The End of the Road (12 page)

“Well,” I said, “you’d still have to choose whether to answer the question or not, or whether to answer it correctly, even if you knew the right answer, wouldn’t you?”

The Doctor’s tranquil stare told me my question was somehow silly, though it seemed reasonable enough to me.

“One of the things you’ll have to do,” he said dryly, “is buy a copy of the
World Almanac
for 1951 and begin to study it scrupulously. This is intended as a discipline, and you’ll have to pursue it diligently, perhaps for a number of years. Informational Therapy is one of a number of therapies we’ll have to initiate at once.

I shook my head and chuckled genially. “Do all your patients memorize the
World Almanac,
Doctor?”

I might as well not have spoken.

“Mrs. Dockey will show you to your bed,” the Doctor said, rising to go. “I’ll speak to you again presently.” At the door he stopped and added, “One, perhaps two, of the older men may attempt familiarities with you at night up in the dormitory. They’re on Sexual Therapy, and I find it useful and convenient in their cases to suggest homosexual affairs rather than heterosexual ones. But unless you’re accustomed to that sort of thing I don’t think you should accept their advances. You should keep your life as uncomplicated as possible, at least for a while. Reject them gently, and they’ll go back to each other.”

There was little I could say. After a while Mrs. Dockey showed me my bed in the men’s dormitory. I was not introduced to my roommates, nor did I introduce myself. In fact (though since then I’ve come to know them better), during the three days that I remained at the farm not a dozen words were exchanged between us, much less homosexual advances. When I left they were uniformly glad to see me go.

The Doctor spent two or three one-hour sessions with me each day. He asked me virtually nothing about myself; the conversations consisted mostly of harangues against the medical profession for its stupidity in matters of paralysis, and imputations that my condition was the result of defective character and intelligence.

“You claim to be unable to choose in many situations,” he said once. “Well, I claim that that inability is only theoretically inherent in situations, when there’s no chooser. Given a particular chooser, it’s unthinkable. So, since the inability
was
displayed in your case, the fault lies not in the situation but in the fact that there was no chooser. Choosing is existence: to the extent that you don’t choose, you don’t exist. Now, everything we do must be oriented toward choice and action. It doesn’t matter whether this action is more or less reasonable than inaction; the point is that it is its opposite.”

“But why should anyone prefer it?” I asked.

“There’s no reason why you should prefer it,” he said, “and no reason why you shouldn’t. One is a patient simply because one chooses a condition that only therapy can bring one to, not because any one condition is inherently better than another. All my therapies for a while will be directed toward making you conscious of your existence. It doesn’t matter whether you act constructively or even consistently, so long as you act. It doesn’t matter to the case whether your character is admirable or not, so long as you think you have one.”

“I don’t understand why you should choose to treat anyone, Doctor,” I said.

“That’s my business, not yours.”

And so it went. I was charged, directly or indirectly, with everything from intellectual dishonesty and vanity to nonexistence. If I protested, the Doctor observed that my protests indicated my belief in the truth of his statements. If I only listened glumly, he observed that my glumness indicated my belief in the truth of his statements.

“All right, then,” I said at last, giving up. “Everything you say is true. All of it is the truth.”

The Doctor listened calmly. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “There’s no such thing as truth as you conceive it.”

These apparently pointless interviews did not constitute my only activity at the farm. Before every meal the other patients and I were made to perform various calisthenics under the direction of Mrs. Dockey. For the older patients these were usually very simple—perhaps a mere nodding of the head or flexing of the arms—although some of the old folks could execute really surprising feats: one gentleman in his seventies was an excellent rope climber, and two old ladies turned agile somersaults. For each Mrs. Dockey prescribed different activities; my own special prescription was to keep some sort of visible motion going all the time. If nothing else, I was constrained to keep a finger wiggling or a foot tapping, say, during mealtimes, when more involved movements would have made eating difficult. And I was told to rock from side to side in my bed all night long: not an unreasonable request, as it happened, for I did this habitually anyhow, even in my sleep—a habit carried over from childhood.

“Motion! Motion!” the Doctor would say, almost exalted. “You must be always
conscious
of motion!”

There were special diets and, for many patients, special drugs. I learned of Nutritional Therapy, Medicinal Therapy, Surgical Therapy, Dynamic Therapy, Informational Therapy, Conversational Therapy, Sexual Therapy, Devotional Therapy, Occupational and Preoccupational Therapy, Virtue and Vice Therapy, Theotherapy and Atheotherapy—and, later, Mythotherapy, Philosophical Therapy, Scriptotherapy, and many, many other therapies practiced in various combinations and sequences by the patients. Everything, to the Doctor, is either therapeutic, anti-therapeutic, or irrelevant. He is a kind of super-pragmatist.

At the end of my last session—it had been decided that I was to return to Baltimore experimentally, to see whether and how soon my immobility might recur—the Doctor gave me some parting instructions.

“It would not be well in your particular case to believe in God,” he said, “Religion will only make you despondent. But until we work out something for you it will be useful to subscribe to some philosophy. Why don’t you read Sartre and become an existentialist? It will keep you moving until we find something more suitable for you. Study the
World Almanac:
it is to be your breviary for a while. Take a day job, preferably factory work, but not so simple that you are able to think coherently while working. Something involving sequential operations would be nice. Go out in the evenings; play cards with people. I don’t recommend buying a television set just yet. If you read anything outside the
Almanac,
read nothing but plays—no novels or non-fiction. Exercise frequently. Take long walks, but always to a previously determined destination, and when you get there, walk right home again, briskly. And move out of your present quarters; the association is unhealthy for you. Don’t get married or have love affairs yet: if you aren’t courageous enough to hire prostitutes, then take up masturbation temporarily. Above all, act impulsively: don’t let yourself get stuck between alternatives, or you’re lost. You’re not that strong. If the alternatives are side by side, choose the one on the left; if they’re consecutive in time, choose the earlier. If neither of these applies, choose the alternative whose name begins with the earlier letter of the alphabet. These are the principles of Sinistrality, Antecedence, and Alphabetical Priority—there are others, and they’re arbitrary, but useful. Good-by.”

“Good-by, Doctor,” I said, a little breathless, and prepared to leave.

“If you have another attack, contact me as soon as you can. If nothing happens, come back in three months. My services will cost you ten dollars a visit—no charge for this one. I have a limited interest in your case, Jacob, and in the vacuum you have for a self. That
is
your case. Remember, keep moving all the time. Be
engagé.
Join things.”

I left, somewhat dazed, and took the bus back to Baltimore. There, out of it all, I had a chance to attempt to decide what I thought of the Doctor, the Remobilization Farm, the endless list of therapies, and my own position. One thing seemed fairly clear: the Doctor was operating either outside the law or on its very fringes. Sexual Therapy, to name only one thing, could scarcely be sanctioned by the American Medical Association. This doubtless was the reason for the farm’s frequent relocation. It was also apparent that he was a crank—though perhaps not an ineffective one—and one wondered whether he had any sort of license to practice medicine at all. Because—his rationalizations aside—I was so clearly different from his other patients, I could only assume that he had some sort of special interest in my case: perhaps he was a frustrated psychoanalyst. At worst he was some combination of quack and prophet—F ather Divine, Sister Kenny, and Bernarr MacFadden combined (all of them quite effective people), with elements of faith healer and armchair Freud thrown in—running a semi-legitimate rest home for senile eccentrics; and yet one couldn’t easily laugh off his forcefulness, and his insights frequently struck home. As a matter of fact, I was unable to make any judgment one way or the other about him or the farm or the therapies.

A most extraordinary Doctor. Although I kept telling myself that I was just going along with the joke, I actually did move from the Bradford down to East Chase Street; I took a job as an assembler on the line of the Chevrolet factory out on Broening Highway, where I operated an air wrench that bolted leaf springs on the left side of Chevrolet chassis, and I joined the U.A.W. I read Sartre but had difficulty deciding how to apply him to specific situations (How did existentialism help one decide whether to carry one’s lunch to work or buy it in the factory cafeteria? I had no head for philosophy). I played poker with my fellow assemblers, took walks from Chase Street down to the waterfront and back, and attended B movies. Temperamentally I was already pretty much of an atheist most of the time, and the proscription of women was a small burden, for I was not, as a rule, heavily sexed. I applied Sinistrality, Antecedence, and Alphabetical Priority religiously (though in some instances I found it hard to decide which of those devices best fitted the situation). And every quarter for the next two years I drove over to the Remobilization Farm for advice. It would be idle for me to speculate further on why I assented to this curious alliance, which more often than not is insulting to me—I presume that anyone interested in causes will have found plenty to pick from by now in this account.

I left myself sitting in the Progress and Advice Room, I believe, in September of 1953, waiting for the Doctor. My mood on this morning was an unusual one; as a rule I am almost “weatherless” the moment I enter the farmhouse, and I suppose that weatherlessness is the ideal condition for receiving advice, but on this morning, although I felt unemotional, I was not without weather. I felt dry, clear, and competent, for some reason or other—quite sharp and not a bit humble. In meteorological terms, my weather was
sec Supérieur.

“How are you these days, Horner?” the Doctor asked affably as he entered the room.

“Just fine, Doctor,” I replied breezily. “How’s yourself?”

The Doctor took his seat, spread his knees, and regarded me critically, not answering my question.

“Have you begun teaching yet?”

“Nope. Start next week. Two sections of grammar and two of composition.”

“Ah.” He rolled his cigar around in his mouth. He was studying me, not what I said. “You shouldn’t be teaching composition.”

“Can’t have everything,” I said cheerfully, stretching my legs out under his chair and clasping my hands behind my head. “It was that or nothing, so I took it.” The Doctor observed the position of my legs and arms.

“Who is this confident fellow you’ve befriended?” he asked. “One of the other teachers? He’s terribly sure of himself!”

I blushed: it occurred to me that I
was
imitating Joe Morgan. “Why do you say I’m imitating somebody?”

“I didn’t,” the Doctor smiled. “I only asked who was the forceful fellow you’ve obviously met.”

“None of your business, sir.”

“Oh, my. Very good. It’s a pity you can’t take over that manner consistently—you’d never need my services again! But you’re not stable enough for that yet, Jacob. Besides, you couldn’t act like him when you’re in his company, could you? Anyway I’m pleased to see you assuming a role. You do it, evidently, in order to face up to me: a character like your friend’s would never allow itself to be insulted by some crank with his string of implausible therapies, eh?”

“That’s right, Doctor,” I said, but much of the fire had gone out of me under his analysis.

“This indicates to me that you’re ready for Mythotherapy, since you seem to be already practicing it without knowing it, and therapeutically, too. But it’s best you be aware of what you’re doing, so that you won’t break down through ignorance. Some time ago I told you to become an existentialist. Did you read Sartre?”

“Some things. Frankly I really didn’t get to be an existentialist.”

“No? Well, no matter now. Mythotherapy is based on two assumptions: that human existence precedes human essence, if either of the two terms really signifies anything; and that a man is free not only to choose his own essence but to change it at will. Those are both good existentialist premises, and whether they’re true or false is of no concern to us—they’re
useful
in your case.”

He went on to explain Mythotherapy.

“In life,” he said, “there are no essentially major or minor characters. To that extent, all fiction and biography, and most historiography, are a lie. Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.
Hamlet
could be told from Polonius’s point of view and called
The Tragedy of Polonius, Lord Chamberlain of Denmark.
He didn’t think he was a minor character in anything, I daresay. Or suppose you’re an usher in a wedding. From the groom’s viewpoint he’s the major character; the others play supporting parts, even the bride. From your viewpoint, though, the wedding is a minor episode in the very interesting history of
your
life, and the bride and groom both are minor figures. What you’ve done is choose to
play the part
of a minor character: it can be pleasant for you to
pretend to be
less important than you know you are, as Odysseus does when he disguises as a swineherd. And every member of the congregation at the wedding sees himself as the major character, condescending to witness the spectacle. So in this sense fiction isn’t a lie at all, but a true representation of the distortion that everyone makes of life.