0486798100 (N) by William Seabrook

Author:William Seabrook
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub
ISBN: 9780486806310
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

IX

MY INCLUSION as a suspect in the attempted window escape made me like Hall Two better and feel more at home there. This sounds like sheer perversity but the transitional elements were natural. “Papa” Duval, for instance, who had been sure I had a hand in it, went out of his way now to be a little more agreeable, as perhaps did fellow-patients. I began to play contract, listen to symphonies on the radio, even tried to learn to shoot bottle pool—in short, stopped beefing and sulking. “Everything,” says Epictetus, “has two handles; one by which it can be carried, and one by which it cannot.” I took hold now by the other handle, and carried on. Spike was already with us; a week or so later Johnny Reiss and Hauser were moved up, and we began to have a fairly good time.

Then, early in March, one afternoon at twilight, rather suddenly, deprived of drink for about three months, I developed a new set of symptoms, perhaps entered a new phase of gradual cure:

It was snowing outside the big windows; it was peaceful and warm inside; I was listening to muted Siegfried and Valhalla motifs—symphonic Rheingold excerpts coming from Carnegie Hall, tuned low on the radio—this may have been the fortuitous trigger—when I began to find myself interiorly illumined with a sort of mystical, if not maudlin, exaltation strangely like that which comes sometimes from prolonged drinking when the whiskey is good and one drinks a lot of it without becoming violent or sick. I suddenly found it wonderful, strange and beautiful, to be sober, and it curiously produced an illuminated sensitiveness which was astonishingly like the flashes a drunken man gets on the rare occasions when drunkenness seems golden and divine. It was as if a veil, or scum, or film had been stripped from all things visual and auditory, or as if the world had been suddenly diffused with a soft, unearthly, revealing light. I was sitting close to the radio, and was almost afraid to lift my head or move, for fear it all would fade. The colors in the carpet at my feet were abnormally vivid and made harmony. Mr. Duval came, standing in the doorway, and was looking in, as he did from time to time. I had seen him often thus, a fat-faced, fussy, spying, prying, pompously masculine old maid. I saw him now, benevolent, kindly and solicitous. He was my father and mother. He wouldn’t let me hurt myself or let anything hurt me. He was there to protect us, watch over us, and be kind to us. Four or five fellow-patients were scattered round the big room. I looked at their faces. Their faces too were diffused with kindly, human light—even the face of one I had disliked, now wondering why, for he was now my brother. Some minutes had passed, but the illusion still persisted. It had not flashed, fleeting. It was still there. I took stock of it. I realized that it was wonderful and at the same time slightly maudlin.

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