K-Pax Omnibus

by Gene Brewer

  Psychotherapy was completely ineffective in Russell’s case, and Metrazole shock therapy barely less so. Nevertheless, he was returned to his parents. The young delusional soon escaped from the farm, however, only to be arrested as a “public nuisance.” After that he was in and out of jails and hospitals for several years until he was finally brought to MPI, where he has remained to this day.

  Neither Howie, who is Jewish, nor Mrs. Archer (“I’m Episcopalian,” she would sniff) have ever had much use for Russell. But with his retinue shrinking rapidly—only Maria and a few of her alters seemed to be paying any attention to him—he began to preach the gospel to Howie and to the Duchess, who had begun to emerge from her room on occasion to speak with prot.

  Howie simply ignored him, but it was different for Mrs. Archer. It would be a bad joke to state that he was driving her crazy, but that was the net effect. Conversing with Russell requires a certain amount of forbearance under the best of circumstances. He tends to preach right into your face, releasing prodigious amounts of spittle with almost every word. And when she was able to escape his fervent hectoring she found herself being assaulted by Chuck’s observations, expressed in no uncertain terms, that she stank.

  Mrs Archer, who used nearly a pint of expensive perfumes weekly, was both mortified and irate. “I most certainly do not stink!” she screeched, impatiently lighting a cigarette.

  “Those goddamn things reek,” Chuck would badger.

  She was finally reduced to tears. “Please,” she implored, when I happened by. “Let him come back.”

  “He wouldn’t take a stinker like you with him. He’s going to take me!” Chuck proclaimed.

  But Russell warned, “For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and they shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect!”

  “You stink too!” Chuck reminded him.

  * * *

  During a quick lunch in the doctors’ dining room Dr. Goldfarb told me more about Chuck. He had been a middle-level government employee at one time, she said, but blew the whistle on the waste and corruption in his division at the Pentagon. For his efforts he was fired and, for all practical purposes, blackballed, both from government and corporate employment. That alone might be cause enough for disillusionment, but the straw that broke his back was his wife’s divorcing him after thirty-five years of marriage. “I couldn’t have been happier,” he muttered to Dr. Goldfarb. “I had to kiss that malodorous maw every day. P.U.! Stinkeroonie!” But the truth was that he loved his wife passionately and it was more than he could bear. Indeed, he had tried to commit suicide shortly after she left him by blowing his brains out with a shotgun. It must seem incredible to the reader to learn that he missed, but the fact is that many attempted suicides end in “failure” for the simple reason that they are actually desperate attempts to draw attention to the sufferer’s terrible, and often silent, unhappiness. Most victims don’t actually want to die; they want to communicate.

  Of course, not all those who feel rootless or valueless resort to this futile measure. A manic-depressive once assured me that he would never try to kill himself. I asked him how he could be so sure. “Because,” he told me, “I still haven’t read Moby Dick.”

  As good a reason for living as any, I suppose, and perhaps it explains why so few people have ever finished that book.

  In the midst of all the furor surrounding prot’s disappearance, the reporter who had called me the previous week arrived, half an hour early, for her appointment. She was older than she appeared, thirty-three, she said, though she looked more like sixteen. She wore faded jeans, an old checked shirt, and running shoes with no socks. My first impression was that freelance writing must be a poorly paid profession, but I eventually came to realize that she dressed this way for effect—to induce people to feel at ease. To that end she also wore little makeup, and only a hint of perfume that somehow brought to mind our summer place in the Adirondacks. “Pine woods,” I would have called it. She was short, about five-two, and her teeth were tiny, like a little girl’s. Disarmingly, she curled up into the chair I offered. She asked me to call her Giselle.

  She came from a little town in northern Ohio. After graduating with a degree in journalism from the local college she came directly to New York, where she got a job on the now-defunct Weekly Gazette. She stayed there nearly eight years before writing an article on drugs and AIDS in Harlem, which won her the Cassady prize. I asked her about the dangers she must have faced researching that story. A friend had accompanied her, she explained, an ex-football player whom everyone in the area knew. “He was huge,” she added with a coy smile.

  She later quit the Gazette to research and write pieces on a variety of subjects—abortion, oil spills, and homelessness— for various periodicals, including several major newspapers and national magazines. She had also written scripts for a number of TV documentaries. She had gotten the idea to do something on mental illness after trying to find background material on Alzheimer’s disease and failing to find a good generalized account of the subject “in layperson’s language.” Her credentials were certainly impressive, and I gave her the go-ahead to “cruise the corridors,” as she put it, provided that she was accompanied by a staff member at all times, and that she enter the psychopathic ward for no more than three one-hour visits and only in the presence of a security officer. She cheerfully agreed to abide by these conditions. Nevertheless I asked Betty to keep an eye on her.

  Session Eight

  I was in a very bad mood when Wednesday afternoon came around, having spent the entire morning waiting to testify in a preliminary hearing, only to have the case resolved out of court. I was glad it was settled, but annoyed that half a day had been wasted, and I had missed lunch as well. Underlying all this, of course, was my concern about prot’s well-being.

  But he returned exactly in time for our next session. Still wearing his blue corduroys, he sauntered in as if nothing had happened. I shouted at him: “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Newfoundland. Labrador. Greenland. Iceland.”

  “How did you get out of the hospital?”

  “I just left.”

  “Without anyone seeing you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How did you do that?”

  “I told you—”

  “With mirrors. Yes, I know.” I also knew there was no sense in arguing the matter, and the tape at this point in the session is silent except for the distinct sound of my fingers tapping the arm of my chair. I finally said, “Next time tell me when you’re going to leave.”

  “I did,” he replied.

  “And another thing: I don’t think you should be telling the other patients you’re going to take them back with you.”

  “I never said that to any of the patients.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “No. In fact I told them I can only take one person back with me.”

  “I don’t think you should be making promises you can’t keep.”

  “I have promised nothing.” He bit into a huge strawberry from a bowlful brought in from her garden in Hoboken by Mrs. Trexler.

  I was famished. My mouth was watering. This time I joined him. Chewing hungrily, we glared at each other for several minutes like prizefighters sizing up an opponent. “Tell me,” I said. “If you can leave here any time you want, why do you stay?”

  He swallowed a mouthful of berries, took a deep breath. “Well, it’s as good a place as any to write my report, you feed me every day, and the fruit is wonderful. Besides,” he added impishly, “I like you.”

  “Well enough to stay put for a while?”

  “Until august seventeenth.”

  “Good. Now let’s get started, shall we?”

  “Certainly.”

  “All right. Can you draw a star map showing the night sky from anywhere in the galaxy? From Sirius, say?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”


  “I have never been there.”

  “But you can do so for all the places you’ve been?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Will you do a few of those for me before the next session?”

  “No problem.”

  “Good. Now—where have you really been the past few days?”

  “I told you: newfoundland, labrador—”

  “Uh huh. And how are you feeling after your long journey?”

  “Very well, thank you. And how have you been, narr?”

  “Narr?”

  “Gene, on K-PAX, is narr.” It rhymed with “hair.”

  “I see. Is that from the French, meaning ‘to confess’?”

  “No, it is from the pax-o, meaning ‘one who doubts.’”

  “Oh. And what would ‘prot’ be in English—one who is cocksure?”

  “Nope. ‘Prot’ is derived from an ancient K-PAXian word for ‘sojourner.’ Believe it or not by ripley.”

  “If I asked you to translate something from English to pax-o for me, something like Hamlet, for example, could you do it?”

  “Of course. When would you like to have it?”

  “Whenever you can get to it.”

  “Next week okay?”

  “Fine. Now then. We’ve talked quite a bit about the sciences on K-PAX. Tell me about the arts on your planet.”

  “You mean painting and music? Stuff like that?”

  “Painting, music, sculpture, dance, literature...”

  The usual smile broke out, and the fingers came together. “It is similar in some ways to the arts on EARTH. But remember that we have had several billion years longer to develop them than you have. Our music is not based on anything as primitive as notes, nor any of our arts on subjective vision.”

  “Not based on notes? How else—”

  “It is continuous.”

  “Can you give me an example?” With that he tore a sheet of paper from his little notebook and began to draw something on it.

  While he did so I asked him why, with all his talents and capabilities, he needed to keep a written record of his observations. “Isn’t it obvious?” he replied. “What if something happens to me before I get back to K-PAX?” He then showed me the following:

  “This is one of my favorites. I learned it as a boy.” As I tried to make sense out of the score, or whatever it was, he added, “You can see why I’m rather partial to your john cage.”

  “Can you hum a few bars of this thing?”

  “You know I can’t sing. Besides, it doesn’t break down into ‘tunes.’ “

  “May I keep this?”

  “Consider it a souvenir of my visit.”

  “Thank you. Now. You said that your arts are not based on ‘subjective vision.’ What does that mean?”

  “It means we don’t have what you call ‘fiction.’”

  “Why not?”

  “What is the point?”

  “Well, through fiction, one often gains an understanding of truth.”

  “Why beat around the bush? Why not go right for the truth in the first place?”

  “Truth means different things to different people.”

  “Truth is truth. What you are talking about is make-believe. Dream worlds. Tell me”—he bent over the notebook—“why do human beings have the peculiar impression that a belief is the same as the truth?”

  “Because sometimes the truth hurts. Sometimes we need to believe in a better truth.”

  “What better truth can there be than truth?”

  “There may be more than one kind of truth.”

  Prot continued to scribble in his notebook. “There is only one truth. Truth is absolute. You can’t escape it, no matter how far you run.” He said this rather wistfully, it seemed to me.

  “There’s another factor, too,” I countered. “Our beliefs are based on incomplete and conflicting experiences. We need help to sort things out. Maybe you can help us.”

  He looked up in surprise. “How?”

  “Tell me more about your life on K-PAX.”

  “What else would you like to know?”

  “Tell me about your friends and acquaintances there.”

  “All K-PAXians are my friends. Except there is no word for ‘friend’ in pax-o. Or ‘enemy.’”

  “Tell me about some of them. Whoever comes to mind.”

  “Well, there is brot, and mano, and swon, and fled, and—”

  “Who is brot?”

  “He lives in the woods RILLward of reldo. Mano is—”

  “Reldo?”

  “A village near the purple mountains.”

  “And brot lives there?”

  “In the woods.”

  “Why?”

  “Because orfs usually live in the woods.”

  “What’s an orf?”

  “Orfs are something between our species and trods. Trods are much like your chimpanzees, only bigger.”

  “You mean orfs are subhuman?”

  “Another of your famous contradictions in terms. But if you mean is he a forebear, the answer is yes. You see, we did not destroy our immediate progenitors as you did on EARTH.”

  “And you consider the orfs to be your friends?”

  “Of course.”

  “What do you call your own species, by the way?”

  “Dremers.”

  “And how many progenitors are there between trods and dremers?”

  “Seven.”

  “And they are all still in existence on K-PAX?”

  “Mais oui!”

  “What are they like?”

  “They are beautiful.”

  “Do you have to take care of them in some way?”

  “Only clean up after them, sometimes. Otherwise they take care of themselves, as all beings do.”

  “Do they speak? Can you understand them?”

  “Certainly. All beings ‘speak.’ You just have to know their language.”

  “Okay. Go on.”

  “Mano is quiet. She spends most of her time studying our insects. Swon is soft and green. Fled is—”

  “Green?”

  “Of course. Swon is an em. Something like your tree frogs, only they are as big as dogs.”

  “You call frogs by name?”

  “How else would you refer to them?”

  “Are you telling me you have names for all the frogs on K-PAX?”

  “Of course not. Only the ones I know.”

  “You know a lot of lower animals?”

  “They are not ‘lower. ’Just different.”

  “How do these species compare with those we have on Earth?”

  “You have more variety, but, on the other hand, we have no carnivores. And,” he beamed, “no flies, no mosquitoes, no cockroaches.”

  “Sounds too good to be true.”

  “Oh, it’s true all right, believe me.”

  “Let’s get back to the people.”

  “There are no ‘people’ on K-PAX.”

  “I meant the beings of your own species. The—uh— dremers.”

  “As you wish.”

  “Tell me more about your friend mano.”

  “I told you: She is fascinated by the behavior of the horns.”

  “Tell me more about her.”

  “She has soft brown hair and a smooth forehead and she likes to make things.”

  “Do you get along well with her?”

  “Of course.”

  “Better than with other K-PAXians?”

  “I get along well with everyone.”

  “Aren’t there a few of your fellow dremers that you get along with—that you like—better than others?”

  “I like all of them.”

  “Name a few.”

  That was a mistake. He named thirty-odd K-PAXians before I could stop him with: “Do you get along well with your father?”

  “Really, gene, you’ve got to do something about that memory of yours. I can give you some tips if—”

  “How about your mother?”

/>   “Of course.”

  “Would you say you love her?”

  “Love implies hate.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “Love... like... it’s all a matter of semantics.”

  “All right. Let me turn that around. Is there anyone you don’t like? Is there anyone you actually dislike?”

  “Everyone on K-PAX is just like me! Why would I hate anyone? Should I hate myself?”

  “On Earth there are those who do hate themselves. Those who haven’t lived up to their own standards or expectations. Those who have failed to achieve their goals. Those who have made disastrous mistakes. Those who have caused harm to someone and regretted it later on....”

  “I told you before—no one on K-PAX would cause harm to anyone else!”

  “Not even unintentionally?”

  “No!”

  “Never?”

  Yelling: “Are you deaf?”

  “No. I hear you quite clearly. Please calm down. I’m sorry if I upset you.” He nodded brusquely.

  I knew I was onto something here, but I wasn’t certain as to the best way to proceed. While he was composing himself we talked about some of the patients, including Maria and her protective alter egos—he seemed quite interested in her condition. Who knows where inspiration comes from? Or is it merely a momentary clearing in the fog of stupidity? In any case I realized at that moment that I had been focusing, perhaps for reasons of self-interest, on his delusion. What I should have been attacking was the hysterical amnesia! “Prot?”

  His fists slowly unclenched. “What?”

  “Something has occurred to me.”

  “Bully for you, doctor brewer.”

  “I was wondering whether you’d be willing to undergo hypnosis at our next session?”

  “What for?”

  “Let’s call it an experiment. Sometimes hypnosis can call up recollections and feelings that are too painful to recall otherwise.”

  “I remember everything I have ever done. There is no need.”