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

The scientists are wrong: man is not his own juices but a vortex, a traveling suck in his juices.

Ellen pats some Hell-for-Leather on me.

“How do you like it, Chief?”

“Very much,” I say, eyes watering with cloves.

Ellen, though she is a strict churchgoer and a moral girl, does not believe in God. Rather does she believe in the Golden Rule and in doing right. On the whole she is embarrassed by the God business. But she does right. She doesn’t need God. What does God have to do with being honest, hard-working, chaste, upright, unselfish, etcetera. I on the other hand believe in God, the Jews, Christ, the whole business. Yet I don’t do right. I am a Renaissance pope, an immoral believer. Between the two of us we might have saved Christianity. Instead we lost it.

“Are you ready now, Chief?”

“Ready for what?”

“You’ve got two patients. Or rather three. But two are together.”

“Who?”

“There’s Mr. Ives and Mr. and Mrs. Tennis.”

“Good God. Who is Mr. Ives?”

“You know. He’s an old patient of yours.”

“Wait a minute. Isn’t he from Gerry Rehab over in Fedville?”

“Yes.”

“Then what’s he doing here?”

“He wanted to see you.”

“He’s the patient who’s up for The Pit Monday, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“I still don’t understand how he got here.”

“He wanted to see you. I brought him.”

“You?”

“Don’t forget, Chief, I used to work over there.”

She did. She even took care of me in the acute ward when I was strung out, bound by the wrists, yet in the end free and happy as a bird, by turns lustful and exalted, winging it like a martin, inducing scientific theories, remembering everything, quoting whole pages of Gerard Manley Hopkins:

Glory be to God for dappled things —

For skies of couple-color as a brinded cow;

For rose moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls;

and inviting her into my bed, her of all people.

Nevertheless, when I left the hospital, she came with me and set up as my nurse. Toward me she feels strong Presbyterian mother-smoothings.

“Did Mr. Ives want to come or was it your idea?”

“My idea?”

“Did you think I needed a little briefing before appearing in The Pit?”

“Tch. What do you mean?”

“Are you afraid Dr. Brown is going to beat me?”

“He can’t hold a candle to you as a doctor.”

“But you were afraid?”

“Afraid? Oh yes, I’m afraid for Mr. Ives. Oh, Chief, do you think he’ll be sent to the Happy Isles?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do they really throw the Switch there?”

“Yes.”

“No!”

“You don’t think they ought to?”

“Oh no, Chief!”

“Why not?” I ask her curiously.

“It’s not right.”

“I see.”

“I think Mr. Ives is putting on.”

“But if he were not?”

“Oh, Chief, why do you have anything to do with those people?”

“What people?”

“Those foul-mouthed students and that nasty Dr. Brown.”

“It’s all in good fun. End-of-year thing.”

“You’re much too fine to associate with them.”

“Hm. Well, don’t worry. I have other fish to fry.”

“You mean you’re not going to The Pit?”

I shrug. “What difference does it make? By the way, what’s Brown’s diagnosis of Mr. Ives?”

She reads: “Senile psychopathy and mutism.”

“And his recommendation?”

“The Permanent Separation Center at Jekyll, Georgia. Doesn’t that mean the Happy Isles?”

I nod.

“And the Euphoric On-Switch?”

“Yes. But you think the diagnosis is wrong?”

“Because you did.”

“I did? Well, let’s see him.”

She wheels him in. Mr. Ives sits slumped in a folding chair, a little bald-headed monkey of a man, bright monkey eyes snapping at me. His scalp is a smooth cap of skin, heavily freckled, fitted over his low wrinkled brow. The backs of his hands are covered with liver spots and sun scabs. His eyes fairly hop with — what? rage or risibility? Is he angry or amused or just plain crazy? I leaf through his chart. He was born in Sherwood, Tennessee, worked for forty years as controller in a Hartford insurance company, lost his wife, retired to Louisiana, lived in the woods in a camper, dug up potsherds in a Choctaw burial mound, got sick, was transferred to a Tampa Senior Citizens’ compound, where he misbehaved and was referred to Gerry Rehab here. I remember him from the old days. He used to call me for one complaint and another and we’d sit in his camper and play checkers and through the open door watch the wild turkeys come up and feed. He was lonely and liked to talk. Now he’s mute.

I get up and open the back door. Ellen frowns.

“What’s the trouble, Mr. Ives?”

He doesn’t reply but he’s already looking past me at the martins scudding past and turning upwind for a landing. Gusts of warm air sour with rain blow in the open doorway.

“Ecccc,” says Mr. Ives.

The old man can’t or won’t speak but he lets me examine him. Physically he’s in good order, chest clear, abdomen soft, blood pressure normal, eyegrounds nominal. His prostate is as round and elastic as a handball. Neurological signs normal.

I look at his chart “… Did on August 5 last, expose himself and defecate on Flirtation Walk.” Hm. He could still suffer from senile dementia.

I look at him. The little monkey eyes snap.

“Do you remember playing checkers out at the mound?”

The eyes snap.

“You never beat me, Mr. Ives.” I never beat him.

No rise out of him. His eyes slide past me to the martins rolling and rattling around the hotel.

“He doesn’t look senile to me,” I tell Ellen. I take out my lapsometer and do a complete profile from cortex to coeliac plexus. Ellen jots down the readings as I call them out.

“No wonder he won’t talk,” I say, flipping back through his stack of wave patterns.

“Won’t or can’t?” Ellen asks me.

“Oh, he can. No organic lesion at all. Look at his cortical activity: humming away like a house afire. He’s as sharp as you or I.”

“Then why—?”

“And he’s reading me right now, aren’t you, Mr. Ives?”

“Ecccc,” says Mr. Ives.

“You asked me why he won’t talk,” I tell her loudly. “He’s too damn mad to talk. His red nucleus is red indeed. Look at that.”

“You mean—”

“I mean he doesn’t trust you or me or anybody.”

“Who’s he mad at?”

“Who are you mad at?” I ask Mr. Ives.

His eyes snap. I focus the lapsometer at his red nucleus.

“At me?” No change.

“At Communists?” No change.

“At Negroes?” No change.

“At Jews?” No change.

“At students?” No change.

“Hm. It’s not ordinary Knothead anger,” I tell Ellen.

“How do you know he understands you at all?” asks Ellen.

“Watch this.” I aim in at the medio-temporal region, near Brodmann 28, the locus of concrete memory. “Do you remember our playing checkers in your camper ten years ago on summer evenings like this?”

The needle swings. The eyes snap, but merrily now.

“Chief!” cries Ellen. “You’ve done it!”

“Done what?”

“You’ve proved your point!”

“I haven’t proved anything. He still won’t talk or can’t, won’t walk or can’t. All I’ve done is make a needle move.”

“But, Chief—! You’re a hundred years ahead of EEG.”

“I can’t prove it. I can’t treat him. This thing is purely diagnostic and I can’t even prove that.” Mr. Ives and I watch the last of the martins come home. “I feel like a one-eyed man in the valley of the blind.”