The Sunlight Dialogues (98 page)

Clumly put his hands on his knees and bent down closer, squinting into the eyes, looking for some spark. There was nothing. “How do you know she hears voices?”

“Ah!” the doctor said. “An excellent question.—Shall we go down now?”

They followed him to the door. He held it for them, then closed it and locked it.

Clumly said, looking at the doorknob, “Why do you lock the door?”

The doctor wrinkled his nose with disgust. “Rule,” he said. “An idiotic rule.” He dropped the keyring in his pocket, and they started down the hall. “So,” he said, “the voices. We don’t know what she actually hears, of course, we are entirely in the area of theory. We know she
used
to hear voices, and we assume—it’s all very complicated really, but one can express it simply without altogether distorting the matter—we assume she has relinquished her hold on external reality out of preference for the actuality of her voices, if you see the distinction.” He pinched his own cheek—an odd sort of gesture, it seemed to Clumly—then went on with great interest in his subject. “At certain periods outer reality does seem to reach her: the nurses find her sitting in the middle of the room, for example. A clear indication that she is aware of the walls—and resents them, needless to say. Feels bombarded by them. That’s the effect of reality on us all, you know. A constant blitz.” They were going down the stairs now, Kozlowski in front, then Clumly, the doctor behind. “And we all have our periods of withdrawal, of course. At a time of sorrow, for example. When a loved one has died the whole world seems full and terrible, you know what I mean? The trees are suddenly more
oppressive,
intolerably so. A car horn has a nightmarish kind of effrontery, or a birdsong. Not the tripe of poets, I don’t mean anything like that. No no! Sorrow, which is to say violated memory, a crack in the armor of our individuality, takes precedence for us. Thus in the moment of the catastrophe sights and sounds are unusually clear, unusually violent and distinct, an imposition. But after the first shock we withdraw to the point where sights are barely seen, sounds barely heard. Interesting?”

Clumly nodded. He thought a moment, then nodded again.

“This way,” Dr. Burns said. “I’d like you to meet my son.” He led them down a hallway opening to the right off the entryroom, a series of doors exactly like the doors upstairs, but here the doors had metal signs, some of them the names of doctors. “Kathleen’s a fascinating case,” he said. “I wish I could give it the time it deserves. I have some theories, actually. But this is no place for trying out one’s theories. We barely get the taxes paid.” He came to a door with the name
Orr
on the plate, and got out his keys. “This is my office,” he said. “The nameplates are old. It’s been years since there was a Dr. Orr in this place.”; He laughed, then shrugged a little fiercely, and unlocked the door. “Are you familiar with the Jungjan theory of the stages of life?”

“I don’t believe so,” Clumly said.

The door swung open. The office was very small, comfortable. On the wall there was a picture of a Coast Guard ship, with the number W738.

“You were in the Coast Guard?” Clumly said.

“P.H.S.,” he said. “Public Health Service.” He glanced at the picture. “Spent six weeks on her. Beautiful.”

Clumly nodded.

“Adam?” the doctor called. There was obviously no one in the room. The window was open. The doctor went over to it and looked out. He frowned, then thought better of it and smiled. “Climbed out the window,” he said. “He’s a devil, that’s the truth. Sharp as a tack though. His mother is also a psychiatrist. Gets it on both sides, poor little fellow. We’ll go this way.” He led them back into the hall and toward the glass doors at the end. With his hand on the doorknob he paused, reached up rather suddenly and once again pinched his cheek. “The stages of life,” he said. “Yes. Right. According to Jung life is like the daily course of the sun. He says—” The doctor closed his eyes a moment, thinking, then quoted carefully, shaking his finger as if at an imaginary class, “ ‘In the morning it arises from the sea … ’ no, ‘the nocturnal sea of unconsciousness and looks upon the wide, bright world … ’ something, something ‘ … expanse that steadily widens the higher it climbs in the firmament.’ Ah, I forget the exact words. Anyway, point is, sun rises in the morning, the world expands before it, and it’s in the expanding world that the sun discovers its own significance. It imagines that reaching the greatest possible height, where it can disseminate its blessings most fully, is its life goal. But at noon the descent begins, and the descent means the reversal of all the ideals and values that were cherished in the morning. The sun falls into contradiction with itself. It’s as if it should draw
in
its rays, instead of emitting them. Now, it’s the same with life, Jung says. You rise out of the unconsciousness of babyhood—he’d go farther back than that, in fact—and you learn who and what you are in youth, reacting with the world, and you build more and more consciousness, you think you can judge everything, meet all demands. But at a certain point you learn that the more you learn the more you’ll never know! You begin to shrink back from thought-life has bombed you, and you flee forward to the unconsciousness of senility. You understand all this?”

Clumly tipped his head, lips pursed, hand on his chin. Kozlowski stood looking through the glass.

“Well now this is my belief,” the doctor said—excitedly. “I believe one does not
regress
in neurosis. I believe one progresses too rapidly through life. Bombed by experience, one hurtles through life
—snap!”
He snapped his fingers as he said it. “What is the doctor’s job, then?
Not
to move him back to childhood, make him live through his traumas over again, this time with understanding. The doctor’s job is to rejuvenate! Turn back the years!” He was leaning far forward now, snapping his fingers again and again, eyes narrowed to slits.

“But how?” Clumly said.

The doctor straightened up, became absolutely calm. Then he smiled. “Hypnosis,” he said. He beamed. Then: “Come meet my son.” He threw open the door. Chief Clumly scratched his head.

It was a small, enclosed yard with a dark-leafed mapletree in the center, around it long soft grass. The boy sat in a swing, looking sadly at his knees. He had long, dark hair, pale skin, blue eyes as colorless as glass. “Adam,” the doctor said. The boy turned his head just a little. “Child,” the doctor said. He stood with his fingertips together, his head thrown forward, on the peaked face a look of anguish. “Come and meet our guests,” he said.

The boy did not stir.

“What am I to do?” the doctor whispered. “Do you think I don’t know what damage I can do him by punishing him? Do you think I don’t know what damage I can do by
not
punishing him? His mother, now. We are separated. We cannot live together—a grotesque mismatch of slightly paranoid personalities. So we should stick together for the sake of the child, and our arguments eating him alive? We should break up, then, and deprive him of love?” He stretched out his hands to Clumly. “Advise me! What should I do?”

Clumly studied the doctor in alarm.

“Adam!” the doctor called suddenly. “I said to get over here!” His fists closed.

“We have to go,” Clumly said timidly. “We really can’t—”

“Is that your solution? To go!” He stopped himself. “Yes of course. Fair is fair. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’ve been no help. As for the boy—it’s not as bad as it seems, not at all. He loves me as much as he hates me, and he’s young, flexible. As for his mother—” He stopped abruptly and mopped his forehead. Then, like a child, he smiled. “You must think we’re all mad here. And me the maddest of all. My dear sir, life—” He shook his head. For no apparent reason, the boy dropped from the swing and came over to take the man’s hand. “Full of surprises, isn’t it,” said the doctor. “That, if I may say so, is my professional opinion.” He patted the boy’s head.

“Good luck,” Clumly said humbly. They turned back toward the door.

“You haven’t asked about the husband.”

Clumly waited.

“He came by, once, you know. A strange-looking man—I think mad, in fact, or very close to it. You know him?”

Clumly stole a glance at Kozlowski. He had not exactly wanted it to come out in Kozlowski’s presence, for reasons of his own.

“Taggert Hodge. A kind of magician—very good. Very. I suspect if the truth were known he might be directly responsible for … the patient’s condition.”

“He comes here?” Clumly faltered.

“He’s been here twice. You want my diagnosis?”

“We thought he was still in Phoenix,” Clumly said. Kozlowski did not seem fooled by it. Clumly wiped the sweat from the back of his neck.

“He’s here all right. My opinion is, he’s right on the edge of violence. Whether it will be directed outward or inward … But this is just guesswork. I have only watched him. To tell the truth, I believed he was going to kill me. We’ve hardly spoken.”

“Thank you,” Clumly said. He turned away.

For a moment the doctor said nothing. Then: “Good luck. As you say. To all of us. God give the world good luck.”

Abruptly, the boy jerked away from him and returned to his swing. They went back inside, leaving the doctor to brood on his difficulties, and walked hurriedly down the long hallway to the entryroom and front door. It was locked. They rang for the nurse, not meeting each other’s eyes.

At last, in the car, Kozlowski said, “How come you keep pretending, Chief? You knew who this Sunlight Man was from the beginning.”

“Not from the beginning,” Clumly said.

“The others?”

“The other whats?”

“The rest of the Hodges know?”

“I don’t know. Be strange if they didn’t.”

They were approaching the iron gates now.

“You think Will Hodge knew, that night he found the corpse in his apartment?”

“People are strange, Kozlowski. Full of surprises.” He turned in the seat to look back, and Kozlowski, at the same moment, glanced into the rear-view mirror. Will Hodge Sr’s car pulled onto the road.

“Still with us,” Kozlowski said. It was the first either of them had said about it. “What’s he after, you think?”

Clumly lit a cigar and scrooched down in the seat to meditate. At last he said, “It comes to this. If he knows, he’s following us to watch after his brother. And if he doesn’t know—” He let it finish itself, but Kozlowski looked at him, waiting. “All right, Kozlowski,” Clumly said, “say you’re in the woods and you see somebody tracking something. What’s he up to?”

“I guess he’s hunting,” Kozlowski said.

Clumly blew out smoke. “You guess he’s hunting.”

It did not matter, now that Clumly had seen her. He was ashamed of having hoped for a parade.

4

Clumly was in plain clothes. A blue serge suit. Trousers with enormous pleats in them, a double-breasted coat, dark brown shirt, wide tie, black hat on his head. On the wire hanger in the closet of the otherwise empty room he had his black winter coat. He stood by the window, leaning on his knees, in the third-floor room where he went to listen to the tapes, and to look at him you would have thought he had taken on still more weight, the past few hours: he might have weighed tons and tons, like one of the damned. When Kozlowski had let him off this afternoon, Esther was out. Clumly had come up at once to where he had hidden the tapes, and he’d found that the tapes were gone.

“Impossible!” Clumly had said. “My own wife!” He’d run down to the bedroom (still wearing his uniform) and hunted there—through his shirt drawer, his underwear drawer, the drawer in the highboy where he kept his father’s old shaving equipment. He looked in the closet, in the box he kept under the bed, in the medicine chest in the bathroom. He stood patting his cheeks, trying to remember. He looked downstairs. Useless. Life is full of deadly ironies.

He went back up to the bedroom and closed the door behind him and leaned on it, thinking. Well, he’d known, hadn’t he, that his time had run out? There would be criminal charges no doubt. Correct. (It flitted through his mind that the Sunlight Man was a natural for “The Most Unforgettable Character I’ve Met.” He shook his head crossly to get rid of the thought.
Getting old,
he thought. Even his mind would allow him no dignity.)

Where was I? Yes. They’ve got hold of the tapes, so they know. “This is irregular, Clumly.” “I’m aware of that. Yes.” “Highly irregular. Negligent.” “Yes, yes, yes.”

Someone had died, he remembered again, through his incompetence.

He thought of the stages of life the psychiatrist had mentioned. Strange to say, he had heard it all without listening. Clumly was in the twilight stage. Not that sixty-four was old, exactly. He still had his teeth. He’d be going strong at ninety. Good stock, as Miss Woodworth would say. But twilight, nevertheless. No longer fit for the world. One further injustice. Was a man no more than a monkey? Young monkeys played games, learning the tricks that would keep them alive when playtime was over. They reached maturity and they reproduced, and they used what skills they had to protect the young. Then the old monkey died. Not so with man. At the Tonawanda Reservation—and it was the same everywhere with Indians, or with those African savages you read about—the old people were the keepers of the law, the guardians of the mysteries: it was not a case of mere sinking into the unconsciousness of childhood, it was a further progress, a final stage in the sun’s long ride into darkness, and in that final stage the sun carried all it had known before, all its intellect and activity, but now surpassed mere intellect and activity, surpassed mere propagation, mere earning, mere things of nature, and rose to the things of culture, to civilization! Not so with us. “What is the wisdom of the American old man?” asked Clumly of the room. He contends with the young. For all his pot belly and his ashen skin, he throws on his bikini and parades himself at the edge of the pool. He colors his hair, reads dirty books, perhaps; drinks beer. A sobering thought. He went over to the bed to sit down on it, and when he looked up he saw himself in the mirror, a shrunken old cop with handsome teeth, still wearing his uniform. Thoughtfully, he un-knotted the tie and unbuckled the collar. Then, though he never wore ordinary clothes except every second Saturday, when he had his day off, and Sundays of course, he changed into street clothes. He had stepped down, as Moss would express it. He would meet the Sunlight Man, tonight, as Fred Clumly, Citizen. Or less. As Fred Clumly, merely mortal, nothing more than—without any grandiose overtones—a man. Then, carrying his coat on his arm, not because he would need a coat but because it was a business which demanded the greatest formality, and, lacking his uniform, he could not endure it without, at least, the black coat handed down to him by his father, he went up to the third-floor room to watch and wait.