So he would have four years left before coming of age, four years to devote to the stage of human beings. Then nine years for the Angels. And then, by the time he was thirty, if he worked without ever letting up, if he didn’t indulge his personal ambitions or pleasures, he could have ceased to exist except in God, in Him, through Him and for Him. In the ineffable – bang in the ineffable. No longer Sim Tweedsmuir, but God in person. You see. You see.’

  One would have said his words had rung strangely in the infirmary, that cramped little room with its white-tiled walls like the walls of a bathroom or a public lavatory; one would have said there was an immense rectangular emptiness somewhere on earth and that this altered the depths of the sentences and dimmed the meaning of the words.

  ‘Tweedsmuir. Tweedsmuir, Sim Tweedsmuir. He never talked to me again after that, after that day. I believe I heard that he’d died some time ago. He must have caught syphilis somewhere, during his satanic period. While honouring the Devil with a tart. You see the kind of thing. In a way, yes, he was an intelligent fellow, and all that. If he’d managed to see it through, he’d have ended by getting into the newspapers.’

  Adam gave a short laugh. ‘You know the funny thing about it – It’s that if he’d been only the slightest bit more sociable lots of the chaps at school would have followed him, and his religion. I wo
uld have, for instance. But he didn’t want any of that. He distrusted people. He wouldn’t even listen if one mentioned Ruysbroek or Occam. In fact he had a petty side to him, and that was his downfall…’

  ‘You’re sure you didn’t follow him a little way all the same – I mean his religion, his doctrine?’ Julienne asked.

  ‘How old did you say he was?’ added the boy with the dark glasses.

  ‘Who, Sim?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He must have been a little older than me, about fourteen or fifteen…’

  ‘Yes, that makes it easier to understand. It must have been the kind of mysticism kids do invent for themselves at that age – no?’

  ‘You mean it was unsophisticated?’

  ‘Yes, and I – ’

  ‘That’s true. But it was rather fine, all the same. I think – I think if one remembers he was at the age for being confirmed, and all that, it seems rather fine, don’t you think?’

  ‘And you yourself thought it so fine – ’

  Julienne R. frowned, as though her head had suddenly begun to ache.