The Town and the City: A Novel

  Then he observed the other doctors, who seemed more competent, less Don Juan-ish, and somehow professionally humble. One of them particularly, a husky young Italian, obviously a New Yorker, who came around on the evening-call absentmindedly carrying a copy of the New Republic under his writing pad. Francis looked eagerly at this man, Dr. Gatti, who had a friendly and absentminded and almost amenable look about him. He noticed how Gatti jotted down all the important data, while the head doctor, Thompson, asked all the routine questions in a bored manner and moved on impatiently, glancing at his watch.

  Francis also noticed that the head attendant, Bill, who had a sort of misty-eyed sentimental look and always spoke in a soft, gentle, and persuasive voice, could also be very cruel and sadistic at times. Francis had originally noticed this in his eyes, which were a little blank and unseeing, and in the shape of his jaw, the gross, heavy shape of it. Francis saw him beat up a stubborn patient that night when they were trying to calm down the poor creature off some tremendous yelling manic-depressive exultation. The other attendants held the boy’s arms and legs, while Bill, beside himself with rage, pummelled him with his fists, occasionally hitting the other attendants who growled: “Watch what you’re doing, for krissakes!” Finally they had the youngster calmed down for a moment as he nursed his bruises, and they forced a drink of paraldehyde down his throat, and put him away in one of the padded cells. Bill actually cried awhile, saying mournfully: “Geez, guys, I don’t like to do things like that, nobody loves these kids more than I do, but what the hell can I do?” The other attendants consoled him.

  Francis walked around noticing everything with great horror. There was one fellow who came up to him and said: “I know you, you don’t have to act innocent, not with me you don’t.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re an F.B.I. man, but you’re not fooling me, not one bit; what’s more I don’t care: you’ve got nothing on me.” And this young man smiled into Francis’ face.

  “You don’t have anything to worry about,” replied Francis gravely, “I’m not here to watch you, but someone else. You can relax now.” He suddenly wondered why he should say a silly thing like that.

  He made friends with only one patient in his ward, a tall, thin, sensitive-looking boy of twenty-four who continually smiled and behaved in the most genteel and refined manner. His name was Griggs. Griggs told Francis that he was a conscientious objector but that he hadn’t had the nerve to announce it to the proper authorities. He was very nervous, yet dreamy, and spent most of his time reading a book, or staring over it for hours. Francis thought him very intelligent but noticed something indefinite and inconsecutive in his line of reasoning, brilliant and provocative though it was.

  “The trouble with the world,” said Griggs, absentmindedly running a long bony hand through his hair, “is not war or ignorance or anything like that, actually it’s—well, you’ll never guess what, it’s the liver, the organism right down here,” and he patted his side.

  “The liver?”

  “Yes. You see, people eat too much, they keep a continual sloppy stream of food going down all day and never give their liver a chance to kick out the bile. If they did, they’d never grow old and get gray hair, your Senators and Congressmen in Washington would not be a bunch of old petulant men, there wouldn’t be wars. It all begins in the liver. The liver is the killer.”

  “That’s an interesting play on words,” sallied Francis.

  “Oh, it’s more important than that,” said Griggs gravely, with a little reproach in his tone, “it’s a question of the source of youth itself. Now I myself have experimented by starving myself on a controlled starvation diet, and you’ll note that there’s an unusual youthfulness in my eyes and in my movements.”

  This was almost true, except for the fact that he was a bag of bones with a gaunt, haggard mask of a face. “I hope to grow younger and younger as I go along, until finally, when I’m fifty, I’ll be able to play football.…”

  He overwhelmed Francis for days with his observations, but one day he grew silent, the day after that he just sat in his chair staring, and the day after that, steeped in profoundest silence, he refused even to look at the trays of food they brought him, and they took him away to a padded cell. Francis was terrified, especially since his single choice of a friend in the wards had turned out so disastrously.

  Soon Francis had many panic-stricken moments when his only thought was: “I’m caught, I’m caught!”—and he racked his whole being wondering for how long, how long.… It was four weeks already.

  One day he was lying on his bed with his slippers on, and one of the young attendants reminded him that this was against the rules. Francis did not budge: he suddenly had a feeling of the most intense pleasure.

  “Take a rag in the corner, Francis, and wipe off the dirt from your bedspread. And don’t do this again.”

  Still Francis did not budge, he simply stared away absentmindedly and hummed a little tune.

  “Francis!”

  Francis was swelling with a pleasurable indignation that brought a flush to his cheeks.

  “Francis, you don’t want me to lock you up in solitary, do you? Get up off that bed this minute and do as I say.”

  “All right,” said Francis, getting up, “lead the way, lock me up if you want to.”

  The young attendant was startled, he began to blush, and all the other patients, who were watching, were amazed.

  “Come on!” goaded Francis, waiting at the door. “Lock me up, Red!”

  Red was confused for just a moment, he seemed to ponder the possibilities with no little hesitation, but the look of insufferable arrogance and pleasure on Francis’ face irritated him and he made up his mind hotly. “All right, wise guy, I will lock you up!” Together they swaggered down the hall, Red found an empty padded cell, Francis walked in, Red locked the door, peeked in through the small screen (a little forlornly now), and Francis merely sat on the floor, on a mattress, with his legs crossed underneath him, and looked about him with intense pleasure. He suddenly realized that his privacy here would be inviolable and beautiful.

  “What are you going to do, Francis?” said Red finally. “Are you going to do as I say, or stay in there?”

  Francis grinned happily. He had been wandering around in a bathrobe so long that his usual severe taciturnity was all gone; and he said now: “Don’t worry, my friend, I shall simply stay here and contemplate Vishnu.”

  Red went away, and a minute later the most mournful, grief-stricken, unhappy face in the world was looking in at Francis through the screen—Bill, the head attendant, who was actually crying, great real tears were swelling from his eyes and rolling down his cheeks. He just stared grievously through the screen for a whole half-minute, in ruefullest silence, he even sniffed and blew his nose slowly, wiped his eyes, and finally, in a low, tenderly pleading, almost inaudible voice, he said: “Francis baby, what did you go and do?”

  Francis was astounded.

  “Francis chappy, I don’t know what to say, I’m so stunned, I never expected you to kick up like that, not you, not you!”

  Francis only stared.

  “A nice quiet kid like you, why, who would have ever thought it, now tell me, please tell me.”

  There was a long silence. New tears were welling up in Bill’s eyes. Francis was conscious of an instinctive fear of the situation, of Bill’s sentimentality which seemed somehow ominous. He promptly got up and agreed to go back and wipe the dirt off his bed. Bill affectionately put his arm around him and led him back to the ward like a mother consoled. And Francis was convinced that he had done the right thing at just the right moment, “or,” he thought, “something would have exploded for sure.”

  That same afternoon something happened that Francis had long been awaiting: he had an interview with the youthful Doctor Gatti, and he was ready for him.

  Gatti’s curiosity in Francis had already been aroused by the reports he had read about him.

  “They’ve got
you down here as a dementia praecox case,” he said affably after they had talked awhile in his office, “but I don’t think so in the least, not after talking to you like this.”

  “I should hope not,” said Francis urbanely. “By the way, I suppose that the diagnosis was made by Doctor Thompson?”

  “Yes? How did you know?” smiled the doctor.

  “I just imagine that he wouldn’t waste much time with any of the newer, more complex diagnoses, assuming of course that he even understands the meaning of the old ones.”

  “Do you have any idea what is meant by dementia praecox?” smiled the young doctor.

  “I read the definition somewhere in an ancient text. I do want to ask you one thing, though—I wonder if I’m being put through all this to convince somebody, including myself, that I must be insane because I can’t submit to the absolutist discipline of military life.”

  Francis had conceived and memorized these phrases weeks before, on the very night he had first seen Gatti with his copy of the New Republic. He now recited them out with a strange and exalted nervousness. It was lucky that he was nervous, otherwise the phrases would have sounded mad and gravely memorized.

  The young doctor was overwhelmed with curiosity. The fact that he was interviewing Francis in a capacity as psychiatrist, and that he was his commanding officer as well, seemed to be forgotten on both sides, and indeed, when it occurred to Gatti, he was disposed to overlook the matter.

  “But that is a very bitter way of looking at it,” he cried, lighting a cigarette and sitting on the edge of his desk.

  “It’s a bitter world, isn’t it?” murmured Francis.

  “Yes, but that’s not our consideration at the moment. Right now we’re concerned with your failure to adapt yourself to a given situation. We can talk philosophy later.… For one thing now, I’m ready to assume that the headaches you reported were entirely made up—”

  Francis was deeply silent.

  “Whether you had them or not is only interesting to me insofar as it shows your withdrawal from the realities at hand, whether psychologically or psychosomatically. In any case it’s a withdrawal and it reveals a basic neurotic tendency. Do you understand that? I mean the terms? I assume you do.”

  “The terms, yes,” replied Francis. He was busily considering the naïveté with which the young doctor had just mentioned “philosophy”—like some eager young student. “I did have headaches,” continued Francis almost affably now, “as a result of having my teeth drilled and filled, twelve cavities in all, the second day here. But I was exaggerating things, I’ve always been a little—what’s the word?” he demanded innocently.

  “Hypochondriac?”

  “Yes. By the way,” he smiled, “another thing has occurred to me. Do you get impatient incidentally because I go on talking like this?—”

  “Oh, no!” cried the doctor quickly. “Actually, the more you talk the better it is. I’m supposed to get an insight into your thought processes.”

  When he said that, they looked at each other curiously, with a sheer, foolish curiosity.

  “Well then,” continued Francis, “I’ve been wondering how you yourself, as a liberal, can reconcile your enlightened views with the system of military disciplines that are built up in the armed forces. You’ve got to admit that the absolute relationship between officers and enlisted men is a fascistic set-up. No one can deny that any more than you can deny that it’s precisely such a system we’re supposed to be wiping out.” All this had been memorized.

  “Ah-ha!” laughed Gatti jovially. “I think I expected that. I knew it was coming!” With a gesture of excited pleasure he went to the door of the office, which had been left ajar, and closed it.

  When Francis saw this he could have hugged himself with delight, and the thought flashed across his mind: “Then it is really possible to be clever!”

  He had many other interviews with Gatti during the following week and the upshot of it was that his fate in the Navy was decided once and for all, with no further hesitation and incompetent uncertainty. He was removed from the locked ward to the open wards, his diagnosis was changed from “dementia praecox” to “schizoid tendencies,” and he was told that his discharge would be coming through soon, an honorable medical discharge. Doctor Gatti, who was nobody’s fool, understood quite clearly that out of the millions of men involved in the Navy, good and bad, easygoing and wild, dutiful and undisciplined, Francis was numbered among those who could render no service at all to the organization because they were merely a jumble of incalculable reactions. He politely informed Francis of this opinion, and Francis was thoroughly pleased.

  One rainy night an attendant came to Francis and notified him that he had a visitor waiting in the office.

  “You’ve got only a half-hour, so step on it!”

  Francis was astounded. As he hurried in the hall he passed a wet, shabby old man who, with a meek and humble air, was looking back down the hall in a gape of hesitation, clutching a dripping hat with both hands. It was a moment of awful presentiment before Francis, turning back to this woeful old man, realized it was his father George Martin. He had come a long way; he looked tired and haunted.

  “Well, I didn’t expect this!” said Francis, more pleased than he could have imagined.

  “Francis,” cried the old man anxiously, “there’s a doctor here—Doctor Thompson? I wrote him a letter and asked him why they were keeping you here, and he told me you were a pretty sick boy.”

  “Oh, nonsense!” snapped Francis angrily. They shook hands firmly.

  “You don’t look sick to me, Francis. What’s it all about? I was really worried—I took three days off from work to come and see you, that letter scared me so much. I’m going back tonight right away, I just wanted to see you myself, it’s only for these few minutes they allowed. And, gosh, what a trip out here, a thousand miles, Francis, a thousand miles!” he said with amazement. “But your mother and I were so worried!—”

  Francis was so exasperated he could hardly talk. Finally he explained everything to his father and assured him that it was going to be all right.

  “Well then!” sighed the old man wonderingly. “Like you say, they’d have to prove you’re nuts for not wanting to fight their silly wars. Well, that’s one way of putting it. God knows, young Joe, and Petey too haven’t given it much thought, they’re right in the thick of it, and your little brother Charley’s joining the Army next month.”

  The old man gazed at Francis. “But I understand you, kiddo, I understand you better than anybody else right now. You just made up your mind you wouldn’t have any of it, so here you are, and it’s all right with me, don’t you worry, I won’t wave a flag at you. If everybody was like you all over the world, they wouldn’t be able to find anybody to fight their wars. God knows,” said Martin, shaking his head, “I’m not the one to judge. You’re a strange boy with your own quiet little mind. You’re my son and you’ve got a conscience of your own, I hope! Everything is in chaos nowadays and none of us can explain it, none of us. You know something?” he suddenly grinned quickly.

  “What?”

  “Do you realize that this was the longest trip I ever took in all my life? That Chicago! You ought to see that town, a swell city! I had the time of my life this afternoon running around and eating in little restaurants.” The old man chuckled gleefully. “If I had my way I’d travel clear on out west tonight! But the old lady and I have a budget to watch, dammit. It was a lulu of a trip, sonny. I enjoyed the beautiful Ohio farmlands, Indiana, that beautiful Indiana—”

  “I’m glad you got something out of the stupid mess!” muttered Francis darkly. “Imagine that Thompson writing you a thing like that. The stupid fool!”

  “I’ll take your word he’s a fool, Francis.”

  “Ta-ake my word!” breathed Francis madly.

  The old man gripped Francis’ hand and held it in his. “Don’t let them get you down, sonny. Do as your old man says and take it easy, wait it out, be calm. Be h
umble, sonny, be humble! I’m going to have to be leaving, it’s almost nine o’clock. Never mind what happens and what they say,” he concluded with sorrowful gravity.

  “Be humble,” echoed Francis with a curl of his lips. “Be humble—among strutting fools?”

  “Because it doesn’t really matter,” said the old man, frowning painfully over a thought of his own, “and a man is as strong as he’s humble. There.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” sniffed Francis, grinning suddenly at his father. “A man’s as strong as his strength and will, there’s no two ways about that.”

  “No,” replied the old man with awe and perfect seriousness, “a man’s as strong as he’s humble. He just doesn’t have to prove his strength.”

  Francis glanced at his father with sudden curiosity. For some reason he thought of Alexander Panos and the letter. “That may be true, in a sad kind of way. But it’s not for me! I haven’t time to be humble.”

  The old man chuckled. “Well, you can bandy twenty-five cent words all you want, but—Say! we’ve never had a talk like this before, have we? Well, I’ll be darned, I had to travel a thousand miles to have my first real chat with Francis! Ye Gods, what a family!” he cried. “Francis, Francis, Francis!” he chanted mournfully. “As long as you’re all right, that’s all I care!”

  His father hugged Francis when it was time to leave, he grew sorrowful again, his eyes misting, his jaw almost trembling. Francis watched him go away across the courtyard and disappear, and he went back to his bed in a meditative state of mind. He realized in a flash of compassionate understanding, and with no little mortification, that his father had traveled a thousand miles to talk to him for thirty minutes, and that it was all over now. And he remembered his father’s face and his voice and his big mournful presence, and it was strange to think of it, very strange and surprisingly sad.