There. Quite a speech. But he'd told it all, all he knew; he hadn't held a single thing back.
"Your turn," he said.
"What if I don't want a turn?"
"We had a deal."
"You can get out of the deal if you want."
"I don't want."
"Maybe you do, and you don't know it."
"Now you're losing me, Doctor. Come on, this was I'll- tell-you-mine-if-you-tell-me-yours."
"You don't want to hear mine."
"Why?"
"Because mine's worse. Go home."
"I can't."
"Go home, William."
"I can't. Why did you know him?"
"I can call you a cab."
"Fifty years later and you knew his name. Why?"
"Because I couldn't forget it. I've tried."
"It's your turn, Doctor."
"If I tell, you'll wish I hadn't."
"I wish I hadn't read the obits. One wish to a customer."
"Okay," Dr. Morten said. "Okay," his voice trailing off like a muffled prayer. And what was he praying for? For William to listen to him maybe, for William to take the next cab home, and leave what was buried, buried. But William had gone too far; he'd crossed that point where going back was longer than going forward. He was committed to the journey now, no refunds, no cancellation insurance. Like Mr. Leonati on another journey to hell, he was good and stuck.
"Okay," he repeated. "But I've got to figure out where to begin. Do I begin with him or with me? We're both important here. Take me. I was a kid, a psychiatric intern, just starting out. He wasn't much older. But he'd been through it. Like the rest of them. Bones-walking skeletons with that dead stare in their eyes. He wasn't different, just more bitter than the rest of them. Help him, they said. Help him. He was my first-you never forget your first, right?"
Clarence the cat was pirouetting crazily on the end table, like a music box ballerina gone haywire. Dr. Morten didn't seem to notice. He was back in time, a fresh- scrubbed intern about to shrink his very first head.
"He's a hero, they told me. Lost his family in the camps. Refused to eat when they liberated him. Wanted to die. Help him, they said. Sure thing, I answered. After all, this is what I wanted, what I'd gone to school for. I was going to make him forget, make him come to terms with his loss.
"At first, he was uncommunicative. Sat in the corner and didn't say a word to me. I let him stew in it too- tried to use the silence as a tool. But it didn't work with him. He was back there sizing me up-even then I knew that. So I started to talk-telling him a little about me to see if he'd bite. Of course, before I knew it, I was doing all the talking and he was doing all the listening. See- he'd turned things on their head-reversed roles with me. He was the doctor and I was the patient. It didn't take him long to come up with a diagnosis either. Terminal tenderness-the fatal desire to help others. He had me right where he wanted me then.
"So he began to talk. And talk. Suddenly he wasn't so dead anymore. Suddenly he wasn't so pathetic and tortured. Because suddenly I was. I thought about getting up and leaving him. Just refusing him as a patient. Wishful thinking. We were stuck with each other. At least till the next session when he decided not to show up again. He didn't have to. He'd said everything he wanted to."
Dr. Morten leaned forward.
"But to tell you about Jean, I have to tell you about someone else first. Someone you may find it hard to believe was real. Except he was. Afterward, I looked up everything I could about him. There wasn't a lot. But there was enough-even today. In the absolute butchery that was World War II he was just an afterthought. Maybe he didn't have the right press agent-his numbers weren't up there with the big boys. But he was smarter than they were. Much smarter."
As Dr. Morten continued, William could sense something had changed. No, Clarence still sat on the end table licking his paws with undisturbed relish, the blinds still lay drawn and shuttered, the door still firmly shut to the world. But there was another visitor in the house now. No doubt about it. Someone had sneaked in through the cracks, drawn up a chair, and put up his feet on the kitchen table.
Had he ever heard of Marcel Petoit, Dr. Morten wanted to know. Dr. Petoit?
"No," William replied.
"Now you will." And as he told him what he knew, William felt like he was six years old again and listening to a fairy tale in the dark, one of those gruesome fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm. Just a fairy tale. Because when you got right down to it-it was easier that way.
TWENTY-THREE
Once upon a time in the little French town of Auxerre there lived a boy called Marcel. Marcel Petoit. One day, when Marcel was nine years old he took his aunt's dog, Max, for a walk. Good dog, he whispered, as Max trotted faithfully beside him. Good dog, as he settled down beneath an ancient ash tree, rubbing the soft fur between Max's eyes. Very good dog, as he used some hatbox twine to tie Max to the trunk of the tree. Great dog, as he lifted the carving knife from his coat pocket. Excellent dog, as he slit Max's stomach from his collarbone down to his tail. Dead dog, as he watched his intestines slide out onto the autumn leaves. Little Marcel Petoit decided then and there to be a doctor.
Once upon a time Marcel joined the army.
Three months later, he joined the walking wounded in the military hospital at Sers. Just about a stone's throw from the Aisne valley where he'd gone and had his leg blown up on ordinary maneuvers.
Marcel didn't much like the military. And he liked the military hospital even less. What he particularly disliked about it was the haunting babble that surrounded him every night like crickets in the dark. His fellow soldiers, his comrades in arms. Some of whom had injuries just like his. Though, strictly speaking, that wasn't why they were there. This ward's business had nothing to do with healing injured bodies. This was the mental ward. This was the ward of babble. Which is where they put you when you did things like blow up your leg on purpose. Or, at least, when they caught you at it. He'd been hoping for his discharge papers. Instead, he'd been rewarded with an admission to loon land.
It quickly occurred to him that the only way out of the crazy ward was to act crazier. Too crazy for the French army. Sure, they wanted you insane enough to charge a hill with several hundred automatic weapons trained at your head. But not crazy enough to turn one on yourself. It was all right to yell charge. As long as you didn't do it in strange tongues.
So he added a few more symptoms to his file. He developed the shakes, the trembles, and the faints. He was constantly seen rubbing his hands together as if trying to start a fire. He threw in a little self-mutilation here and there as well.
There was just one problem with all this. He was starting to have a little difficulty telling the difference. The difference between the charade and the non-charade, between the mentally disturbed him and the non-mentally disturbed him, between faking it and feeling it. He found himself trembling when he hadn't asked himself to do it. He found himself recovering from a dead faint when he'd never actually planned on fainting. And his hand rubbing had gotten completely out of control.
There was a bright side though.
It worked.
Four months later he was discharged with a noticeable limp and an eye-catching diagnosis of severe paranoid psychosis.
Once upon a time in a little French village somewhere in the Dordogne, there lived a doctor called Marcel.
The doctor fell in love. With a charming local girl called Lousette. Then the doctor fell out of love with the charming local girl called Lousette. She no longer seemed so charming to him. She had, in fact, become annoying and irritating.