We Can Build You

  “I know that.”

  “Would you care to try that?”

  “Yes!”

  “It would mean further schizophrenic episodes, occurring of course under supervised, controlled conditions.”

  “I don’t care, I want to try it.”

  “It wouldn’t bother you that I and other staff members were present to witness your behavior during these episodes? In other words, the invasion of your privacy—”

  “No,” I broke in, “it wouldn’t bother me; I don’t care who watches.”

  “Your paranoiac tendency,” Doctor Shedd said thoughtfully, “cannot be too severe, if watching eyes daunt you no more than this.”

  “They don’t daunt me a damn bit.”

  “Fine.” He looked pleased. “That’s an a-okay prognostic sign.” And with that he strolled off into the white steam clouds, wearing his blue trunks and holding his clipboard under his arm. My first interview with my psychiatrist at Kasanin Clinic was over with.

  At one that afternoon I was taken to a large clean room in which several nurses and two doctors waited for me. They strapped me down to a leather-covered table and I was given an intravenous injection of the hallucinogenic drug. The doctors and nurses, all overworked but friendly, stood back and waited. I waited, too, strapped to my table and wearing a hospital type frock, my bare feet sticking up, arms at my sides.

  Several minutes later the drug took effect. I found myself in downtown Oakland, California, sitting on a park bench in Jack London Square. Beside me, feeding bread crumbs to a flock of blue-gray pigeons, sat Pris. She wore capri pants and a green turtle-neck sweater; her hair was tied back with a red checkered bandana and she was totally absorbed in what she was doing, apparently oblivious to me.

  “Hey,” I said.

  Turning her head she said calmly, “Damn you; I said be quiet. If you talk you’ll scare them away and then that old man down there’ll be feeding them instead of me.”

  On a bench a short distance down the path sat Doctor Shedd smiling at us, holding his own packet of bread crumbs. In that manner my psyche had dealt with his presence, had incorporated him into the scene in this fashion.

  “Pris,” I said in a low voice, “I’ve got to talk to you.”

  “Why?” She faced me with her cold, remote expression. “It’s important to you, but is it to me? Or do you care?”

  “I care,” I said, feeling hopeless.

  “Show it instead of saying it—be quiet. I’m quite happy doing what I’m doing.” She returned to feeding the birds.

  “Do you love me?” I asked.

  “Christ no!”

  And yet I felt that she did.

  We sat together on the bench for some time and then the park, the bench and Pris herself faded out and I once more found myself on the flat table, strapped down and observed by Doctor Shedd and the overworked nurses of Kasanin Clinic.

  “That went much better,” Doctor Shedd said, as they released me.

  “Better than what?”

  “Than the two previous times.”

  I had no memory of previous times and I told him so.

  “Of course you don’t; they were not successful. No fantasy life was activated; you simply went to sleep. But now we can expect results each time.”

  They returned me to my room. The next morning I once more appeared in the therapy chamber to receive my allotment of fugal fantasy life, my hour with Pris.

  As I was being strapped down Doctor Shedd entered and greeted me. “Rosen, I’m going to have you entered in group therapy; that will augment this that we’re doing here. Do you understand what group therapy is? You’ll bring your problems before a group of your fellow patients, for their comments … you’ll sit with them while they discuss you and where you seem to have gone astray in your thinking. You’ll find that it all takes place in an atmosphere of friendliness and informality. And generally it’s quite helpful.”

  “Fine.” I had become lonely, here at the clinic.

  “You have no objection to the material from your fugues being made available to your group?”

  “Gosh no. Why should I?”

  “It will be oxide-tape printed and distributed to them in advance of each group therapy session … you’re aware that we’re recording each of these fugues of yours for analytical purposes, and, with your permission, use with the group.”

  “You certainly have my permission,” I said. “I don’t object to a group of my fellow patients knowing the contents of my fantasies, especially if they can help explain to me where I’ve gone wrong.”

  “You’ll find there’s no body of people in the world more anxious to help you than your fellow patients,” Doctor Shedd said.

  The injection of hallucinogenic drugs was given me and once more I lapsed into my controlled fugue.

  I was behind the wheel of my Magic Fire Chevrolet, in heavy freeway traffic, returning home at the end of the day. On the radio a commuter club announcer was telling me of a traffic jam somewhere ahead.

  “Confusion, construction or chaos,” he was saying. “I’ll guide you through, dear friend.”

  “Thanks,” I said aloud.

  Beside me on the seat Pris stirred and said irritably, “Have you always talked back to the radio? It’s not a good sign; I always knew your mental health wasn’t the best.”

  “Pris,” I said, “in spite of what you say I know you love me. Don’t you remember us together at Collie Nild’s apartment in Seattle?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t you remember how we made love?”

  “Awk,” she said, with revulsion.

  “I know you love me, no matter what you say.”

  “Let me off right here in this traffic, if you’re going to talk like that; you make me sick to my stomach.”

  “Pris,” I said, “why are we driving along like this together? Are we going home? Are we married?”

  “Oh god,” she moaned.

  “Answer me,” I said, keeping my eyes fixed on the truck ahead.

  She did not; she squirmed away and sat against the door, as far from me as possible.

  “We are,” I said. “I know we are.”

  When I came out of my fugue, Doctor Shedd seemed pleased. “You are showing a progressive tendency. I think it’s safe to say you’re getting an effective external catharsis for your regressive libido drives, and that’s what we’re counting on.” He slapped me on the back encouragingly, much as my partner Maury Rock had done, not so long ago.

  On my next controlled fugue Pris looked older. The two of us walked slowly through the great train station at Cheyenne, Wyoming, late at night, through the subway under the tracks and up onto the far side, where we stood silently together. Her face, I thought, had a fuller quality, as if she were maturing. Definitely, she had changed. Her figure was fuller. And she seemed more calm.

  “How long,” I asked her, “have we been married?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “Then we are,” I said, my heart full of joy.

  “Of course we are; do you think we’re living in sin? What’s the matter with you anyhow, do you have amnesia or something?”

  “Let’s go over to that bar we saw, opposite the train station; it looked lively.”

  “Okay,” she said. As we started back down into the subway once more she said, “I’m glad you got me away from those empty tracks … they depressed me. Do you know what I was starting to think about? I was wondering how it would feel to watch the engine coming, and then to sort of fall forward ahead of it, fall onto the tracks, and have it pass over you, cut you in half…. I wondered how it would feel to end it all like that, just by falling forward, as if you were going to sleep.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” I said, putting my arm around her and hugging her. She was stiff and unyielding, as always.

  When Doctor Shedd brought me out of my fugue he looked grave. “I am not too happy to see morbid elements arising in your anima-projection. However, it’s to be expecte
d; it shows what a long haul we still have ahead of us. In the next try, the fifteenth fugue—”

  “Fifteenth!” I exclaimed. “You mean that was number fourteen?”

  “You’ve been here over a month, now. I am aware that your episodes are blending together; that is to be expected, since sometimes there is no progress at all and sometimes the same material is repeated. Don’t worry about that, Rosen.”

  “Okay, Doctor,” I said, feeling glum.

  On the next try—or what appeared to my confused mind to be the next try—I once more sat with Pris on a bench in Jack London Park in downtown Oakland, California. This time she was quiet and sad; she did not feed any of the pigeons who wandered about but merely sat with her hands clasped together, staring down.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked her, trying to draw her close to me.

  A tear ran down her cheek. “Nothing, Louis.” From her purse she brought a handkerchief; she wiped her eyes and then blew her nose. “I just feel sort of dead and empty, that’s all. Maybe I’m pregnant. I’m a whole week late, now.”

  I felt wild elation; I gripped her in my arms and kissed her on her cold, unresponsive mouth. “That’s the best news I’ve heard yet!”

  She raised her gray, sadness-filled eyes. “I’m glad it pleases you, Louis.” Smiling a little she patted my hand.

  Definitely now I could see that she had changed. There were distinct lines about her eyes, giving her a somber, weary cast. How much time had passed? How many times had we been together, now? A dozen? A hundred? I couldn’t tell; time was gone for me, a thing that did not flow but moved in fitful jolts and starts, bogging down completely and then hesitantly resuming. I, too, felt older and much more weary. And yet—what good news this was.

  As soon as I was back in the therapy room I told Doctor Shedd about Pris’s pregnancy. He, too, was pleased. “You see, Rosen, how your fugues are showing more maturity, more elements of responsible reality-seeking on your part? Eventually their maturity will match your actual chronological age and at that point most of the fugal quality will have been discharged.”

  I went downstairs in a joyful frame of mind to meet with my group of fellow patients to listen to their explanations and questions regarding this new and important development. I knew that when they had read the transcript of today’s session they would have a good deal to say.

  In my fifty-second fugue I caught sight of Pris and my son, a healthy, handsome baby with eyes as gray as Pris’s and hair much like mine. Pris sat in the living room in a deep easy chair, feeding him from a bottle, an absorbed expression on her face. Across from them I sat, in a state of almost total bliss, as if all my tensions, all my anxieties and woes, had at last deserted me.

  “Goddam these plastic nipples,” Pris said, shaking the bottle angrily. “They collapse when he sucks; it must be the way I’m sterilizing them.”

  I trotted into the kitchen to get a fresh bottle from the sterilizer steaming on the range.

  “What’s his name, dear?” I asked when I returned.

  “What’s his name.” Pris gazed at me with resignation. “Are you all there, Louis? Asking what your baby’s name is, for chrissakes? His name’s Rosen, the same as yours.”

  Sheepishly, I had to smile and say, “Forgive me.”

  “I forgive you; I’m used to you.” She sighed. “Sorry to say.”

  But what is his name? I wondered. Perhaps I will know the next time or if not, then perhaps the one hundredth time. I must know or it will mean nothing to me, all this; it will be in vain.

  “Charles,” Pris murmured to the baby, “are you wetting?”

  His name was Charles, and I felt glad; it was a good name. Maybe I had picked it out; it sounded like what I would have arrived at.

  That day, after my fugue, as I was hurrying downstairs to the group therapy auditorium, I caught sight of a number of women entering a door on the women’s side of the building. One woman had short-cut black hair and stood slender and lithe, much smaller than the other women around her; they looked like inflated balloons in comparison to her. Is that Pris? I asked myself, halting. Please turn around, I begged, fixing my eyes on her back.

  Just as she entered the doorway she turned for an instant. I saw the pert, bobbed nose, the dispassionate, appraising gray eyes … it was Pris. “Pris!” I yelled, waving my arms.

  She saw me. She peered, frowning; her lips tightened. Then, very slightly, she smiled.

  Was it a phantom? The girl—Pris Frauenzimmer—had now gone on into the room, had disappeared from sight. You are back here at Kasanin Clinic, I said to myself. I knew it would happen sooner or later. And this is not a fantasy, not a fugue, controlled or otherwise; I’ve found you in actuality, in the real world, the outside world that is not a product of regressive libido or drugs. I have not seen you since that night at the club in Seattle when you hit the Johnny Booth simulacrum over the head with your shoe; how long ago that was! How much, how awfully much, I have seen and done since then—done in a vacuum, done without you, without the authentic, actual you. Satisfied with a mere phantom instead of the real thing…. Pris, I said to myself. Thank god; I have found you; I knew I would, someday.

  I did not go to my group therapy; instead I remained there in the hall, waiting and watching.

  At last, hours later, she reemerged. She came across the open patio directly toward me, her face clear and calm, a slight glow kindled in her eyes, more of wry amusement than anything else.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “So they netted you, Louis Rosen,” she said. “You finally went schizophrenic, too. I’m not surprised.”

  I said, “Pris, I’ve been here months.”

  “Well, are you getting healed?”

  “Yes,” I said, “I think so. I’m having controlled fugue therapy every day; I always go to you, Pris, every time. We’re married and we have a child named Charles. I think we’re living in Oakland, California.”

  “Oakland,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Parts of Oakland are nice; parts are dreadful.” She started away from me up the hall. “It was nice seeing you, Louis. Maybe I’ll run into you again, here.”

  “Pris!” I called in grief. “Come back!”

  But she continued on and was lost beyond the closing doors at the end of the hall.

  The next time in my controlled fugue when I saw her she had definitely aged; her figure was more matronly and she had deep, permanent shadows under her eyes. We stood together in the kitchen doing the dinner dishes; Pris washed while I dried. Under the glare of the overhead light her skin looked dry, with fine, tiny wrinkles radiating through it. She had on no make-up. Her hair, in particular, had changed; it was dry, too, like her skin, and no longer black. It was a reddish brown, and very nice; I touched it and found it stiff yet clean and pleasant to the touch.

  “Pris,” I said, “I saw you yesterday in the hall. Here, where I am, at Kasanin.”

  “Good for you,” she said briefly.

  “Was it real? More real than this?” In the living room I saw Charles seated before the three-D color TV set, his eyes fixed raptly on the image. “Do you remember that meeting after so long? Was it as real to you as it was to me? Is this now real to you? Please tell me; I don’t understand anymore.”

  “Louis,” she said, as she scrubbed a frying pan, “can’t you take life as it comes? Do you have to be a philosopher? You act like a college sophomore; you make me wonder if you’re going to grow up.”

  “I just don’t know which way to go anymore,” I said, feeling desolate but automatically continuing in my task of dish-drying.

  “Take me where you find me,” Pris said. “As you find me. Be content with that, don’t ask questions.”

  “Yes,” I agreed, “I’ll do that; I’ll try to do it, anyhow.”

  When I came out of my fugue, Doctor Shedd once more was present. “You’re mistaken, Rosen; you couldn’t have run into Miss Frauenzimmer here at Kasanin. I checked the records carefully and found no one by that name
. I’m afraid that so-called meeting with her in the hall was an involuntary lapse into psychosis; we must not be getting as complete a catharsis of your libido cravings as we thought. Perhaps we should increase the number of minutes of controlled regression per day.”

  I nodded mutely. But I did not believe him; I knew that it had really been Pris there in the hall; it was not a schizophrenic fantasy.

  The following week I saw her again at Kasanin. This time I looked down and saw her through the window of the solarium; she was outdoors playing volleyball with a team of girls, all of them wearing light blue gym shorts and blouses.

  She did not see me; she was intent on the game. For a long time I stood there, drinking in the sight of her, knowing it was real … and then the ball bounced from the court toward the building and Pris came scampering after it. As she bent to snatch it up I saw her name, stitched in colored block letters on her gym blouse.

  ROCK, PRIS

  That explained it. She was entered in Kasanin Clinic under her father’s name, not her own. Therefore Doctor Shedd hadn’t found her listed in the files; he had looked under Frauenzimmer, which was the way I always thought of her, no matter what she called herself.

  I won’t tell him, I said to myself; I’ll keep myself from mentioning it during my controlled fugues. That way he’ll never know, and maybe, sometime, I’ll get to talk to her again.

  And then I thought, Maybe this is all deliberate on S head’s part; maybe it’s a technique for drawing me out of my fugues and back into the actual world. Because these tiny glimpses of the real Pris have become more valuable to me than all the fugues put together. This is their therapy, and it is working.

  I did not know whether to feel good or bad.

  It was after my two hundred and twentieth controlled fugue therapy session that I got to talk to Pris once more. She was strolling out of the clinic’s cafeteria; I was entering. I saw her before she saw me; she was absorbed in conversation with another young woman, a buddy.