The Sunlight Dialogues (97 page)

“Should we go in?” Kozlowski said.

“Mmm,” Clumly said, startled. He opened his door. He got out and waited while Kozlowski came around and stood beside him. Clumly hooked his thumbs inside his belt and squinted at the porch. He couldn’t see too good. He sighed.

Slowly, as though they were personally to blame for the misery and pain inside, they went up the steps, rang at the locked door, and stood with their heads bowed, waiting.

“Lot of the people they keep here are drunks,” Clumly said. “Mostly women. But a few true crazy people, too. I remember they had a woman here kept biting people. I never met her myself, but someone was telling me—I forget now who. She’d be talking along just as sensible as you please and then all at once she’d stop and look up and
snap!
Her teeth in you. So her husband committed her. It was just the eternal annoyance, you know. She didn’t bite really deep. And then there’s a young boy they tell of, all he would eat was hay. What you think does that to people?”

He shook his head.

The door opened inward, and a square, muscular head, vaguely female, poked out to look at them. After a moment the door opened wider and they could see the woman’s striped uniform, powerful legs, lumpy black shoes. The key to the door hung from a chain around her waist.

“Come in,” she said. “We’ve been expecting you.”

The ceilings were high, traversed by ten-by-ten oak beams. It had all been elegant long ago. The entryroom had almost no furniture in it, though it was large—a parlor—two cheap wooden chairs, an overstuffed chair of ancient mohair, on the far wall a desk with nothing on it but a green blotter and a fluorescent lamp. The stairway curving around to the left had no runner on it, only rubber treads torn at the corners and renailed. The mannish nurse guided them past the foot of the stairs to the double-width doorway underneath the stairs, opening onto a sunlit livingroom as plain as the entryroom, though not as sparse. Threadbare rug of the sort found in Methodist Sunday school rooms. Two couches, standing metal ashtrays, a cheap blond coffeetable, small plastic radio (white), old magazines.
The Zodiac.

“Wait here,” she said. “The doctor will see you in a moment.”

Clumly sat down and opened a three-month-old copy of
Time.
Kozlowski went to the window and stood looking out. Pictures of dead soldiers, the headless body of a child. He turned the page.

“I guess you know the story of Taggert Hodge,” he said.

Kozlowski gave no sign.

“About forty now,” Clumly said. “Left Batavia sixteen years ago—1950. He was a lawyer, got disbarred. I don’t know what all was involved in it. He was the youngest of the Congressman’s sons. He was a hero in the Army. Minor sort of hero, but he got a medal, I remember. Well anyway, it was during his time in the Army he married Kathleen Paxton. Prettiest thing you ever saw. Old man was rich of course. Clive Paxton. One they just buried. She was a schoolteacher. (I’m talking about Kathleen, now.) But that faraway look in her eyes was because she was more’n half-crazy, just plain not in the world about half the time. I could tell you something about that, too. That girl’s parents never laid a hand on her, her whole life. They never even yelled. She had a room you’d put a princess in—all pillows and white and gold paint and stuffed animals and dolls. … Why that place would’ve turned a Marine into a helpless little flower, or else some kind of wild animal running through the world rampant, or maybe both. Anyway, what happened to Kathleen was this: she got to be the softest sweetest gentlest thing on earth except she had a temper that would stand up your hair, same as her dad, and one thing more: she got full of suspicions. When the whole thing blew up, sixteen years ago, she wrote letters to the paper that the Communists had her husband locked up in a cellar, whole town full of secret agents, according to Kathleen. It was sad.”

Kozlowski still showed no sign that he was listening. He stood motionless, hands on his hips, staring down toward the river.

Clumly cleared his throat and collected his memories. “Well, Taggert Hodge married her, and they went away on a trip together, over to Europe and I guess Japan and India and all over, I don’t recall. He found out how it was with her, all right. They say young Tag went to Clive Paxton about it, he wanted to send her to an analyst, more money than the Hodges have had for a goodly number of years. Old Man wouldn’t hear of it. Had his crazy streak himself, you know. Stubborn as the side of a mountain and cold as a iceberg. They say he thought if Kathleen was part crazy it was nobody’s fault but Taggert’s. Tried to get the marriage annulled, even made some inquiries about getting Taggert locked up in a hospital himself. You can guess the rest. Taggert Hodge was too smart for his own good, and all his life he’d been too lucky. He thought he could get away with some number juggling. I don’t blame him, mind you. I’d’ve done the same thing myself, if I thought it would work. And he didn’t just think it would, he knew it. Only it didn’t, on account of Kathleen. She was already seeing the analyst, by that time, but it wasn’t working fast enough, and one night in the middle of winter, about eleven o’clock, she went into that office of Tag’s, where he was working late the way he always did—that boy worked seventeen, eighteen hours a day, and that’s the truth—you see it wasn’t just juggling numbers that he was up to: he was making money however he could, and that included working himself half to death. Well then, all right. She tried to set his office on fire—covered the floor with gasoline—she had her two children right there with her. But somebody stopped her. Well, life’s full of ironies. She wrecked the rug or something, and Will Hodge, he was in the office too, he tried to collect insurance. There’s some think he knew all the time. For some reason that meant they had to go through the records, get everything straightened out, and the number juggling showed up. What could Tag Hodge do? He lit out, left the wreck to his brother—they were partners, Tag and Will Sr—because it was either that or jail, and the poor devil still had hope he could save that poor crazy girl. Well he couldn’t, Clive Paxton did get the thing annulled then—I don’t know what grounds—and so he won, if you call it that. They had her locked up. But Tag Hodge kept in touch, or so the rumor goes. Oldest brother was pretty much on Taggert’s side as to how it should be done, and someway they got her away from the Old Man. They been moving her around for a number of years, we found out this morning. My guess is that’s Tag Hodge’s work, or the brother’s, or all the brothers and Taggert too. Old Lady didn’t know it, I know that much, and I doubt that Clive Paxton knew it either until just lately, though that’s just guesswork. He was a coward, some ways. He loved her all right, I grant you that, but I don’t think he could look at her after she got the way she was.”

“How was she?” Kozlowski asked, distant.

“You’ll see,” he said. “So where was I? Ah. They moved her around, keeping her out of the Old Man’s reach, and they tried to get her treated, but none of ’em had money. The Paxton boys weren’t businessmen. We found that out too. And Taggert neither. You know what he’s been doing since he left here that night—as good a lawyer as Batavia ever had? He’s been working used-car lots, Kozlowski. Sweeping up at some church. Peddling. Fixing televisions. He was even school janitor awhile. And worked at his magic, of course. He couldn’t stand that humiliation, naturally. Hurt his pride—and who’d blame him? Truth is,
you’d
feel robbed in a situation like that. It wasn’t for something he’d done for himself. He did it out of love for her—or maybe worse yet, did it after her craziness had made loving her impossible, which means he did it out of duty, something like. Smashed because he wanted to be noble. Like his father, Old Nobility himself.”

Clumly leaned forward, pointing. He was talking to himself now, thinking out loud. “Listen! You’d think back, a time like that. You’d commence reconsidering all the fine phrases, the high-minded speeches about duty and unselfishness and the rest. Maybe you’d say, ‘Ah, ah! I stepped outside the law, there’s the heart of it! Oh Dad, Dad, you were right all along!’ Maybe you’d say that, but then too maybe not. Listen. If I’m standing waiting for a red light to change and some kid walks out in the middle of the street, some toddler, say, you think I go on waiting for the light to change before I run out and drag him away from where it’s dangerous? Listen. Some ordinary citizen, say—not a cop, mind you, some barber, for instance—some ordinary citizen picks up a man with a broken skull and drives him in to the hospital. If the man drives sixty miles an hour, through red lights and all, with his hand on the horn, why there’s not a judge in the country would say he did wrong. Law and Order is important, no question about it, but it exists for a reason—protection of life and property—and when the law runs counter to the
reason
for law, why it’s no longer law at all. Correct? Maybe it seemed to him a case where he had to settle an either-or: property—other people’s property—versus life—the life of the girl. So he made the choice, maybe made it knowing the odds that he wouldn’t get away with it, and what happens? The law comes down on both their heads, his head the same as hers. He’s outcast, in a way, you might say; killed. In the conflict of property and life, property’s won. How would you feel about that, Kozlowski? What would that make of you?”

Kozlowski mused.

“Bitter!” Clumly said. “Except that that would depend on how much pride you had, wouldn’t it? And how much temper?”

Kozlowski said, “You think he was right?”

Clumly rubbed his chin, forehead wrinkled as a bulldog’s. “I don’t know. There’s something wrong with it, but damned if I can catch it.”

“It’s unchristian,” Kozlowski said, possibly joking. Clumly couldn’t tell.

Three minutes later the doctor came in.

“I’m Dr. Burns,” he said. He was small, excessively cheerful, very young. He wore a beard and plastic glasses with one side wired up. “You must be Police Chief Clumly.”

Clumly nodded. “This is Officer Kozlowski.”

They shook hands. The doctor spoke as if with pleasure of the run-down condition of the hospital, the limited staff, the barbarism of his colleagues. Clumly shook his head politely, not listening. Abruptly and irrelevantly Clumly said, “You don’t approve of shock treatments, then?” The doctor looked startled. “Everything’s relative,” he said. He smiled. There was an awkward pause. Then: “We go this way.”

He led them back to the entryroom and toward the stairs. As they went up, the doctor taking two steps at a time and sorting his keys, Clumly said, “How is she, doctor? What is your—” He hunted for the word.

“Prognosis,” the doctor said brightly. “Well, you’ll see. Not good, I’d say. As you may or may not be able to observe at a glance—it all depends—she hears voices. Projections, you know.” There was no one in the hallway that opened out at the head of the stairs. The doors to the left and right of the hallway were closed, perhaps locked. Not a sound came from any of them. “Her conscious mind is seriously crippled, possibly destroyed. The projections—the voices—are of course the unconscious mind at work, stirring up memories of old sensations—as for present sensation, she’s cut off from it entirely, you see. She, uh—” He selected a key and fitted it into the lock on the last of the high, peeling doors. He turned the key and opened the door an inch but paused, looking down the hallway, and went on with what he was saying. “She has emotions, sensations, and intuitions, but in all cases old ones, nightmarish memories, so to speak. As for intellect, it’s reduced to ashes. Ashes. The voices that mumble are, as you might say, dreamlike representations of the old emotions and so on. I’m telling you this to prepare you.”

Clumly nodded.

“Each case is different, interesting in its own unique way. The ordinary layman would be amazed at the infinite variety of psychotic avenues—no two exactly alike. Like snowflakes, you know, or crystals. Because of course no two people are alike, not even identical twins. Put it this way. We receive sensations—you do, I do, Officer Kozlowski here does. You feel the rain falling, you see green leaves, you hear a frying pan fall off the sink. Well now some people have a more acute sense of feeling than other people have. Some people
hear
more acutely, others
see
more acutely, and so on. All this can be measured, at least relatively: a cathode in the brain can register the degree of psychoelectric charge an individual gets from any given sensation—A440 extended to thirty seconds, for example. But sensation is the ground of our experience, not so? First we sense things: a bull in a field, say. Then we ratiocinate. After that—or before that (there are several theories)—we emote. Finally we intuit. To be healthy, normal people—if we may use the expression—we need a balance of sensation, ratiocination, and the rest. Or if not a balance, then an adequate compensation. A fascinating business, let me tell you. The Germans—”

“Excuse me,” Clumly said. He pointed tentatively toward the doorknob with one curved finger.

“Yes of course,” the doctor said. He opened the door.

“The Germans are far ahead of us in this. They did some really magnificent experiments during the War—induced neuroses, then altered the sensation-field, by blinding the subject, for instance, or terminating his hearing, et cetera. It’s incredible, the ways in which neurotics compensate. And if that’s true of a neurotic, you see, we can hazard that it’s equally true of the so-called normal psyche.—Oh, don’t worry, she can’t hear a thing. At least not from the outside.—Kathleen?” He clapped his hands.

She sat perfectly still, hands lightly folded in her lap, her back against the wall. Her eyes were open and contained no life. She was so much like a corpse, in fact, that Clumly caught his breath. There was nothing whatever in the room, only the bare floor, the bare, chipped walls, the naked window. She smelled of urine. Her hair was gray, cut short just at the middle of her ears. Some of it had fallen out, over her temples. The face was old.

“She never move at all?” Clumly said.

“Almost never. The layman might think her an absolute vegetable, but actually that would be an oversimplification. She may possibly have a fine intelligence in there, fast asleep. If there were time enough, it might be possible to rouse it. But there isn’t of course. With five years of concentration on no patient but her, using violent pleasure and violent pain, I might be able to get her to smile when I enter the room. Five more and I might be able to get her to play with blocks, say, or rock a doll. Five more—well, you see how it is.”