I Never Promised You A Rose Garden (25 page)

Deborah lay in bed, and her thoughts returned to the puzzle. Dust motes blown and floating all the patients were, but even so there were some things that were not done. Deborah knew very well that she could never ask Miss Coral why she had thrown the bed or how it was that Mrs. Forbes’s arm had been intruded upon by that bed. Beating, stealing, swearing, blaspheming, and sexual eccentricity were not sins on D ward. Spitting on the floor, urinating, defecating, or masturbating incontinently in public aroused only passing annoyance rather than horror, but to ask how or why was not forgivable and to oppose another patient’s act was a sign of crudity at best and at worst a kind of assault—an attempted mayhem
at the barriers which were the all-costly protectors of life. Lee Miller had cursed Deborah for the burnings which had resulted in the whole ward’s restriction, but she had never asked why they had been done or expressed a wish that they be stopped. There was ridicule and anger, but never intrusion. Miss Coral could never be confronted with throwing the bed, and her friends, such as they could be, would henceforth delicately expunge the name of Mrs. Forbes from their conversation in the presence of the one who had caused her to be hurt. Where then could Deborah get the answer to her question?

Through the days of wondering, Deborah’s surface registered nothing, and when she spoke her words were the mangled Anglo-Yri-gibberish and there were only enough to try to answer a question or to hint at a need. The ambiguity of what she said surprised her as much as anyone. When an attendant asked her if it was her day for a bath, she tried for a purely English answer, but it emerged as, “It never goes deep enough.”

In the bathroom: “Blau—are you in there?”

“Here is
cutucu
.” (The second degree of being hidden.) As she struggled to translate, finding it almost impossible to span the light-years of distance between herself and them, the confusion of tongues only alienated her further. She would become frightened, whatever she said next could not be translated at all, and the formless sounds would make her even more frightened. Only with Furii was there any clarity.

“They said we were getting sicker, all of us. They said I was getting sicker.”

“Well, do you think you are?” Furii said, lighting another cigarette.

“No games.”

“I do not play games. I want you to think deeply and answer honestly.”

“I don’t want to think anymore!” Deborah said, with her voice rising in the wind of her sudden anger.
“I’m
tired and scared and I just don’t care anymore what happens. Work in the dark and work in the cold and what for!”

“To get you out of this damn place, that’s what for.” Furii’s voice was as loud as Deborah’s.

“I won’t tell you anything more. The more garbage I give away the more I have left.
You
can turn me off and go with your friends or write another paper and get another honor for it. I can’t turn me off, so I’m turning the fight off, and don’t you worry—I will be nice and docile and nothing more will go on the walls.”

The cigarette gave a long puff before the doctor’s face. “Okay,” she said, almost amiably. “You quit, poor little girl, and you stay in a crazy house the rest of your life. You stay on a crowded disturbed ward all your days…. …Poor darling,’ the world will say, …she could have been such a nice person … so talented
… what a loss.’” The mobile features made a “tch-tch” purse of the mouth.

“And more talented than I really am because I’m here and will never test it!” Deborah shouted because the bone-truth gave such a fine sound, even from Hell.

“Yes, damn it, yes!” Furii said.

“Well, what!” Deborah said, good and loud.

“Well, did I ever say it would be easy? I cannot make you well and I do not want to make you well against your own wishes. If you fight with all the strength and patience you have, we will make it together.”

“And what if I don’t?”

“Well, there are lots of mental hospitals, and they build more every day.”

“And if I fight, then for
what
?”

“For nothing easy or sweet, and I told you that last year and the year before that. For your own challenge, for your own mistakes and the punishment for them, for your own definition of love and of sanity—a good strong self with which to begin to live.”

“You certainly don’t go in for hyperbole.”

“Look here, my dear girl,” Furii said, and thumped
the ash of her cigarette on the tray. “I am your doctor and I see these years how allergic you are to lying, so I try not to tell lies.” She looked at Deborah with the familiar half-smile. “Besides, I like an anger that is not fearful and guilty and can come out in good and vigorous English.”

They were quiet for a while and then Furii said, “I think it is time and that you are ready to answer for yourself the question that you raised before. Are you getting sicker? Don’t be afraid—you will not have to hang for your answer, whatever it is.”

Deborah saw herself as Noah, sending out a dove to scout the fearful country. After a time the dove came back, quaking with exhaustion. No green branch, but at least it was a return. “Not sicker,” she said. “Not sicker at all.”

“Not sicker …” Dr. Fried said at the meeting of the D-ward staff. “… Not sicker at all.”

The ward personnel listened politely and attentively, but it seemed unbelievable to them that the bursting stream of gibberish and the uncontrolled and useless violence was not a great change for the worse. Before, Deborah Blau had been morbid and silent or morbid and witty; she had had an immobile face and a sarcastic and superior manner. There were real signs of serious mental illness, but now she fit the familiar form of D ward’s patients. She was “crazy,” a word felt and used by most of them except in the presence of the doctors or when they thought they might be overheard. It was the penetrating but unspoken word in the air now.

“Well … the burning business is slowing up a little …” one of the attendants said, without much conviction.

“That would be her …new morality,’” Dr. Fried answered with her little smile. “She said that she does not wish to involve other patients in her sickness, so she must get her fires elsewhere. She has made some restrictions on the stealing.”

“Do they … do they have considerations like that? I mean … morals?” It was a new man asking. They all
knew what the answer was supposed to be, but few of them really believed it. Only a few of the doctors really believed it and only some of the time.

“Of course,” Dr. Fried said. “As you work here, you will often see evidences of it. There are many examples of such ethics or morals, which have moved …healthy’ ones to awe over the years—the little nicety, the sudden and unexpected generosity of great cost to the patient, but present nevertheless to remind us and to kick the crutch from our complacency. I remember when I left my hospital in Germany, a patient gave me a knife to protect myself. This knife he had made in secret by grinding down a piece of metal for months and months. He had made it to save against the day that his illness would become too painful for him to bear.”

“And did you accept it?” someone asked.

“Of course, since his ability to give was an indication of health and strength. But because I was coming to this country,” she said with a gentle little smile, “I gave the knife to one who had to stay behind.”

“She’s a good speaker, don’t you think?” Dr. Royson said as they left. He had come to the conference as Dr. Halle’s guest and because he had worked for a while with some of the patients.

“Blau is one of her cases,” Dr. Halle said. “Oh yes, I forgot. Of course, you knew that.”

“Yes, I took over while she was away,” Dr. Royson said.

“How was it?”

“At first I thought it was her resentment that made the working so difficult—you know, having the regular therapist leave her—a rejection, you might say. But you know, that wasn’t the case. It was something we don’t like to face because we are doing medicine, and that’s a science which doesn’t admit of likes or dislikes. We just didn’t get on. We didn’t like each other. I think perhaps we were too much alike….”

“Then it’s no wonder you struck sparks.”

“Do you think there’s any real progress in that Blau case?
She
seems to think so.” He turned a little and made a gesture toward Dr. Fried. “But …”

“I don’t see any, but she would know.”

“She is a fine doctor—I wish I had her brains,” Royson said.

“She is brainy”—and Halle looked back at the chubby little woman who was still answering questions in the conference room—“but after you know her a while, you’ll find out that with little Clara Fried, brains are only the beginning.”

Through the distortion of heat-watering air over the volcano, through the gray lava-flow desolation between eruptions, Deborah noticed the onset of a certain kindness toward her from the ward staff—a kindness that seemed to be more than form. A new attendant by the name of Quentin Dobshansky, one of the Good Ones like McPherson, came to replace tired old Tichert; Mrs. Forbes came back to work on Male Disturbed, in the other building, and another autumn yielded to another winter.

Winter was a hard season. The ancient and erratic heating system wheezed and clanged, overheating everyone to dullness when it was on and letting them all freeze when it wasn’t.

“By what methods do they heat this place?” Lee asked, echoing eternal questions about eternal subjects. She was huddled with her coffee cup, trying to warm her hands.

“It’s a system that Lucy’s Abdicated First Husband the VIIIth thought up,” Helene said.

“The heating is taken care of by all the characters in the dreams we tell our doctors.”

“They don’t hate us, though,” Mary chirped gaily, “at
least not me. They despise me intensely, but they don’t hate me—because the Bible says not to!”

Deborah got up and went in search of warmth. Since the eruption of the volcano, the need to keep alert for backfire material had lessened, though the anguish had not. The volcano’s fear-rage would still come and throw her against a wall with the force of its eruption, or send her running down the hall until she was stopped by a closed door or a wall. She was in a pack every day, sometimes twice, and once tightened in, she would let the fight explode and overcome her as violently as it would. Yet … yet they were all kinder, all the nurses and attendants, joking even, and giving little gifts of themselves.

“Don’t you know why?” Furii said.

“No. I am exploding and they take time with me. Lots of times I feel the thing coming and I ask to get packed and they do it, although it takes time and energy, and afterward, we sometimes even talk.”

“You see,” Furii said gently, “when this volcano of yours broke, something else broke, too: your stoniness of expression. One sees you now reacting and living by looking at your face.”

Deborah went ice cold with the special fear that was many years old and from which she had protected herself at such great cost.

“
Nacoi … nacoi …
”

“What is it?” Furii asked.

“It was always … unmatching … what the face showed: …Why are you angry?’ when I was not, and
…Why are you scornful?’ when I was not. It was part of the reason for a Censor and the set rules and Yri laws.”

“You are free of them now,” Furii said. “Your face does not make enemies for you; it only shows a person reacting to what she feels. Anger and fear show also because you suffer them. But do not be frightened—no need anymore to lie about anger and fear, and, best of all, enjoyment shows too, and fun, and hope also, and these expressions are not unmatching, as you call it, but are appropriate
and will become more and more subject to your own conscious wish and choice.”

But Deborah was still frightened. Her facial expressions were a mystery to her, one that had never been solved. In memories whose meaning was still dark to her, she counted years and years of enemies made in ways which she could never explain. Part of it had been the look—must have been the look—some expression not hers which she had been wearing, a voice and a doer not herself and capable of turning allies into persecutors. Now that the volcano had melted her stone face it might all start over again: the
nacoi-
life of laws to which she had no key and realities to which she could lay no claim.

The afternoon was cold and lowering, and coming back from the doctor’s office she laughed at herself and at the attendant with her, shivering in the cold (real cold), while she alone, although close to the attendant’s side, was also in cold
(intraregional fear) and cold (Yr-cold).

“Like to freeze you to death!” the attendant said. It was nice being spoken to in that way, so Deborah repaid the sense of equality with truth.

“You’ve only got one kind of cold, the kind coats can fix.”

The attendant sniffed. “Don’t you believe it,” she said, and Deborah remembered back, through a thousand falls and punishments, to McPherson saying, “What makes you think you have a corner on suffering?”

“I’m sorry,” Deborah said. “I didn’t mean it as an insult.”

But the attendant was bitter and angry, and began to tell Deborah about how hard it was to raise children and work for long hours and low pay. Deborah seemed to hear into the attendant’s mind, where the woman was saying also that the work was ugly: cleaning up messes from adult bodies and sitting in the midst of childish noises made by adult lungs and ingenuity. The woman was angry at Deborah, who was at that moment a symbol of “the job,” but Deborah felt that she was giving a confidence also. The
dislike was impersonal and honest and therefore not hard to bear. At the door, whose lock and key were also symbols, the whole relationship ended; the attendant erased it as if it had never been, and her face was impassive as she walked away from her charge.

Deborah walked idly around the ward for a while. When the change of shift came on, she asked to be let into the bathtub room to be by herself for a little while. Inside, the heat was turned off, but by force of habit she went to the old radiator and sat down on its covered top. A window above it looked out over the lawn part of the hospital grounds, where there were trees and a thick hedge that concealed the wall—Deborah had named it the Preserve. The sun, ready to set, glittered beyond the hedge like a cold star, and the trees seemed bare and gray in the diffusing light. It was quiet. Yr was quiet and the Collect, for once, was silent also. All the voices in all the worlds seemed stilled.