Walker Percy - The Thanatos Syndrome

After he finishes, we sit for a while in silence. The moon is overhead. The sea of pines, without shadows, looks calm and silvery as water. There is a sliver of light in the south where the moonlight reflects from Lake Pontchartrain.

“No fires tonight,” says the priest.

“No,” I say absently.

“Would you do me a favor, Tom?”

“Sure.”

“Get me that soup and Jell-O. I’m hungry.”

He spoons up chicken soup from the can and drinks the melted Jell-O from the bowl.

“You seem to feel better, Father.”

“I’m fine.”

“Do you have these episodes often?”

“Mostly in winter. I think it’s an allergy to the dampness.”

“How long have you had them?”

“Since last year when we had all that rain.”

“I see.” I reach for the ring of the trapdoor, hesitate. “There is something I don’t understand.”

“Yes?” He turns up the wick of the kerosene lamp.

“I’m not sure I understand what you’re trying to tell me — about your memory of — about Germany.”

“What is there to understand?”

“Are you trying to tell me that the Nazis were not to blame?”

“No. They were to blame. Everything you’ve ever heard about them is true. I saw Dachau.”

“Are you suggesting that it was the psychiatrists who were the villains?”

“No. Only that they taught the Nazis a thing or two.”

“Scientists in general?”

“No.”

“Then is it the Germans? Are you saying that there is a fatal flaw peculiar to the Germans, something demonic?”

“Demonic?” The priest laughs. “I think you’re pulling my leg, Tom.” He looks at me slyly, then narrows his eyes as if he is sizing me up. “Could I ask you a question, Tom?”

“Sure.”

“Do you think we’re different from the Germans?”

“I couldn’t say. I hope so.”

“Do you think present-day Soviet psychiatrists are any different from Dr. Jäger and that crowd?”

“I couldn’t say. But what is the point, Father?”

Again the priest’s eyes seem to glitter. Is it malice or a secret hilarity? “Of my little déjà vu? Just a tale. Perhaps a hallucination, as you suggest. I thought you would be interested from a professional point of view. It was such a vivid experience, my remembering it in every detail, even the florist-shop smell of geraniums — much more vivid than a dream. Some psychological phenomenon, I’m sure.”

I look at him. There is a sly expression in his yes. Is he being ironic? “No doubt.” I rise. “I’m going to pick up Claude. Come in tomorrow for a CORTscan. If you don’t feel well, call me or have Milton call me. I’ll come for you.”

We shake hands. Something occurs to me. “May I ask you a somewhat personal question?” His last question about the Germans irritated me enough that I feel free to ask him.

“Sure.”

“Why did you become a priest?”

“Why did I become a priest.” The priest at first seems surprised. Then he ruminates.

“Yes.”

“What else?”

“What else what?”

“That’s all.”

He shrugs, appearing to lose interest. “In the end one must choose — given the chance.”

“Choose what?”

“Life or death. What else?”

What else. I’m thinking of the smell of geraniums and of the temporal lobe where smells are registered and, in some cases of epilepsy or brain tumor, replay, come back with all the haunting force of memory. And play one false too. I don’t recall geraniums having a smell.

17. THE IRON GATE at Belle Ame is closed. I get out to open it, hoping it is not locked. It unlocks and opens even as I reach for it. In the same instant headlights come on beyond the gate not ten feet away. They are double lights, on high beam but close enough and low enough not to blind me.

It is the Ranger four-door parked, waiting.

“Okay, Doctor. You can hold it right there. That’s fine.”

It’s the driver, the one dressed in the business suit. The other man is getting out of the Ranger. He is wearing a business jacket over the bib overalls.

“Please park your car over there, Doctor,” says number one, opening the gate and pointing past the Ranger. He’s Boston or Rhode Island, the park is almost pâk, the car almost but not quite câ. Not as broad as Boston. Probably Providence. Otherwise he’s Midwest Purvis, old-style FBI, hair: crewcut; suit: Michigan State collegiate.

Why?”

“We have a federal warrant, Doctor.”

“For what? What’s the charge?”

“We don’t need a charge.” He reaches for something under his jacket, behind him — cuffs? — but flips open a little pocket book, showing a badge. “ATFA, Doctor. Please park your car there.”

“Take it easy, Mel,” says number two. “The doctor’s not going anywhere, are you, Doc?” He’s upcountry Louisiana, strong-bellied, heavy-faced, not ill-natured, but sure, sheriff-sure. He could have been one of Huey Long’s bodyguards. He’s wearing a suit jacket over his overalls. Why bib overalls? Because he’s too fat for jeans? “Doc, we got orders to hold you for parole violation. I’ll park your car for you.” He says päk, cä. They are not unfriendly.

“Where’re we going?”

“Angola, right up the road.”

“That’s a state facility.”

“We have very good liaison with state and county officers, Doctor,” says Providence Purvis, picking up some Louisiana good manners. “I’m sure we can clear it up in no time. Don’t worry. You’re not going to the prison farm. We have a holding facility there, quite a decent place actually — for political detainees and suchlike.”

“He’s talking about parish, Doc,” says Louisiana Fats, pronouncing it pa-ish. “I’ m out of the sheriff’s office in East Feliciana, on loan to the ATFA. It’s the feds have the holding facility.”

“Let’s go, Dr. More,” says Purvis.

“I want to pick up a patient here, one of the boys. It’s an urgent medical matter.”

“No way,” says Purvis, turning Yankee again. “Move it.”

18. THE FEDERAL HOLDING FACILITY is under the levee, outside the main gate, and not really part of the Angola Prison Farm. It is a nondescript, two-story frame building which in fact I remember. It used to be a residence for junior correction officers. It looks like a crewboat washed up from the Mississippi, which flows just beyond the levee and all but encircles Angola like a turbulent moat.

It is not yet midnight. But the place is brightly lit by a bank of stadium lights. There are two tiers of rooms and a boatlike rail running around both decks. A couple of men, not dressed like prisoners, are lounging at the upper rail like sailors marooned in a bad port.

It turns out I know the jailer. He’s a Jenkins, Elmo Jenkins, one of several hundred Jenkinses from upper St. Tammany Parish, sitting behind not even a desk but a folding metal picnic table in a passageway amidships which looks like the rec room of an oil rig with its old non-stereo TV, plastic couches, a card table, and a stack of old Playboys.

Officer Jenkins is uniformed but shirt-sleeved. When I knew him he was a deputy sheriff in Bogalusa. He is older than I and heavy. His thick gray hair, gone yellow, is creased into a shelf by his hatband.

He looks at me for a while. “How you doing, Doc,” says Elmo mournfully, holding out his hand and not looking at me. He is embarrassed. He’s expecting me. “What can I do for you fellows?” he asks the two federal officers in a different voice. He doesn’t have much use for them.

“Just sign this, Officer,” says Providence Purvis, taking a paper from his pocket, “and the doctor will be out of our jurisdiction and into yours.”