Love in the Ruins

by Walker Percy

  “Of course. Will you come back?”

  Colley beats me to the door. “I’m off. Max. Tom. You know your job is still open?”

  “Thanks,” I say sourly.

  Colley gone, Max nods toward the lounge. “You look tired, Tom. Did you have a bad night?”

  “Yes.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine fine.”

  “No depression?”

  “Not much.”

  “No highs?”

  “They come together, sine-cosine.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Max, you read my paper and you’ve seen my lapsometer.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think they’re of value?”

  “Yes. I think you’ve hit on something extremely intriguing. You’ve got a gift for correlation, but there’s too much subjectivity here and your series is too short. You need to come back in the hospital and spend about a year at it.”

  “At what?” I ask him suspiciously.

  “At this.” He picks up my paper. “And at treatment.”

  “Whose treatment?”

  “Your treatment of other patients and our treatment of you.”

  “I know my mental health is bad, but there’s not much time.”

  “Let’s talk about this sense of impending disaster.”

  “Bullshit, Max. Are you going to help me with the Director or aren’t you?”

  “I am. And you take the job back.”

  “What job?”

  “Your same job. As a matter of fact, Kenneth Stryker over in Love just read your earlier paper and I told him something about this. He’s quite excited and thinks you can help him out over there.”

  “Max, I don’t seem to be getting across. You’re talking about doing business at the same stand here. I’m talking about a crash program involving N.I.M.H. and twenty-five million dollars.”

  “A crash program? You mean on a national scale? You think there is a national emergency?”

  “More even than that, Max! It’s not even the U.S.A., it’s the soul of Western man that is in the very act of flying apart HERE and NOW. Christ, Max, you read the paper. I can measure it, Max! Number one, I’ve got to get this thing mass-produced and in the hands of G.P.’s; number two, I’ve got to hit on a therapeutic equivalent of my diagnostic breakthrough. Don’t you agree?”

  “Well now. The soul of Western man, that’s a large order, Tom. Besides being rather uh metaphysical—”

  “Metaphysical is a word, Max. There is nothing metaphysical about the tenfold increase in atrocities in this area. There’s nothing metaphysical about the vines sprouting. There’s nothing metaphysical about the Bantu guerrillas and this country falling apart between the Knotheads and the Leftpapas. Did you know the President and Vice-President will both be in this area on the Fourth—”

  “What was that about the vines?” asks Max, cocking an ear.

  “Never mind,” I say, blushing. I shouldn’t have mentioned the vines.

  Max is shifting about in his chair.

  “I get uh uncomfortable when politics gets mixed with medicine, to say nothing of angels.”

  “Very well.”

  “Wait. What are your immediate plans?”

  “For today? I’m headed for my office in town, stopping off on the way at old Howard Johnson’s. I want to make sure it’s safe. Moira and I have a date there on the Fourth.”

  “Moira? Isn’t she the little popsy over in Love?”

  “Yes. She’s a secretary at the Love Clinic.”

  “Yes indeed. I saw her at the square dance with Buddy.”

  “Buddy?” I frown.

  “She’s a charmer.”

  Max calls all attractive women “popsies.” Though he is a neobehaviorist, he is old-fashioned, even courtly in sexual matters. Like Freud himself, he is both Victorian and anatomical, speaking one moment delicately of “paying court to the ladies” or “having an affair of the heart,” and the next of genitalia and ejaculations and such. Whenever he mentions women, I picture heavy black feather-boa’d dresses clothing naked bodies and secret parts.

  “Then will you come back, Tom?”

  “Come back?”

  “To the hospital. I’ll work like a dog with you.”

  “I know you will.”

  “We were just getting the cards on the table when you left.”

  “What cards?”

  “We found out what the hangup was and we were getting ready to condition you out of it.”

  “What hangup?”

  “Your guilt feelings.”

  “I never did see that.”

  “You did see that your depression and suicide attempt were related to sexual guilt?”

  “What sexual guilt?”

  “Didn’t you tell me that your depression followed une affaire of the heart with a popsy at the country club?”

  “Lola is no popsy. She’s a concert cellist.”

  “Oh.” Max has a great respect for stringed instruments. “Nevertheless your guilt did follow une affaire of the heart.”

  “Are you speaking of my fornication with Lola in number 18 bunker?”

  “Fornication,” repeats Max, nodding. “You see?”

  “See what?”

  “That you are saying that lovemaking is not a natural activity, like eating and drinking.”

  “No, I didn’t say it wasn’t natural.”

  “But sinful and guilt-laden.”

  “Not guilt-laden.”

  “Then sinful?”

  “Only between persons not married to each other.”

  “I am trying to see it as you see it.”

  “I know you are.”

  “If it is sinful, why do you do it?”

  “It is a great pleasure.”

  “I understand. Then, since it is ‘sinful,’ guilt feelings follow, even though it is a pleasure.”

  “No, they don’t follow.”

  “Then what worries you, if you don’t feel guilty?”

  “That’s what worries me: not feeling guilty.”

  “Why does that worry you?”

  “Because if I felt guilty, I could get rid of it.”

  “How?”

  “By the sacrament of penance.”

  “I’m trying to see it as you see it.”

  “I know you are.”

  “What I don’t see is that if there is no guilt after une affaire, what is the problem?”

  “The problem is that if there is no guilt contrition, and a purpose of amendment the sin cannot be forgiven.”

  “What does that mean, operationally speaking?”

  “It means that you don’t have life in you.”

  “Lifer?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you didn’t seem much interested in life that night On the contrary.”

  “I know.”

  “In any case, your depression and suicide attempt did follow your uh ‘sin.’”

  “That wasn’t why I was depressed.”

  “Why were you depressed?”

  “It was Christmas Eve and there I was watching Perry Como.”

  “You’re blocking me.”

  “Yes.”

  “What does ‘purpose of amendment’ mean?”

  “Promising to try not to do it again and meaning it.”

  “And you don’t intend to do that?”

  “No.”

  “Why not, if you believe it is sinful?”

  “Because it is a great pleasure.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “I know.”

  “At least, in the matter of belief and action, you are half right.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But there remains the tug of war between the two.”

  “There does.”

  “If you would come back and get in the Skinner box, we could straighten it out.”

  “The Skinner Box wouldn’t help.”

  “We could condition away the contradiction. Yo
u’d never feel guilt.”

  “Then I’d really be up the creek.”

  “I’m trying to see it.”

  “I know you are.”

  “I notice that in speaking of your date with the little popsy from Love, you choose a setting that emphasizes the anonymous, transient, and sordid character of the relationship as you see it.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Not merely a motel, but an abandoned motel, a ruin, a secret hole-in-the-corner place, an assignation.”

  “Yes, that the beauty of it, isn’t it?” I say, cheering up.

  “No. No no. You misunderstand me. It’s a question of maturity—”

  “You’re right, Max,” I say, wringing his hand affectionately and rushing off. “You’re a good friend!” I call back from the hall.

  Poor Max did his best for me. Once he devised a psychological test, tailored to my peculiar complaint.

  “You see those two doors,” he said to me one day, sitting behind the same desk.

  “Yes.” I could tell from the sparkle in his eye and from the way light glanced interestingly from his forehead that he had cooked up something for me.

  “Behind those two doors are not the lady and the tiger but two ladies.”

  “O.K.,” I say, perking up. Max, I saw, had gone to some trouble devising a test that would reveal to me the nature of my problem.

  “Behind that door,” said Max, wheeling in his chair, “is a lovely person, a mature, well-educated person who is quite fond of you.”

  “Yes?”

  “You have much in common. She can converse on a variety of topics, is psychiatrically-oriented, empathetic toward you, and is quite creative in the arts. She is equally at home discussing the World Bank or a novel by Mazo de la Roche.”

  “Mazo de la Roche? Jesus, Max. Look, do you have someone in mind?”

  “And she is dressed in the most seductive garb”—Max would say garb—“and you find her reclining on a couch in a room furnished with the costliest, most tasteful fabrics. Exotic perfumes are wafted toward you”—Max says wäfted—“You talk. She responds warmly at all levels of the interpersonal spectrum. The most seductive music is playing—”

  “What music in particular, Max?”

  “What difference does it make? Scheherazade.”

  “God, Max, it all sounds so Oriental.” What makes Max’s attempt to find me a girl both odd and endearing is that he is so old-fashioned. He and his wife, Sylvia, are like Darwin and Mrs. Darwin at their fireside in Kent. “Who’s behind the other door, Max?”

  “Oh, a popsy in a motel room.”

  “What is she like?”

  “Oh, ordinary. Say a stewardess. You’ve spoken to her once on a flight from Houston.”

  “She fancies me?”

  “Yes.”

  “You want to know which I prefer?”

  “Yes.”

  “The stewardess.”

  “Exactly!” cried Max triumphantly. “You prefer ‘fornication,’ as you call it, to a meaningful relation with another person qua person.”

  “Right, and you’re saying the other case is not fornication.”

  “Yes.”

  Thus Max devised a specific test to reveal me to myself, I flunked the test, was in fact revealed to myself. But nothing came of it.

  After saving my life, he tried to make it a good life. He invited me along on Audubon bird walks and to Center square dances and even introduced me to an attractive lady behaviorist named Grace Gould. Was this the lady behind the first door, I wondered. He even invited me to his home. Grace and I would sit in Max’s living room while Max barbecued kebabs outside and his wife, Sylvia, a tall stooped one-shoulder-hitched-up ruddy-faced girl from Pittsburgh, passed around a dip. We spoke of politics, deplored Knotheads, listened to Rimski-Korsakov, played Scrabble, watched educational stereo-V. Max himself had many interests besides medicine and looking for the ivorybill: tropical fish, square dancing, gem-polishing, tree-dwarfing—which he tried to interest me in, without success. Grace Gould was his last and best effort Grace, who came from Pasadena, was indeed attractive, was nimble as a cat at square dancing, could spot a Louisiana waterthrush at one hundred feet, and could converse on a variety of topics. Max and Sylvia would retire early, leaving us to our devices downstairs. Upstairs the Gottliebs lay, quiet as mice, hoping something was cooking downstairs (for Max loved me and wanted for me what he had). Nothing was cooking, however, though Grace and I liked each other. But there seemed to be nothing to do but drink and look at the walls which, though the house was a new one in Paradise, nevertheless gave the effect of being dark and varnished inside like an old duplex in Queens. The bookshelves contained medical, psychiatric, and psychological texts, a whole shelf of Reader’s Digest four-in-one novels, and the complete works of Mazo de la Roche. The night Max sewed up my wrists at his house, found a cut tendon, went out to beat the bushes for a surgeon, I read Whiteoaks of Jalna at one sitting. There we sat, Grace and I, agreeing on everything, until I developed a tic, commenced to wink, and so took her home, keeping one side of my face averted.

  6

  Passing through the geriatric cottages on the way to Love. Here in cold glassed porches sit despondent oldsters, exiled from Tampa and Tucson for crankiness, misanthropy, malcontent, solitariness, destructiveness, misery— in short, the St. Petersburg Blues.

  Each has two electrodes in his head, like a Martian with antennae. They’re being reconditioned, put in Skinner boxes, which are pleasant enough chambers furnished with that “recreational or avocational environment” which the patient shows highest aptitude for—pottery wheel, putting green, ceramic oven, square-dance therapist—and conditioned. Positively conditioned when he responds positively: spins wheel, hops to music—by a mild electric current flowing through electrode A inducing a pleasant sensation, an unlocated euphoria, hypothalamic joy. Negatively conditioned when he responds negatively: breaks wheel, kicks therapist, sits in corner—by a nasty shock through electrode B inducing a distinct but not overpowering malaise.

  Those who respond? Back home to Senior Citizen compounds in Tampa and Tucson with other happy seniors.

  Those who don’t respond? Off they’re packed to the Happy Isles of Georgia, the federal Good Time Garden where reconditioning is no longer attempted but rather the opposite: whenever they behave antisocially they’re shocked into bliss, soon learning to press the button themselves, off and dreaming so blissful that they pass up meals—

  Here’s the hottest political issue of the day: euthanasia. Say the euthanasists not unreasonably: let’s be honest, why should people suffer and cause suffering to other people? It is the quality of life that counts, not longevity, etcetera. Every man is entitled to live his life with freedom and to end it with dignity, etcetera etcetera. It came down to one curious squabble (like the biggest theology fight coming down to whether to add the que to the filio): the button vs. the switch. Should a man have the right merely to self-stimulation, pressing the button that delivers bliss precisely until the blissful thumb relaxes and lets go the button? Or does he not also have the right to throw a switch that stays on, inducing a permanent joy—no meals, no sleep, and a happy death in a week or so? The button vs. the switch.

  And if he has such a right and is judged legally incompetent to throw the switch, cannot a relative throw it for him?

  The debate rages. The qualitarians, as the euthanasists call themselves, have won in Maryland and New York and Hawaii where legislatures have passed laws that allow sane oldsters to choose a “joyful exitus” as it is called in Maryland, or a kawaneeolaua as it is called in Hawaii, and throw the on-switch on. In the case of the insane, the consent of both physician and spouse is necessary.

  Whup. Up ahead I spy my enemy, Dr. Buddy Brown, sailing his coattails, and duck into Love Clinic just in time.

  I don’t want to talk to him about our coming shoot-out in The Pit. Am I afraid of him?

  7

  The small observation room in Love is n
ot crowded. Moira is perched on a stool at the viewing mirror, steno pad open on her knees. My heart melts with love. Does not a faint color spread along her throat? She blushes! I nod merely—or do I blush?—and go on talking to Stryker. But her presence is like sunlight. No matter which way I turn I feel a ray of warmth, now on my cheek, now between my shoulder blades. There is a sextant in me that keeps her position.

  Father Kev Kevin sits reading Commonweal at his console of vaginal indicators. Only the regular staff is present today—though there may be students in the amphitheater above—Dr. Kenneth Stryker, chief of staff of Love; Dr. Helga Heine, his assistant, a West German interpersonal gynecologist; Father Kev Kevin, an ex-priest now a Love counselor; and Moira Schaffner, my own true love.

  Stryker and Moira are glad to see me. Father Kev Kevin and Helga are not, though they are civil enough. Helga thinks I don’t like Germans. I suspect, too, she believes I am Jewish because I was always with Gottlieb and I look somewhat Jewish, like my illustrious ancestor, Sir Thomas More.

  Father Kev Kevin was a curate at Saint Michael’s, my old parish church. So he is skittish toward me, behaving now too brightly, now too sullenly. I think he fears I might call him Father. A handsome Irishman, he is not merely chaplain of the clinic but jack of all trades: counsels persons in Love who cannot love—love or die! he tells them—takes clinical notes, operates the vaginal console. Imagine a young genial anticlerical Pat O’Brien who reads Commonweal.

  The behavior room beyond the viewing mirror is presently unoccupied. It has an examining table with stirrups, a hospital bed, a tray of instruments, a tube of K-Y jelly, and a rack for the sensor wires with leads to the recording devices in the observation room.

  A subject comes in, a solitary lover. I gaze at her, feeling somewhat big-nosed.

  I recognize her. She is Lillian, Stryker’s first subject. No doubt she will go down in history like Freud’s first patient, Anna O. For it is she, Lonesome Lil as the students called her, who exhibited in classic form the “cruciform rash” of love that won for Stryker the Nobel Prize.

  Lillian wears a sensible gray suit and sturdy brown low-heeled shoes. Her outfit, with shoulder bag and matching hat, a kind of beret with up-arching hoop inside, puts me in mind of Lois Lane of the old Superman comics of my childhood. Lillian is a good deal sturdier, however. As she opens her shoulder bag and begins to remove small fitted devices of clear Lucite, lining them up neatly on the surgical tray, she is for all the world like a visiting nurse come to minister to a complex ailment.