VI
During the entire time that my delusions of persecution, as they are
called, persisted, I could not but respect the mind that had laid out
so comprehensive and devilishly ingenious and, at times, artistic a
Third Degree as I was called upon to bear. And an innate modesty (more
or less fugitive since these peculiar experiences) does not forbid my
mentioning the fact that I still respect that mind.
Suffering such as I endured during the month of August in my own home
continued with gradually diminishing force during the eight months I
remained in this sanatorium. Nevertheless my sufferings during the
first four of these eight months was intense. All my senses were still
perverted. My sense of sight was the first to right itself—nearly
enough, at least, to rob the detectives of their moving pictures. But
before the last fitful film had run through my mind, I beheld one which
I shall now describe. I can trace it directly to an impression made on
my memory about two years earlier, before my breakdown.
Shortly after going to New York to live, I had explored the Eden Musée.
One of the most gruesome of the spectacles which I had seen in its
famed Chamber of Horrors was a representation of a gorilla, holding in
its arms the gory body of a woman. It was that impression which now
revived in my mind. But by a process strictly in accordance with
Darwin's theory, the Eden Musée gorilla had become a man—in appearance
not unlike the beast that had inspired my distorted thought. This man
held a bloody dagger which he repeatedly plunged into the woman's
breast. The apparition did not terrify me at all. In fact I found it
interesting, for I looked upon it as a contrivance of the detectives.
Its purpose I could not divine, but this fact did not trouble me, as I
reasoned that no additional criminal charges could make my situation
worse than it already was.
For a month or two, "false voices" continued to annoy me. And if there
is a hell conducted on the principles of my temporary hell, gossipers
will one day wish they had attended strictly to their own business.
This is not a confession. I am no gossiper, though I cannot deny that
I have occasionally gossiped—a little. And this was my punishment:
persons in an adjoining room seemed to be repeating the very same
things which I had said of others on these communicative occasions. I
supposed that those whom I had talked about had in some way found me
out, and intended now to take their revenge.
My sense of smell, too, became normal; but my sense of taste was slow
in recovering. At each meal, poison was still the pièce de
résistance, and it was not surprising that I sometimes dallied one,
two, or three hours over a meal, and often ended by not eating it at
all.
There was, however, another reason for my frequent refusal to take
food, in my belief that the detectives had resorted to a more subtle
method of detection. They now intended by each article of food to
suggest a certain idea, and I was expected to recognize the idea thus
suggested. Conviction or acquittal depended upon my correct
interpretation of their symbols, and my interpretation was to be
signified by my eating, or not eating, the several kinds of food placed
before me. To have eaten a burnt crust of bread would have been a
confession of arson. Why? Simply because the charred crust suggested
fire; and, as bread is the staff of life, would it not be an inevitable
deduction that life had been destroyed—destroyed by fire—and that I
was the destroyer? On one day to eat a given article of food meant
confession. The next day, or the next meal, a refusal to eat it meant
confession. This complication of logic made it doubly difficult for me
to keep from incriminating myself and others.
It can easily be seen that I was between several devils and the deep
sea. To eat or not to eat perplexed me more than the problem conveyed
by a few shorter words perplexed a certain prince, who, had he lived a
few centuries later (out of a book), might have been forced to enter a
kingdom where kings and princes are made and unmade on short notice.
Indeed, he might have lost his principality entirely—or, at least, his
subjects; for, as I later had occasion to observe, the frequency with
which a dethroned reason mounts a throne and rules a world is such that
self-crowned royalty receives but scant homage from the less elated
members of the court.
For several weeks I ate but little. Though the desire for food was not
wanting, my mind (that dog-in-the-manger) refused to let me satisfy my
hunger. Coaxing by the attendants was of little avail; force was
usually of less. But the threat that liquid nourishment would be
administered through my nostrils sometimes prevailed for the attribute
of shrewdness was not so utterly lost that I could not choose the less
of two evils.
What I looked upon as a gastronomic ruse of the detectives sometimes
overcame my fear of eating. Every Sunday ice cream was served with
dinner. At the beginning of the meal a large pyramid of it would be
placed before me in a saucer several sizes too small. I believed that
it was never to be mine unless I first partook of the more substantial
fare. As I dallied over the meal, that delicious pyramid would
gradually melt, slowly filling the small saucer, which I knew could not
long continue to hold all of its original contents. As the melting of
the ice cream progressed, I became more indifferent to my eventual
fate; and, invariably, before a drop of that precious reward had
dripped from the saucer, I had eaten enough of the dinner to prove my
title to the seductive dessert. Moreover, during its enjoyment, I no
longer cared a whit for charges or convictions of all the crimes in the
calendar. This fact is less trifling than it seems; for it proves the
value of strategy as opposed to brute and sometimes brutal force, of
which I shall presently give some illuminating examples.
|
