Berger: What’s supposed to be wrong with me?
Adamantha: You’ll have to ask the doctor that, won’t you?
Berger: What do you call this place?
She offers to feed him what seems to be a bowl of soup; he turns his head away, refusing to eat.
Adamantha (opening the top few buttons of her uniform): If not food, sir, what is it that will content you?
Berger: I want to know where I am. I want the straps removed from my wrists. I want to know what’s wrong with me.
Adamantha (looking at her watch): The doctor will be back in precisely twelve minutes, sir. He knows everything about your case. I am here, I say this unofficially, to ease your burdens in any way I can.
We cutaway from Henry Berger to the small window — a glimpse of sky, an outline of fields and mountain as insubstantial as a backdrop, a view of anonymous undefined landscape. Slowly the camera pans back to the hospital bed, discovers Adamantha on top of Henry Berger, riding him, whispering endearments. Berger, who is still strapped to the bed, offers only limited response. Adamantha seems a whirlwind of energy.
Momentarily, we see the room through Henry Berger’s eyes. There is a ceiling fan turning slowly, a fly buzzing at the window, the nurse’s face distorted luxuriantly with pleasure or anguish, the window, a row of three wood chairs against a wall, a framed print of a topographical map, scars in the light blue wall, gouges as if someone had tried to break through with a blunt instrument, the window again, the faded sky, the fan turning slowly, the door. The door opens slightly — a figure remains in shadow, is unrevealed — then closes again.
Berger: What was that?
Adamantha (in a lulling whisper): There was nothing, nothing. You must learn not to]ump at mere noises. It uses your body up in tension, tires one to death. Oh how weary it is to be always on your guard, jumping at shadows. Suspicion confirms itself, you know. There have been case studies. There is no one to be afraid of here, no danger, no threat to your security. You are safe as a baby with us, absolutely safe, perfectly safe.
Berger: I want to get out of here.
Adamantha: Do not interrupt me. Have you no respect? Without trust, there is no safety. Isn’t it trust what’s wanted? Isn’t it)ust that? You’ve never trusted a soul, have you? You can’t, you don’t know how, have never learned the secret of trust. You want to trust me but something in you, something ugly and unnecessary, something diseased at the heart, says watch out. Watching out has never gotten you anywhere, has it? Now close your eyes and think of trust, think only of trust. Give yourself to trust.
Berger (closing his eyes): Take off the straps.
Adamantha (riding him backwards): Soon they will come off, very soon. We are here to take care of you, to see that you come to no harm. You must trust that.
Berger (weakly): Please take them off. My wrists hurt.
Adamantha: I will take them off in no time at all. As soon as you are ready. Yes?
We cut to the door, watch it expectantly, then pan along the wall to the window and then to the ceiling (the fan revolving so slowly that its movement seems almost a trick of the eye) and then abruptly to the bed, the room tipping, spilling itself. Berger is on top of Adamantha now, has her on her stomach, arms and legs pinned.
The door opens and a white-haired man steps in.
Dr. X: And how is our 1patient coming along?
Berger, stark naked, springs on him from behind the door, holding him in a hammer-lock around the neck.
Berger: If you cry out, I’ll break you neck.
Dr. X: You are making an unfortunate mistake, Mr. Berger. We are your friends here.
Berger: Do you always strap your friends to the bed? Is that your idea of hospitality?
Dr. X: Truly it was for your own safety. You had taken a powerful hallucinatory drug and I was afraid you might do yourself some danger. Yes?
Berger: Were you afraid for my life?
Dr. X: Henry, I feel as if you were my own son. This is the truth. The drug you have taken stays in the blood stream in a dormant fashion, taking effect without warning — it is so new its effects are barely understood — so that from one moment to the next your whole personality may change. If an antidote isn’t administered m a week — two weeks at most — it is possible that you will enter a psychotic phase from which there is no return.
Berger (tightening his grip): Where have you put my clothes?
Dr. X: I…can’t…breathe. Please, I will take you to them.
Berger is dressed and going through the pockets of his jacket. The doctor is trussed to his desk chair, a bandage taped over his mouth.
Berger (removing one end of the bandage): My gun and passport are missing. What did you do with them?
Dr. X: There is no gun when you are brought in. That is the truth. Your passport is in the bottom drawer of my desk. Can’t you see that I am your friend, Henry? It may even be that I am your real…(Berger retapes the bandage over his mouth, goes through the drawers of the doctor’s desk.)
4
Eyes down, shoulders slumped forward as though to make himself less conspicuous, Tom goes to 27 Foxglove Road to visit Astrid and her convalescent father. Her dad has been quite a trial since returning from hospital, Astrid has confided. The blows on the head have left him with only patches of memory and even those were not wholly to be trusted. There were mornings when he didn’t recognize his own daughter. In the beginning it had made her cry but she had learned to deal with it, or if not quite that, had come to accept his periodic blankness as a temporary disorder. With her dad unable to work, there was little money coming in, next to nothing. And her dad couldn’t be left alone, was prone to violent, heart-stopping fears, Astrid required to look after him day and night. Or if not Astrid, someone else. A friend named Mary Flaherty came over to sit with him while Astrid worked three days a week at American Express on Regents Street.
They were having tea in the parlor, Tom and Astrid, when the father bawled “Asty” from the room next door. Astrid looked into his room to see what he needed.
“Who the hell is that strange boy?” he asked.
“Da, that’s the American boy,” she said softly. “His name is Tommy.”
“I don’t recall having had that pleasure,” he said. “You can tell me over and again that I’ve met the lad but I can’t believe something for which I have no experience, can I?” For the third time (or fourth), Astrid presented Tom to her father. He shook Tom’s hand, said, “Heard so much about you, Tom, I feel like I know you already. Astrid, I suppose, has told you of our situation. We don’t do so badly, the two of us. Wouldn’t you say so, Asty?”
“You do,” she said with mournful insistence, “very, very well.”
“I’m not the one to sit idly by and be pampered,” he said to no one in particular. “That’s the worst of it. The best of it is having Asty about to give me a hand.” He held on to his daughter’s hand like a lover.
“He self-dramatizes,” she said to Tom when they were alone. They sat in the parlor, talking in hushed voices while the father watched television on the other side of the door. The shabby sitting room diminished with increasing acquaintance, seemed barely larger than the space taken up by its two occupants.