Walker Percy - The Thanatos Syndrome

“What? Oh. Do you mean about Yugo — about the ah predictions. Very interesting. Well, Father, I really must be—”

“So don’t worry about it,” says the priest. He has let me go and is absently doing a few calf isometrics, balancing on the ball of one foot, then the other.

“And to be specific in your case, Tom.”

“Yes?”

“Do what you are doing. You are on the right track. Continue with the analysis and treatment of your patients.”

“All right,” I reply, somewhat ironically, I fear. “But I don’t have many patients.”

“You will. You are on the right track. I have watched you. Carry on. Keep a good heart.”

“All right.”

“I will tell you a secret. You may have a thing or two to add to Dr. Freud and Dr. Jung, as great as they were.”

“Thank you.” Did he wink at me?

We shake hands. He gives me his old firm Ricardo Montalban handshake, turns, throws a punch or two and is gone.

14. SITTING ON THE FRONT PORCH of my office sailing paper P-51s at the martin house.

A fine warm Louisiana winter day, my best time: the morning sun booming in over the live oak, the air yellow and clear as light, oak leaves glossy, bottle-glass green. Pollen gone. My nose clear as a bell. The white-throated sparrows are back, kicking leaves under the bushes like chickens.

In the next few minutes I must make a decision and phone Max.

I must tell him either/or.

Either take him up on his offer, join him in Mandeville, do group work and divorce facilitation with his aging yuppies, crisis intervention with their stoned-out teenage children. It’s good work and I need the money, but I’d rather do my old-fashioned one-on-one therapy with depressed and terrified people.

Or take the directorship at the hospice. Low-paying but steady. No one else wants the job. Father Smith had had to be let go after all. In fact, he became a patient. He wanted to go back to the fire tower for good. Max diagnosed Alzheimer’s, pointing out his strange harangues, his memory loss and disconnected speech — more and more now he is given to short gnomic utterances which grow ever more gnomic and disconnected, as if he cannot remember what he said five seconds ago. I disagreed, pointing out that his CORTscans showed no loss of cerebral tissue and his PETscans no loss of cerebral function, and other tests were negative. And he is too old. Alzheimer’s dementia usually sets in in the fifties or sixties. But there was no denying his strange behavior. Perhaps it is presenile dementia. I agreed to co-sign his commitment — on one condition: that he be allowed to stay in the tower as long as he wanted. For he remains quite agile and can scramble up like an old mountain goat. He watches the horizon, mainly in the east, like a hawk, and at the first sign of a smudge he’ll line up his azimuth, call another tower, crisscross his fishing-line coordinates, report the fire as precisely as you please, talk at length and in the peculiar ham lingo to Emmy in the Waldheim tower. He did not object to being committed, seemed quite happy in fact. Max is pleased. Our treatment of Father Smith accorded well with new ideas in geriatrics — which boil down to making the elderly feel useful.

Only occasionally does he seem confused. Then it is not clear whether he is speaking of locating brushfires or God by signs and coordinates. Milton Guidry looks after him, assists at Mass. But Milton’s emphysema is worse. When he can’t make it up the tower, Father Smith calls me and I substitute — when I can.

I must make up my mind about the future. We’re in debt. Tuition at the Pentecostal school is high and Ellen has given away all her money to the Baton Rouge evangelist.

A doctor needs patients to make a living. What happened to the sort of patients I used to see, the lonely-hearts, the solitary aching consciousnesses — they were my kind of people — the fears, the phobias, the depressions? Have these symptoms been knocked out for good by the heavy sodium? Or are they being treated by GPs prescribing pills? Or by pharmacists? In any case, who needs me?

One good sign. Ellen is back as my secretary-nurse-receptionist.

She’ll be here any minute. Better go inside. Wouldn’t do to be caught out here sailing P-51s.

She’s canny, cheerful, businesslike. It’s like the old days, having her back, hearing her nimble voice in the outer office, weeding out undesirable patients, charming the desirable ones. She’s already got referrals from her bridge crowd, her Episcopalian book-review group and her big Pentecostal church. The Pentecostals are decent folk, honest and forthright, no crazier than liberal unbelievers and a good deal less neurotic, but perhaps a bit paranoid, given to suspecting godless conspiracies under every sofa. But if I keep them off the couch, don’t mention sex, wear a white coat like a TV doctor, speak to them face to face, take their blood pressure — they tend to hypertension — examine their eyegrounds, they’ll tell me their troubles.

The telephone is ringing inside. A patient? There is still no Ellen but I needn’t hurry. The answering machine clicks on during the third ring. I can hear my voice and a woman’s which I almost recognize. There is a familiar overtone of hushed urgency.

Go inside. Play the message.

It is Mickey LaFaye. She’s not asking for an appointment or even for a return call. She speaks in the hushed-mouth-in-the-phone voice of a woman hearing a prowler and calling the police.

“I’m coming in — now,” she all but whispers. Click. The silence of the machine roars.

It is as if even the machine could grasp the urgency and reach me.

Ellen arrives before Mickey. I try to tell her about Mickey, but she’s excited about something.

“That priest called you at home, said he couldn’t reach you here—” She pauses for an explanation.

“Probably hadn’t arrived. I walked.” I’m not about to tell her about sitting on the porch and flying P-518.

“For once I think he’s being helpful.”

“How’s that?”

“He’s got an important referral for you.”

“Who?”

“It may be royalty.” Ellen lowers her voice.

“Royalty.” Is Princess Di — I almost say, but decide not to joke.

“He wouldn’t give names — it’s all very hush-hush — but do you know who I think it is?” Royalty really lights her up, and her an American Pentecostal. I’ll never understand it.

“You know that the new king and queen of Spain are in New Orleans paying a state visit to commemorate Spanish rule in the Vieux Carré—which is in fact more Spanish than French.”

I am nodding, mystified, more puzzled by the change in Ellen than by the Spanish king.

“The priest wants you to meet them out there. Tomorrow.”

“I see.”

“Now get this,” says Ellen. She’s in her chair and I sitting on her desk in the outer office.

“All right.” She’s got it figured out.

“He only gave me three hints. Royalty, a visit, gifts and — a Jewish connection.”

“That’s four.”

“Right. Now get this. I happen to know that the new queen, Margarita, has Jewish blood — a noble old Sephardic family from Toledo.”

“Ohio?”

“And you know what?”

“No, what?” I don’t know what, but I’m pleased to see her so pleased.

“I happen also to know that your friend Rinaldo has a Spanish connection, is highly regarded in certain circles over there — which would account for him being called in in case of some trouble — and I also happen to know that Queen Margarita has a psychiatric history. I think she might be your patient.”

“I see.”

“Tomorrow morning at eight — why eight I don’t know.” She’s briskly writing down the appointment. “Out there.”