The Thanatos Syndrome

by Walker Percy

  I look. There is nothing but the shaggy sea of bluish pines. My nose has started running. The air is yellow with pollen.

  “Right there.” He nods, hands still in pockets.

  I look again. There is a straight wisp of smoke in the middle distance, as insignificant-looking as a pile of leaves burning in a gutter.

  “Yes.”

  “As a matter of fact, would you help me report it? My hands are a bit unsteady.”

  Perhaps that is why he keeps his hands in his pockets, to hide a tremor.

  “Sure. What do I do?”

  “Line up the sights on the smoke.”

  I rotate the azimuth and sight along the upright posts to the wisp of smoke. “I make it eighty-two degrees.”

  “Very good. Wouldn’t you agree that there is no question , about what the smoke is a sign of?”

  “Yes, I would.”

  “What is it a sign of?”

  “Fire.”

  “Right!”—triumphantly. “Now would you hang up the reading?”

  I turn to the wall map, which is encircled by pins like the Wheel of Fortune. I pick up a weighted string and hang it over pin number 82.

  “Very good!” says the priest. He’s looking over my shoulder. “Now what do we have here?”

  “We have the direction of—”

  “Right! We have one coordinate, don’t we?”

  “Yes.”

  “But that’s not enough to locate the fire, is it?”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “What else do we need?”

  “We need another coordinate.”

  “All right! And how do you suppose we get it?”

  All at once I know what he reminds me of. He’s the patient priest-teacher teaching the dumb section at Holy Cross Prep.

  I am willing to play dumb. “I don’t know. I don’t see how we can get a triangulation fix from here.”

  “And you’re right! So we need a little help, don’t we? So—” He picks up the wall phone and dials a number. “Emmy,” he says in a different voice, “give me a reading on that brush job in 5-9. Okay, Blondie, I read. How goes it in Waldheim? All right. That’s a fiver-niner. You call it in. Over.”

  He speaks easily, good-humoredly. No, he’s not a priest-teacher. He’s a ham operator, one of those fellows who are shy up close but chummy-technical with a stranger in Bangkok.

  He turns to me. “Her reading is 2-9-2. She’s in the Waldheim tower.” He shows me a pin. “Here. Now, what are you going to do about it?”

  I pick up the string and the Waldheim sinker and hang it over pin 292. The weighted strings intersect at a crossroad on the map. The priest, I can see, is pleased by the elegance of the tight intersected strings. So am I.

  The priest is pushing one fist into the other hand, hard, taking turns. I realize he is doing isometric exercises. Now he is pulling against interlocked fingers.

  “We know what the smoke is a sign of. We have located the sign,” he says between pushes and pulls. “Now we are going to act accordingly. That’s a sign for you. Unlike word signs.”

  “Right.” I look at my watch. I’m afraid he’s going to get going on the Germans. “It’s good to see you, Father, but I have an appointment. Do you wish me to tell Father Placide or Dr. Comeaux anything?”

  “Sure,” says the priest, who is back in his place across the azimuth. “Now here is the question.” There’s a lively light in his eye. He’s out to catch me again. He has the super-sane chipperness of the true nut.

  “Can you name one word sign which has not been evacuated of meaning, that is, deprived?”

  “I don’t think I can. As a matter of fact, I’m afraid that—” Again I look at my watch.

  Two things have become clear to me in the last few seconds.

  One thing is that Father Smith has gone batty, but batty in a way I recognize. He belongs to that category of nut who can do his job competently enough, quite well in fact, but given one minute of free time latches on to an obsession like a tongue seeking a sore tooth. He called in the forest fire like a pro, but now he’s back at me with a mad chipper light in his eye.

  The second thing is that I promised Father Placide to make an “evaluation” of Father Smith’s mental condition. Can he do priestly work?

  No, three things.

  The third thing is that all at once I want badly to get out of here and see Lucy Lipscomb.

  “Can you name the one word sign,” Father Smith asks me, leaning close over the azimuth, “that has not been evacuated of meaning, that is, deprived by a depriver?”

  “I’m not sure what the question means. Later perhaps—”

  “Will you allow me to demonstrate,” says the priest triumphantly, as if he had already demonstrated.

  “Of course,” I say with fake psychiatric cordiality.

  “The signs out there”—he nods to the shaggy forest—“refer to something, don’t they?”

  “Right.”

  “The smoke was a sign of fire.”

  “That is correct.”

  “There is no doubt about the existence of the fire.”

  “True.”

  “Words are signs, aren’t they?”

  “You could say so.”

  “But unlike the signs out there, words have been evacuated, haven’t they?”

  “Evacuated?”

  “They don’t signify anymore.”

  “How do you mean?” From long practice I can keep my voice attentive without paying close attention. I wonder if Lucy—

  “What if I were to turn the tables on you, ha ha, and play the psychoanalyst?”

  “Very good,” I say gloomily.

  “You psychoanalysts encourage your patients to practice free association with words, true?”

  “Yes.” Actually it’s not true.

  “Let me turn the tables on you and give you a couple of word signs and you give me your free associations.”

  “Fine.”

  “Clouds.”

  “Sky, fleecy, puffy, floating, white—”

  “Okay. Irish.”

  “Bogs, Notre Dame, Pat O’Brien, begorra—”

  “Okay. Blacks.”

  “Blacks?”

  “Negroes.”

  “Blacks, Africa, niggers, minority, civil rights—”

  “Okay. Jew.”

  “Israel, Bible, Max, Sam, Julius, Hebrew, Hebe, Ben—”

  “Right! You see!” He is smiling and nodding and making fists in his pockets. I realize that he is doing isometrics in his pockets.

  “See what?”

  “Jews!”

  “What about Jews?” I say after a moment.

  “Precisely!”

  “Precisely what?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What about Jews?”

  “What do you think about Jews?” he asks, cocking an eye.

  “Nothing much one way or the other.”

  “May I continue my demonstration, Doctor?”

  “For one minute.” I look at my watch, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

  “May I ask who Max, Sam, Julius, and Ben are?”

  “Max Gottlieb is my closest friend and personal physician. Sam Aaronson was my roommate in medical school. Julius Freund was my training analyst at Hopkins. Ben Solomon was my fellow detainee and cellmate at Fort Pelham, Alabama.”

  “Very interesting.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Don’t you see?”

  “No.”

  “Unlike the other test words, what you associated with the word Jew was Jews, Jews you have known. Isn’t that interesting?”

  “Yes,” I say, pursing my mouth in a show of interest.

  “What you associated with the word sign Irish were certain connotations, stereotypical Irish stuff in your head. Same for Negro. If I had said Spanish, you’d have said something like guitar, castanets, bullfights, and such. I have done the test on dozens. Thus, these word signs have been evacuated, deprived of meaning somethi
ng real. Real persons. Not so with Jews.”

  “So?”

  He’s feeling so much better that he’s doing foot exercises, balancing on the ball of one foot, then the other. Now, to my astonishment, he is doing a bit of shadowboxing, weaving and throwing a few punches.

  “That’s the only sign of God which has not been evacuated by an evacuator,” he says, moving his shoulders. “What sign is that?”

  “Jews.”

  “Jews?”

  “You got it, Doc.” He sits, gives the azimuth a spin like a croupier who has raked in all the chips.

  “Got what?”

  “You see the point.”

  “What’s the point?”

  He leans close, eyes alight, “The Jews—cannot—be—subsumed.”

  “Can’t be what?”

  “Subsumed.”

  “I see.”

  “Since the Jews were the original chosen people of God, a tribe of people who are still here, they are a sign of God’s presence which cannot be evacuated. Try to find a hole in that proof!”

  I try—that is, I act as if I am trying.

  “You can’t find a hole, can you?” he says triumphantly.

  “But, Father, the Jews I know are not religious. They either do not believe in God or, like me, they don’t attach any significance beyond—”

  “Precisely!”

  “Precisely?”

  “Precisely. Probatur conclusion as St. Thomas would say.” He seems to have finished.

  “Right,” I say, reaching for the rung of the trapdoor. I think I know what to tell Father Placide.

  “Hold it!” He waves an arm out to the wide world. “Name one other thing out there which cannot be subsumed.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Pine tree?”

  “How do you mean, pine tree?”

  “That pine tree can be subsumed under the classes of trees called conifers, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Try to subsume Jews under the classes of mankind, Caucasians, Semites, whatever. Go ahead, try it.”

  “Excuse me, Father, but I really—”

  “Do your friends still consider themselves Jews?”

  “Yes.”

  “You see. It does not matter whether they believe. Believe or not, they are still Jews. And what are Jews if not the actual people originally chosen by God?”

  “Excuse me, Father, but is it not also part of Christian belief that the Jews did not accept Jesus as the Messiah and that therefore—”

  “Makes no difference!” exclaims the priest, throwing a punch as if this were the very objection he had been waiting for.

  “It doesn’t?”

  “Read St. Paul! It is clear that their inability to accept Jesus was not only foreordained but altogether reasonable and is not to be held against them. Salvation comes from the Jews, as holy scripture tells us. They remain the beloved, originally chosen people of God.”

  “Right. Now I—”

  “It is also psychologically provable.”

  “It is?”

  “Jews are naturally skeptical, hardheaded, and, after all, what Jesus was proposing to them was a tall order.”

  “Yes. Well—” He’s standing on the trapdoor and I can’t lift it until he gets off.

  “What do you think Peres would say if Begin claimed to be the Messiah?”

  I have to laugh.

  “No no.” The priest hunches forward, almost clearing the trapdoor. “You’re missing the point.”

  “I am?”

  “How many times in your work have you encountered someone who claims to be Napoleon, the Messiah, Hitler, the Devil?”

  “Often.”

  “How often have you encountered a Jewish patient who claimed to be the Messiah or Napoleon?”

  “Not often.”

  “You see?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “I don’t?”

  “You still don’t see the bottom line psychologically speaking?” My nose has started running seriously. He is standing on the trapdoor and my nose is dripping.

  “One, a Jew will not believe another Jew making such a preposterous claim, right? But—But—!” Now he has come to the bottom line sure enough. For he has stopped doing isometrics and throwing punches and has instead placed both hands on the azimuth and lined me up in the sights. He speaks in a low intense voice, pausing between each word. “Is it not the case, Doctor, that if a Jew speaks to a Gentile, speaks with authority, with sobriety, as a friend—the Gentile—will—believe—him! Think about it!” He has leaned over so close I can see the white fiber, the arcus senilis, around his pupil.

  I give every appearance of thinking about it.

  “Even an anti-Semite! Did you ever notice that an anti-Semite who despises Jews actually believes them deep down—that’s why he hates them!—and isn’t that the reason he despises them?”

  I eye him curiously. “May I ask you something, Father?”

  “Fire away.”

  “Do you still regard yourself as a Catholic priest?”

  For the first time he seems surprised. He stops his isometrics, cocks his head. “How do you mean, Tom?”

  “Why are you?”

  “Why am I what? Oh. You mean why am I a Catholic—Tom, may I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you remember what a sacrament is?”

  I smile. “A sensible sign instituted by Christ to produce grace. I can still rattle it off.”

  The priest laughs. “Those sisters did a job on us, didn’t they?”

  “Yes. Maybe too good.”

  “What? Oh. Yes, yes. Do you remember the scriptural example they always gave?”

  “Sure. Unless you eat my body and drink my blood, you will not have life in you.”

  “Same one!” says the priest, again laughing, then falls to musing. “Life,” he murmurs absently and under his breath. “Life. But that’s the trouble, the words—”

  “What’s that?” I ask the priest, wondering if he’s still talking to me.

  “Oh,” he says, giving a start. “I’m sorry. To answer your question—” He frowns mightily.

  What question?

  “Are you forgetting about the ancient Romans?”

  The ancient Romans. My nose is running badly. I have to go.

  “Aren’t you forgetting that the ancient Romans, who were, after all, not stupid people and were right about most things though not very creative, were also right about us.”

  “I suppose I had forgotten.”

  “The historians say they mistook us for a Jewish sect, didn’t they?”

  “Sure.”

  “Was it a mistake?”

  Now he’s clear of the trapdoor. I give the rung a yank.

  “The Jews as a word sign cannot be assimilated under a class, category, or theory. No subsuming Jews! Not even by the Romans.”

  “Right.” I yank again. What’s wrong with this damn thing?

  “No subsuming Jews, Tom!”

  “Okay, I won’t.”

  “This offends people, even the most talented people, people of the loftiest sentiments, the highest scientific achievements, and the purest humanitarian ideals.”

  “Right.”

  “You have to turn it,” he says, noticing my efforts to open the trapdoor.

  “Thank you.” No, that doesn’t work either.

  “The Holocaust was a consequence of the sign which could not be evacuated.”

  “Right.”

  “Who remembers the Ukrainians?”

  “True.”

  “Let me tell you something, Tom. People have the wrong idea about the Holocaust. The Holocaust, as people see it, is a myth.”

  Oh my. My heart sinks. On top of everything else, is he one of those? I try harder to open the damn door.

  While he is talking, he has taken hold of my arm.

  I remove his hand. “Goodbye, Father.”

  “What’s the matte
r, Tom?”

  “Are you telling me that the Nazis did not kill six million Jews?”

  “No.”

  “They did kill six million Jews.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “What I’m trying to tell you is that the origins of the Holocaust are a myth—”

  “Never mind. I’m leaving.”

  “Very well. What are you going to tell Father Placide and Dr. Comeaux?”

  “I am going to tell Father Placide that you are too disturbed to be of any use to him at St. Michael’s. I am going to tell Dr. Comeaux that you are also too disturbed to operate the hospice and that I hope you will sell it to him. Now will you let me out of here?”

  “I appreciate your frankness,” says the priest, nodding vigorously, hands making and unmaking fists in his pockets. “Shall I be frank with you?”

  “Sure, if you’ll open this damn door.”

  “I will. But please allow me to tell you something about yourself for your own good.”

  “Please do.”

  “You are an able psychiatrist, on the whole a decent, generous, humanitarian person in the abstract sense of the word. You know what is going to happen to you?”

  “What?”

  “You are a member of the first generation of doctors in the history of medicine to turn their backs on the oath of Hippocrates and kill millions of old useless people, unborn children, born malformed children, for the good of mankind—and to do so without a single murmur from one of you. Not a single letter of protest in the august New England Journal of Medicine. And do you know what you’re going to end up doing? You a graduate of Harvard and a reader of The New York Times and a member of the Ford Foundation’s Program for the Third World? Do you know what is going to happen to you?”

  “No,” I say, relieved to be on a footing of simple hostility, “—even though I did not graduate from Harvard, do not read The New York Times, and do not belong to the Ford Foundation.”

  The priest aims the azimuth at me, but then appears to lose his train of thought. Again his preoccupied frown comes back.

  “What is going to happen to me, Father?” I ask before he gets away altogether.

  “Oh,” he says absently, appearing to be thinking of something else, “you’re going to end up killing Jews.”

  “Okay,” I say. Somehow I knew he was going to say this.