The Madman's Tale (5 page)

He tried to shake his head, but had trouble moving his neck. “I won’t be a problem,” he choked out. The words seemed as raw as the day, but he was glad to hear he could speak. This reassured him a bit. He’d been afraid, throughout the day, that somehow he was going to lose the ability to communicate at all.

“Okay, then, Mister Petrel. We going to get you up off the gurney. Then we
going to sit down, nice and easy in a wheelchair. You got that? Ain’t gonna be loosing those cuffs on your hands and feet quite yet, though. That’s gonna come after you speak to the doctor. Maybe he gives you a little something to calm you right down. Chill you right out. Nice and easy now. Sit up, swing those legs forward.”

Do what you’re told!

He did what he was told.

The motion made him dizzy, and he seemed to sway for a second. He felt a huge hand grab his shoulder to steady him. He turned and saw that the first orderly was immense, well over six and a half feet tall and probably close to three hundred pounds. He had massively muscled arms, and legs that were like barrels. His partner, the other black man, was a wiry, thin man, dwarfed by his partner. He had a small goatee, and a bushy Afro haircut that failed to add much stature to his modest height. Together, the two men steered him into a waiting wheelchair.

“Okay,” said the little one. “Now we’re going to take you in to see the doc. Don’t you worry none. Things may seem nasty-wrong and bad and lousy right now, but they gonna get better soon enough. You can take that to the bank.”

He didn’t believe this. Not a word.

The two orderlies steered him forward, into a small waiting room. There was a secretary behind a gray steel desk, who looked up as the procession came through the doorway. She seemed an imposing, prim woman, on the wrong side of middle age, dressed in a tight blue suit, hair teased a bit too much, eyeliner a little too prominent, lip gloss slightly overdone, giving her a contradictory sort of appearance, a demeanor that seemed to Francis Petrel to be half librarian and half streetwalker. “This must be Mr. Petrel,” she said brusquely to the two black orderlies, although it was instantly obvious to Francis that she didn’t expect an answer, because she already knew it. “Take him straight in. The doctor is expecting him.”

He was pushed through another door, into a different office. This was a slightly nicer space, with two windows on the back wall that overlooked a courtyard. He could see a large oak tree swaying in the wind pushed up by the rainstorm. And, beyond the tree, he could see other buildings, all in brick, with slate black rooflines that seemed to blend with the gloom of the sky above. In front of the windows was an imposing large wooden desk. There was a shelf of books in one corner, and some overstuffed chairs and a deep red oriental carpet resting on top of the institutional gray rug that covered the floor, creating a small sitting area off to Francis’s right. There was a photograph of the governor next to a portrait of President Carter on the wall. Francis took it in as rapidly as possible, his head swiveling about. But his eyes quickly came to rest upon a small man, who rose from behind the desk, as he came into the room.

“Hello, Mister Petrel. I am Doctor Gulptilil,” he said briskly, voice high-pitched, almost like a child’s.

The doctor was overweight and round, especially in the shoulders and the stomach, bulbous like a child’s party balloon that had been squeezed into a shape. He was either Indian or Pakistani. He had a bright red silk tie fastened tightly around his neck, and sported a luminous white shirt, but his ill-fitting gray suit was slightly frayed at the cuffs. He appeared to be the sort of man who lost interest in his appearance about midway through the process of dressing in the morning. He wore thick, black-rimmed glasses, and his hair was slicked back and curled over his collar. Francis had difficulty telling whether he was young or old. He noticed that the doctor liked to punctuate every word with a wave of his hand, so that his speech became a conductor’s movement with his baton, directing the orchestra in front.

“Hello,” Francis said tentatively.

Be careful what you say!
One of his voices shouted.

“Do you know why you are here?” the doctor asked. He seemed genuinely curious.

“I’m not at all sure,” Francis replied.

Doctor Gulptilil looked down at a file and examined a sheet of paper.

“You’ve apparently rather scared some people,” he said slowly. “And they seem to think you are in need of some help.” He had a slight British accent, just a touch of an Anglicism that had probably been eroded by years in the United States. It was warm in the room, and one of the radiators beneath the window hissed.

Francis nodded. “That was a mistake,” he said. “I didn’t mean it. Things just got a little out of control. An accident, really. Really no more than a mistake in judgment. I’d like to go home, now. I’m sorry. I promise to be better. Much better. It was all just an error. Nothing meant by it. Not really. I apologize.”

The doctor nodded, but didn’t precisely reply to what Francis had said.

“Are you hearing voices, now?” he asked.

Tell him no!

“No.”

“You’re not?”

“No.”

Tell him you don’t know what he’s talking about! Tell him you’ve never heard any voices!

“I don’t exactly know what you mean by voices,” Francis said.

That’s good!

“I mean do you hear things spoken to you by people who are not physically present? Or perhaps, you hear things that others cannot hear.”

Francis shook his head rapidly.

“That would be crazy,” he said. He was gaining a little confidence.

The doctor examined the sheet in front of him, then once again raised his eyes toward Francis. “So, on these many occasions when your family members have observed you speaking to no one in particular, why was that?”

Francis shifted in his seat, considering the question. “Perhaps they are mistaken?” he said, uncertainty sliding back into his voice.

“I don’t think so,” answered the doctor.

“I don’t have many friends,” Francis said cautiously. “Not in school, not in the neighborhood. Other kids tend to leave me alone. So I end up talking to myself a lot. Perhaps that’s what they observed.”

The doctor nodded. “Just talking to yourself?”

“Yes. That’s right,” Francis said. He relaxed just a little more.

That’s good. That’s good. Just be careful
.

The doctor glanced at his sheets of paper a second time. He wore a small smile on his face. “I talk to myself, sometimes, as well,” he said.

“Well. There you have it,” Francis replied. He shivered a little and felt a curious flow of warmth and cold, as if the damp and raw weather outside had managed to follow him in, and had overcome the radiator’s fervent pumping heat.

“… But when I speak with myself, it is not a conversation, Mister Petrel. It is more a reminder, like ‘Don’t forget to pick up a gallon of milk …’ or an admonition, such as, ‘Ouch!’ or ‘Damn!’ or, I must admit, sometimes words even worse. I do not carry on full back and forth, questions and replies with someone who is not present. And this, I fear, is what your family reports you have been doing for some many years now.”

Be careful of this one!

“They said that?” Francis replied, slyly. “How unusual.”

The doctor shook his head. “Less so than you might think, Mister Petrel.”

He walked around the desk so that he closed the distance between the two of them, ending up by perching himself on the edge of the desk, directly across from where Francis stayed confined in the wheelchair, limited certainly by the cuffs on his hands and legs, but equally by the presence of the two attendants, neither of whom had moved or spoken, but who hovered directly behind him.

“Perhaps we will return in a moment to these conversations you have, Mister Petrel,” Doctor Gulptilil said. “For I do not fully understand how you can have them without hearing something in return and this genuinely concerns me, Mister Petrel.”

He is dangerous, Francis! He’s clever and doesn’t mean any good. Watch what you say!

Francis nodded his head, then realized that the doctor might have seen this. He stiffened in the wheelchair, and saw Doctor Gulptilil make a notation on the sheet of paper with a ballpoint pen.

“Let us try a different direction, then, for the moment, Mister Petrel,” the doctor continued. “Today was a difficult day, was it not?”

“Yes,” Francis said. Then he guessed that he’d better expand on that statement, because the doctor remained silent, and fixed him with a penetrating glance. “I had an argument. With my mother and father.”

“An argument? Yes. Incidentally, Mister Petrel, can you tell me what the date is?”

“The date?”

“Correct. The date of this argument you had today.”

He thought hard for a moment. Then he looked outside again, and saw the tree bending beneath the wind, moving spastically, as if its limbs were being jerked and manipulated by some unseen puppeteer. There were some buds just forming on the ends of the branches, and so he did some calculations in his head. He concentrated hard, hoping that one of the voices might know the answer to the question, but they were, as was their irritating habit, suddenly quite silent. He glanced about the room, hoping to spot a calendar, or perhaps some other sign that might help him, but saw nothing, and returned his eyes to the window, watching the tree move. When he turned back to the doctor, he saw that the round man seemed to be patiently awaiting his response, as if several minutes had passed since he was asked the question. Francis breathed in sharply.

“I’m sorry …,” he started.

“You were distracted?” the doctor asked.

“I apologize,” Francis said.

“It seemed,” the doctor said slowly, “that you were elsewhere for some time. Do these episodes happen frequently?”

Tell him no!

“No. Not at all.”

“Really? I’m surprised. Regardless, Mister Petrel, you were to tell me something …”

“You had a question?” Francis asked. He was angry with himself for losing the train of their conversation.

“The date, Mister Petrel?”

“I believe it is the fifteenth of March,” Francis said steadily.

“Ah, the ides of March. A time of famous betrayals. Alas, no.” The doctor shook his head. “But close, Mister Petrel. And the year?”

He did some more calculations in his head. He knew he was twenty-one
and that he’d had his birthday a month earlier, and so he guessed, “Nineteen seventy-nine.”

“Good,” Doctor Gulptilil replied. “Excellent. And what day is it?”

“What day?”

“What day of the week, Mister Petrel?”

“It is …” Again he paused. “Saturday.”

“No. Sorry. Today is Wednesday. Can you remember that for me?”

“Yes. Wednesday. Of course.”

The doctor rubbed his chin with his hand. “And now we return to this morning, with your family. It was a little more than an argument, wasn’t it, Mister Petrel?”

No! It was the same as always!

“I didn’t think it was that unusual …”

The doctor looked up, a slight measure of surprise on his face. “Really? How curious, Mister Petrel. Because the report that I have obtained from the local police claims that you threatened your two sisters, and then announced that you were intending to kill yourself. That life wasn’t worth living and that you hated everyone. And then, when confronted by your father, you further threatened him, and your mother, as well, if not with an attack, then with something equally dangerous. You said you wanted the whole world to go away. I believe those were your exact words. Go away. And the report further contends, Mister Petrel, that you went into the kitchen in the house you share with your parents and your two younger sisters, and that you seized a large kitchen knife, which you brandished in their direction in such a fashion that they believed that you intended to attack them with the weapon before you finally threw it so that it stuck into the wall. And, then, additionally, when police officers arrived at the house, that you locked yourself in your room and refused to exit, but could be heard speaking loudly inside, in argument, when there was no one present in the room with you. They had to break the door down, didn’t they? And lastly, that you fought against the policemen and the ambulance attendants who arrived to help you, requiring one of them to need treatment himself. Is that a brief summary of today’s events, Mister Petrel?”

“Yes,” he replied glumly. “I’m sorry about the officer. It was a lucky punch that caught him above the eye. There was a lot of blood.”

“Unlucky, perhaps,” Doctor Gulptilil said, “both for you and him.”

Francis nodded.

“Now, perhaps you could enlighten me as to why these things happened this day, Mister Petrel.”

Tell him nothing! Every word you speak will be thrown back at you!

Francis again gazed out the window, searching the horizon. He hated the
word
why
. It had dogged him his entire life. Francis, why can’t you make friends? Why can’t you get along with your sisters? Why can’t you throw a ball straight or stay calm in class. Why can’t you pay attention when your teacher speaks to you? Or the scoutmaster. Or the parish priest. Or the neighbors. Why do you always hide away from the others every day? Why are you different, Francis, when all we want is for you to be the same? Why can’t you hold a job? Why can’t you go to school? Why can’t you join the Army? Why can’t you behave? Why can’t you be loved?

“My parents believe I need to make something of myself. That was what caused the argument.”

“You are aware, Mister Petrel, that you score very highly on all tests? Remarkably high, curiously enough. So perhaps their hopes for you are not unfounded?”

“I suppose so.”

“Then why did you argue?”

“A conversation like that never seems as reasonable as we’re making it sound now,” Francis replied. This brought a smile to Doctor Gulptilil’s face.

“Ah, Mister Petrel, I suspect you are correct about that. But I fail to see how this discussion escalated so dramatically.”