Pharmakon (8 page)

Perhaps it was the sweater with the big Y on it that the kid was wearing. Whoever had spent weeks knitting it by hand for him had picked the wrong color yarn. Casper’s sweater was navy, while Yale’s shade of blue was the color of a box from Tiffany’s. It was the kind of thing Friedrich’s mother’s would have done on purpose, the kind of mistake that announced to anyone connected with the university that not only was Casper on scholarship, but was infected with a strain of geekiness so acute even the other scholarship students would steer clear of him for fear of being contaminated.

It was 7:30 now. All the neighbors had left. The sun had set. The parrots had quieted down, and Friedrich was trying to think of where he had heard Casper’s unfortunate last name. As Casper used up the last of his film, taking blinding, flashbulb-popping snapshots of Nora and the children catching the first fireflies of the season, Friedrich studied the awkward boy the same way he watched the patients through the one-way mirror in the mental ward of the hospital. It was how he looked at people when he cared about them. Friedrich focused on all that was slightly off. The twitch in the Orbicularis oculi muscles above Casper’s right eye; his forefinger’s nervous habit of rubbing small, concentric circles in his hair above his left temple when he was asked a question. And now, as he heard Lucy ask Casper, “Where are you from?” he heard a slight stutter.

“S-S-Seabury, New Jersey.” Casper stepped on one of his spent flashbulbs as he walked over to Friedrich to say good-bye. “Oh my God. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, no it’s not.” Friedrich watched as Casper fell to his knees and began picking the tiny shards of glass from the earth. “One of the ch-ch-children could step here and cut themselves.”

“Don’t worry about it, Casper.” Friedrich pulled the awkward boy to his feet.

It was unusual for Casper to be touched. It felt almost like a hug. “Thank you for sharing your family with me. Really, Professor Friedrich, it’s been a privilege.”

“It was our pleasure, son.” Friedrich had already forgotten Gedsic’s first name.

“Come on, children, time to say good night to Casper.” Nora held Jack in her arms.

“If you’d like, I can make you prints of the photographs.” Still trying to remember why Casper seemed so familiar, Friedrich didn’t respond. “Don’t worry, it wouldn’t cost you anything,” Casper added nervously.

Friedrich let go of the boy’s hand. The idea that this kid thought he couldn’t afford to pay for pictures of his wife and children, that somebody called Gedsic felt sorry for him, made Friedrich’s mood plummet. The residue of the day’s earlier humiliations were still in him: the white whale of a DeSoto he couldn’t afford to fix; the bicycle he ran over but didn’t have the money to replace; the drug he hadn’t discovered. Friedrich’s cheeks flushed, his heart rate rose. He was studying himself now. Shocked by the visceral jolt of the same mix of anxiety and depression that one of Jens’s lab rats registered when they pressed on the food bar and got a hot shot of electricity instead of the kibble of dog food they’d been expecting, Friedrich snapped, “I can pay for my own photographs.”

Casper heard the edge in the doctor’s voice. “I . . . I . . . I d-d-d-didn’t mean it that way.” The stutter was back. His fingers worried circles on the side of his head like he was trying to scratch a hole in his temple.

Nora didn’t hear what had been said but sensed the joy suddenly bleeding out of the end of what had been a wonderful day. Friedrich’s jacket was off, his shirttails were out. She slid her free hand up his back. The warmth of her hand, the touch of her fingertips reminded Friedrich of all the good that had happened and the promise that there would be more of it tomorrow. He felt his heartbeat slow down. His anxiety dipped and his mood elevated. If only he could prescribe Nora’s touch, the gentle pressure of a hand on one’s back, life would be different for the Caspers of this world.

“What I mean to say, Casper, is ‘thank you.’ I’d appreciate that. Sorry if I sounded gruff. I get that way when I’m hungry.”

Nora had removed her hand, but the warmth lingered. “Would you like to stay for dinner?”

“I d-d-don’t want to cause you any trouble.”

“It’s no trouble. I’m afraid it’s just going to be bacon and eggs.”

“I can’t have bacon. I’m a vegetarian.”

Nora volunteered, “We’ll have potatoes and string beans.”

The children were asleep and the Friedrichs were in bed. They’d made love twice, something they hadn’t done since before the Korean War. Nora was just drifting off when Friedrich suddenly sat up. “He’s the A-bomb kid.”

“What?”

“I heard some guys in the physics department talking about him. I thought they were kidding, but . . .”

“What are you talking about?”

“They said there was this sad-sack kid in the freshman class who had submitted a design for an atomic bomb in a high school science contest.”

“How do you know it’s Casper?”

“They said he was from New Jersey.”

“It’s a wonder he didn’t get arrested.” The Friedrichs would later find out that the FBI had interviewed both Casper and his mother when the judges of the Edison National Science Contest informed them that one of their contestants had submitted a model for a thermonuclear device that as far as they could tell would work. National security prevented Casper from being declared the official winner, but it got him into Yale.

Will scratched the back of his head. “It’s almost as if he lacks joy receptors.”

“Where are they located in the brain?”

“I don’t know; I just made them up.”

“Geniuses are always lonely.” Nora turned off the light.

“I don’t know if he’s a genius.” Friedrich was jealous. “Anyway, why do you say that?”

“Because I live with one.” He knew it wasn’t true, but he liked hearing it.

Friedrich’s black-and-white photo of the Bagadong fermenting vessel did not do justice to the presence of the object among the Bunsen burners and test-tube racks of the old chem lab in the basement of Sterling Hall. Fashioned from the trunk of a belian ironwood tree, nearly three feet tall, weighing nearly two hundred pounds, it held just shy of four gallons. Cut with stone axes and hollowed out with hot coals, it was carved to look like a squatting man on one side, a woman on the other. The male figure had a phallus, as long and stout as a billy club. The head of the penis was sheathed in beaten brass that had been cannibalized from an artillery shell. The female figure featured breasts nippled with iron nails stolen from a missionary, and a vagina fashioned from the jawbones of a primate (Dr. Winton, after much debate, had decided that its teeth had once belonged to an orangutan). Friedrich was more interested in the ethnopsychological implications of the fact that the male and the female shared the same head—which was also the lid of the fermenting vessel.

Perched on the slate countertop next to the lab sink, the periodic table bannered behind it, the figure seemed to cast a shadow on them, even when it didn’t. Hands, sweat, use had smoothed its surface and given the wood a darkly damp patina, as if it were perspiring. The eyes of the shared face were wide open; the whites were inlays of bone, with huge dilated pupils of red coral. The mouth was lipped in cowry shells, the man/woman was neither smiling nor angry; the expression was one of superior calm.

As Friedrich had hoped, the residue of dried
gaikau dong
in the bottom of the vessel provided the yeast culture necessary to ferment the kwina leaves into a crude beer. By day seven they had 3.78 liters of The Way Home as it would have been prescribed by the Bagadong shaman to ameliorate the grief and fears and depressions of a bereaved widow, an orphaned child, a spurned lover, or a warrior who had lost his hand, or his courage. To make administering this drug easier and more scientific re: dosage, as well as to ascertain in what form, if any, kwina was psychoactive, Friedrich and Winton distilled off the alcohol, then dried the remaining liquid in a vacuum.

By day ten The Way Home was reduced to a saltshaker’s worth of faintly chartreuse crystals.
Gai kau dong
was referred to by its initials, GKD. Doctors Friedrich and Winton had not quite become friends but were relaxed enough in one another’s company to borrow cigarettes from each other’s packs without feeling the need to ask.

It was day eleven. The crystals had been diluted in sterile water at a ratio of a hundred to one. Colorless and odorless, The Way Home now resided in 1,000 milliliter glass-stoppered Erlenmeyer flasks. Friedrich and Winton sat on stools, admiring the purified fruits of their labor. Will’s shirtsleeves were rolled up, tie loosened; he wore a black rubber apron tied around his waist. She wore a freshly laundered lab coat and sensible shoes cobbled out of alligator. “What do you think we should call it?”

“Nothing, until we find out if it works.” Will wasn’t a pessimist. It was just that he had learned the hard way that you won’t be disappointed if you expect the worst. They both reached for the pack of cigarettes on the counter at the same time. There was only one Lucky left. “You can have it.” Will handed her the smoke.

“We’ll share. We’re partners, after all, Dr. Friedrich.” They never used first names. Winton lit it off the Bunsen burner, took a drag, and passed it to Friedrich. He had sworn to his wife he hadn’t started smoking again. When she smelled the stink of cigarettes on his clothes, he blamed it on Winton. He didn’t feel guilty about the lie until he tasted Bunny’s pink lipstick on the end of that shared cigarette.

“When this is all over . . .” Winton took back her cigarette, “. . . I think I’m going to turn Jack and Jill into a planter.” They were her nicknames for the figures on the vessel.

“Please correct me if I’m wrong, but did I ever tell you or imply that you could have the fermenting vessel?”

“No . . .” Bunny stubbed out the shared cigarette. “I apologize for being presumptuous.”

“I already promised it to my wife.” He hadn’t, but Winton’s sense of entitlement annoyed him a little more each day.

“Is Nora fond of primitive art?”

“Why do you think she likes me?”

“That is not a question I’ve ever thought about.” She picked a bit of tobacco off the tip of her tongue and jotted down something in her notebook.

Friedrich wondered why he’d brought Nora into the conversation, and changed the subject. “We’re gonna need thirty-six rats for our initial tests.”

“I should think one or two would be enough to determine if it’s toxic. The only way we’ll know the psychological effects of GKD is to test it on humans.” Winton had put a tea kettle on the Bunsen burner.

“I’m not comfortable letting anyone take this until I’ve seen hard evidence it has a beneficial effect.”

“You’re implying I imagined its effect on Lieutenant Higgins?”

“I just don’t think you were objective.”

“On what grounds?” She looked at him like a dog who’d growled at her.

“Because I think you were in love with your patient and probably had slept with him. All of which I understand and am in no way judging you for. But . . .”

“Point taken.” The kettle was whistling. “Well, Doctor, how do you propose to determine whether GKD makes a rat less depressed? Or more to the point, how do you intend to depress the rats that are taking part in your tests? Give them unhappy childhoods? Dead-end jobs?”

“I’ll have the rats in a controlled situation that provokes a general sense of hopelessness.” He said it like he was ordering a burger at a lunch stand.

“Such as?”

Friedrich winced as his mind tried to chase down a thought that had just poked its head into his consciousness. “You could think of depression as a way of pretending you’re dead, like an animal showing its throat. And if we think about this like one of the cannibals who thought this stuff up, to be a good cannibal, you can’t be defensive. What makes them function well in their society is the same thing that makes us function well—focused aggression in the face of chronic, inescapable adversity. So we depress the rats by putting them in a situation all their instincts tell them they can never escape from.”

“How are we going to do that?”

“Drowning . . . in a pool with no exit, and you can’t touch bottom. Put them up against a hopelessness they can feel and taste, and see how long it takes them to give up and stop swimming. That would approximate the emotions that bring on depression in modern-day life.”