A Cure for Suicide (3 page)

She paused.

—Can you think of someone you speak about in that way?

—The men who work outdoors.

—You call them gardener. And if you spoke to them that way, they would understand. This is why it is useful—because it is effective communication. You speak to them, and they understand. Now, let us imagine that such a person had a different name—a name that had nothing to do with what he or she did. What would you say to that?

—It wouldn’t make sense, he said. How would you get such a name? There would be no reason for you to have it instead of a different name.

—That’s true. What would you call me?

—I would call you, examiner.

—That’s right, and why am I an examiner?

—Because your work is to examine people and things and help to achieve balance.

—That’s what I told you, and I have shown it to be true through my actions. So, to you, a sound name for me is examiner. However, that is not my name. That is the name of my position. In the world, there are many examiners, but there is only one person with my particular allotment of cells who stands in my geographical and temporal position. That person is myself, and so I have a name to help differentiate me from other people who are similar to me.

—But, if you are the only one in your circumstance, why do you need a different name? Shouldn’t your circumstance alone be the name itself? If it is specific to you?

The examiner laughed.

—Very good, very good. But it isn’t necessarily so, because not everyone has perfect information. So, if they saw me on one day at the lake, and then a week later, by that distant field, they might not know that I was the same person, unless I had told them my name. If I had, they could speak to me and use my name, and thereby confirm that it was me.

—But what if there were two of you with the same name?

—That is a problem. It is—and it comes up. In any case, I have a name. That gardener has a name. Everyone has a name. Everyone but you.

—Why don’t I have a name?

—You don’t have a name because you are starting over. You are beginning from the beginning. You are allowed to make mistakes and to fail. You don’t need to do that under a real name, a name that will stay with you. We give you the freedom to make every conceivable mistake and have them all be forgotten. So, for now you will have a conditional name. You will have a name while you are here in this first village. Here your name is Anders.

—Anders. Anders.

He said it quietly to himself.

—Can you say it again?

—Anders, she said.

—Anders. Anders. What shall I call you?

—You can call me Teresa. That is not my real name either. It is the name for the examiner that orbits you. Teresa and Anders. Names always function this way, though people don’t think about it. They only exist in reference to each other.

—I’m not any more Anders to that gardener than I was a moment ago.

—You aren’t. And his name is hidden from you. Perhaps forever.

—Where did my name come from? What does Anders mean?

She thought for a minute.

—I believe it is a Scandinavian name, or perhaps it is German. Let me say completely how it was for me in the moment I named you Anders. That is as close to the meaning of this use of Anders as we can get.

She stood up and went to the window.

—When I was young, there was a girl who lived on the same street as me. Her name was Matilda Colone. She was very pretty and she wore beautiful clothes. She was the envy of everyone at my school, and she was blind. How can that be? Of course, it isn’t silly for grown people with circumspection and wisdom to envy a blind person who happens to be extraordinary. However, for children to do so—when the world is so bright and good to look at…you may imagine that it is surprising.

He nodded.

—She was elegant and calm. She learned her lessons perfectly. She had a seat in the classroom by a window, and the breeze would ruffle her hair or the scarf she wore, and we would all look at her and look at her and look at her. Matilda Colone, we would say under our breath. The teachers adored her, and everyone wanted to be her friend. But, she needed no friends, and would have none. Of all the things she had, and she had many, the best thing was that she had a brother, named Anders, and he sat beside her in class. He walked beside her to school. He brought her her lunch. He held her coat; he held it up, and then she would put it on. He was very smart, smarter than anyone in the class, except perhaps Matilda, but it was hard to say, because they would never cross each other. It was a school for the smartest children in the region. We all loved her so much that we could almost weep.

—What happened to her?

—This was in the old days. Her father shot himself, and she and Anders were separated and put into homes. Some years after that she died of pneumonia.

—Anders, he said to himself.

—Yes, she said. Its meaning is: a brilliant and trustworthy companion who exceeds all expectation.

—But you did not name yourself Matilda.

The examiner smiled. She did a half turn and her dress swirled lightly. To the door she went, and looking back, she said,

—That is a matter of taste. My respect for Matilda and Anders is such that I am not trying to supplant them. I am just invoking them. The tragedy of Matilda’s life is too great for us to speak of it without seriousness. Would I use her name for a purpose? Perhaps I might. Would I name a child Matilda? Certainly. But, it is a name ill suited to a costume. As I plan to retire this name, just as you will retire Anders, it is better to choose a less severe name.

The claimant looked after her in the doorway where she stood. The wooden door frame was worked with pastoral scenes—harvests and crop-sowing and landscapes covered in snow. Beneath it and between it, she seemed almost to kneel, although she stood.

—Teresa, he said. I want to know more about your life.

—It is a part of the help I bring you, she said. One day, you will have heard so much that you tire of it!

EACH NIGHT, the examiner would say to the claimant something like this (not this, but something like it):

Tomorrow we are going to wake up early. I am going to wake early and you are going to wake early. This will happen because I am sure to do so, and I will come and see to it that you are woken up. Then, I shall dress and you shall dress, and we will go downstairs to the kitchen. In the kitchen, we shall have our breakfast and we will enjoy the morning light. We will talk about the furnishings in the room. We will talk about the paintings and the photographs that we talk about each morning. You will have things to say about them and I will listen. I will have things to say to you about the things you have said. In this way, we shall speak. After breakfast, we will wash the dishes we have used and we will put them away. We will stand for a moment in the kitchen, which we will have cleaned, and we will feel a small rise of pleasure at having set things right. It is an enduring satisfaction for our species to make little systems and tend to them.

Yes, she would continue, we shall go on a walk to the lake, and perhaps this time we will walk around it to the small wood at the back. There we will find the trees that we like. Do you remember them? Do you remember that I like the thin birch that stands by the stream, and that you prefer the huge maple with the roots that block the path? Do you remember when you first saw it, and you ran to it? We shall go there tomorrow, and spend as much time as we want to sitting with those trees, in that quiet place. And when we have done that, we shall come home, walking fast or slow, and we shall…

And in this way she would go through the day and give him a sense that there was something to look forward to, and nothing to fear.

ON THE ELEVENTH DAY, the examiner brought a sheet of paper to the dining room table. She asked the claimant to sit opposite her. In her hand, she had also a thick object made of paper.

—This, she said, is a book. It is one of our ways of codifying and keeping human knowledge. When it cannot be kept in a person’s head, this is one method of keeping it safe. It is a good way of moving ideas from one head to another, as it only requires one person’s time to do it, and not two.

She opened the book and showed him the letters. She wrote them out on the paper.

—I think, he said. I think I can do it.

—Can you, she said.

He took the pen and wrote on the paper:

A room and a table and a pen. I am writing this.

He wrote it perfectly. The examiner took a deep breath.

—Very good, she said. That means that I will not need to teach you how to write. What a good thing. Our use of writing will be the following: I want you to take some time in the morning to write down the dreams that you can remember from the night before.

His face became downcast.

—I know that you have dreams, she said. I have watched you toss and turn. You even cry out now and then. Let us attend to them, and perhaps we can settle your sleep.

—I will try.

—It is difficult for a person to write down dreams when anyone is nearby, so I am going to go out on the porch and read for a little while. You can come and join me when you are done.

She placed a notebook on the table.

—You can write your dreams into this. It is nicer than the loose sheets.

—Do you have any questions about writing?

—How is it that I can remember to write—but you had to show me how to button a shirt?

—Time is passing, she said. You are coming back into yourself. Perhaps other good things, other helpful things will appear.

—Is writing the same as thinking? he asked. Maybe that’s why I didn’t forget it.

—It is not the same, although it can almost be. We shall see what your writing is like. I am eager to know. Some trace the origin of writing to the origins of granaries, thousands of years ago. Before that, man wandered as a hunter, but once he began to till the land, there was more food than could be eaten in a day. What was there to do but put it in a building and save it? Then, one suddenly feels the need to write down how much grain has been put in the building. And, that’s when writing begins—or so some say. The other thing, she confided, that starts with granaries, is the keeping of cats. They came to the granaries to hunt mice and rats, and they have stayed ever since. Cats and writing, perhaps they share a little of the same nature, then? That is a joke, she said.

The examiner left the room. Her footsteps crossed the hall, paused at the door, and sounded on the porch.

ON THE FIFTEENTH DAY, she sat at the writing desk, making her report. The noise of the claimant’s breathing could be heard through the open door. A window was before her, and through it she could see clouds and a sky surrounding them, and beyond it, a moon that was hardly a sliver. Maybe there wasn’t even a moon there to be seen.

++

The claimant’s memories intrude at an alarming rate. The cause is clearly his dream recollection. I have chosen a course of reintegration, to begin tomorrow. He has completely regained his written language, and writes with great composure.

A sample of his dream records:

_ _

I see the face of a woman as she lies in a bed. I am sometimes near enough that her face is all I can see, as though she were leaning over me. But it is I that am leaning over her. At other times, I feel I am far away and I can see the bed, the room, and her—all of them as small as objects on a table, and as still. I am sure that she is dead.

When I see her, I feel that she is surrounded by images, and although I can see her, I cannot see the images that blur her face. Somehow I feel that they are images of our happiness—that we were happy and knew one another. I feel that these things are hidden from me, and that she has carried them into death and I can never know them again.

And then I am flying through a long tunnel in the darkness and there are stars all about me, and finally I realize that I am just water—I am just the surface of a pond. I ripple and when I ripple, I sail through darkness until the ripples settle and I can see again. And when I see, what I see is the sky above and it is full of pinpricks of light.

When I woke up this morning, I had just been sitting in a station where there were huge machines to carry people. I was waiting for someone, and I was holding a paper bag full of presents. I wore a long coat—it was cold—and a hat and gloves. A child was crying or blowing its nose on the bench beside me. I felt someone was coming to meet me. And always someone comes up from behind and calls to me, a man. I see him, but I don’t recognize him, and he goes away, not as in life, but back the way he came, backward, fluttering backward, and all the trains leave the station the same way, and even the child is gone, there’s just a bench and a handkerchief, and I am the one crying.

_ _

Troubling, to say the least.

The course of his recovery is peculiar. We are already on difficult ground. He has begun to insist that he remembers this woman, and he asks me incessantly to explain details of his dreams—which would lend him a larger view onto the life he led. All the same, I favor transparency, where it is possible. Perhaps it is not possible here.

++

THE EXAMINER sat the claimant down at the dining room table one afternoon.

—Do you remember, she said, how I told you last week that there was a thing called writing, how I explained it to you, and showed you about it, how we practiced thinking about it, and imagining doing it, and how it could be used to record dreams?

The claimant looked at her with a bit of confusion.

—You remember how I told you several of my dreams? How I wrote them down and showed them to you? And I told you, if you wanted to, you could try to dream them yourself? And you have been trying, all this last week?