《玫瑰花园》Longley

2、2

　　2.
　　They took Deborah to a small,plain room,guarding herthere until the showers were empty.She was watched therealso,by a woman who sat placidly in the steam and lookedher up and down as she dried herself.Deborah did what shewas told dutifully,but she kept her left arm slightly turnedinward,so as to hide from sight the two small,healing punc-ture wounds on the wrist.Serving the new routine,she wentback to the room and answered some questions about her-self put to her by a sardonic doctor who seemed to be dis-pleased.It was obvious that he did not hear the roaringbehind her.
　　Into the vacuum of the Midworld where she stood be-tween Yr and Now,the Collect was beginning to come tolife.Soon they would be shouting curses and taunts at her,deafening her for both worlds.She was fighting against theircoming the way a child,expecting punishment,anticipatesit by striking out wildly.She began to tell the doctor thetruth about some of the questions he was asking.Let themcall her lazy and a liar now.The roar mounted a little andshe could hear some of the words in it.The room offered no distraction.To escape engulfment there was only the Here,with its ice-cold doctor and his notebook,or Yr with itsgolden meadows and gods.But Yr also held its regions ofhorror and lostness,and she no longer knew to which king-dom in Yr there was passage.Doctors were supposed tohelp in this.
　　She looked at the one who sat fading amid the clamor andsaid,“I told you the truth about these things you asked.Noware you going to help me?”
　　"That depends on you,"he said acidly,shut his notebook,and left.A specialist,laughed Anterrabae,the Falling God.Let me go with you,she begged him,down and downbeside him because he was eternally falling.
　　So it shall be,he said.His hair,which was fire,curled alittle in the wind of the fall.
　　That day and the next she spent on Yr's plains,simplelong sweeps of land where the eye was soothed by the depthof space.
　　For this great mercy,Deborah was deeply grateful to thePowers.There had been too much blindness,cold,and painin Yr these past hard months.Now,as by the laws of theworld,her image walked around and answered and askedand acted;she,no longer Deborah,but a person bearing theappropriate name for a dweller on Yr's plains,sang anddanced and recited the ritual songs to a caressing wind thatblew on the long grasses.
　　For Jacob and Esther Blau the way home was no shorterthan the way to the hospital had been.Although Deborahwas not with them,their freedom to say what they reallywanted to say was even more circumscribed than before.
　　Esther felt that she knew Deborah better than her hus-band did.To her,it had not been the childish attempt atsuicide that had begun this round of doctors and decisions.She sat in the car beside her husband wanting to tell himthat she was grateful for the silly and theatrical wrist-cutting.At last a dragging suspicion of something subtly and terribiywrong had had outlet in a fact.The half-cup of blood onthe bathroom floor had given all their nebulous feelings andvague fears weight,and she had gone to the doctor the nextday.Now she wanted to show Jacob the many things he didnot know,but she knew she could not do it without hurting
　　him.She looked over at him driving with his eyes hard on the road and his face set.“We'll be able to visit her in amonth or two,"she said.
　　Then they began to construct the story that they wouldtell their acquaintances and those relatives who were notclose or whose prejudices did not allow for mental hospitalsin the family.For them,the hospital was to be a school,andfor Suzy,who had heard the word"sick"too many timesin the past month and had been puzzled too often and deeplybefore that,there was to be something about anemia orweakness and a special convalescent school.Papa andMama would be told that everything was fine...a sort ofrest home.They already knew about the psychiatrist andhis recommendation,but the look of the place would haveto change in the telling,and the high,hard scream that theyhad heard from one of the barred windows as they left,andthat had made them shiver and grit their teeth,would haveto be expunged.The scream had made Esther wonder if theyhad not really been wrong after all;the scream would haveto be kept locked in her heart as Deborah in That Place.
　　Doctor Fried got up from her chair and went to the win-dow.It faced away from the hospital buildings and over asmall garden beyond which lay the grounds where thepatients walked.She looked at the report in her hand.Against the weight of three typewritten pages were balancedthe lectures she would not be able to give,the writing shewould have to neglect,and the counseling of doctors thatshe would have to refuse if she took this case.She likedworking with patients.Their very illness made them ex-amine sanity as few“sane”people could.Kept from loving,sharing,and simple communication,they often hungeredfor it with a purity of passion that she saw as beautiful
　　Sometimes,she thought ruefully,the world is so muchsicker than the inmates of its institutions.She rememberedTilda,in the hospital in Germany,at a time when Hitler wason the other side of its walls and not even she could saywhich side was sane.Tilda's murderous hate,bound downon beds,tube-fed,and drugged into submission,could stillfade long enough to let the light in now and then.Sheremembered Tilda looking up at her,smiling in a travestyof genteel politeness from the canvas-bound bed,and say-
　　ing,“Oh,do come in,dear Doctor.You are just in time forthe patient's soothing tea and the end of the world.”
　　Tilda and Hitler were both gone and now there was moreand more to tell the younger doctors who were coming outof the schools with too little experience of life.Is it fair totake private patients when any real improvement may takeyears,and when thousands and tens of thousands are clam-oring,writing,phoning,and begging for help?She laughed,catching in herself the vanity she had once called the doc-tor's greatest enemy next to his patient's illness.If one byone was good enough for God,it would have to do for her.She sat down with the folder,opened it,and read itthrough:
　　BLAU,DEBORAH F.16 yrs.PREV.Hosp:NoneINITIAL DIAG:SCHIZOPHRENIA.
　　1.Testing:Tests show high(140-150)intelligence,butpatterns disturbed by illness.Many questions misinter-preted and overpersonalized.Entire subjective reactionto interview and testing.Personality tests show typ-ically schizophrenic pattern with compulsive andmasochistic component.
　　2.Interview(Initial):On admission patient appearedwell oriented and logical in her thinking,but as theinterview went on,bits of the logic began to fall awayand at anything which could be construed as correctionor criticism,she showed extreme anxiety.She dideverything she could to impress examiner with her wit,using it as a formidable defense.On three occasionsshe laughed inappropriately:once when she claimedthat the hospitalization had been brought about by asuicide attempt,twice with reference to questions aboutthe date of the month.As the interview proceeded herattitude changed and she began to speak loudly,givingrandom happenings in her life which she thought tobe the cause of her illness.She mentioned an operationat the age of five,the effects of which were traumatic,a cruel babysitter,etc.The incidents were unrelated,and no pattern appeared in them.Suddenly,in themiddle of recounting an incident,the patient startedforward and said accusingly,"I told you the truthabout these things—now are you going to help me?”It was considered advisable to terminate the interview.
　　3.Family History:Born Chicago,Ill.October,1932.18 Breast-fed 8 mos.One sibling,Susan,born 1937.Father,Jacob Blau,an accountant whose family hademigrated from Poland 1913.Birth normal.At age 5patient had two operations for removal of tumor inurethra.Difficult financial situation made family movein with grandparents in suburb of Chicago.Situationimproved,but father became ill with ulcer and hyper-tension.In 1942 war caused move to city.Patient madepoor adjustment and was taunted by schoolmates.Puberty normal physically,but at age 16 patient at-tempted suicide.There is a long history hypochondria,but outside of tumor the physical health has been good.
　　She turned the page and glanced at the various statisticalmeasurements of personality factors and test scores.Sixteenwas younger than any patient she had ever had.Leavingaside consideration of the person herself,it might be goodto find out if someone with so little life experience couldbenefit from therapy and be easier or harder to work with.
　　In the end it was the girl's age that decided her,and madethe report weigh more heavily than the commitment ofdoctors'meetings to be attended and articles to be written.
　　“Aber wenn wir...If we succeed...”she murmured,forcing herself away from her native tongue,"the good yearsyet to live.
　　Again she looked at the facts and the numbers.A reportlike this had once made her remark to the hospital psy-chologist,"We must someday make a test to show us wherethe health is as well as the illness."
　　The psychologist had answered that with hypnotism andthe ametyls an? pentothals such information could beobtained more easily.
　　“I do not think so,”Dr.Fried had answered.“The hiddenstrength is too deep a secret.But in the end...in the end itis our only ally.”