Walker Percy - The Thanatos Syndrome

“Right. But what does that have to do with heavy sodium in the water supply?”

“What does that have to do with heavy sodium in the water supply,” he repeats gravely. “Good question, Tom. One might have asked a similar question fifty years ago: What does it have to do with fluoride in the water supply? And if we’d asked it, we’d have gotten the same sort of flak from the Kluxers and knotheads — as you of all people know. Hence our little cloak-and-dagger secrecy. Frankly, I saw no need of it.”

“So?”

“What would you say, Tom—” Bob, who has been lilting along with Strauss, leans forward and, turning down the music, fixes me with a smiling, keen-eyed look. “What would you say if I gave you a magic wand you could wave over there”—he nods over his shoulder toward Baton Rouge and New Orleans —“and overnight you could reduce crime in the streets by eighty-five percent?”

I wait, knowing there is more.

“Child abuse by eighty-seven percent?”

“You mean you’ve done it by—”

He waves me off. “We’ve done it — the numbers will be out next month — but let me finish. Teenage suicide by ninety-five percent. Ninety-five percent, Tom.”

“Yes?”

“Wife battering by seventy-three percent.”

“Yes?”

“Teenage pregnancy by eighty-five percent.”

“Yes?”

“And here’s some bad news for us shrinks.” He winks at me. “Hospital admissions for depression, chemical dependence, anxiety reduced by seventy-nine percent.”

“Yes?”

“And get this.” He leans close. “AIDS by seventy-six percent.”

“You’ve reduced AIDS by a heavy-sodium additive?”

“Not directly, but the numbers are there.”

“How, if not directly?”

He sinks back, eyes me speculatively, turns up “Wiener Blut.” “I’ll give you the easy answer first.”

“All right.”

“By reducing anal intercourse and drug use, shooting up with needles. That’s how the LAV-HTLV–III virus is mainly transmitted, right?”

“Right. But—”

“Here comes the interesting part. Why we need you. Tom, hear this. We don’t have stats for obvious reasons, but in the sodium treatment areas we’ve mentioned, the incidence of homosexuality has declined dramatically.”

“How could you know such a thing?”

Bob shrugs. “Clinical impressions. How many homosexuals have you treated lately? And a couple of interesting items. The Gay and Lesbian Club at L.S.U. has disbanded. Voluntarily. Tom, every gay bar and bathhouse in Baton Rouge is out of business, and not from police pressure. And a tiny but telling little item: the sale of gay and S.M. video cassettes is down almost to zero. Not from censorship, Tom! From lack of interest.”

“How does that come to pass, Bob?”

He appraises me. “I think you might have an idea, Tom, but I’m asking the questions, remember?”

“Then ask.”

“Tom, how much do you know about chimpanzees?”

“Not much. Some. I did some work with them.”

I know. Tom, how many homosexual chimpanzees did you run across?”

“Then are you saying that you’re zapping homosexuals with heavy sodium and regressing them to lower primates?”

He shakes his head, wags a finger. “You know better, Doctor. That’s why we want you. For one thing, these same subjects have an average twenty percent increase in I.Q. — plus an almost total memory recall which makes you and me look like dummies. We ain’t talking chimps, Tom.”

“I know,” I say absently. “They can tell you where St. Louis and Cut Off are.”

“What?” he says sharply. “Oh, map and graphic recall. Yes, sir, they’ve got it. We’re not zapping them. No zombies here. Far from it.”

“Then what are you doing?”

He turns down “Wiener Blut.” “You know what?”

“What?”

“I have an idea you might know more than we.”

“Is that so?”

“That’s so, but I’ll tell you how much we do know.”

“All right.”

“We know that the heavy ion inhibits dopamine production in the prefrontal cortex — which as you know is probably the chemical basis of schizophrenia. We know it increases endorphin production, which as you know gives you a drug-free natural high. We know it suppresses the cortical response to bombardment from the limbic system, which again you know is the main source of anxiety. Tom, we can see it! In a PETscanner! We can see the glucose metabolism of the limbic system raising all kinds of hell and getting turned off like a switch by the cortex. We can see the locus ceruleus and the hypothalamus kicking in, libido increasing — healthy heterosexual libido — and depression decreasing — we can see it! And here’s the damnedest thing, Tom! — here’s where we need your help — we need your help because of your expertise with the CORTscan, your baby — we know and you know that there are certain inhibitory functions in the cortex — you call it superego, Freudian forgetting — which wipe out most memory recall from the temporal lobe. Tom—!” He’s as exhilarated now as “Wiener Blut.” “Those suckers can remember everything. We can see it both on PET and SPECT. Ask them a question: What did you do on your fifth birthday? and, Tom, I’m telling you, it’s like watching the mainframe at NIH scanning its data bank. They retrieve it! If it’s in the neurones, they get it! What do you think?”

“I’m impressed.”

“Then be the devil’s advocate. Attack us from your own expertise. Name one thing wrong we’re doing.” Both Bob and “Wiener Blut” wind up with a triumphant chord.

“Well, there’s the technicality of civil rights. You’re assaulting the cortex of an individual without the knowledge or consent of the assaultee.”

“Assault!” He leans forward again, eyes blazing. “Let me tell you about assault and who’s assaulted!”

“All right.”

He points north, past Grand Mer. “Do you know what’s up the river fifteen miles or so?”

“Sure. Angola.”

“Right. Angola. The Louisiana State Prison Farm. Ten thousand murderers, rapists, armed robbers, society’s assholes, who would as soon kill you as spit on you. That’s where the assault comes from.”

“So?”

“So, two little numbers, Tom. One: The admissions to Angola for violent crime from the treatment area have declined seventy-two percent since Blue Boy began.”

“Blue Boy?”

“The name of our little pilot program.”

“I see.”

“Two: The incidence of murder, knifings, and homosexual rape in Angola, which is of course in the treatment area, has — declined — to — zero.” He pauses. “Zero,” he whispers.

“So why do you need me? It sounds like your pilot has succeeded.”

“I’ll tell you why we need you.” He turns over the cassette. Here comes “Tales from the Vienna Woods.” “First, you know as much about the action of radioactive isotopes on neurones as anyone — you’re the pioneer. But I need you for something else.”

“Yes?”

“Tom, as you intimated a moment ago, we’ve got an interesting philosophical question here. Both my colleagues and I need some dialoguing on the subject and we think you could contribute a very creative input.”

The Strauss is very lovely. The Feliciana woods here, bathed as they are in the gold autumn sunlight, are surely as lovely as the Vienna woods. “What creative input do you have in mind, Bob?”

“Okay, try this for size. What we have here is a philosophical question. Yes, you’re right, though your language was pejorative. Yes, we’re treating cortical neurones by a water-soluble additive, just as we treated dental enamel by fluoride in the water fifty years ago — without the permission or knowledge of the treated. The courts upheld us then, probably will again. But that’s not the question. The real, the fascinating, question is this. What do you think of this hypothesis, which is gaining ground among psychologists, anthropologists, neurologists, to mention a few disciplines — as well as among academics and in liberal-arts circles — even among our best novelists! — Kurt Vonnegut wrote a book setting forth this very thesis.” He eyes me. “You already know, don’t you?”