The Three Christs of Ypsilanti (15 page)

[
2
] In this instance Leon not only has interpreted the Scriptures for his own uses, but has distorted them to suit his needs. Cf. Luke 6:43–44: “For a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. For every tree is known by his own fruit …” Also Matthew 7:17–18, 12:33.

6:30
A.M.
The three Christs stand separated from one another in the long breakfast line; as the line enters the dining room, there is a disturbance. Leon has accused one of the other patients of touching him indecently.

Coming to the table reserved for Clyde, Joseph, and himself, he says: “Ah, good morning, ye instrumental gods,” and sits down with a self-satisfied smile. “These men are victims of electronic imposition,” he continues.

Clyde leaps up, yelling: “I made the place!”

They exchange insults. “Shut up, you bitch,” Clyde shouts, and Leon answers: “I'm not a bitch, sir. I'm a lamb of God.”

10:45 a.m. Clyde sits in a rocking chair, smoking and rhythmically tapping his feet, although there is no music to be heard. Leon and Joseph stand close together, leafing through magazines, paying no attention to one another.

1:46 p.m. Joseph, standing up, banging his fist on the table, talks to Leon about “good old England.” Leon, who is sitting down, stands up, and Joseph sits down. “My salute to you, sir,” says Leon. Joseph gets to his feet again and they salute each other. Then they shake hands, after which Leon shakes hands with
Clyde, who is sitting close by, telling him he's an instrumental God, hollowed-out four or six times. “Hallowed,” Clyde insists, “not hollowed.”

2:15 p.m. Clyde shows Leon a picture in a magazine, of a ship with bathing beauties on deck, describing the girls as “my girls—I made them.”

2:50 p.m. Queen Elizabeth is on TV. Joseph says he's not interested in watching the Queen because she is taking his place, although he saved her years ago by preventing two men from throwing her off London Bridge.

3:00 p.m. Leon writes something on a piece of paper, holding his ball-point pen in his fist and writing slowly and clumsily. Asked why he writes with the pen in his fist, he replies: “I was taught in Europe that this is the positive way because of the cosmic organics.” He then asks if “they teach the proper use of the palm of the hand in respect to organics in college.”

3:15 p.m. Clyde, smoking a pipe, is writing on a scrap of paper, adding up columns of astronomical figures, incorrectly. He states he has four hundred girls and women to care for, and that he “can't hardly understand why I can't buy anything when I have forty cars of money.”

3:30 p.m. Daily group session. The three men take turns reading from the Bible. Then Clyde takes a copy of the
Reader's Digest
from his pocket and each of the men in turn reads one item from “Increase Your Word Power,” a game designed to test the player's knowledge of word meanings. Whenever Leon guesses which of a series of alternative words is correct, he exuberantly shouts: “Yay!” Although he does not know many of the words, he takes the game very seriously. Clyde mumbles throughout about various and sundry topics, but when he is asked which word is correct he frequently makes the right choice, offering it almost as a
non sequitur
among his mutterings. Joseph, although he grasps the idea of choosing an alternative, gives his own definitions when his turn comes. Leon is polite and helpful to Clyde, who visibly enjoys listening to Leon read.

Supper. Clyde, passing a table of women patients, stops for
small talk. The women offer little response. When the meal is finished, a woman stands beside Joseph, as she does every day, without saying anything. Joseph, also wordlessly, rolls a cigarette, lights it, and gives it to her—whereupon she goes away. Another woman patient, picking up food trays, accidentally brushes against Leon. “Madame, I don't like the idea of strange women brushing me suggestively,” Leon says, “I'm married, I have a wife, and even if I didn't I don't advocate hurtful behavior in hospitals.” The woman smirks and walks away.

6:12 p.m. Back in the recreation room. Leon walks the length of the room to get a light for Clyde. After Leon has given him the light and walked away, Clyde claps his hands loudly several times, with no visible emotion. He sits with his legs drawn up on the chair.

8:00 p.m. Leon is kneeling at his bed. I stand there for a while watching him and as I start to leave he says: “Good evening, sir, and thank you for your trouble.”

7:30 a.m. At work in the laundry room, Joseph hangs back quite frequently, and has to be called to participate. Clyde takes many rests. Leon is a steady, intelligent, and good worker. He rests only when there is nothing to do. When he rests he stands straight, with his hands in front of him, palms up. He seems to have a compulsion to keep his hands in sight, as if to keep track of them.

3:15 p.m. Leon is in the recreation room, watching TV. Another patient changes the channel in the middle of the program. Leon says nothing and continues watching. Brassiere ad comes on; Leon averts his eyes. Another ad begins; Leon again watches.

3:42 p.m. Girl in TV movie asks: “Do you ever go out with girls?” Leon goes through ritual of “shaking off.”

Supper. A patient, seeing Leon in the dining room, says: “Hi, Rex, do you still think you're Jesus Christ?”

“Sir,” Leon replies, “I most certainly am Jesus Christ.”

The patient, turning to Joseph, says: “This guy thinks he's Christ. He's nuts, isn't he?” Joseph, agitated, says: “He's not Jesus Christ. I am!”

Clyde enters the fray, shouting: “No, he's not! I am!”

The patient, somewhat bewildered, steps back and says to Leon: “I think you're faking.”

Leon explains later that the patient is one of his arch enemies, that even though the man is a Jesus Christ, too, in the sense that he has a vine and a rock, he has an evil ideal which Leon hates because he misuses his vine by placing it in the wrong hole.

7:30 p.m. Leon is engrossed in a TV movie,
Nazi Spy
. He leaves in the middle to say his prayers. The ward is very unsettled tonight; only two patients are lying down. Others are pacing, sitting, talking. Three fights on the ward this evening.

Supper. Leon's tormentor appears again. Clyde says: “Stop making trouble for him. Talking about my name. I'm Jesus Christ. You wanta make something of it?” Clyde gets up, tries to hit the patient. The patient melts away and Clyde is very upset. Leon is calm.

9:00 a.m. Group meeting—poetry reading. Leon reads Coleridge's
Kubla Khan
, and interprets it as a description of copulation. His interpretations would not raise an eyebrow in Freudian circles: cave=womb; river=penis; cave of ice=frigid woman.

4:43 p.m. At supper table, Clyde holds out his pipe for me to light. Smiling and clowning, he puts the salt cellar on top of the pipe bowl. I laugh, he guffaws. Leon says: “I put my sodium in it, Mr. Benson, it will act like a flare.” Clyde cackles again. Joseph bows his head and makes gestures. Such playful episodes occur only rarely.

1:55 p.m. All three men are leaving the laundry. When Leon approaches a tunnel junction, he calls out: “Coming through, coming through, please!” thereby commanding one and all to get out of his way. Joseph, pushing his truck, repeatedly booms out: “Thar she blows! All the enemies of the world are going to be blown up!”

5:30 p.m. Joseph reminisces about life outside the hospital, about where he used to eat and drink, in what restaurants, and the fact that he used to ride a streetcar for six cents. Informed by Leon that it costs twenty-five cents now, Joseph exclaims: “Twenty-five cents! I'll walk!”

6:44 a.m. Clyde sits in the recreation room mumbling quietly to himself. His soliloquy is incomprehensible. The only things I can make out are: “God,” “man,” “banks,” “kill,” “dead,” “that's the way it has been,” “Bible”—in that order.

9:40 a.m. At work, Joseph tells the foreman that he used to be an artist. The foreman asks if he painted in oils. Joseph replies that he painted in fresco to save money for Wesson and Mazola oil.

Breakfast. Leon, who never drinks milk, pours water on his cold cereal and dilutes his coffee at least fifty per cent with water. His breakfasts always look singularly unappealing.

11:45 a.m. Lunch over, Joseph wends his way slowly out of the dining room. Leon is right behind him. Patients line the walls of the corridors and sit outside in the sun. Joseph, like a town crier, calls out rhythmically as he passes the others: “Well, everything's all right! For the British! I've saved the world!” He raises both arms high above his head and clasps his hands in the victory salute of a prize-fighter. “I'm God!” “Everything's all right for the British!” No one pays the slightest attention to him.

4:00 p.m. On his way to the dining room, Joseph picks up magazines from the rack and tosses them out the window.

6:00 p.m. The three men are at a dance held for the patients. Earlier, Leon had announced that he was not planning to go. But when the time arrived, he went first to the washroom to comb his hair and then to the recreation room where the dance was held. Although he sits near the dance area, he spends his time looking at a magazine or discussing fossils, religion, and cosmic phenomena with one of the observers. Joseph sits nearby,
staring at the dancing couples. Clyde, who had combed his hair and begun singing before the dance got under way, is the first on the dance floor; he goes over to a young girl and asks her to dance. He dances most of the numbers, including the Pennsylvania and Beer Barrel polkas.

Supper. A young female patient, rather seductive in appearance, joins the three men at the table. Joseph tells her she would make a good wife, but that he wouldn't touch anything unless it were his own. She asks him if he has ever been to Mexico, and he replies that he is the mayor of Mexico. Suddenly she turns to Leon and asks him if he would like to go outside and make love. “I don't believe in such, sir—or madam,” Leon replies, and pulling his chair away turns his back on her.

11:00 a.m. The men are at work in the laundry room. Clyde leaps on an empty laundry truck and, using the rails as parallel bars, vaults to the top of the truck. He drops down and looks around at those watching him, saying with a huge toothless grin: “How's that for a man over seventy?” With a little encouragement he repeats the performance.

3:30 p.m. Daily meeting. Leon reads
Requiescat
, by Matthew Arnold, from a book of poems Joseph brought to the meeting. He interprets it as referring to death, the body covered by the falling rose petals of the funeral flowers. He then reads
O Captain, My Captain
, by Walt Whitman, which he finds “exhilarating” and sees as the story of a son taking the place of his father. Then a poem by Robert Browning, which he interprets as involving adventure, desire, and not attaining one's desire. “I wonder if he's a bachelor?” Leon asks. “No,” says Joseph, “he married Elizabeth Barrett Browning.” Leon comments that he thought Browning was a bachelor because he didn't get what he wanted. He then reads Lear's
The Owl and the Pussycat
, which he interprets as an example of “cosmic eye fertilization,” the offspring being a marmoset.

Joseph then reads from
The Insolent Chariots
, an attack on the automobile industry. Joseph sees it as an advertisement for cars. Leon prophesies that automobile manufacturers will finally be forced to obey the Ten Commandments because more and more people are traveling by translocation—he prefers traveling with the speed of light, breaking through the cosmic barrier. Joseph says translocation would be too expensive.

2:00 p.m. Waiting for elevator to return to the laundry, Leon asks another patient: “What time d'you have?” “Two, Rex.” “Thank you, sir—it's TIME TO SHAKE OFF.” His voice has the ring of a World War II fighter pilot preparing to peel off from formation to dive-bomb a battleship.

Breakfast. Clyde sits down at the table and, upon seeing a patient he had scuffled with a couple of days earlier, becomes highly agitated: “He's got no business here! I'll fight him! This is a private table!” Joseph seats himself, saying: “Well, here I am again.” Leon brings his tray to the table, crosses himself, and sits down. As they eat, Leon salutes every employee, male and female, who passes by.

1:40 p.m. A messenger comes with a note addressed to Leon Gabor, announcing that his mother is here for a visit. Leon hands the note back, saying that his name is not Leon Gabor, that the woman is not his mother, that he does not want to see her, and that she is not to come again.

A research assistant goes to talk to Leon's mother. She is wearing a long black dress, and carries a huge black purse crammed with rosary beads, crucifixes, and religious pictures. She speaks with an accent and throughout the interview weeps and fingers her beads. All she wants, she says, is to talk to Leon and find out why he is angry with her. When asked what Leon was like before he became sick, she says that he “burned up everything, pictures, paper”; that he took down all the crucifixes, all the religious pictures; that he broke the statues of Jesus and threw
them in the garbage can; and that he did all this on Good Friday while she was at church. She goes on to say she was afraid of him because he had choked the pigeons, the nice white pigeons; he had broken the necks of all the white birds and had left the others alone. (Apparently there had been a pigeon colony on the roof of the building, although it is not clear who kept the colony.) She goes on to describe Leon before he went into the army, and to tell how much he had changed when he returned. She gives the impression of a defeated woman approaching the end of life, who realizes that all she has valued most highly has turned out badly, but who has not the faintest idea why. Least of all does she show any awareness of the part she herself played in her own bitter defeat. She repeats over and over that she is alone now, that she has lost both her grown sons and that she has no place in their lives. “Why it has turned out this way?” she cries brokenly. “Why is Leon mad at me? What have I done?”