The Devil Tree (9 page)

But what if I have cut myself off from feeling any pain at all now? Each time I stand near a window high up in a tall building, in a momentary reflex I want to smash the glass with my head. I imagine it in slow motion: my blood reflected in thousands of tiny shards of cracked and splintered glass that cascade to the ground. I hear the screams of people far below, the braking of cars, the commotion caused by the falling glass. What I can’t imagine is my pain.

•   •   •

In a health journal I found the pharmaceutical manufacturer’s advertisement for the medication the doctor recently prescribed for me after I complained about my easily irritated colon. The ad warns that the drug is strong enough to impair alertness, that it increases response to alcohol, and that it might lead to suicide. Because of this, until satisfactory remission has taken place, close supervision of the patient who takes this drug is essential.

For a moment I assumed that my doctor had made a mistake. The drug sounded so powerful that it should obviously be taken only by the most gravely ill. But then I read the following list of symptoms, which the manufacturer recommended be considered by a doctor prescribing the drug: the patient might display repeated lip biting, a tense facial expression, and moist palms; his fingernails might be bitten down; he might complain of waking early in the morning; he might be agitated, restless, and irritable, finding it almost impossible to start work in the morning; he might suffer from a nervous stomach, lack interest in most things, and feel tired and listless most of the time.

Is that all? Yes. But most ordinary people display some of these symptoms daily, even without undue stress. Moreover, the symptoms seem minor indeed when compared with the impaired alertness and the other serious side effects caused by the drug meant to remedy them. If my father—just because he was “agitated” or “complained of waking early in the morning”—had repeatedly been given such a drug, would the impaired alertness caused by it have allowed him to become one of the giants of industry?

•   •   •

Centuries ago, in certain countries, the king and the ruling elite would fill many important government posts, not with native-born subjects, but with suspicious aliens—religious converts, political traitors, dissident émigrés, men captured as boys during military raids abroad who had been raised as strangers among the natives; in short, renegades. This policy was based on the belief, often verified by history, that the renegade, having escaped or betrayed his past relationships and therefore unable to go back to them, was very likely to make a trustworthy and loyal subject, one
who would have to struggle and connive to succeed and who would therefore be less likely to betray his new country and religion than a native would.

Exiled from opium, unwilling to go back and vegetate abroad, at times I tend to see myself as a resident renegade—my motivation heightened by my return to the States, which while it is my home is also the country of my lasting exile.

•   •   •

My self-doubt often makes me feel that I might never be able to carry off anything original and that my independence, my inheritance, my relationship with Karen all demand creativity I don’t have. Before I came back to America I had resigned myself to respond to situations, not to instigate them. I had accepted myself as being alone. But now things have changed. It seems that what I really need is a drug that will increase my consciousness of others, not of myself.

•   •   •

Once when I was considering going through psychotherapy, Karen warned me that it is a bit like the treatment for a broken shinbone that has mended crookedly: to correct it, breaking the bone again is often necessary. But, unlike bone surgery, psychotherapy offers no anesthesia, no clearly defined period of healing, no assurance that things will ever mend, and for a while your new walk might seem like a limp to you and those who know you.

•   •   •

Karen suggested that joining a psychotherapy group, even for one weekend, would give me some sense of what other people—men and women from different walks of life—think of themselves, of me, and of the world around us.

Since I have always suspected everyone who likes me of having poor judgment, and often despised them for being so easily taken in, I decided to take Karen’s advice.

A psychiatrist friend of Karen’s recommended an encounter group that was planning a weekend in Lake Success. We met early Friday evening in someone’s country house. There were fifteen of us, an uncomfortable assortment, seated around a long table on straight-backed chairs. At first I felt superior to the others, assuming that no one else could match my experiences abroad. How could these supermarket psychotherapists understand what I had gone through?

In the course of our discussions throughout the weekend, two or three people did admit that my image was intimidating. A man from upstate said he envied my independence and wealth. Another man said he would be frightened if he had all my money. One girl said she would not want to go out with me. A woman history teacher from New York University, who at first seemed gentle and shy, turned out to be the most belligerent person in the group. She accused me of leading a life based on distortion. How could I possibly depend on others, she demanded, when my position was forever forcing me to use them as servants?

A girl who had recently graduated from college broke down and cried. Her boyfriend was black and schizophrenic,
and she was torn between her own reality and his. She said that she often had to listen to his secret whisperings and enter his odious world. She sometimes even slipped into his fantasies, and at such times if she saw anyone looking at her, she believed that she was a white Negress.

One of the black people in the group said he felt smothered because he was unable to express his emotions. He said his lack of education prevented him from even articulating his own problems. He kept mumbling, “I don’t make sense, I don’t make sense,” and when we tried to convince him that he did, he countered, “How do you know? You haven’t lived my life. If my story makes sense to you, then it’s a lie, because it shouldn’t. It’s a black man’s story, not yours!” I felt moved by his anguish and his sense of entrapment among us, but despite my compassion I remained detached from him and from the group, aware that as soon as people claim to know who I am, I can no longer act freely.

Someone in the group said that a whole lot of ghetto kids could have had a whole summer in the country for what this weekend cost. The black man quickly agreed. A tall blond girl blew up at him. She said that she wasn’t in the least concerned about the money and that she couldn’t care less about black, red, yellow, or white children. She said she was not there to solve the problems of the underprivileged and would like us to get back to the gut level of things. She accused the black man of cutting down white people simple because they weren’t black, rather than admitting to the real sources of his anger. I felt threatened by her outburst. She had supported me earlier and I had responded warmly, but now I felt betrayed. Later when I told her about it, she said that, separated as I was by my wealth from most of the human race, I probably expected betrayal from everyone, especially women, whom I clearly did not understand. I said that I was surprised to hear her talk about
understanding, which takes years to develop and occurs only when people feel free to expose themselves to one another. To even speak of understanding before then is a mockery, I told her.

When the group discussed prejudice, everyone became serious and apologetic. Finally I said, “Look, we’re all very concerned about prejudice and we should be, but after all, there are only three black people in the group, whereas there are also several other people here who are victims of prejudice, and we aren’t talking about their problems at all.” At once attention centered completely on me. Whom did I mean? Were the men who administered my fortune prejudiced against me? When had anyone ever denied me anything? Then someone asked why all the talk was directed at me. One woman suggested that it was because I was articulate and had been overseas and was rich; I was clearly discriminated against because of my privileged status. Then they all began to analyze me. One person said I was obviously very strong, another that I was just as obviously sensitive, and another that I was masculine but soft. The black guy said that I frightened him, although he didn’t know why. I asked them to stop giving me their bullshit and to attempt to get down to real emotions, not labels.

At the end of our encounter, one girl complained about my sarcasm. I said that it was just defensive humor, that I was sarcastic more to hide my bitterness than to alienate or frighten anyone. I said that living is an arbitrary matter; that every time I climbed a mountain in Nepal I expected to die on the way up or on the way down; that even now, whenever I drive anywhere, I don’t expect to get where I’m going.

•   •   •

Taking part in the group has been important if only because it has taught me that no one possesses completely consistent emotions. In view of the discussions, I find that I can be described as neither a hostile nor a sympathetic person. Therefore, my sense of myself is entirely relative, and my hostility and sympathy vary depending on whom I’m with: I compete or I pity. Either I’m not good enough for anyone, or I’m too good for everyone. After this experience with the group, I want to give up contemplation and get out and move. Yet I am afraid that this energy is only a temporary reaction to my feeling of entrapment. Each time we met I became more aware of how dishonest all people are: we know our lives are chaotic, but we insist that everything happen in an orderly way, and that it be logically conceived.

Only two days ago we arrived here, perfect strangers to each other. In the adjoining parking lot we parked our respective Furies, Tempests, Escorts, Swingers, Barracudas, and Demons. Given the real nature of the destruction these cars bring upon us, they should all be renamed: Polluters, Colliders, Wasters, Annihilators, Autopsy-Coupes, Custom Disintegrators, and Maimers. Now, two days later, we are still strangers, anxious to return to our individual existences, and all the tears and hugs and screams and anger we manufactured seem vacuous and unreal. This concept of instant intimacy is what annoyed me most about the group encounter. The group seemed to break down resistances and make people feel good by allowing them to think that they were really getting to know one another. Yet nothing has happened; we know no more about ourselves and the others than we would after a cocktail party.

Here we are, I thought, a bunch of grown-up kids locked in an empty room playing naïve games with each other. No one understands anyone else. We are wandering around in dark caves, holding our private little candles, hoping for great illumination. But what if, because of my
past, I am more confused and limited than the others? Or what if, for the same reason, I’m more complex and perceptive? In either instance, no one can help me find answers to what I ask of life, least of all those who, fat with guilt, treating their own life as a mere outline for some future faultlessly plotted play, have become nothing but collectors of their own sterility and inertia.

In the end I remain unfulfilled. I feel that I have not confronted anything unknown. I told this to Karen when I got back, and she accused me of unreasonably expecting tangible results from the sessions. In fact, all I expected was honesty.

•   •   •

The other day, on the giant screen of a Broadway movie theater, I saw a film in which a number of people were shot in the face. In one such scene a fountain of blood bubbled up from a woman’s mouth. In another scene a man hit a woman with a bullwhip, then pressed his mouth to the wound, then drew away with blood on his lips. Even though I knew it was only red dye, I flinched. I tried to force myself to stay and see the end of the film, but I couldn’t: I have had too many painful experiences. But what if my past pain were nothing more than my own exaggerated reactions to red dye?

•   •   •

Richard, one of my Yale psychology instructors, learned from Karen that I was back in the country, and yesterday we saw each other. Richard talked about our
society’s treatment of the mentally ill as a yardstick of our humanity. He turned to a page in
American Notes
by Charles Dickens and quoted what Dickens had to say over a century ago about American insane asylums.

The state hospital for the insane is admirably conducted. . . . At every meal, moral influence alone restrains the more violent among them from cutting the throats of the others; but the effect of that influence is reduced to an absolute certainty, and is found, even as a means of restraint, to say nothing of it as a means of cure, a hundred times more efficacious than all the straight-waistcoats, fetters, and hand-cuffs, that ignorance, prejudice, and cruelty have manufactured since the creation of the world.

During Dickens’s time, the treatment of the mentally ill in America followed the lessons of Samuel Tuke, the British philanthropist and reformer. In Samuel Tuke’s retreat the mad lived freely in their rooms, and as long as they did not violate the established codes of normal behavior and managed to restrain themselves, they were never punished or coerced. Thus, each patient was threatened only by the possibility of his own purposeful or inadvertent revelation of his madness to those around him, the patients and guardians alike. Once he realized that a madman’s motives, thoughts, and emotions were of no interest to anyone, it was assumed that he would impose constant self-censure which would lead to his recovery.

But if by good behavior a madman could be turned so easily into a normal human being, couldn’t any normal human being who doubted his own sanity be as easily turned into a madman? With such reasoning for a basis, the age of never-ending psychiatric therapy was upon us, and America was its retreat.

Recently, at a supermarket, Richard noticed the fruit and vegetable bins standing right next to the insecticides, bug repellents, and other household and garden poisons. He approached the manager, an older Jewish man, and told him that someone might spray the fresh food with poison. The manager was taken aback.