ASYLUM

Up until that summer, she seemed to be an entirely ordinary patient--as ordinary as I suppose one might find in that place, our sanatorium. I had been assigned there just that February, from a post in which I had been sure I would grow complacent and comfortable, at one of the better-funded clinics in Buenos Aires. I had enemies among the Agency--this much I know--though what I had done to earn their ire remains a mystery to me even today. If they were, truly, the ones responsible for my reassignment, then I must thank them (or do I thank myself, for committing my anonymous offense?), for had I not been unceremoniously dragged--in a purely professional sense, of course--to that backwater asylum, I might have spent the remainder of my days in blind, fattening ignorance, even despite my sudden, unfortunate solitude.

When I first met the patient, she was perfectly functional--and, compared to the overmedicated, shambling husks that made up much of the rest of the patient body, a delightful conversationalist! That her appearance was similar to another, dear to my heart, was likewise of interest to me. I took much solace, in my early days at the ward, from our discussions on topics ranging from the quality of Pynchon’s body of work (me: for, my patient: against), to speculation on the technological advancements of the next millennium--I think we both preferred the padded cell of intellectual abstraction to the grimy linoleum, bare walls, and dripping pipes of our present condition. My fellow staff regarded me with suspicion: they had not asked for my transfer, and my urbane sophistication set them somewhat ill at ease. That I privileged the company of one of the patients to their own, I’m sure, did not diminish the tensions between us. It was no great loss, for despite one notable exception, in those early days the patient was completely rational, quite indistinguishable from you or me.

Alas, the gap between sanity and its inverse is not quite so wide and deep as many of us would like to believe, and this singular, unrepentant deviation from the norm was enough to merit institutionalisation. At the time, I believe I was more conscious of this injustice than even she was. Its origins are not so difficult to trace; allow me a momentary digression to do so. According to her file, as well as the patient herself--who was admirably forthcoming on the matter--in her youth, for one reason or another (intent being, after all, irrelevant), she had moved her right hand above her left breast, over her heart. No sooner had she completed this gesture than she witnessed, just outside her window, a horrific car accident, resulting in the gruesome deaths of not just the collided-with pedestrian but every passenger in the car as well. Truly a frightful, painful scene, even if only a matter of coincidence, of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, of simply turning to look one direction when one could have instead turned away and remained ignorant of the full tragedy. This trauma made an indelible mark on the mind of the young patient-to-be (or perhaps merely exposed a flaw that already existed, lying dormant in the recesses of her amygdala), and she became convinced that her gesture had somehow caused the accident. Perhaps if this “binding” event had been less grievous, perhaps if the patient’s mind had been less rational, she might have tested this hypothesis, seen its patent falsehood, and gone on to lead an ordinary, modest, unassuming existence.

As circumstances conspired against it, however, this reality was never to be. Instead, suffering from self-inflicted shame and guilt, and unwilling to risk being the cause of even more misery, the patient simply resolved never to make the gesture again. And, again, this might have been the end of the matter--after all, there are an infinite number of gestures, of permutations of even one single gesture, that you will not make in your lifetime--had not this mortal gesture been deemed necessary in the performance of one’s patriotic duties. An explanation for her dereliction being evinced and deemed irrational, the patient was remanded to the care and education at this, our humble, sanatorium, and had remained there for several years.

Gaining the patient’s trust was a simple matter. During those all-too-frequent check-ins in those days, I ensured she remained locked in isolation while the attending Agents went about their business. She remained safe in our padded cell under whatever diagnosis I could plausibly fabricate, while the rest of us saluted in the annex as our inspectors called roll to the accompaniment of our nation’s anthem. At the time, I suspected that confronting the patient about her delusion would have caused her to withdraw further, hindering my ability to observe the case. That sparing her the indignity of these exercises would ingratiate me in her eyes was, likewise, not lost on me--I would certainly owe a debt of gratitude to anyone who did the same for me.

I confess that then, as now, I found these demonstrations an utter farce. This may come as an unwelcome shock to some of my readers, no doubt those still in possession of their youth--I care not. My life has been long and, despite my best efforts, successful enough already: I would welcome any hardship you could contribute to my hollow coffers, o zealous reader. Alas, my course is already set, the boulder already on its way down the mountain--no amount of individual striving will change its path now. Such is the way of old age, is it not? Our actions only have consequences for others; it is too late to affect ourselves. Ah, but I am digressing. Let me step back from the spotlight and allow the rest of this drama to play out.

In conversation with the patient, I found it quite easily to follow her logic. She had little, if anything, to gain by trying to prove herself wrong, and in her mind many lives were at stake if she turned out, against all odds, to be correct. I asked her if this did not, in her opinion, make her a bit of a heroic figure, sacrificing her freedom and agency for the sake of strangers she had never--and likely would never--meet? She responded, quite simply, that it was no act of bravery to stay in the walled, locked, guarded halls of the sanatorium when, outside, one may be killed at any moment because of a stranger’s inadvertent gesture.

As I became acquainted with the patient’s unique form of debilitation, another irrational struggle was playing out, though at the time I felt its stakes to be significantly lower. I must confess that the institutionalised are a singularly uninteresting bunch--at their best, boring; at their worst, depressing. Watching those poor souls modestly struggle to peer out from behind the protective walls of sedatives they were prescribed often led one to reflect on the fragility of selfhood, how easily it (one’s own, and indeed that of others as well) could be lost or taken away, and usually led one to seek solace in some form of sedation oneself. My fellow staff obviously felt this way--they had been petitioning the Agency for a television for several months before I arrived. Judging from what few of their interminably pedestrian cases, which--at the darkest depths of my early ennui--I took on, their work doubtless did little to ameliorate this ambiance of collective misery. I imagine even the deepest banalities of our meager broadcast programming were preferable to the endless white noise of groaning, gibberish, and despair.

Given the desolate nature of my own personal time, even I sympathized with their plight. The other staff members, I’m sure, had become accustomed to the routines of this bovine town from birth, and wished only for their time “at the office” to be as flatly disengaging as their mindless commutes and mindless small talk with their even more mindless families. Cold comfort as such a reality might have been for someone of my upbringing, education, and experience, I suspect even it would have been preferable to my innumerable evenings of solitude, and its crueler cousin: isolation. I must admit that I took to sleeping in the infirmary those nights it was not occupied by yet another suicidal--after all, it hardly made logical sense to waste so much time driving from and to the asylum: time I could spend in observation, and conversation, with my patient. Indeed, the many unpacked boxes in my too-spacious personal quarters seemed to sneer at me those nights I did have to “return home.”

Fortunately, the sanatorium received word from the Agency that our request had been approved shortly after I arrived, and that a television would soon be forthcoming. Words cannot describe just how much the spirits of my colleagues were lifted by this news--even the patients seemed more energetic in their moaning on the day this letter arrived, though how they could have known of it is beyond me. I have long suspected this fortuitous correlation, my arrival and the promise of entertainment, to be the doing of some friendly faction at the Agency, a sort of apology for my exile. I would have voiced my theory to friendly ears among the staff, were I not convinced that they would see it as further evidence of my unbelonging, and hold even my boons against me. Thus, instead, I confided with my patient, who expressed both gratitude and excitement, for she hoped to see how the world was getting on without her interference. In any case, it being the Agency, it was some four months before the television navigated its bureaucratic labyrinth and arrived at our sanatorium, and by then I had so languished in my exile to that asylum that I barely registered the event. I must apologize for my lackluster ability to report on this period--my journals are dominated by notes on the behaviors and preferences of my patient, giving me unfortunately little access to my own mind.

However, I do recall the covetousness with which the other staff treated the device--they wished to keep the thing in our offices, away from the prying eyes and grasping hands of our patients--I had no choice but to act on behalf of my patient, my friend. I petitioned the asylum’s director, behind the backs of the petty oligarchy of orderlies, to install the television in the ward’s central annex, so that both the patients and their keepers could enjoy its presence. It was here and here alone that my status as an outsider benefitted me--my brand-name education and prestigious curriculum vitae left the director little choice but to take me for my concocted word. Soon enough, under the glowering of my colleagues and the blank--though I believe grateful--stares of the patients, I installed the television on a cart in the center of the room, its antennae standing jauntily and power cord snaking along between chairs to the room’s singular outlet, inconveniently positioned under the skylight in the northeast corner. So delighted by the addition, my patient crossed the annex and shook my hand, the first and only time in our relationship she had attempted any physical contact whatsoever. I suppose that after so many years of careful moderation of behavior, one would be reticent to relinquish any amount of bodily autonomy to another. Briefly, I felt that power, with her hand in mine--she was slight in comparison with me, due no doubt to my strict physical regimen and her self-imposed sedentarism. If I had chosen to, it would have been nothing at all for me to force her to make that gesture, to prove once and for all her irrationality. I believe she felt it too, for from that point onward she always kept a few paces distant from me.

It was here that the trouble started. From the very first, my patient took autocratic control over the set, seizing its remote control at the first opportunity and darting about the facility at the slightest presentiment of a coup d’etat. No amount of threatening could convince her to give up the remote control, and the orderlies quickly grew weary of chasing and sedating her every time she snatched it away again. The other patients could hardly be bothered to care, either, bovinely tranquil as they were, so soon enough my patient’s reign was unopposed. In any case, hers was a benevolent tyranny--she granted any request outside of the morning or evening news slots, without question. I did not notice it at first, but after a few days it was clear that she was becoming much more cautious with her movements. Then, on that first Saturday, I caught it. Perhaps you remember, but the Irish conflict was reaching its peak in those days, and much of our news programming was devoted to tracking the trials and travails of the Nationalist militants--each kidnapping, shootout, and bombing merited its own segment. My patient scratched her chin, just as the anchor introduced one of such segments, and I witnessed her stiffen, and slowly lower her hand back into her lap.

It only progressed from there--every new report removed another gesture from my patient’s repertoire (one especially heinous bombing in Belfast left her without the use of her left arm entirely), and by the conflict’s end she was completely bedridden. Of course, I brought her attention that it couldn’t possibly be the gestures she made during the broadcasts that were causing those calamities, as, obviously, the broadcasts occurred well after the fact. My patient’s response was twofold: First, she informed me that the nature of causality was much more complex than I believed, and second, she began painstakingly recording her every movement, spending hours every day charting each gesture, and the time it occurred. With every new report, she traced back through the ledger and eliminated whichever one immediately preceded the disaster in question.

I was baffled--my only friend in this backwater terrarium, with whom I had discussed, at length, the various connotations of “The Immortals,” who handily defeated me at every game of chess we played, was now refusing to breathe through her nose for fear of causing another massacre in Indochina! It was becoming downright embarrassing; for her, for me, for the Agency as a whole. When she nearly strangled herself with the television’s power cord to prevent a yawn that she believed might cause a bridge collapse in Switzerland, I was forced to cut my analytical observation short, lest I lose access to my patient entirely. I know now that rational intercession was a foolish error, but surely you must understand my reticence to take more drastic action, my belief that she could be reached, and fixed, by the proper argument.

It was easy enough to separate the patient from that metastatic device in the annex--she had already confined herself to her room: complete excision required only my shutting her door behind me. It pained me to see my friend stiffen so, terrified, as she was, of through an accidental twitch setting off riots in San Francisco, an assassination in Rwanda, a lottery in Babylon. But the measure was necessary, to quarantine her from outside influence. I should have foreseen that it only trapped me in that airtight room, with that inescapable contagion.

I remember little of our conversation; even now it returns to me only in vignettes, unplaceable in any form of linear sequence. It continued through the night, at times in complete darkness, with each of our voices straining to be the only source of illumination in the room. I recall making a weak, early thrust on theological grounds--would not her thesis of personal, universal causality spit in the face of an omnipotent God? Was it not the highest arrogance to privilege one’s own bodily autonomy over the manifold workings of a deity, or, if she preferred a sacreligious approach, the rule of her invisible laws of physics? She responded that her delusion was not incompatible with Christian faith--after all, were He to wish it, He could simply move her arm into our nation’s salute, and doom another vehicle of innocents. And she maintained that her delusion was just as much based in observable evidence as my assumption that gravity will continue to apply to my pen as I write this account: had I not seen the day she snapped twice with her left hand, and shortly thereafter witnessed the massacre of striking miners by Agency mercenaries? I countered with another reminder that for several weeks her mortal gestures had taken place after their supposedly “bound” tragedies, at which she fell silent, a silence--I fervently hoped--of defeat. You see, at some point in the night, we had ceased to be friends, ceased even to be bound by the oath I had taken all those years ago. She was my enemy now, a force to be bested, ground into submission. Alas, she was merely shepherding her forces for a final assault. She posited that my very concept of linear causality was something that I took on faith, that my shrill refrain of “Coincidence!” was the truly lunatic act. She challenged me to prove its contrapositive, to demonstrate a completely causal dipolar interaction, inarguably unaffected by outside forces. Then, hearing a staccato burst of gunfire outside her window, an ellipsis to her sentence, her voice ceased entirely. Lying motionless in the face of a new fiasco, the patient gave up the only gesture she had made--that of speech. I thought I saw, in a sudden burst of moonlight, a tear glisten on her cheek, but I could not be certain, as, disgusted, I stumbled from her bedside, into my car, to my home, past my unpacked boxes, into the succoring embrace of dreams.

I spent the next few days in a blur, attempting to navigate the labyrinths set before me. It was not a matter of heroism, or professionalism, or even of pride. It was spite. I would see the patient’s theory ridiculed, torn to shreds, and I would spit on its remnants--not to rescue a person from her toxic delusion but merely to prove it, and her, a failure. I labored at the problem ceaselessly, or so it felt, researching vacuum, noble gases, stable elements. At every corner, I was stymied by some new force, some new law. As my labors continued, the realization of their utter folly crept up on me. After my third consecutive sleepless night, I could avoid it no longer. To prove a relationship completely, directly causal, I would have to limit the objects and forces at work to the two in question, or, failing that, account for everything that I could not eliminate. Without the absolute knowledge of every particle in the universe, this was impossible. Even if I were to achieve this fundamental omniscience, given Heisenberg’s thesis, the mere act of knowing this would make its outcome unpredictable. Like the Socialists of thirty years previous, my position was not only untenable in a practical sense, it was unsupported at its very center. I slept, I know not for how long, and I did not dream.

I awoke smiling. My efforts may have been unsuccessful, I may have been wrong, but so too was my patient. If I was stupid, at least I was not alone in it. Her actions were not causing cataclysms--at best, they were merely correlated to them. I walked to my car as if on air, breathing easier than ever before. My patient’s gestures could never be traced to their delusional consequences--they could never truly be traced to any consequences at all. As I drove to the asylum, I did not bother to invent an excuse for my extended truancy. It was not my fault--nothing could be! I rolled the world, “Correlate,” over my tongue, savoring its alloys and variations. “Collate.” “Incorporate.” “Coronate.” The wind whipped through my windows on that bright summer morning, and I closed my eyes, enjoying my newfound freedom, and opened them to an unpleasant sound, to a lurch of the car’s suspension, to the sight in the rearview mirror of a motionless, ragged shape in the road, receding.

I pressed onward, but my good mood had soured. In the exuberance of victory I had not fully considered my position. By the time I arrived at the asylum to find Agents milling about, performing yet another of their innumerable tiresome inspections, anxiety had engulfed me. And as I brushed past the armed retinue, barely pausing to show my identification, I saw my patient, in a row with the rest of them, hate in her eyes.