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

“The problem is that if there is no guilt contrition, and a purpose of amendment the sin cannot be forgiven.”

“What does that mean, operationally speaking?”

“It means that you don’t have life in you.”

“Lifer?”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t seem much interested in life that night On the contrary.”

“I know.”

“In any case, your depression and suicide attempt did follow your uh ‘sin.’”

“That wasn’t why I was depressed.”

“Why were you depressed?”

“It was Christmas Eve and there I was watching Perry Como.”

“You’re blocking me.”

“Yes.”

“What does ‘purpose of amendment’ mean?”

“Promising to try not to do it again and meaning it.”

“And you don’t intend to do that?”

“No.”

“Why not, if you believe it is sinful?”

“Because it is a great pleasure.”

“I don’t follow.”

“I know.”

“At least, in the matter of belief and action, you are half right.”

“That’s right.”

“But there remains the tug of war between the two.”

“There does.”

“If you would come back and get in the Skinner box, we could straighten it out.”

“The Skinner Box wouldn’t help.”

“We could condition away the contradiction. You’d never feel guilt.”

“Then I’d really be up the creek.”

“I’m trying to see it.”

“I know you are.”

“I notice that in speaking of your date with the little popsy from Love, you choose a setting that emphasizes the anonymous, transient, and sordid character of the relationship as you see it.”

“How’s that?”

“Not merely a motel, but an abandoned motel, a ruin, a secret hole-in-the-corner place, an assignation.”

“Yes, that the beauty of it, isn’t it?” I say, cheering up.

“No. No no. You misunderstand me. It’s a question of maturity—”

“You’re right, Max,” I say, wringing his hand affectionately and rushing off. “You’re a good friend!” I call back from the hall.

Poor Max did his best for me. Once he devised a psychological test, tailored to my peculiar complaint.

“You see those two doors,” he said to me one day, sitting behind the same desk.

“Yes.” I could tell from the sparkle in his eye and from the way light glanced interestingly from his forehead that he had cooked up something for me.

“Behind those two doors are not the lady and the tiger but two ladies.”

“O.K.,” I say, perking up. Max, I saw, had gone to some trouble devising a test that would reveal to me the nature of my problem.

“Behind that door,” said Max, wheeling in his chair, “is a lovely person, a mature, well-educated person who is quite fond of you.”

“Yes?”

“You have much in common. She can converse on a variety of topics, is psychiatrically-oriented, empathetic toward you, and is quite creative in the arts. She is equally at home discussing the World Bank or a novel by Mazo de la Roche.”

“Mazo de la Roche? Jesus, Max. Look, do you have someone in mind?”

“And she is dressed in the most seductive garb”—Max would say garb—“and you find her reclining on a couch in a room furnished with the costliest, most tasteful fabrics. Exotic perfumes are wafted toward you”—Max says wäfted —“You talk. She responds warmly at all levels of the interpersonal spectrum. The most seductive music is playing—”

“What music in particular, Max?”

“What difference does it make? Scheherazade .”

“God, Max, it all sounds so Oriental.” What makes Max’s attempt to find me a girl both odd and endearing is that he is so old-fashioned. He and his wife, Sylvia, are like Darwin and Mrs. Darwin at their fireside in Kent. “Who’s behind the other door, Max?”

“Oh, a popsy in a motel room.”

“What is she like?”

“Oh, ordinary. Say a stewardess. You’ve spoken to her once on a flight from Houston.”

“She fancies me?”

“Yes.”

“You want to know which I prefer?”

“Yes.”

“The stewardess.”

“Exactly!” cried Max triumphantly. “You prefer ‘fornication,’ as you call it, to a meaningful relation with another person qua person.”

“Right, and you’re saying the other case is not fornication.”

“Yes.”

Thus Max devised a specific test to reveal me to myself, I flunked the test, was in fact revealed to myself. But nothing came of it.

After saving my life, he tried to make it a good life. He invited me along on Audubon bird walks and to Center square dances and even introduced me to an attractive lady behaviorist named Grace Gould. Was this the lady behind the first door, I wondered. He even invited me to his home. Grace and I would sit in Max’s living room while Max barbecued kebabs outside and his wife, Sylvia, a tall stooped one-shoulder-hitched-up ruddy-faced girl from Pittsburgh, passed around a dip. We spoke of politics, deplored Knotheads, listened to Rimski-Korsakov, played Scrabble, watched educational stereo-V. Max himself had many interests besides medicine and looking for the ivorybill: tropical fish, square dancing, gem-polishing, tree-dwarfing — which he tried to interest me in, without success. Grace Gould was his last and best effort Grace, who came from Pasadena, was indeed attractive, was nimble as a cat at square dancing, could spot a Louisiana waterthrush at one hundred feet, and could converse on a variety of topics. Max and Sylvia would retire early, leaving us to our devices downstairs. Upstairs the Gottliebs lay, quiet as mice, hoping something was cooking downstairs (for Max loved me and wanted for me what he had). Nothing was cooking, however, though Grace and I liked each other. But there seemed to be nothing to do but drink and look at the walls which, though the house was a new one in Paradise, nevertheless gave the effect of being dark and varnished inside like an old duplex in Queens. The bookshelves contained medical, psychiatric, and psychological texts, a whole shelf of Reader’s Digest four-in-one novels, and the complete works of Mazo de la Roche. The night Max sewed up my wrists at his house, found a cut tendon, went out to beat the bushes for a surgeon, I read Whiteoaks of Jalna at one sitting. There we sat, Grace and I, agreeing on everything, until I developed a tic, commenced to wink, and so took her home, keeping one side of my face averted.

Passing through the geriatric cottages on the way to Love. Here in cold glassed porches sit despondent oldsters, exiled from Tampa and Tucson for crankiness, misanthropy, malcontent, solitariness, destructiveness, misery— in short, the St. Petersburg Blues.

Each has two electrodes in his head, like a Martian with antennae. They’re being reconditioned, put in Skinner boxes, which are pleasant enough chambers furnished with that “recreational or avocational environment” which the patient shows highest aptitude for — pottery wheel, putting green, ceramic oven, square-dance therapist — and conditioned. Positively conditioned when he responds positively: spins wheel, hops to music — by a mild electric current flowing through electrode A inducing a pleasant sensation, an unlocated euphoria, hypothalamic joy. Negatively conditioned when he responds negatively: breaks wheel, kicks therapist, sits in corner — by a nasty shock through electrode B inducing a distinct but not overpowering malaise.

Those who respond? Back home to Senior Citizen compounds in Tampa and Tucson with other happy seniors.

Those who don’t respond? Off they’re packed to the Happy Isles of Georgia, the federal Good Time Garden where reconditioning is no longer attempted but rather the opposite: whenever they behave antisocially they’re shocked into bliss, soon learning to press the button themselves, off and dreaming so blissful that they pass up meals—