Madness (14 page)

God almighty.

Yes.

‘Coffee,' I say to the flight attendant. ‘Two cups, with sugar, please.'

Yes.

With New York City as my cure, I can finally get off the psychotropic drugs. To absorb the world purely, to absorb New York City and let it heal, I must surely be free from the interference of mind-altering substances like lithium and the anti-psychotics and the anti-depressants.

Taking lithium is like wearing a particular kind of blinkers. Lithium curbs creativity. It blocks the ability to make unique connections between objects and concepts. It blunts the acuteness of sensitivity to words and sound and colour. It stunts passion.

British psychiatrist R.D. Laing wrote, ‘The cracked mind of the schizophrenic may let in light which does not enter the intact minds of many sane people whose minds are closed.'

I don't have schizophrenia, but lithium does hinder the letting in of light and perhaps even (in the words of an Chassidic Rabbi),
l' havi or I'olam
– the bringing of light into the world.

Seven hours of rumination and I'm sure. Before we descend into Melbourne I empty the bottle of lithium tablets into the aeroplane toilet. Gush and suck and gone.

November, the end of spring. The air is slowly warmer and the dark is picking up energy. I haven't taken lithium for three weeks. The last of the magnolias are flowering and I'm in front of them like my shoes have been glued to the ground because of palpitations.

The beauty of ordinary life.

One Saturday Zoë comes over for dinner.

‘Why are your clothes drying all over the chairs?' she asks.

‘It's the clotheshorse. There's something about its shape – it's like a carcass. I'm not sure . . . I just have this really strong sense that it's leering. All that wire . . . you know?'

‘Not really, no. Are you okay?'

‘Will be once I get rid of the clotheshorse.'

I haven't taken any lithium for seven weeks, and today I understand why the minor key is sadder than the major. The interval of a Minor Third (three semitones) mirrors the expression of sadness in human speech and is the change in pitch of emergency sirens. The evenings, the nights are when the minor third clutches me in its slow and melancholic way – clutches and holds. By morning my heart has doubled in weight. It is there in the centre of my chest cavity, this dense red muscle that clenches blood of its own accord, throbbing – lubdub – with portent. I carry it around with me and size up its heaviness and its meaning. In the day I'm suddenly afraid of the omnipotence of sunlight, of its ability to make me visible. Melancholia is stretching her generous wings.

I wear the burnt orange beanie with the holes in it where the wool is unravelling, and long skirts over long pants and boots and jumpers and coats. The dark is picking up energy. The doves on Fitzroy Street worry me. How do I keep them from dying?

On my lunch break from work I walk around the city buying copies of the same edition of
The Big Issue
from as many vendors as I can find. Air tunnels up Flinders Lane and hurts the epidermis – the outer layer of my skin. The sound of cars on the road scratches my inner ears – the labyrinths, the cochlear and the oh-so-fine hair cells. Sunlight falls on my retinae – hits the rods and cones – shivers them. The leaves on the plane trees are brutal-green.

By the time I'm back at my desk I'm wet with sweat and my legs are heavy.

‘Kate, it's nearly summer and you're dressed for the arctic,' says one of my colleagues.

‘I'm cold-blooded,' I say.

She looks confused. ‘Are you okay?'

spawn death you spawn death

They've subjected me to an electric current. Their voices are sudden knives. I start to shake – a fine, full-body tremor.

‘Sure, just cold.'

death you spawn death

I try to hold on to sanity by falling deep into fictional worlds, falling in deep, staying under for as long as I can hold my breath. I read in the morning, on the train, in my lunch break at work, all evening, through the ink-blue-black of half the night. I'm reading a book a day swallowing the characters whole.

you spawn death spawn death is gathering

Around my neck is a replica Athenian coin on a silver chain. The head of Athena goddess of wisdom, goddess of war, is on one side and there's an owl on the other. Owls are also symbols of wisdom – and of dread. Wherever I go, I hold in my right hand two card-sized black and white engravings by Albrecht Dürer. They lie next to my pillow at night.

death is gathering

I start drinking.

Whisky, red wine, anything to shut them up.

I cancel my appointment with Winsome via email. If my heart were now removed and weighed against the feather of Ma'at, it would be devoured by the part-lion, part-crocodile beast guarding a path to the afterlife. Winsome is decent and principled. What if my dark leaky heart is contagious? What if I spawn death?

On the train are school kids laughing and whispering about kissing and adults who are tired and normal or bored and normal or intent on one another and normal. The seats are too narrow, I'm terrified of my neighbour's skin, the air is stiff; thick and hot and stiff, my eyes are all pupil in spite of the sunlight. The graffiti on the walls beside the train line is significant but I don't know how to unravel its meaning. VOID MEOW BIG! OH YEAH! PUNK<<

Once or twice a day I go into the women's toilets, into the farthest cubicle from the door and curl up on the floor next to the sanitary bin and close my eyes and I don't move for thirty or forty minutes. After eight or nine hours of desperate normality at work I'm completely unnerved by the thought of other commuters standing so close with so much flesh. I pay a hefty fee for taxies home.

This particular evening the moon in its thin crescent phase; the dark side just visible by earthshine, thus transforming the whole from a part-circle into an animate sphere, a pockmarked eye. It takes forever to walk up the driveway and my keys are heavy and once inside the house I feed the cats and take my shoes off and get into bed. There's a shard of sunlight breaching the closed curtains, but I'm not moving now. No poetry, no television, no telephone, no further light. I have a mixed CD of Lisa Gerrard and Jeff Buckley. I play it on repeat. If the music were translated into colour, it would be black and the grey of a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Each night, in a tiny dinghy far out to sea, out in the ocean with oceany waves and an oceany swell, I fall into deep troughs, so deep that inside them, I cannot see the sky.

‘Hush,' I whisper to the cats. ‘Hush.'

The heaviness in the centre of my chest makes it hard to breathe. Air is full of chlorine. One morning The Presence takes up residence over my left shoulder. He is an amorphous mass; squat and angry and bitter. He leers and mutters in a strangely breathy way. To soften His voice I drive out to the big, generic GP clinics in the suburbs and ask for drugs – benzos if I can get them or tramadol, even codeine. As the days pass I make a new CD of four Jeff Buckley songs and listen to that on repeat. Then only one song, Leonard Cohen's ‘Halleluiah', over and over and over. Curled up. Tight.

At work I file manila folders neatly and delete old emails, shred personal documents, clean my desk with disinfectant and arrange some annual leave. The backs of my hands and my arms are a repeatedly curious maze of black ink lines and swirls, vaguely Celtic.

‘Are you all right?' my manager asks.

death you spawn death

‘I'm sorry,' I say. ‘Just really tired. Possibly a virus.'

When all music spikes my insides I put on the BBC World Service and the English version of Radio Deutsche Welle. When English hurts – the words, the meaning – I listen half the night to SBS Radio broadcasting in Portuguese and Cambodian, Croatian and Arabic, drinking whisky straight from the bottle.

They're coming through the phone now, hissing—

you are stench stench

you spawn unclean and evil

death you spawn death

Or sometimes they just laugh, high and mirthless.

I stop showering because The Presence is a voyeur – an enormous, predatory voyeur. I stop eating because I have no appetite and everything takes like newspaper. I read and write scratchy sentences and drink whisky until the clutch and suck of Him ebbs. My house is filthy. I am filthy, my hair and clothes unwashed, my breath ketotic. The fridge is empty, there are piles of rubbish in the hallway, my body smells, my bed smells. Amongst a pile of CDs on my living room floor I discover Max Bruch's
Kol Nidrei
. It is an Italian recording; the soloist accompanied by eight other cellos. I play it on repeat all through the night. Kol Nidre: All Vows, the prayer of erev Yom Kippur. All vows . . . atonement. Atonement . . . death.

spawn you are stench you are spawn death WE SAID (shouting) you spawn death

Words are pressing in on my head and eyes. There are lumpy bruises on my arms – my wrists, my forearms, and welts where I have scratched at my skin in the night. Deborah rings and Zoë rings and my parents ring.

‘Are you okay?' they ask.

‘Really, I'm okay.'

‘Are you safe?'

‘Quite safe.'

death is gathering

In the night, the sensual night, the million-star-spawning-night. I wait. Avē Marīa, sancta Marīa, hail hail—the night offers communion, but He is here, heavy on my shoulder, whispering His darling doctrine in my left ear with breath like thick fog. He is a hangman's noose around my neck. I write about the squashed arteries, the cervical fracture, the stoppered trachea, the tongue, the terminal erection. And then the nakedness on stainless steel; body stripped back bare as that of a newborn. Carbon leaving earth in a dream.

Winsome rings and suggests, firmly, that I make an appointment.

‘Not okay,' I say eventually, hunched up on her couch in long pants, a skirt, jumper, winter coat and high black boots.

Winsome looks at me calmly.

Dead self. Sitting here. In this chair. The relief.

‘What's happening?' Winsome asks.

Can't face her eyes. Him.

‘All this shit,' I say, monotone.

unclean spawn

‘In notebooks. That I've written in the night.'

My handwriting is not mine. It is His. I hold the pen in my hand

but the words that form on the page are His.

Winsome is very still. Dead self.

Old bone. Him.

‘It doesn't make sense. None at all.'

‘What else is happening?' Winsome asks.

unclean and evil devil and spawn

‘The phone,' I say.

Can't feel the air.

‘Nowhere is safe,' I say.

Winsome waits.

Silence for a minute outside my head.

‘The melancholia of Dürer's engraving,' I say.

‘Meaning . . .?' asks Winsome.

‘I don't know how to get rid of it.'

Talk to the floor. Can't face her eyes. Him.

‘Get rid of the melancholia?' she asks.

‘Dead self.'

evil devil spawn you are stench you are spawn death WE SAID (shouting) you spawn death

Unwind off the couch. Slow old bone.

Scrunch on the floor.

Winsome watches but she doesn't comment. Then she says, ‘There have been times when you have been in a better space: aware of your feelings, finding pleasure in your surroundings and senses. At present, however, you seem to be in a very different place.'

Nod.

‘I appreciate that you are not in the frame of mind for therapy. I'd like you to make an urgent appointment with Aaron. It's essential, Kate, that you and he discuss medication.'

Hunch down.

Whisper, ‘Narcotics cannot still the tooth that nibbles at the soul.'

‘If I can make an appointment for today or tomorrow will you go?' Winsome asks.

Nod.

Aaron listens to me stutter for ten minutes and then he says, ‘Hospital.'

Everyone smokes in the inpatient unit. Tobacco is currency. There's another new patient on the ward today, pacing and smoking rollies in the courtyard. That singular-psychosis-energy is streaming from his skin, his feet, his arms, his eyes. His eyes are black diamonds – the glint and flint – it is rare, like rare meat, all the juice and flair. His stare enters me through my eyes and exits through the occipital lobe at the back of my head.

‘Kate! Move away please.' One of the nurses wanders over. ‘Move away.'

I do.

For the first two days in hospital I don't get out of bed even for my bladder and staff leave me alone. Then they must have decided that the only way to get me up in the morning is to come into the bedroom in pairs, as loudly as possible, open the curtains, peel the blankets and sheets off me and say, ‘We're not leaving, Kate, until you are out of bed.'

‘There isn't a single, plausible reason for moving,' I say, eyes closed. My voice makes me want to vomit.

‘Gorgeous day,' says Damien, my regular contact nurse. ‘Blue sky.'

beware we said devil we said hang your hair right there

‘Come on please. Now.'

‘I need a forklift.'

Damien laughs. But I am serious. What's left of the body is already dead.

When I finally lumber into the communal area, the largest person I've ever seen is sitting at one of the tables the eating cornflakes. He takes the lid off the plastic sugar pot and pours sugar like a waterfall into his bowl. He sits to the side of the table because his belly won't fit underneath. His legs are wide apart and I can see his penis through the taut gaps between the buttons of his pyjama fly.

In the courtyard I sit on the wooden bench with my notebooks and bag of other books and stare for a long time at the brown concrete tiles.

unclean and evil devil spawn you are stench you are spawn death you spawn death you spawn death

‘Kate?' says Damien from the doorway. ‘Aaron's ready to see you.'

As we go through the community area, a young man comes out of HDU holding a young woman's hand, with one of the nursing staff on his other side. I know him – James and I were in a uni class together a few years ago. He looks at me without recognition, shoots out his left hand and grips my arm.

‘They're trying to steal my logic,' he says, low and fast. ‘They're a security company disguised as a hospital and they're contravening the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.'

I don't say anything.

‘They administer harmful substances!' his voice rises as the nurse tries to walk him away. ‘We're lab rats! They track and trace us with satellites. Ask them to reverse their smiles because it's false advertising.'

‘Oh James,' says the young woman. She strokes his head.

‘Don't,' he says.

Her eyes fill with tears.

‘Tell them lies; otherwise they'll rip off your identity!' he shouts at the roof.

Damien and I walk into the interview room. Aaron is already here with my medical record open in front of him.

‘How are you today?' Aaron asks.

‘Breathing.'

Aaron suppresses a yawn.

‘Come on Kate, you can do better than that,' says Damien.

I stare at the floor. ‘It has been decreed.'

‘What has been decreed?'

‘My death.'

‘Oh.'

I nod.

‘Are you sure?' asks Damien.

I give him all of my eyes – right through, cornea to retina, right through.

In the corner of the room, Lily is on the floor in her crib. Lily was born different. Her neck repulses her head. Her tongue sticks straight out, writhing like a pale eel. Lily's eyes are bent sideways; part blue, part green. Separate from one another. Alone in their sockets. She keens all through the night, flails arms and legs, forms positions unholy for a child. Hair smothers her crown and brow; not even the sides of her face are delicious to touch. Adults sometimes look kindly– attempt embrace, but Lily makes a bridge of her spine so high she might as well be boneless. Perhaps she is. Her hands are always fists.

How do I articulate Lily to these two neat, clean men? The connection between my brain and mouth is blocked, stoppered or perhaps severed. I sit there with the pain – the visceral pain, centred in the chest, heavy as plutonium and glacier-cold. And the soul-pain, because the very essence of self is damaged and damaging. Then there is the mind, tunnelling itself straight to hell. I can't articulate this. I sit there.

Later I walk back into the courtyard because I'm not allowed in my room and the television is on in the community area. The television impregnates: it is too loud and too fast and too bright. Naava is playing the ward's acoustic guitar. She plays intimately; a few people gather round to listen. Two patients are kissing on a bench, her legs in between his legs, her hands, his hands, feeling their way over each other's skin, lips. They glow a little.

‘Close your eyes,' she says to him. ‘Go on.' He does. Then she says, ‘I love you I love you I love you I love you.'

Naava plays ‘Blues run the game' by Nick Drake, quietly and perfectly. The music heals one of the broken things inside me. When she finishes, Andrew and I clap.

‘There's never going to be a Second Coming,' says Andrew, his eyes suddenly red and bright.

Damien says, ‘Kate, let's have a chat.'

In my room I curl up on the bed and Damien sits opposite on one of those generic, plastic hospital chairs.

‘How's it going?' he asks.

‘If you put me in a brown cardboard box and taped it up and walked away, I wouldn't care.'

‘When was the last time you had a shower?'

‘Ah . . . well, the thing is . . .'

‘Yes?'

‘A month ago. I think. I don't remember.'

‘When was the last time you changed your clothes?'

I don't know the answer.

‘Your clothes smell awful.'

‘It's . . . I can't . . .' I hold my breath all the way in.

He waits.

‘It's not just me in the shower, that's the problem.'

‘I don't understand.'

‘. . . there's Him.'

‘Who?'

‘Shit.' I stare up at the sprinkler outlets, metal flowers, in the ceiling.

‘Nothing up there is going to help you, Kate.'

‘I call Him The Presence, okay, He's here, He's always here, He doesn't leave me the fuck alone, He whispers in my left ear on and on and on, I don't know why He's here, I didn't bloody well invite Him and I'd quite like to kill Him, all right, so now you know, you can go ahead and lock me up.'

‘Thank you for being so honest. Can I talk to your doctor about this?'

‘Oh so he can lock me up. Brilliant. No, okay, yes, okay.'

‘You're shaking.'

‘Well it's not every day you get to admit that you're mad.'

‘Mad?'

‘Yes, you know, loony, batty, bonkers, completely fucked in the head.'

‘Is that what you are?'

‘Yes.'

‘I don't think so. Part of your brain is not working properly, but we can treat that. That's why you're here.'

I roll my eyes. Damien is looking at me directly; his eyes are brown and clear and appear to be emitting their own light from somewhere deep inside him.

‘Okay,' I say.

‘We gave you a series of psychometric tests when you were here a couple of years ago. Do you remember?' he asks.

‘No.'

‘Well your visual and verbal responses and your processing speed were off the charts.'

I stare at my knees.

‘There is a link between creativity and some kinds of mental illness?'

‘I've read about it.'

‘Many people in the creative arts are affected in one way or another, usually with one or more episodes of depression or hypomania. And about half have a problematic relationship with alcohol and/or other drugs at some time in their lives.'

I smile at my knees, ‘I've got the second part.'

‘I really do want to help you, while you're here. Will you work with me?' His voice is soft and warm.

The people in my head cackle.

‘I'm a persistent vegetable, a breathing, shitting shell. I kneel in my swill.'

‘That's the illness talking. Your life is before you. We can get you through this rough patch and I'd like to start by asking you to come and see us whenever it gets particularly bad.'

Nothing about this conversation amounts to anything, but I appreciate that Damien has taken the time to bother with it, so I say, ‘Okay. Thanks Damien,' and I walk into the courtyard and here's Max, shuffling towards me. He's about seventy, very thin, elegantly dressed, coiffed hair. When he opens his mouth his two teeth are yellow and black and his breath is a fetid mix of cigarettes, pus and acetone. He stands in front of me, where I'm sitting cross-legged on one of the wooden benches.

‘Look at you!' he shouts. ‘You're a fucking dirty bitch prostitute! How much do you charge?'

I look at him.

‘You dirty bitch! Are you soliciting me? I'm calling the police! Hey! She's a prostitute! Hey! I've got five dollars.'

I just look.

‘Bitch, you dirty bitch,' he says. ‘Hey! There's a fucking prostitute here!' And then he spits a thick, yellow gob onto the ground in front of me. It bubbles, and he shuffles away, stopping every two steps to hold up his hands, glaring, mouthing ‘dirty bitch'.

The newspaper is here and I copy out my horoscope:

Your planet Mercury makes a harmonious link to Pluto, so today is one of those days when you'll probably feel all your brain cogs are superbly well-oiled. It is a perfect opportunity for making plans or analysing crucial issues. Enjoy the light and positive feeling that comes with both heart and mind working smoothly and astutely. Favourable colours are pink and parchment.