The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares (32 page)

“Ms. Steene, no reputable doctor would ‘trepan’ a patient. That is just not possible. There’s no medical purpose to it, and as I said it’s very dangerous, as you can surmise. I don’t quite see why you came to me. . . .”

Ms. Steene wasn’t an unattractive woman but her voice set Lucas’s nerves on edge, like sandpaper rubbed against sandpaper. She seemed to be peering at him with an unusual avidity, as if indeed there was a reason why she’d made an appointment to see him which he wasn’t willing to acknowledge. “I came to inquire whether you might administer this treatment to me, Doctor. It’s very simple—a single hole to start with. The recommended size is three-quarters inch in diameter in this area of the skull”—with bizarre matter-of-factness the woman indicated a portion of her scalp several inches above her right eye.

Brusquely Dr. Brede said, “I’m sorry. No.”

“Just—‘no’? But why not? If you do ‘face-lifts’—‘liposuction’—procedures for mere vanity’s sake—why won’t you do this, for the sake of the
spirit
?”

Because there is no such entity as “spirit.” Because you are a madwoman.

“I’m afraid not, Ms. Steene. And I don’t recommend that you look around for another ‘surgeon’ to do this ridiculous ‘procedure’ for you.”

On this note the consultation ended abruptly. With a forced courteous smile Dr. Brede showed Ms. Steene to the door. How
his face ached, like a mask clamped too tightly in place! Though he was incensed and indignant from the insult to his professional integrity, yet he managed to behave courteously to Ms. Steene; even now the woman left his office reluctantly as if, despite the doctor’s unambiguous words, he might change his mind and summon her back.

Chloe complained that Ms. Steene hadn’t paid the consultation fee but had simply walked out of the office, rudely. Dr. Brede assured her it was all right, the consultation hadn’t taken long—“Just expunge Ms. Steene from our records. As if she’d never been.”

This season of dark-pelting rains! That seemed never to be ending except in patches of ferocious sunshine so blinding, Dr. Brede had to wear dark glasses when he stepped outside, and was forced to drive his car—a silver Jaguar SL—with unusual concentration, for fear of having an accident. He was disturbed by frequent for sale signs in the more affluent areas of Hazelton-on-Hudson; even at Weirlands, where once there’d been a waiting list for tenants, there were beginning to be vacated offices. It was a shock to see that the Hazelton Neck & Spine Clinic had departed with rude abruptness from its large suite in an adjoining building.

Yet more troubling, Dr. Brede’s patients were canceling appointments, often failing to make new appointments, and failing to pay their bills. One of these patients had moved to Arizona—“No forwarding address!” Chloe lamented—and one was reputedly hospitalized after what might have been a suicide attempt. the corn maiden and other nightmares
It wasn’t likely that Dr. Brede would be paid what he was owed by these women—more than $19,000 had accumulated in the past six months in unpaid patients’ bills. Turning such delinquent accounts over to a collection agency was a desperate move Dr. Brede hesitated to make: even if the agency collected, he’d receive only a fraction of the money owed him.

Civilization is faces, “appearances”: when these collapse, civilization collapses as well.

His last patient of the day. In fact, late Friday afternoon, Dr. Brede’s last patient of the week.

“‘Trepanning’—you’ve heard of it, Dr. Brede?”

The woman spoke in a thrilled, lowered voice. Her bright fanatic eyes were fixed on Lucas’s face.

“Doctor, I realize—it’s a controversial procedure. It’s—unorthodox.”

Lucas stared at the woman, dismayed. Was this some sort of cruel joke? The image came to him of carrion birds circling a fallen creature not yet dead.

Irma Siegfried, the divorced wife of a rich Hazelton businessman, was a long-term patient of Lucas Brede’s. For the past decade she’d seen him faithfully—collagen injections, Botox, and Restylane—face-lift, “eyelid lift”—liposuction; and now, unexpectedly, to Dr. Brede’s chagrin, it was a very different sort of procedure—
trepanning—
about which she’d come to consult with him.

Lucas knew that Irma Siegfried was devoted to him; yet he had reason to suspect that from time to time, especially when Irma spent part of the winter in Palm Beach or in the Caribbean, she’d had work done on her face by other cosmetic surgeons. The woman’s fair, thin, dry skin—the skin of a natural, if now faded blonde—was the sort of skin that aged prematurely despite the most diligent cosmetic precautions, and so now Irma’s naive-girlish manner, a childlike sort of seductiveness, that had been so effective only a few years before, was increasingly at odds with her appearance. In her eyes a hurt, wounded, reproachful glisten that touched Lucas Brede to the heart—
Help me Doctor! You alone have the power
.

Initially Irma Siegfried pleaded the case for trepanning in a reasonable tone. She wasn’t the sort of patient—like the contentious Ms. Steene—to bluntly confound her doctor’s professional wisdom, still less his integrity. Irma told him that she’d reached a “spiritual impasse” in her life—she’d had “serious doubts” whether the Christian God existed during this seemingly endless winter, in the last months of the Bush administration—“And Mr. Bush was a man I voted for, Doctor—my family has always been Republican, but now”—in a tremulous voice telling Lucas that she’d come to the conclusion that only a “radical”—“revolutionary”—alteration of her spirit-consciousness could save her:
trepanning.

Lucas asked what on earth she knew of
trepanning
. He did his best to disguise the astonishment and disapproval he felt.

Irma said that she’d learned through books and the
Internet—“The New World Trepanation Order”—and had only just the previous week realized how essentially it was for her to have the procedure. “It isn’t for everyone, of course. But I know it’s for
me
. I need to relieve the terrible stress of my nerves and certain ‘noxious memories’—as
trepanning
has done for so many others.”

“Really? What others?”

“On the Internet—they’ve given testimony. I’ve been corresponding with some of them—women like myself—‘pilgrims.’ I signed a pledge to establish an ‘endowment’—at the New World Order—which is based in Geneva, Switzerland. The director is ‘medically trained’—his teaching is that we are living in a debased ‘Age of Lead’ and radical measures are required for our salvation. And
trepanning
is very simple: a hole bored in the skull.”

Lucas listened with disdain, disbelief. How casually the woman uttered these words—
a hole bored in the skull.

“Doctor, I know it’s ‘dangerous’—of course! All that is courageous in our lives is ‘dangerous’—even ‘reckless.’ I’ve come to you because I know you, and I trust you. All that you’ve done for me—which has been considerable, Dr. Brede—won’t begin to compare with what I am asking you to do for me now, if you will find it in your heart to help me! If you can’t, I will have to turn to a nonmedical practitioner of some sort—unless I fly to Geneva—there are
trepannists
who advertise on the Internet. The procedure is painless, it’s said—or almost—but there is a risk of infection if amateurs perform it. And if the dura mater
is penetrated in some way to cause hemorrhaging, that could be serious. But in recent dreams . . .”

Yet more bizarre, the matter-of-fact way in which the woman alluded to dura mater, as if she had the slightest idea what she was talking about, and how disabling, if not fatal, such a wound, carelessly executed, might be.

Bizarre too, that Lucas was listening courteously to her, and not bringing their conference to an abrupt close. If he insulted Irma Siegfried he might never hear from her again, this was a risk he must take. His professional integrity! His common sense! Yet it was difficult to interrupt Irma, who spoke with such naive hope of having a hole drilled in her head to release “toxic” thoughts, emotions and memories that had been accumulating since her childhood—“Like a well that has been slowly poisoned.”

It was touching that for her visit to Dr. Brede, Irma Siegfried was wearing elegant clothing—cream-colored cashmere, a strand of pearls around her neck, glittering but tasteful rings. Yet disconcerting when she began to speak more forcefully, like a balked child, charging that physicians like Dr. Brede made careers out of concentrating on the “physical” and neglecting the “spiritual”—the procedures she’d had on her face had been “stopgaps” with no power to satisfy “spiritual yearnings.”

And how did she know this?—she’d had “numinous dreams” since the New Year.

“Doctor, I’m not happy—not any longer—with just ‘appearances.’ The face-lifts, the injections—have created a ‘false
face’—what is necessary for us, to transcend our ‘fallen’ selves, is to return to the ‘original face’—the ‘original soul’—that is the child-soul, unblemished by the world.
Trepanation
has been a sacred ritual in many cultures, you know—as ancient as the Egyptians long before Christ—in prehistory, practiced by Neanderthals. There are ‘trepanned’ skulls to prove this—I’ve seen evidence on the Internet. It’s believed that this is what poets mean by ‘trailing wisps of glory’—‘memory’—this return to the pure child-self. I remember my ‘child-self,’ Doctor—I was so happy then! Yet it hardly seems that that child was
me,
so many years have passed.”

“That may be true, Irma—to a degree”—but what was Lucas saying, did he believe this nonsense?—“but
trepanation
is not the solution. No reputable doctor would perform this ‘sacred ritual’ for you—I’m sure.”

He felt a tug of emotion for the agitated woman, as for himself. It was so—so many years! His childhood in Camden, Maine, belonged now to a boy he no longer recalled, on the far side of an abyss.

“Doctor, if you, with your surgical skill, refuse me—I will have to turn to a stranger, on the Internet. I may have to fly to Geneva, alone—in secret, since my family disapproves. Please say that you will help me, Dr. Brede!”

“I can’t ‘help’ you! The procedure is dangerous, and useless—it can’t possibly be of ‘help.’ It’s true, radical and once-discredited procedures like lobotomies and electroshock treatment have been reexamined lately—but in very rare instances, and when
other methods have failed. There is no medical justification for ‘trepanning’—drilling holes into a healthy human head.”

Whenever Lucas spoke, Irme Siegfried listened, or gave that impression; but in the way of a pilgrim whose fanatic faith can’t be dampened by another’s logic. “Dr. Brede, I would pay you, of course—twice the fee for a face-lift. This would be a ‘spirit-lift’—it would save my life.”

“Irma, I don’t think we should discuss this any longer. . . .”

Yet there was irresolution in Dr. Brede’s voice—the faintest note, near-imperceptible. Like a dog sensing fear in a human voice, however it’s disguised, Irma Siegfried leaned forward, baring her small porcelain-white teeth in a ghastly seductive smile. “Doctor, I would tell no one—of course! This would be our utter secret! I will pay you in advance of the procedure—you would not even need to bill me. Here, I’ve brought—a drawing—the ‘sacred triangle’—”

Irma was smoothing out a sheet of paper. Here was a drawing of a triangle as a child might have drawn it with a ruler. “Three very small holes, just above the hairline—here.” Irma drew back her hair, to suggest the positioning of the holes, in the area of what was called the frontal lobe—though she wouldn’t have known this, still less what crucial functions the frontal lobe controlled. Sensing Lucas’s reluctant interest, determined not to lose it, Irma was recounting how she’d dreamt the “sacred triangle”—which was in fact an ancient symbol predating even
Egyptian history—out of the vast reservoir of the “collective unconscious”; she’d dreamt this design which was fated for
her.

Somberly, Dr. Brede listened. The tight affable smile had clamped the lower part of his face.

This is madness. You know the woman is mad.

Yes, but she has money. She will pay you.

Do I need money? How badly?

Such yearning in the woman’s eyes! Lucas had seen that look of yearning in the eyes of countless others, that filled him with both repugnance and something like exhilaration, pride—so a priest might feel presiding over sacred rites, ritual confession, absolution and blessing.

Or an execution, a sacrifice.

Lucas was thinking—would it matter? If he drilled, or pretended to drill, a few very small holes in this woman’s scalp, barely penetrating the hard bone of the skull? It would be a kind of cosmetic treatment, above the hairline; he would take care not to penetrate the dura mater. The smile clamped tighter about his jaws.

“Dr. Brede? Will you—?”

Lucas hesitated. His heart clanged like a metronome. Yet hearing himself say, with infinite relief: “Irma, no. I think—no. I’m sorry.”

Tears welled in the woman’s eyes. Abruptly then the consultation ended.

Lucas stumbled into the adjoining lavatory. He ran cold water
and splashed it on his burning face. How close he’d come to a terrible danger!—but he’d drawn back in time.

No. We can’t. It would be a tragic mistake we could never undo.

In the photos—you can see the child is brain damaged. Some sort of birth-injury. The eyes aren’t in focus. There’s a look of cretinism
. . . .

We can’t risk it. We can’t get involved. We’ve been forewarned—these Russian “orphans”
. . .

No. No. No. Absolutely no.

How was it his fault?—for years his wife had taken fertility drugs. A specialist had encouraged her, at enormous expense. Lucas had not been optimistic, though he’d wanted a child as badly as she did—of course. Soon he’d come to see that the powerful hormone supplements were adversely affecting her—her fixation upon a child, her emotional instability, mood swings. Her resentment of him, as a
man
. And when finally—almost unbelievably—she did become pregnant, at the age of thirty-nine, the sonogram had revealed serious defects in both the heart and brain.