The Thanatos Syndrome

by Walker Percy

  “No, Max,” I say. “You were not treating me at the time. That was earlier.” For some reason I am having difficulty concentrating.

  “Tom is a very creative person,” says Max, “as we all know. Like all creative people he has periods of lying fallow.”

  “I wasn’t lying fallow, Max. I was mostly lying drunk. My practice went to pot. I needed the money.”

  “But for a good cause!” exclaims Max, raising a finger. “You were thinking of your family. And what a lovely family!”

  Bob Comeaux is shaking his hand, but tolerantly, even smiling. “Okay, how’s this?” he asks briskly, again setting one hand softly into the other. “Let’s just put this business on hold for a couple of weeks. I think there may be a way to beat this bum rap.” He rises, stretches. Max rises.

  “Let me just say one thing,” says Max, not moving toward the door.

  “Sure, Max,” says Bob Comeaux, smiling. He is no longer ironic.

  “I don’t have to remind you of what Tom here has accomplished, by his breakthrough in the field of cortical scanning, for which he received national recognition. Furthermore—”

  “No, Doctor, you don’t have to remind me.” Bob Comeaux is holding out both arms to us in a kind of herding gesture in the direction of the door. “What is more, I feel certain we can work something out. We’re not about to lose Dr. More’s services. Two things, Tom. One, Mrs. LaFaye. I’m going to need your help with her, okay?”

  “Sure. As a matter of fact I have an idea—”

  “Sure sure. I’ll get back to you, there’s plenty of time. The other is frankly a favor you could do me and also an old friend of yours.”

  “Sure. Who?”

  One arm falls. Bob Comeaux’s hand touches my shoulder. “Your old friend, Father Simon.”

  “Father Simon?”

  “Father Simon Smith.”

  “Oh. Rinaldo.”

  “Yes. Father Simon Rinaldo Smith.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Well, he’s not doing well.” He moves closer, hand still on my shoulder. “It’s a long story, but I was sure you’d be concerned. I’ll call you in a day or so. Will you talk to his assistant, Father Placide?”

  “Placide? Sure.” What is Comeaux up to with the clergy? Whatever it is, I sense only that he wants me to talk them into something or other, probably something to do with Rinaldo’s hospice, and I don’t particularly want to. Don’t want to talk to them, let alone talk them into something.

  “Okay, Doctors,” says Bob Comeaux, opening his arms again. “Meeting’s adjourned—unless you have a question. Dr. Gottlieb?”

  Max sighs and shakes his head.

  “Dr. More?”

  “Yes?” I can’t stop thinking about Donna and Mickey,

  “Any questions?” asks Bob Comeaux patiently.

  “Well, we’re here to review my present practice, aren’t we?”

  “Sure, fella, but we’re not worried about—”

  “As a matter of fact I’d like to discuss a couple of cases, one a patient of yours, Bob, Mickey LaFaye. There is something interesting—”

  “Very!” cries Bob Comeaux, looking at his watch. He claps his hands softly. “Why don’t we have lunch? I’ll give you a buzz. Any further questions? Max? Tom?”

  “Bob, where is Hammond?”

  “What?” says Bob quickly.

  “You mentioned Hammond, Louisiana. Where is it?”

  “Where is Hammond,” Bob repeats, looking at me. His eyes stray toward Max. “Okay, I give up. What’s the gag?”

  “Nothing. Forget it.”

  Now Max is doing the herding, smiling and herding me. He’s like a guest trying to get a drunk friend out the front door before he throws up on the rug.

  We’re both anxious to leave. But first I’d better fix things up with Bob Comeaux. He’s up to something, wants something, wants me to do something. What’s he cooking up with this business about my license and with his smooth invitation—threat?—to hire me on here at Fedville? I don’t know, but there is no need for me to look nuttier than I am.

  “Thanks, Bob, for everything,” I say warmly, shaking hands, matching his handshake for strength, his keen gray-eyed expression for its easy comradeliness—two proper Louisiana gents we are. “I’ll let you in on a little secret.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I just used you as a control.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Yeah. I’ve had a couple of patients who may show an interesting cortical deficit at Brodmann 39 and 40, you know, the Wernicke speech area. They answer questions out of context—and I’m thinking of using it as an informal clinical test. I needed a couple of normal controls. You wouldn’t answer the Hammond question out of context. You’re a control. Max is next.”

  “Gee thanks.” But Bob Comeaux cocks a shrewd eye at me. “But who—Never mind.”

  “Max,” I say, “where is Hammond?”

  “I can’t say I care,” says Max. Max looks relieved.

  “You guys get out of here,” says Bob Comeaux. “Jesus, shrinks.”

  We’re in the hall. Max is padding along faster than usual, but in his usual odd, duck-footed walk. Max waits until we hear Bob Comeaux’s door close behind us. He moves nearer and speaks softly.

  “You okay, Tom?”

  “Sure.”

  “What was that stuff about Hammond?”

  “I wasn’t kidding. I really have picked up a couple of odd things lately, Max. And I wanted to check Comeaux out. Have you noticed anything unusual in your practice lately?” “Unusual?” Max is attentive but still guarded. “Such as?”

  “Oh, changes in sexual behavior in women patients—”

  “Such as?”

  “Oh, loss of inhibition and affect. Downright absence of superego. Loss of anxiety—”

  Max laughs. “Well, don’t forget my practice is not here but in New Orleans, the city that care forgot. It has never been noted for either its anxiety or its sexual inhibitions.” Max is eyeing me. It is not his or my patients he’s thinking about. “Tell me something, Tom.”

  “What?”

  “What is Comeaux up to?”

  “You noticed. I thought you might tell me.”

  “That business about your license was uncalled for. This so-called probation is pro forma, purely routine and up to us. There is no reason to have any trouble.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “Dr. Comeaux wants something,” says Max thoughtfully.

  “I know. Do you know what it is?”

  “No, but it was interesting that Mrs. LaFaye, your wealthy patient, was mentioned.”

  “Why is that interesting?”

  “The word is, he’s got something going with her.”

  “Such as?”

  “My wife, who knows everything around here because she is a realtor like your wife, says he has been very helpful to Mrs. LaFaye, his neighbor and fellow horseperson, rancher, whatever, and that he or Mrs. LaFaye or both are trying to buy up the adjoining land.”

  “That’s the hospice he was talking about.”

  “Oh, you mean out at—”

  “Yes.”

  We’re standing at the elevators. I notice that Max is still preoccupied.

  “Max, I’d like to talk to you about a couple of cases.”

  “Sure. Come on over to my place now. Sophie would be delighted to see you—and Ellen.”

  Max is always embarrassed to mention Ellen. Why? Because my first wife ran off with a fruity Englishman. No, two fruity Englishmen.

  “I can’t. I have to get home.”

  “I understand. How’s Ellen and the kids?” he asks too casually. We’re standing side by side gazing at the bronze elevator doors.

  “They’re fine.”

  “Is Ellen home?”

  “Well, you know she went back to Georgia to stay with her mother when I was convicted and sent to—”

  “I know, I know. But she’s back now.”

&nb
sp; “Yes—though I haven’t seen much of her. She just got back from a bridge tournament.”

  “Yes. I heard from—I heard she was some sort of prodigy at it.”

  “She just got back from Trinidad. The big annual Caribbean tournament. She and her partner, Dr. Van Dorn, won it.”

  “I see. Well, I know she’s way out of our class, that is, mine and Sophie’s. But do you think the two of you might come over one evening—”

  “Sure. I’ll ask her.” We gaze at the bronze door one foot from our noses.

  “How about next week?”

  “She won’t be in town.”

  “No?”

  “No. She’s been invited to the North American championships.”

  “I see. How long does it last?”

  “I think about a week. It is being held at the Ramada Inn West in Fresno, California.”

  “I see.”

  The elevator doors open.

  “John Van Dorn thinks she can compile a sufficient number of red points to become a master, I think they call it, in less than two years’ time, starting from scratch, something of a record.”

  “Remarkable,” says Max, concentrating on the arrow. Something—Ellen?—is making him uneasy again. He wants to get out of the elevator and go about his business. But then his worrying gets the better of him. “Look. Who’s been watching Tommy and—ah—”

  “Margaret. Well, we still have old Hudeen, you will remember—”

  “Oh yes. Hudeen. Fine old woman.”

  “Yes. And a live-in person, Hudeen’s granddaughter, who stays with the kids at night.”

  “Good. Very good. Very good,” says Max absently. Max is torn, I notice, torn between his desire to welcome me back and his Jewish-mother disapproval. He worries about me. But as soon as we’re out of the Fedville high-rise and into the parking lot, Max seems to recover his old briskness. He eyes my Caprice with mild interest, takes hold of my arm. “Now, Tom—”

  “Yes?”

  “I am concerned about—concerned that you get going again with your practice and back with your—ah—family.”

  “I know you are, Max.”

  “I think we can straighten out this license business. I’ll take care of Comeaux.”

  “Good.”

  Max is examining his car keys intently. “You don’t seem much interested.”

  “I’m interested.”

  “You’re not depressed, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I do wish you would check in with me. You were, after all, my patient once, and I need all the patients I can get, ha.” This is as close as Max ever comes to making a joke. “Just a little checkup.”

  “Sure. And I do want to discuss a couple of bizarre cases with you. I wasn’t kidding about some sort of cortical deficit. But it’s more radical than that.”

  “More radical?”

  “There’s not only a loss of cortical inhibitions, superego, anxiety which was once present. There’s something else, a loss of—self—”

  “Of self,” Max repeats solemnly, concentrating on his ignition key. He looks worried again. He’s thinking. There are worse things than depression, for example, paranoia, imagining a conspiracy, a stealing of people’s selves, an invasion of body- snatchers.

  “So you give me a call,” says Max, frowning, eyes casting into the future.

  “Right, Max.”

  “You need more cases, Tom,” he says carefully.

  “I know, Max.”

  “Two cases are not exactly a series.”

  “I know, Max.”

  He doesn’t look up from his car keys. “What’s this business about Father Smith?”

  “Have you seen him since you got back?”

  “Father Smith? No. Only a phone call.”

  “What did he want?” Max asks quickly.

  I look at him. This quick, direct question is not like him.

  “I’m not sure what he wanted. As a matter of fact, it was a very odd conversation.”

  What was odd was that Father Smith sounded as if he was calling from an outside phone, perhaps a booth in a windy place. I remember thinking at the time that he reminded me of those fellows who listen to radio talk shows in a car, decide to call in a nutty idea, stop at the first booth. The priest said he wanted to welcome me home. Thanks, Father. He also wanted to discuss something with me. Okay, Father. Did I know he had been to Germany? No, I didn’t. Recently? No, when I was a boy. I see, Father. So he gets going on the Germans for a good half hour, in a rapid, distant voice blowing in the wind.

  “What did he talk about?” asks Max, eyeing me curiously.

  “The Germans.”

  “The Germans?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see. By the way, Tom. Don’t argue with Comeaux. It’s a waste of time. And stop worrying about this. It’s going to work out.”

  “I’m not worried.” I’m not. Max is worried.

  6. BOB COMEAUX LIKES to argue. I don’t much.

  For two years I was caught between passionate liberals and conservatives among my fellow inmates at Fort Pelham. Most prisoners are ideologues. There is nothing else to do. Both sides had compelling arguments. Each could argue plausibly for and against religion, God, Israel, blacks, affirmative action, Nicaragua.

  It was more natural for me, less boring, to listen than to argue. I was more interested in the rage than the arguments. After two years no one had convinced anyone else. Each side made the same points, the same rebuttals. Neither party listened to the other. They would come close as lovers, eyes glistening, shake fingers at each other, actually take hold of the other’s clothes. There were even fistfights.

  It crossed my mind that people at war have the same need of each other. What would a passionate liberal or conservative do without the other?

  Bob Comeaux reminds me of them. He comes just as close when he argues, much closer than he would in ordinary conversation, his face, say, a foot from mine. He wants to argue about “pedeuthanasia” and the Supreme Court decision which permits the “termination by pedeuthanasia” of unwanted or afflicted infants, infants facing a life without quality.

  I can tell he has hit on what he considers an unanswerable argument and can no more resist trying it out on me than a lover can resist giving his beloved a splendid gift.

  “Can you honestly tell me,” he says, coming even closer, “that you would condemn a child to a life of rejection, suffering, poverty, and pain?”

  “No.”

  “As you of all people know, as you in fact have written articles about”—he says triumphantly, and I can tell he has rehearsed these two clauses—“the human infant does not achieve personhood until some time in the second year for the simple reason, as you yourself have shown, that it is only with the acquisition of language and the activation of the language center of the brain that the child becomes conscious as a self, a person. Right?”

  He waits expectantly, lips parted, ready, corners moist. His eyes search out mine, first one, then the other. “Do you see what I mean?” he asks. “I see what you mean,” I answer.

  He waits for the counter-arguments, which he already knows and is prepared to rebut.

  He is disappointed when I don’t argue.

  Instead, I find myself wondering, just as I wondered at Fort Pelham, what it is the passionate arguer is afraid of. Is he afraid that he might be wrong? that he might be right? Is he afraid that if one does not argue there is nothing left? An abyss opens. Is it not the case that something is better than nothing, arguing, violent disagreement, even war?

  More than once at Fort Pelham I noticed that passionate liberals, passionate on the race question, had no use for individual blacks, and that passionate conservatives could not stand one another. Can you imagine Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson spending a friendly evening alone together?

  One of life’s little mysteries: an old-style Southern white and an old-style Southern black are more at ease talking to each other, even though one may be unjus
t to the other, than Ted Kennedy talking to Jesse Jackson—who are overly cordial, nervous as cats in their cordiality, and glad to be rid of each other.

  In the first case—the old-style white and the old-style black—each knows exactly where he stands with the other. Each can handle the other, the first because he is in control, the second because he uses his wits. They both know this and can even enjoy each other.

  In the second case—Ted Kennedy and Jesse Jackson—each is walking on eggshells. What to say next in this rarified atmosphere of perfect liberal agreement? What if one should violate the fragile liberal canon, let drop a racist remark, an anti-Irish Catholic slur? What if Jesse Jackson should mention Hymie? The world might end. They are glad to get it over with. What a relief! Whew!

  Frowning and falling back, Bob Comeaux even gives possible arguments I might have used so that he can refute them.

  “In using the word infanticide, you see, you are dealing not with the issue but in semantics, a loaded semantics at that.”

  “I didn’t use the word.”

  Bob shrugs and turns away, his eyes suddenly distant and preoccupied, like an unsuccessful suitor.

  7. HOME TO THE QUARTERS. We’ve lived there for years. Sure enough slave quarters they were, from an old indigo plantation, twenty or so sturdy brick boxes with stoops and kitchen gardens, attached like row houses with chimneys in common, lined up under the cliff and along the bayou like old Natchez-under-the-hill, repossessed by vines and possums—where no white folks had dreamed of living for a hundred years.

  Even when we were poor, Ellen fixed ours up with authentic iron hooks and pots for the fireplace. Then Ellen and my realtor mother, Marva, teamed up and between them became a realestate genius, my mother being naturally acquisitive, thinking money, Ellen having natural good taste. They bought the whole row for a song and during the time I was away borrowed money, added two stories painted in different pastels like the villas of Portofino, stuck on New Orleans balconies, put a tiny dock in front of each and a Jacuzzi behind, calculating the place would be as prized now as it was misprized then, for being too small, too close together, too near the water—and named it The Quarters. All this during the two years I was detained by the feds at the minimal security facility at Fort Pelham, Alabama. They, Ellen and my mother, were like those fragile Southern ladies who, when their men, brave and somewhat addled, went off to that war, suddenly turned into straw bosses, hucksters, fishwives, tallywomen, slickers.