Джоанн Гринберг - I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

Through the days of wondering, Deborah’s surface registered nothing, and when she spoke her words were the mangled Anglo-Yri-gibberish and there were only enough to try to answer a question or to hint at a need. The ambiguity of what she said surprised her as much as anyone. When an attendant asked her if it was her day for a bath, she tried for a purely English answer, but it emerged as, “It never goes deep enough.”

In the bathroom: “Blau—are you in there?”

“Here is cutucu .” (The second degree of being hidden.) As she struggled to translate, finding it almost impossible to span the light-years of distance between herself and them, the confusion of tongues only alienated her further. She would become frightened, whatever she said next could not be translated at all, and the formless sounds would make her even more frightened. Only with Furii was there any clarity.

“They said we were getting sicker, all of us. They said I was getting sicker.”

“Well, do you think you are?” Furii said, lighting another cigarette.

“No games.”

“I do not play games. I want you to think deeply and answer honestly.”

“I don’t want to think anymore!” Deborah said, with her voice rising in the wind of her sudden anger. “I’m tired and scared and I just don’t care anymore what happens. Work in the dark and work in the cold and what for!”

“To get you out of this damn place, that’s what for.” Furii’s voice was as loud as Deborah’s.

“I won’t tell you anything more. The more garbage I give away the more I have left. You can turn me off and go with your friends or write another paper and get another honor for it. I can’t turn me off, so I’m turning the fight off, and don’t you worry—I will be nice and docile and nothing more will go on the walls.”

The cigarette gave a long puff before the doctor’s face. “Okay,” she said, almost amiably. “You quit, poor little girl, and you stay in a crazy house the rest of your life. You stay on a crowded disturbed ward all your days…. …Poor darling,’ the world will say, …she could have been such a nice person … so talented … what a loss.’” The mobile features made a “tch-tch” purse of the mouth.

“And more talented than I really am because I’m here and will never test it!” Deborah shouted because the bone-truth gave such a fine sound, even from Hell.

“Yes, damn it, yes!” Furii said.

“Well, what!” Deborah said, good and loud.

“Well, did I ever say it would be easy? I cannot make you well and I do not want to make you well against your own wishes. If you fight with all the strength and patience you have, we will make it together.”

“And what if I don’t?”

“Well, there are lots of mental hospitals, and they build more every day.”

“And if I fight, then for what ?”

“For nothing easy or sweet, and I told you that last year and the year before that. For your own challenge, for your own mistakes and the punishment for them, for your own definition of love and of sanity—a good strong self with which to begin to live.”

“You certainly don’t go in for hyperbole.”

“Look here, my dear girl,” Furii said, and thumped the ash of her cigarette on the tray. “I am your doctor and I see these years how allergic you are to lying, so I try not to tell lies.” She looked at Deborah with the familiar half-smile. “Besides, I like an anger that is not fearful and guilty and can come out in good and vigorous English.”

They were quiet for a while and then Furii said, “I think it is time and that you are ready to answer for yourself the question that you raised before. Are you getting sicker? Don’t be afraid—you will not have to hang for your answer, whatever it is.”

Deborah saw herself as Noah, sending out a dove to scout the fearful country. After a time the dove came back, quaking with exhaustion. No green branch, but at least it was a return. “Not sicker,” she said. “Not sicker at all.”

“Not sicker …” Dr. Fried said at the meeting of the D-ward staff. “… Not sicker at all.”

The ward personnel listened politely and attentively, but it seemed unbelievable to them that the bursting stream of gibberish and the uncontrolled and useless violence was not a great change for the worse. Before, Deborah Blau had been morbid and silent or morbid and witty; she had had an immobile face and a sarcastic and superior manner. There were real signs of serious mental illness, but now she fit the familiar form of D ward’s patients. She was “crazy,” a word felt and used by most of them except in the presence of the doctors or when they thought they might be overheard. It was the penetrating but unspoken word in the air now.

“Well … the burning business is slowing up a little …” one of the attendants said, without much conviction.

“That would be her …new morality,’” Dr. Fried answered with her little smile. “She said that she does not wish to involve other patients in her sickness, so she must get her fires elsewhere. She has made some restrictions on the stealing.”

“Do they … do they have considerations like that? I mean … morals?” It was a new man asking. They all knew what the answer was supposed to be, but few of them really believed it. Only a few of the doctors really believed it and only some of the time.

“Of course,” Dr. Fried said. “As you work here, you will often see evidences of it. There are many examples of such ethics or morals, which have moved …healthy’ ones to awe over the years—the little nicety, the sudden and unexpected generosity of great cost to the patient, but present nevertheless to remind us and to kick the crutch from our complacency. I remember when I left my hospital in Germany, a patient gave me a knife to protect myself. This knife he had made in secret by grinding down a piece of metal for months and months. He had made it to save against the day that his illness would become too painful for him to bear.”

“And did you accept it?” someone asked.

“Of course, since his ability to give was an indication of health and strength. But because I was coming to this country,” she said with a gentle little smile, “I gave the knife to one who had to stay behind.”

“She’s a good speaker, don’t you think?” Dr. Royson said as they left. He had come to the conference as Dr. Halle’s guest and because he had worked for a while with some of the patients.

“Blau is one of her cases,” Dr. Halle said. “Oh yes, I forgot. Of course, you knew that.”

“Yes, I took over while she was away,” Dr. Royson said.

“How was it?”

“At first I thought it was her resentment that made the working so difficult—you know, having the regular therapist leave her—a rejection, you might say. But you know, that wasn’t the case. It was something we don’t like to face because we are doing medicine, and that’s a science which doesn’t admit of likes or dislikes. We just didn’t get on. We didn’t like each other. I think perhaps we were too much alike….”

“Then it’s no wonder you struck sparks.”

“Do you think there’s any real progress in that Blau case? She seems to think so.” He turned a little and made a gesture toward Dr. Fried. “But …”

“I don’t see any, but she would know.”

“She is a fine doctor—I wish I had her brains,” Royson said.

“She is brainy”—and Halle looked back at the chubby little woman who was still answering questions in the conference room—“but after you know her a while, you’ll find out that with little Clara Fried, brains are only the beginning.”

Through the distortion of heat-watering air over the volcano, through the gray lava-flow desolation between eruptions, Deborah noticed the onset of a certain kindness toward her from the ward staff—a kindness that seemed to be more than form. A new attendant by the name of Quentin Dobshansky, one of the Good Ones like McPherson, came to replace tired old Tichert; Mrs. Forbes came back to work on Male Disturbed, in the other building, and another autumn yielded to another winter.