Jesse Ball - A Cure for Suicide

They went out on the porch and sat.

— Have some of this, said Dahlia. It will make you sleep, and then we can go.

She handed him a little bottle and he took it and raised it to his mouth. Had he seen one like it before? The end of the bottle was very small and it felt odd on his lips. He drank from it, and soon fell asleep.

Then they were there, sitting on the porch. The examiner sat on one chair. He lay asleep in another. A strange noise came down the street of the town, and it was a truck. A truck came into view and stopped before the house. Two men came out of it and picked up the claimant, one by the arms and one by the feet. They carried him to a pallet in the truck’s rear, and set him gently down. The truck drove off, and soon its roar was as if it had not been, for a church bell was tolling in the distance, and insects buzzed in the near yard, and as the examiner rocked in her chair there was a faint creaking from the boards of the porch. Somewhere in the house a clock was ticking, and the tick went like this, tick, tick, tarick, tick.

4

THE CLAIMANT was awake and sitting up in bed when the examiner entered the room.

— Do you remember my name? she asked.

— Dahlia, he said.

— That’s right, Henry. That is my name. Let us look around the house and see what we can see.

So, they both went around the house and looked at things. He saw that it was just the same as the other house had been. He looked at the dining room and all the walls of the dining room, the kitchen and all the walls of the kitchen. He looked out the windows of the kitchen and saw that the garden was the same, the garden and the street beyond. He saw that the hall was the same, and the stair, the bedrooms were the same. The examiner took him into the study, a place where he had never really been welcome before, and she said,

— This is the study. In this village, you are welcome here as much as I am. You can use this room, too.

She went to the desk that had always been locked.

— Here, she said, the desk is unlocked.

She opened it. There was a book within the desk, and also sheets of paper.

— This is where I put reports that I write about you and about your progress. The book here is the book of the craft of examining. It explains things about how to examine and why. It is a book like any other. Do you know what that means?

Henry was silent.

— It means that some parts are right and some are not. Every examiner makes decisions and does things in ways that are not doctrinal. I, for instance, constantly disobey the book in certain ways. In other ways, it is important to follow along. That’s partly because we are not in this alone. You and I are part of a thing that is larger than ourselves.

She took the book out of the desk and held it up.

— It is not a very large book, as you can see. If you want to read it, you can. I will leave it in the desk. You can also read any of the reports that I write that you find in there. But, remember, do not be angry if you find things written about yourself that are true. If you read someone else’s correspondence, there is always a price. One can often learn things about oneself that one didn’t expect. It’s rarely a comfortable experience.

She went out of the room and down the stairs, leaving him there.

He went to the desk, and closed it. He opened it again, and then he closed it.

Then he sat in the chair and looked at the desk from the outside. Hilda rose in his mind and fell away, and he felt good.

— I am becoming Henry, really, he thought to himself. I am much closer to Henry than I ever was to Martin.

He said this out loud, for he liked the sound of the names in his mouth.

— WHAT THINGS are there in every village? the examiner asked.

— Houses, said the claimant. There are many houses, and all of them…

— All of them are the same, finished the examiner. What else is there?

— There are shops. There is a general shop, and a shop for clothing. There is a shop where you can sit and drink tea. There is the restaurant. Above those shops are rooms where the people who work in them live.

— That’s right, said the examiner. And what about the gathering places?

— There is the library and the village hall. There is the band shell.

— Have all these things been the same in all the places we have been, in all the villages — or have they changed?

— I think, he said, I think they have been the same.

— Do you think they have been the same, because they are the same, asked the examiner, or because you want them to be the same — because you are not differentiating between them? We could call that a case of their being — the same to you. Is that possible?

— I think, he said, I think they have been the same.

— But if they were different, she asked, would you have known?

— I think I would know, he said.

— And would it matter?

— I don’t know. I don’t think so.

— If it wouldn’t matter, then isn’t it a bit difficult to say for sure which way it was?

— I guess so, said the claimant. The villages are the villages — they are a place where we live. When I go in a direction, I know what I will find. When I return, I know it, too. The house is like that, also.

— What if you went to a place, asked the examiner, where things were not like this? Where everything was new?

— Things are always new. Even here. Isn’t that true?

The examiner took out her book and wrote something down.

— LET US MAKE a new cover for ourselves. A new cover and what shall it be?

— I don’t know, said Henry. I am having difficulty again, getting around. Maybe something where I don’t have to move as much.

— Has it been disheartening for you? To not move well?

Henry nodded.

— You should have mentioned it to me. It will pass, said the examiner. It’s just the medicine that helped you to travel. Perhaps you drank a bit too much. Too much can confuse the mind and the body. It will go away in a few days. Let’s see now, your cover. Your costume for this town. What could your cover be? What about if you are working on a paper. I am the person who travels with you, not a servant, but a person who sees to your needs. You employ me that way. And you are working on an important paper for an upcoming conference. You are that age that you could be a scholar of some sort.

— A scholar.

— You don’t need to talk about the subject. The less you do, the more interested people will be. The more you do, the less people will care, until if you were to talk about it all the time — they would actually avoid you. This is how such things are.

— But then, said Henry, what will we do? I won’t actually be working on a paper. I don’t believe I could do that.

— It is not the sort of thing you need to do. We will find other things to fill the time. We are working steadily toward our goal. Here is what we will do. Each day we will address our tasks. I will write my nightly report about it, and you can read it. Then you will know how you are doing. You will know how you are proceeding toward our goal.

— I will tell you, she continued, that a person like you, a good, solid person who knows what to do and when, can live where he likes. We can find good work for you, and a place to live. You will soon have all the skills of a normal human being, and you will have the scope of a normal human being. You can even decide whether you want to live in the villages, or whether you would like to leave. Either is fine. I, for instance, would be perfectly proud of you whatever you chose.

The claimant felt something wide and empty, like anticipation, but weakened. It was not false, but it did not sound out like a bell.