Сэмуэль Шэм - Mount Misery

"I was fired."

"Fired? You? Why?"

"Because I kept doing things like following people down to tennis courts."

"Yeah, well, maybe you don't fit hi here. I mean you're basically a sweetie, just trying to understand. I mean the potential, Roy, is there."

We laughed. "We could continue to meet I'll have an office outside the hospital."

"No. We've done everything we needed to do." She got up. I did too. She looked me squarely hi the eyes and took a step toward me. I thought for a second that she was going to throw her arms around me and hug me. She held out her hand. "Thanks," she said, her grip firm. "You did good."

"We did good."

"Yes, we did." With a certain dignity, she walked out

BERRY AND I talked into the small hours of that summery night.

"I don't think I've ever felt so opened up and alive," I said.

"Imagine if you could live every day like that?"

"Who could bear it?"

"How can we bear not to?"

"Makes me think of how we lived all last year, in China, Italy, Istanbul, Morocco-the intensity of it? Why do we settle for less?" We were lying naked hi my turret. It was hot; the windows were open to the spongy June night. "Great timing, eh? Just when I finally learn, I get fired."

"Learn to be a psychiatrist?'

"That too. I was thinking finally learn how to be a real doctor."

"Now there's an idea. A real doctor, mmm." She yawned, and snuggled into the crook of my neck. "Hold me, babe, hold me so close we won't ever die."

She dozed off, my arm around her. I too began to doze. But then, in that hypnagogic moment just before sleep, I jerked to attention, that black-and-white photo facing me, as if blown up on a billboard. I went cold and shivered-in that hot June night, I shivered. I was face-to-face with a demon. I shivered with fear, and sickly revulsion. I lay there alone until I couldn't stand it anymore, and woke up Berry.

"Wha-what?" she said.

"I'm sorry, but I've got to tell you something."

" 'Kay." She sat up and faced me, eyes barely opening. "Give me a sec." She yawned, rubbed her eyes, crossed her legs." "Kay."

"I know what killed Ike White." She blinked. "Dee was in that photo, standing apart from Schlomo and A.K. Schlomo was Ike's analyst too, at the same time as A.K.'s. Ike and A.K. were best friends. They were in the same class at the Freudian Institute, going to seminars together three times a week. They each saw Schlomo in analysis every day. They were close."

"So?"

"So in that photo, Ike looked like a young boy. He was slender, clean-shaven. His hair was cut short, like A.K.'s, and Lily's, and Zoe's."

"Oh God."

"Yeah. Schlomo was fucking Ike too. Shit." I took a deep breath and tried to breathe out hard, to breathe it all away. "On Ike's face, in that photo, was a look of such sadness. He and A.K. must have suspected Schlomo was screwing each of them." I shook my head. "That first time I met with Cherokee, at six in the morning when he'd told me he thought Schlomo was fucking his wife, I went to Ike for supervision, and told him. I didn't get anywhere with Ike-he said I had to investigate what was probably a delusion. But he didn't totally dismiss it, and when I asked if I should talk directly to Schlomo, he said I definitely should. Almost like he wanted me, or was choosing me, to find out the truth."

"Yes."

"And that same morning I went to see Schlomo, and told him all about it. He said Cherokee was crazy. But later that day, after he'd talked with me, Schlomo called up Ike. And that night, after saying good-bye to me, Dee killed himself. Was that what had killed him? Hearing, from me, that

Schlomo was still at it? Hearing, from Schlomo, that he'd better keep his mouth shut or else?"

"It's sick," Berry said. "It is so so sick."

'That's their word," I said, "and their excuse. Calling it 'sick' is way too easy, it lets 'em off the hook, lets 'em say they're not responsible. Not just sick, no. What it really is, is evil."

IN ACADEMIC MEDICINE the first of July is "change day," when one year ends and we doctors move on to the next. Friends, you enter an academic hospital early in July at no small peril to your life.

I awoke on the morning of June 30 feeling sad. Solini and Hannah had flights booked out that night. Henry was flying to Jamaica, Hannah to Wyoming. Malik, too, was taking a plane that night. Although he wouldn't tell us his destination, I had a sense that he would be going back home to Chicago, to be near his family. We would all meet at the airport that night.

The day dawned crisp and clear. Against the fading for-sythia and daffodils, the hell-bent tulips and daredevil lilac blossomed with even more passion. I drove toward the hospital. As Mount Misery rose in the distance it seemed stunningly beautiful. The way college always looked to me the day after the last exam. Misery's high crown of oaked hill seemed a solid underlay to her red-brick buildings set like rubies in green rings of lawn, lawn flowing down the hill and around the lake and then under the massive iron fence and gate, giving way to normal turf, scraggly fields and hills heading toward the mountains. On the Misery campus people strolled to and fro with seeming purpose. Though I now could tell a patient from a doctor on sight, I could no longer tell whose purpose was authentic.

I stayed just long enough to meet Henry in the attic of Toshiba, to help each other empty out our offices.

On the way out, as Henry and I passed Malik's office, we ran into Mr. K. and Solini's reggae man, Carter. They were hoping to catch Malik to say good-bye. Henry asked Carter if there was anything more he could do for him.

"Nope. I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy."

"And you, Mr. K.?" I asked. "How you doing?"

"Lobotomy's not so bad," he said, "if they botch it. A botched lobotomy's almost a match for a perfect birth. Yesterday was my eightieth birthday."

"Eighty?" SoUni and I cried out in unison. He looked maybe sixty, tops seventy.

"But you seem so young!" I said. "How have you managed to stay so young?"

"Yes, er, no," he said, as if confused. But then his eyes lit up and he went on, "My secret is this: always stay a little bit out of it."

I drove down off Mount Misery for the last time. Workmen were replacing the sign THOREAU with a sign and logo HEALTHYCARE HOUSE. For an instant I felt a stab of regret, recalling the high hope with which I had first ridden up the hill to my first interview with Lee White, where I'd been so dazzled by his compassion and intelligence that I'd enlisted right away to work with him. In the next instant, seeing Misery made small in my rearview mirror, I felt relieved. I would no longer be using the mirrors of sadism and authority to try to catch a glimpse of any truth, in this strange place that those locked up inside had nicknamed "Heaven on the Hill."

WE ALL CONVERGED on the Boston airport that night.

I drove Solini. He was wearing jeans and a bright flowery Hawaiian shirt and his round woolen Rasta cap. He was traveling light, in one hand a new valise, in the other his battered black doctor's bag. The little guy, who had always seemed so cynical, was doing something wildly idealistic-signing up to be the only white doctor in Trenchtown, Jamaica. Bob's hometown.

Hannah and Gilda were already there, traveling heavy, with masses of suitcases, skis and a cello case piled in front of them as they waited in line. Both wore "farmer" jeans, the kind with the bibs and straps and brass buttons, and cow-woman hats. The rancher outfit looked great on the gutsy, broad Gilda, but Hannah, thin down to the hips and dark-haired and looking brittle, reminded me of a city girl having her picture taken on a pony on a day trip to the Catskill Game Farm.

Finally we all sat together on the hard plastic seats that would outlive not only us but civilization. In this polymeric ambience of the airport, we joined those from all walks of life