A Cure for Suicide (11 page)

Hilda rushed to him.

—I went to your house, he said, there was…

And at the same time, she said,

—They took me away, they took me away, darling. Oh. I waited for you and waited for you, and you never came, and then I went back to the house, and Martin was there, and he was angry—he was so angry…

—Took you away? Who?

—I woke up in the back of some kind of closed truck. They were moving the bed that I was in. I was lying there, and we were stopped for some reason. I jumped out the back and hid, and the truck drove on without me.

They stared at one another. Hilda was not even wearing proper clothes—just a nightgown. It must be true—they must have taken her while she slept.

—They’ll come looking for you. When the driver gets where he’s going. When was this?

—Last night. I walked all day, and then hid and waited to come here. Look at my feet.

Her feet were covered in cuts from walking barefoot. One was partially wrapped with a cloth. It must be true.

—How did you find your way? he asked.

—What do you mean?

—From the road where you got out of the truck. How did you know where you were?

—There isn’t anything out there. Just a road. It’s just a road. I went the opposite direction the truck was going. As you approach the town, the waste turns slowly green. There are trees and grass, and then the town begins. I can show you. I don’t know if there’s time.

A great confusion and tiredness settled over the claimant. He felt that he was dealing with the situation and understanding it, moving through the details with celerity and sharpness, and then he wasn’t. A weight settled and confounded all the variables. Everything seemed the same. He could make no progress.

—I don’t know, he said. I don’t know what to…

—Help me hide, she said. Someone is coming.

—Martin, Martin.

A voice was calling from the house. It was the examiner. A panic rose in the claimant’s heart. He didn’t want to do anything wrong. Nothing at all.

—I…

Martin hesitated.

—My love, said Hilda, you must…

She was pulling at him desperately.

—Help me. They’re all against me.

—Martin!

The examiner’s voice came from within the house.

The hall light came on, and then the light on the back porch.

There was an overgrown bush along the fence. Hilda pushed into it, and hid just as the examiner came out the door.

—Martin, she said. Is everything all right?

THE CLAIMANT stood there in confusion. He could hear the slight breathing of Hilda where she hid. The examiner stood looking down at him from the porch, a scant twenty feet away. What was he doing in the yard? Why was he there at all? What could he say?

He had never lied to the examiner. He didn’t want to. She was standing there on the porch with a quilt wrapped around her. Her face was full of concern for him. If anything, her appearance in the middle of the night was even more aged than usual. He felt a sympathy for her, a profound worry. Also, he was terrified that he would be found out, and that she would be displeased.

—Martin, are you all right? Shall we get help? Come inside. Come with me.

The weariness that he had been feeling grew in him. He walked to the house and went up the steps. There he was, standing beside her. He found himself whispering, speaking to the examiner. He found himself talking to her, telling her things. What was he saying? What had he said?

The examiner looked deeply into his eyes, squeezed his arm, and nodded.

—Come into the house, she said.

They sat at the dining room table and the examiner made tea for them. She toasted bread and brought it out on a plate and they sat there. When they had been sitting awhile, there was a scream from outside.

—They have found her, said the examiner quietly. Don’t worry, she will be all right. She is young and strong. But she is very sick.

She said this especially quietly.

—Hilda is very sick, and needs our help, she repeated.

She was holding the papers he had given her, the sheets from the book. He didn’t remember having given them to her, and then suddenly he knew that he had. It hurt him to think of it. He had handed the pages to the examiner. He had pointed out where Hilda was hiding. He started to cry.

—You were right to get help for Hilda, said the examiner. Don’t grieve over it. It was reasonable. It was the right thing to do. Now, let’s get some sleep. Would you like something to help you sleep?

—Yes, said the claimant, I would.

They went upstairs. She gave him some medicine to drink; he lay down in his bed and slept long into the morning, and it was the examiner who woke him, saying,

—It is almost noon! Time to get up, time to get up.

And already then, the episode with Hilda felt far away. Had he ever known her? Had he?

AND THIS WAS how it was for him. Mostly, he was never worried about it—he felt that it was something that had happened to someone else, and he was untouched. Yet, sometimes, as when one looks in a mirror, when one hasn’t seen oneself in a long time, and one catches sight of this face, one’s own in a mirror, and feels—recognition, sometimes he was moved to a great sadness and he would almost cry. His face would twist and he would hold his head in his hands and think to himself: what have I done, and he would feel that he had betrayed the one person who was his.

At such times, the examiner would watch him with concern. When it happened twice in one day, a week after the incident, she came to a resolve.

I believe, she thought to herself, we have stayed here too long.

THE EXAMINER was standing at the bottom of the stairs when the claimant went to come down in the morning.

—When you come down the stairs, she said, you will not go up them again, not in this house, so come down slowly and purposefully and with full intent.

—What’s that? he said.

—We are moving to a new village. This business with Hilda. It was not your fault. But, it is a failure of sorts. I am taking your name from you. Worry not—you will have another. You are not Martin anymore. I am not Emma. Do not refer to me as such.

—I should get my…

—You don’t need your things. What we need is already there, in the place to which we’re going. This travel is different from the ones we have done before, do you know why?

—Because you are telling me about it?

—That’s right. I am telling you about it, so that you will know. I trust you. I feel you should know things. It will be the same in some ways. We will sleep while we travel, so we won’t see much of it, and when we wake up, we will be there. I wanted to prepare you, and to give you your new name before you left.

—My new name, what will it be?

The claimant walked down the stairs, slowly, deliberately. He arrived at the bottom and stood over the examiner.

—Are you ready to hear it?

—I am.

—Henry, she said. Henry Caul. That is your new name.

—Henry, he said. Henry Caul. Henry Caul.

—Henry Caul, she said. It is time for us to be going. Come and sit with me on the porch. My name is Dahlia Gasten.

—Dahlia Gasten, he said quietly.

They went out on the porch and sat.

—Have some of this, said Dahlia. It will make you sleep, and then we can go.

She handed him a little bottle and he took it and raised it to his mouth. Had he seen one like it before? The end of the bottle was very small and it felt odd on his lips. He drank from it, and soon fell asleep.

Then they were there, sitting on the porch. The examiner sat on one chair. He lay asleep in another. A strange noise came down the street of the town, and it was a truck. A truck came into view and stopped before the house. Two men came out of it and picked up the claimant, one by the arms and one by the feet. They carried him to a pallet in the truck’s rear, and set him gently down. The truck drove off, and soon its roar was as if it had not been, for a church bell was tolling in the distance, and insects buzzed in the near yard, and as the examiner rocked in her chair there was a faint creaking from the boards of the porch. Somewhere in the house a clock was ticking, and the tick went like this, tick, tick, tarick, tick.

THE CLAIMANT was awake and sitting up in bed when the examiner entered the room.

—Do you remember my name? she asked.

—Dahlia, he said.

—That’s right, Henry. That is my name. Let us look around the house and see what we can see.

So, they both went around the house and looked at things. He saw that it was just the same as the other house had been. He looked at the dining room and all the walls of the dining room, the kitchen and all the walls of the kitchen. He looked out the windows of the kitchen and saw that the garden was the same, the garden and the street beyond. He saw that the hall was the same, and the stair, the bedrooms were the same. The examiner took him into the study, a place where he had never really been welcome before, and she said,

—This is the study. In this village, you are welcome here as much as I am. You can use this room, too.

She went to the desk that had always been locked.

—Here, she said, the desk is unlocked.

She opened it. There was a book within the desk, and also sheets of paper.

—This is where I put reports that I write about you and about your progress. The book here is the book of the craft of examining. It explains things about how to examine and why. It is a book like any other. Do you know what that means?

Henry was silent.

—It means that some parts are right and some are not. Every examiner makes decisions and does things in ways that are not doctrinal. I, for instance, constantly disobey the book in certain ways. In other ways, it is important to follow along. That’s partly because we are not in this alone. You and I are part of a thing that is larger than ourselves.

She took the book out of the desk and held it up.

—It is not a very large book, as you can see. If you want to read it, you can. I will leave it in the desk. You can also read any of the reports that I write that you find in there. But, remember, do not be angry if you find things written about yourself that are true. If you read someone else’s correspondence, there is always a price. One can often learn things about oneself that one didn’t expect. It’s rarely a comfortable experience.

She went out of the room and down the stairs, leaving him there.

He went to the desk, and closed it. He opened it again, and then he closed it.

Then he sat in the chair and looked at the desk from the outside. Hilda rose in his mind and fell away, and he felt good.

—I am becoming Henry, really, he thought to himself. I am much closer to Henry than I ever was to Martin.

He said this out loud, for he liked the sound of the names in his mouth.

—WHAT THINGS are there in every village? the examiner asked.

—Houses, said the claimant. There are many houses, and all of them…

—All of them are the same, finished the examiner. What else is there?

—There are shops. There is a general shop, and a shop for clothing. There is a shop where you can sit and drink tea. There is the restaurant. Above those shops are rooms where the people who work in them live.

—That’s right, said the examiner. And what about the gathering places?

—There is the library and the village hall. There is the band shell.

—Have all these things been the same in all the places we have been, in all the villages—or have they changed?

—I think, he said, I think they have been the same.

—Do you think they have been the same, because they are the same, asked the examiner, or because you want them to be the same—because you are not differentiating between them? We could call that a case of their being—the same to you. Is that possible?

—I think, he said, I think they have been the same.

—But if they were different, she asked, would you have known?

—I think I would know, he said.

—And would it matter?

—I don’t know. I don’t think so.

—If it wouldn’t matter, then isn’t it a bit difficult to say for sure which way it was?

—I guess so, said the claimant. The villages are the villages—they are a place where we live. When I go in a direction, I know what I will find. When I return, I know it, too. The house is like that, also.

—What if you went to a place, asked the examiner, where things were not like this? Where everything was new?

—Things are always new. Even here. Isn’t that true?

The examiner took out her book and wrote something down.

—LET US MAKE a new cover for ourselves. A new cover and what shall it be?

—I don’t know, said Henry. I am having difficulty again, getting around. Maybe something where I don’t have to move as much.

—Has it been disheartening for you? To not move well?

Henry nodded.

—You should have mentioned it to me. It will pass, said the examiner. It’s just the medicine that helped you to travel. Perhaps you drank a bit too much. Too much can confuse the mind and the body. It will go away in a few days. Let’s see now, your cover. Your costume for this town. What could your cover be? What about if you are working on a paper. I am the person who travels with you, not a servant, but a person who sees to your needs. You employ me that way. And you are working on an important paper for an upcoming conference. You are that age that you could be a scholar of some sort.

—A scholar.

—You don’t need to talk about the subject. The less you do, the more interested people will be. The more you do, the less people will care, until if you were to talk about it all the time—they would actually avoid you. This is how such things are.

—But then, said Henry, what will we do? I won’t actually be working on a paper. I don’t believe I could do that.

—It is not the sort of thing you need to do. We will find other things to fill the time. We are working steadily toward our goal. Here is what we will do. Each day we will address our tasks. I will write my nightly report about it, and you can read it. Then you will know how you are doing. You will know how you are proceeding toward our goal.