Walker Percy - Love in the Ruins - The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World

Max is looking at me sharply. “Why do you ask? Did you see us? Why didn’t you join us? It would be good—”

“I couldn’t. I was trapped.”

“Trapped?”

Colley, I see, is wondering whether he should risk an exchange of glances with Max. His eyes stray. He doesn’t

“Yes,” I say and relate to them the events of the morning, beginning with the sniper and ending with my eavesdropping on the three conspirators in the pagoda. I don’t tell it badly, using, in fact Max’s own low-keyed clinical style of reciting case histories on grand rounds.

Silence falls. Colley, who has lit up again, screws up an eye against the maple-sugar smoke. Max’s expression does not change. He listens attentively, unironically. Daylight glances interestingly from his forehead.

“Let me be sure I understand you,” says Max at last, swinging to and fro. “You are saying first that somebody tried to shoot you this morning; second, that there is a conspiracy planned for the Fourth of July, a conspiracy to kidnap the Paradise baton-twirlers as well as staff members here who participate in the Audubon outings?”

“Not exactly. The shooting is a fact. The other is what I heard.”

“And they’re planning to run a school on Honey Island for the Bantus and Choctaws,” says Colley, drumming his fingers on his helmet

“They said it.”

Silence.

I rise. “Look. I felt obliged to pass it on to you. Make of it what you will. Perhaps it is foolishness. It is not even necessary that you believe me. I simply—”

“I didn’t say I didn’t believe you, Tom,” says Max affectionately. “Belief. Truth values. These are relative things. What interests me is—”

“Yeah, don’t give me that either. Skip it. Look, will you speak to the Director?”

“Of course. Will you come back?”

Colley beats me to the door. “I’m off. Max. Tom. You know your job is still open?”

“Thanks,” I say sourly.

Colley gone, Max nods toward the lounge. “You look tired, Tom. Did you have a bad night?”

“Yes.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine fine.”

“No depression?”

“Not much.”

“No highs?”

“They come together, sine-cosine.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Max, you read my paper and you’ve seen my lapsometer.”

“Yes.”

“Do you think they’re of value?”

“Yes. I think you’ve hit on something extremely intriguing. You’ve got a gift for correlation, but there’s too much subjectivity here and your series is too short. You need to come back in the hospital and spend about a year at it.”

“At what?” I ask him suspiciously.

“At this.” He picks up my paper. “And at treatment.”

“Whose treatment?”

“Your treatment of other patients and our treatment of you.”

“I know my mental health is bad, but there’s not much time.”

“Let’s talk about this sense of impending disaster.”

“Bullshit, Max. Are you going to help me with the Director or aren’t you?”

“I am. And you take the job back.”

“What job?”

“Your same job. As a matter of fact, Kenneth Stryker over in Love just read your earlier paper and I told him something about this. He’s quite excited and thinks you can help him out over there.”

“Max, I don’t seem to be getting across. You’re talking about doing business at the same stand here. I’m talking about a crash program involving N.I.M.H. and twenty-five million dollars.”

“A crash program? You mean on a national scale? You think there is a national emergency?”

“More even than that, Max! It’s not even the U.S.A., it’s the soul of Western man that is in the very act of flying apart HERE and NOW. Christ, Max, you read the paper. I can measure it, Max! Number one, I’ve got to get this thing mass-produced and in the hands of G.P.’s; number two, I’ve got to hit on a therapeutic equivalent of my diagnostic breakthrough. Don’t you agree?”

“Well now. The soul of Western man, that’s a large order, Tom. Besides being rather uh metaphysical—”

“Metaphysical is a word, Max. There is nothing metaphysical about the tenfold increase in atrocities in this area. There’s nothing metaphysical about the vines sprouting. There’s nothing metaphysical about the Bantu guerrillas and this country falling apart between the Knotheads and the Leftpapas. Did you know the President and Vice-President will both be in this area on the Fourth—”

“What was that about the vines?” asks Max, cocking an ear.

“Never mind,” I say, blushing. I shouldn’t have mentioned the vines.

Max is shifting about in his chair.

“I get uh uncomfortable when politics gets mixed with medicine, to say nothing of angels.”

“Very well.”

“Wait. What are your immediate plans?”

“For today? I’m headed for my office in town, stopping off on the way at old Howard Johnson’s. I want to make sure it’s safe. Moira and I have a date there on the Fourth.”

“Moira? Isn’t she the little popsy over in Love?”

“Yes. She’s a secretary at the Love Clinic.”

“Yes indeed. I saw her at the square dance with Buddy.”

“Buddy?” I frown.

“She’s a charmer.”

Max calls all attractive women “popsies.” Though he is a neobehaviorist, he is old-fashioned, even courtly in sexual matters. Like Freud himself, he is both Victorian and anatomical, speaking one moment delicately of “paying court to the ladies” or “having an affair of the heart,” and the next of genitalia and ejaculations and such. Whenever he mentions women, I picture heavy black feather-boa’d dresses clothing naked bodies and secret parts.

“Then will you come back, Tom?”

“Come back?”

“To the hospital. I’ll work like a dog with you.”

“I know you will.”

“We were just getting the cards on the table when you left.”

“What cards?”

“We found out what the hangup was and we were getting ready to condition you out of it.”

“What hangup?”

“Your guilt feelings.”

“I never did see that.”

“You did see that your depression and suicide attempt were related to sexual guilt?”

“What sexual guilt?”

“Didn’t you tell me that your depression followed une affaire of the heart with a popsy at the country club?”

“Lola is no popsy. She’s a concert cellist.”

“Oh.” Max has a great respect for stringed instruments. “Nevertheless your guilt did follow une affaire of the heart.”

“Are you speaking of my fornication with Lola in number 18 bunker?”

“Fornication,” repeats Max, nodding. “You see?”

“See what?”

“That you are saying that lovemaking is not a natural activity, like eating and drinking.”

“No, I didn’t say it wasn’t natural.”

“But sinful and guilt-laden.”

“Not guilt-laden.”

“Then sinful?”

“Only between persons not married to each other.”

“I am trying to see it as you see it.”

“I know you are.”

“If it is sinful, why do you do it?”

“It is a great pleasure.”

“I understand. Then, since it is ‘sinful,’ guilt feelings follow, even though it is a pleasure.”

“No, they don’t follow.”

“Then what worries you, if you don’t feel guilty?”

“That’s what worries me: not feeling guilty.”

“Why does that worry you?”

“Because if I felt guilty, I could get rid of it.”

“How?”

“By the sacrament of penance.”

“I’m trying to see it as you see it.”

“I know you are.”

“What I don’t see is that if there is no guilt after une affaire , what is the problem?”