The Thanatos Syndrome

by Walker Percy

  “Tom?”

  “Yes?”

  “I really think you ought to do something about this.”

  “I will, Van. I will.”

  Azazel is, according to Hebrew and Canaanite belief, a demon who lived in the Syrian desert, a particularly barren region where even God’s life-giving force was in short supply. God told Moses to tell Aaron to obtain two goats for a sacrifice, draw lots, and allot one goat to Yahweh as a sacrifice for sin, the other goat to be marked for Azazel and sent out into the desert, a place of wantonness and freedom from God’s commandments, as a gift for Azazel.

  Mohammedans believe that Azazel is a jinn of the desert, formerly an angel. When God commanded the angels to worship Adam, Azazel replied, “Why should a son of fire fall down before a son of clay?” Whereupon God threw him out of heaven and down into the Syrian desert, a hell on earth. At that very moment his name was changed from Azazel to Eblis, which means despair.

  Milton made Azazel the standard-bearer of all the rebel angels.

  II

  1. MONDAY MORNING. Sitting on the front porch of my office waiting for a patient, sailingpaper P-51s, and watching the sparrows flock around the martin hotel.

  I am not paranoid by nature, but I think someone is following me. Several times this week I’ve seen a Cox Cable van, sometimes following, sometimes ahead of me, sometimes parked and fixing a cable.

  Ellen’s gone to Fresno alone. She seemed sober this morning, unhungover, cheerful, and in her right mind, full of practical plans. Van Dorn, she said, may join her later. How could he not? They have never lost a tournament. If not, at least he had promised to save her from the humiliating ordeal of the partnership desk, would fix her up with a worthy partner in the Mixed Pairs competition.

  Worried about Ellen. Call home to try to reach Chandra.

  Chandra answers, offhandedly, “Yeah?”

  “Chandra, I want you to do me a favor. Would you?”

  Chandra, alerted, voice suddenly serious: “I will.”

  “Chandra, I am counting on you to help me with the kids while my wife is gone. Can I depend on you to be there after three when the kids get home from school?”

  “You certainly can,” says Chandra in her new Indiana voice but not sounding put-on.

  “Thank you.” I can count on her.

  “But—”

  “Yes?”

  “Mrs. More said she made other arrangements.”

  “What other arrangements?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Other arrangements. “Chandra, don’t worry about the other arrangements. I need you there when the children get home.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  A note in the mail and a recorded message on the machine, both from my cousin Lucy, Dr. Lucy Lipscomb.

  The note, dashed off on a prescription pad: “Tom” (not Dear Cousin Tom, though we are cousins, certainly not cud’n): “I need to see you. Important. Bob C. and Van Dorn are up to something. It concerns you, dope. Call me. L.”

  That’s her laconic style all right, maybe slightly overdone, what with her new doctoring manner. She’s completed her residency at Tulane and is back here as house physician at the local hospital.

  I call. Can’t reach her at Pantherburn, where she lives, or at the hospital, but leave message: I’ll be at the hospital later to see Mickey LaFaye.

  The sweet-gum leaves are speckled with fall but the morning sun is already hot. Sparrows flock. The martins are long gone for the Amazon. My nose has stopped running.

  Taking stock.

  Time was when the patients I saw suffered mainly from depression and anxiety: prosperous, attractive housewives terrified for no apparent reason; rich oilmen in a funk after striking it rich; in a funk after going broke; students, the best and the brightest, attempting suicide for reasons unknown to themselves; live-in couples turning on each other with termagant hatred.

  I had some success with them. Though I admired and respected Dr. Freud more than Dr. Jung, I thought Dr. Jung was right in encouraging his patients to believe that their anxiety and depression might be trying to tell them something of value. They are not just symptoms. It helps enormously when a patient can make friends with her terror, plumb the depths of her depression. “There’s gold down there in the darkness,” said Dr. Jung. True, in the end Dr. Jung turned out to be something of a nut, the source of all manner of occult nonsense. Dr. Freud was not. He was a scientist, wrong at times, but a scientist nonetheless.

  Two years in the clink have taught me a thing or two.

  I don’t have to be in a demonic hurry as I used to be.

  I don’t have to plumb the depths of “modern man” as I used to think I had to. Nor worry about “the human condition” and suchlike. My scale is smaller.

  In prison I learned a certain detachment and cultivated a mild, low-grade curiosity. At one time I thought the world was going mad and that it was up to me to diagnose the madness and treat it. I became grandiose, even Faustian.

  Prison does wonders for megalomania. Instead of striking pacts with the Devil to save the world—yes, I was nuts—I spent two years driving a tractor pulling a gang mower over sunny fairways and at night chatting with my fellow con men and watching reruns of Barnaby Jones.

  Living a small life gave me leave to notice small things—like certain off-color spots in the St. Augustine grass which I correctly diagnosed as an early sign of chinch-bug infestation. Instead of saving the world, I saved the eighteen holes at Fort Pelham and felt surprisingly good about it.

  Small disconnected facts, if you take note of them, have a way of becoming connected.

  The great American philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce, said that the most amazing thing about the universe is that apparently disconnected events are in fact not, that one can connect them. Amazing!

  Here are a few disconnected facts, as untidy as these pesky English sparrows buzzing around the martin house.

  Ellen.

  Is she sick?

  There is this:

  Change in personality: from a thrifty albeit lusty, abstemious albeit merry, Presbyterian girl to a hard-drinking, free-style duplicate-bridge fanatic.

  Her sexual behavior.

  Her gift for bridge: Van Dorn says that after three rounds of play she can calculate the probabilities of distribution of cards in individual hands as accurately as a computer.

  Her relationship with Van Dorn.

  The Azazel convention.

  Bob Comeaux and John Van Dorn. Lucy says they are “up to something.” The only evidence so far: Both are overly friendly toward me. Both want something. What? Bob wants me to work with him at Fedville. Why? Van Dorn wanted me to go to Fresno with Ellen. Why?

  Three new patients (short case histories follow) who couldn’t be more different, yet there is a certain eerie similarity, certain signs and symptoms in common, such as

  Change of personality. From the familiar anxieties, terrors, panics, phobias I used to treat to a curious flatness of tone. Their old symptoms are in a sense “cured,” but are they better? Worse?

  Change in sexuality: Sexual feelings more openly, yet more casually, expressed. Less monogamous? More promiscuous? Or simply more honest, part and parcel of the sexual revolution? Plus certain clues to changes in sexual behavior in women: less missionary positioning, front to front, and more front to rear, six to nine, Donna backing into me. Also a hint of estrus-like behavior in Mickey LaFaye, who speaks of her “times,” not meaning her menses. Check menses in future histories.

  Language behavior: Change from ordinary talk in more or less complete sentences—“I feel awful today,” “I am plain and simply terrified,” “The truth is, Doc, I can’t stand that woman”—to two-or three-word fragments—“Feel good,” “Come by me,” “Over here,” “Donna like Doc”—reminiscent of the early fragmentary telepathic sentences of a three-year-old, or perhaps the two-word chimp utterances described by primatologists—“Tickle Washoe,” “More bananas.”

&nbs
p; Context loss: They respond to any learned stimulus like any other creature but not like an encultured creature, that is, any human in any culture. Example: Ask them out of the blue, Where is Schenectady? and if they know, they’ll tell you—without asking you why you want to know.

  Idiot-savant response: They’re not idiots but they’re savants in the narrow sense of being able to recall any information they have ever received—unlike you and me, whose memory is subject to all manner of lapses, repressions, errors, but, rather, like a computer ordered to scan its memory banks. An ocular sign: eyes rolling up behind closed lids as if they were “seeing” a map when asked, Where is St. Louis?

  Is this a syndrome? If so, what is its etiology? Exogenous? Bacterial? Viral? Chemical?

  In a word, what’s going on here?

  Can’t say. My series of patients is far too short. Three patients. I need fifty. I need blood chemistry, seven different kinds of brain scans, especially CORTscans.

  Here comes a patient. Enrique Busch. I spy him a block away and hurry to get inside. Wouldn’t do for a shrink to be caught sitting on the porch zinging paper P-51s at a martin hotel. Ellen taught me that when she was my receptionist-nurse. Act like a respectable physician. Wish I had her back.

  Inside, just time enough to call Lucy Lipscomb. Nothing doing. I leave a message at the hospital that I’ll see her around noon after I see more patients.

  Here is Enrique.

  CASE HISTORY # 1

  Enrique Busch is an old, chronically enraged ex-Salvadoran. Although he was not a member of one of the fourteen families who owned that unfortunate little country, he married into one and had the good fortune to get out with most of his money and his family and remove to Feliciana, where he bought up thousands of acres of cutover pineland, which he converted to Kentucky bluegrass country with horse farms, handsome barns, hunter-jumper courses, and even a polo field.

  His presenting complaint two years ago: insomnia. His real complaint: rage. Every night he lay stiff with rage. He spent the day abusing people. I have never seen such an angry man. There is nothing like an angry Hispanic. It was killing him, this rage, with hypertension, sleeplessness, pills, and booze. He hated Communists, Salvadoran liberals, Salvadoran moderates, Salvadoran Indians, nuns, priests, fundamentalists, Cubans, Mexicans (!), blacks. He hated Americans, even though he had gone to Texas A&M, chosen this country, and done well here. Why did he hate the U.S.? Because we were suckers, weren’t tough enough, were appeasing Communists, and sooner or later would find ourselves face to face with Soviet troops across the Rio Grande. And so on.

  I couldn’t do much for him beyond helping him recognize his anger and to suggest less booze and barbiturates, and outlets for his energy less destructive than death squads. Take up a sport. Beat up something besides people. Beat up a golf ball. Shoot something besides people. He took my suggestion. The upshot: Too old for polo, he took up hunting and golf, joined the ROBs (Retired Old Bastards), a genial group of senior golfers at the country club. The golf, eighteen holes a day, tournaments at other clubs, helped. He competed ferociously and successfully, his blood pressure went down, he slept better, but in the end he blew it and either withdrew or got kicked out. Why? Because he never caught on to the trick of Louisiana civility, the knack of banter and horsing around, easing up, joshing and joking—in a word, the American social contract, in virtue of which ideology is mitigated by manners and humor if not friendship. He could not help himself. On the links he could hack up the fairway, hook and slice and curse with the best of them, but afterward in the clubhouse he could not suppress his Central American rage. One doesn’t do this. His fellow ROBs didn’t like Communists or liberals or blacks any more than he did. But one doesn’t launch tirades over bourbon in the locker room. One vents dislikes by jokes. But Enrique could never see the connection between anger and jokes (unlike Freud and the ROBs). He never caught on to the subtle but inviolable American freemasonry of civility. And so he got kicked out.

  So here he is two years later. And how is he? Why, he’s as easygoing and fun-loving as Lee Trevino. Not only is he back in the ROBs, he’s just won the Sunbelt Seniors at Point Clear. Blood pressure: 120/80.

  He even tells me a joke, not a very good joke. Here is the joke:

  There was this old Southern planter who had bad heart trouble. So his doctor tells him, Colonel, you got to have a heart transplant. He says, Okay, Doc, go right ahead. But what the planter doesn’t know is that the only heart the doctor can find is the heart of a young black who’s been killed in a razor fight. So when the old planter wakes up, the doctor comes in and tells him, Colonel, I got bad news and good news. The bad news is that I had to give you a nigger’s heart. Good God, says the old planter, that’s terrible; maybe you better tell me the good news. So the doctor says, the good news is your deek is ten centimeters long.

  “You get it, Doc?” says Enrique, laughing.

  “Yes, I get it, Enrique,” I say. “But it should be ten inches, I think, not ten centimeters.”

  “You right, Doc! Ten inches!” says Enrique, slapping his leg, laughing all the harder, not caring that he’s screwed up the joke.

  So what has happened to Enrique? I don’t know.

  Why is he here?

  He needs something. And in fact I can help him. It’s about his daughter Carmela, a nice girl, a thoroughly American, Southern U.S. girl. It seems she has enrolled at the University of Mississippi as a freshman. She loves it. Her heart is set on being pledged by the Gammas, a sorority. All her friends are Gammas. If she does not make Gamma, her life will be ruined. There would be little doubt she would make it, but it seems there is a little hitch, says Enrique, and it is because her complexion is quite brunette like mine, and you know how it is in Mississippi, even though she is pure Castilian-German. Now here it is, the end of rush week, and she has not been pledged.

  Enrique in fact looks like an Indian.

  “That’s too bad, Enrique,” I say, still wondering why he’s here.

  “Here’s the thing, Doc. I understand that the Gamma rush captain is a young kinswoman of yours, the granddaughter in fact of the distinguished lady from the Mississippi Delta who was the foundress of this very chapter of Gammas. Now here it is at the end of rush week—” He looks down at his diamond-studded Rolex watch as if minutes counted.

  I look at him in astonishment. How does he know such things? I had forgotten myself, if I ever knew, that Jo Ann had gone to Ole Miss, let alone that she was rush captain of Gamma.

  “Come inside, Enrique.” I remember all too well what it is to have an unhappy daughter.

  It takes ten minutes. I call Aunt Birdie in Vicksburg and Jo Ann at Oxford. Two or three words about Carmela being a darling girl, member of an ancient aristocratic Castilian and Prussian family, indeed one of the first fourteen families of El Salvador, a prime prospect whom they can’t afford to lose to the Chi O’s, and so on.

  I hang up. “She’ll get her invitation this afternoon,” I tell Enrique.

  “Oh, my dear friend! Jesus!” cries Enrique, leaping to his feet. There are actually tears in his eyes. I’m afraid he’s going to embrace me, so I shake hands quickly. He shakes with both of his. “You name it, Doctor! Anything!”

  “My pleasure, Enrique.” It is. Such matters can be serious. I can’t stand to see a child, any child who sets her heart on it, get blackballed by the sisters, who can in fact be as mean to one another as yard dogs.

  But my interest in Enrique lies elsewhere. It is the change in him. Imagine a Central American who’s lost interest in politics! Who knows all about Ole Miss sororities!

  On the way out I ask him casually where San Cristóbal is—San Cristóbal, the town in Chiapas, Mexico, where his family first settled. If I’d asked him two years ago, asked him anything about Mexico, he’d have got going on the Mexicans, whom he dislikes, but now he merely closes his eyes.

  “Oh, I’d say it’s about three hundred miles northwest of Santa Anna.” Santa Anna is the place where he
lived on his finca in El Salvador. He doesn’t even ask me why I wanted to know. He’ll tell me anything, give me anything.

  I ask him if he will come in next week for a couple of tests—I tell him I want to see if he’s as healthy as he looks. What I really want is a CORTscan.

  “My pleasure, Doc,” says Enrique, trying out his interlocking grip on an imaginary club, swinging as easily as Sam Snead.

  CASE HISTORY #2

  Here is Ella Murdoch Smith.

  Her problem used to be failure and fright. “I can’t cope,” she once told me quietly. “It’s too much. What happens when people can’t cope? Is there a place to go, some government program for people who just can’t cope any longer?” she asked ironically but seriously. I told her I didn’t know of any such program. “But this is ridiculous,” she said. “Have you ever heard of a card game where you’re dealt a hand, a losing hand, and you’re stuck with it, can’t turn it in, can’t fold and draw a new card, and you’re stuck with it the rest of your life?” I admitted I had never heard of such a game. “You’re right,” she said. “There is no such game. I want to fold this hand.” I took her threat of suicide, of folding her hand for good, seriously.

  Her husband had left her with two small children. She had to go to work. An educated woman, she had no particular skills and had a hard time holding down a job, taking care of the children, running the house. She became frightened.

  I looked at her. That was three years ago. What was remarkable about her was that here she was, a handsome, formidable woman with heavy breasts, youngish but with hair gone prematurely iron-gray and done up in two heavy braids—and shaking like a leaf. She had been frightened for months.

  Frightened of what? Failure? Not according to her. One might have thought she had enough ordinary troubles to frighten anybody. But she had her own theory. She read books on psychology. She misread Freud. Her theory was that she had a strong sexual drive, that it was not being satisfied, and that in consequence she became anxious. So anxious she couldn’t cope.

  As the older Freud would have told you, it’s not that simple.