The Rules of Dreaming
Read The Rules of Dreaming Online
Authors: Bruce Hartman
The Rules of
Dreaming
a tale by
Bruce Hartman
Swallow Tail Press
All Rights Reserved
Published by Swallow Tail Press,
Philadelphia, PA, USA
swallowtailpress.com
Kindle edition, 2013
Cover design by Kit Foster
Translation from
Die Elixiere des Teufels
by the author.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of any character, event or place mentioned in this book to any real person, place or event is unintentional and entirely coincidental.
Also by Bruce Hartman:
Perfectly Healthy Man Drops Dead
“... it came to me that what we call dream and hallucination might be the symbolic perception of the hidden thread that runs through our life and binds it together in all its domains, and nevertheless that the man who with that perception believes he has gained the power to break the thread and take it in along with the dark power that rules over us, must be regarded as lost.”
E.T.A. Hoffmann,
The Devil’s Elixirs
(1815)
Table of
Contents
I.
Olympia
Setting and Time
Egdon, New York
, 1999. A rural town about two hours northwest of New York City. Home of the Palmer Institute, a prestigious private psychiatric hospital.
Characters
Hunter Morgan
— A 21-year-old schizophrenic who has resided at the Palmer Institute for the past seven years.
Antonia Morgan
— Hunter’s twin sister, also schizophrenic and a resident of the Institute.
Maria Morgan
— The twins’ mother, an opera singer who hanged herself seven years earlier.
Avery Morgan
— The twins’ father, a wealthy local landowner and manuscript collector.
Susan Morgan
— Avery Morgan’s young second wife.
Dr. Ned Hoffmann
—The twins’ physician at the Institute, recently graduated from his psychiatric residency.
Nicole P.
— A 28-year-old graduate student in literature who recently experienced a psychotic episode and was admitted to the Institute, where she is a patient of Dr. Hoffmann’s.
Dr. Miles Palmer
—A world-famous psychiatrist, the founder and Director of the Palmer Institute.
Dr. Peter Bartolli
— Dr. Palmer’s half-brother, also a psychiatrist. Formerly at the Institute, now in private practice.
Olympia
— Dr. Bartolli’s daughter. A dancer and performance therapy artist.
Miss Francine Whipple
—Librarian at the small local public library.
Dubin
— A blackmailer.
Mrs. Paterson
— A nurse at the Institute, formerly employed by the Morgan family.
Dr. Jeff
rey Gottlieb
— Staff psychiatrist and Associate Director at the Institute.
Julietta
—Receptionist at the Institute.
Frank Lynch
— Former local police chief, now retired
Dr. Klein
— Chief of Psychiatry at a small community hospital about fifty miles north of Egdon.
I. Olympia
A
ll right, Dr. Klein, you can turn that thing on now. I’m ready to tell my story. But first you have to understand, I’m not who you think I am.
Okay.
We’re listening.
Late last summer
, after less than two months at the Palmer Institute, I witnessed an extraordinary performance. One of my patients, Hunter Morgan (that was not his real name), sat down at the piano in the patient lounge and started playing like a virtuoso. Hunter was a twenty-one-year-old schizophrenic who had lived in the Institute for the past seven years, and as far as anyone could remember he’d never touched the piano before. The piece he played was classical music—that was about all I could tell—and it sounded fiendishly difficult, a whirlwind of chords and notes strung together in a jarring rhythm that seemed the perfect analog of a mind spinning out of control. He continued playing for about ten minutes and then suddenly stopped in the middle of an intense climactic passage. Without acknowledging his audience—which consisted of his sister Antonia, his nurse Mrs. Paterson, a few other patients and myself—he stood up from the piano and ran out of the room.
Since I was new at the Institute, the impact of this performance was lost on me at first. I assumed that Hunter had been studying the piano from an early age. The nurse, Mrs.
Paterson, gave no sign that what she had just witnessed was the least bit unusual, and as for Antonia, Hunter’s twin sister—she was also a victim of schizophrenia and I knew better than to expect a reaction from her. It wasn’t until later that afternoon, when I reviewed Hunter’s chart and questioned Mrs. Paterson specifically about the piano playing, that I realized how uncanny this incident really was.
“You mean he’s never played the piano before?” We were standing by the nurse’s station on the second floor, where Mrs. Paterson prepared the twins’ afternoon medications.
“Not that I know of,” she said, looking away.
“You were with the family before the twins came to live here, weren’t you?”
“Yes I was.”
“Didn’t he play the piano then?”
“Not that I know of.” Mrs. Paterson was a wiry black woman of about sixty, with flat dark eyes that never gave away a secret. She picked up her tray and started toward Antonia’s room. “It’s time for Antonia’s asthma medication.”
I followed her down the hall and cornered her in front of Antonia’s door. “Their mother was an opera singer, wasn’t she? She must have taught Hunter to play the piano.”
Mrs. Paterson’s forehead was glowing with sweat. “Dr. Hoffmann,” she said, lowering her voice. “I’ve been with the twins since they were two years old. Neither of them ever had any piano lessons.”
“But their mother—”
“She used to sing with them and that’s all.”
“But then after they came in here Hunter must have had lessons.”
“If so, it must have been in the middle of the night. Now let me do my work. I don’t have time to talk about this any more.”
Hunter Morgan and his twin sister Antonia had been admitted to the Institute
seven years earlier, at the age of fourteen, a week after their mother hanged herself on a light fixture in her rehearsal studio. Neither had ever ventured anywhere close to reality again. They were the only children of Maria Morgan, the opera singer, and Avery Phelps Morgan, scion of a wealthy local family who now had three younger children with his second wife Susan. This had been explained to me by Dr. Miles Palmer, the Institute’s Director, who supervised the twins’ care and treatment for seven years without any real success. Hunter suffered from auditory hallucinations, disorganized speech and constantly shifting multiple personalities. Antonia’s illness was almost a mirror image of her brother’s. While Hunter talked—which was almost constantly—Antonia was silent. When Hunter unleashed an outburst of incoherent, violent imagery, Antonia was all sweetness and light. And when the rest of us had given up trying to decipher his meaningless sound and fury, Antonia would be hanging on every word as if she alone could make sense of it.
I was fascinated by them. Even though it was my first real job, I was determined to accomplish what Dr. Palmer and the others who practiced at the Institute had been unable to do: to break through the wall of schizophrenia and connect with Hunter and Antonia, to bring their world back into ours. It was a presumptuous goal for an otherwise modest thirty-year-old
—my name is Ned Hoffmann, by the way—who had just finished his psychiatric residency. My background and upbringing were conventional: born and raised in the suburbs of New York, father in the construction business, mother always wanted me to be a doctor; and no one who knew me could understand why I’d chosen psychiatry when I could have been a cardiologist or even a urologist like my Uncle Art. I was at a loss to explain it, except to say that as soon as I began my residency at the state hospital I knew I’d made the right choice. Like any doctor, I cared passionately about people and wanted to help them. I certainly have my faults—more than I realized, as will become apparent—but cynicism is not among them. If anything I’d say I’m a little naive, particularly about myself, a little too shy and introspective to put my good intentions into effect. At the state hospital I soon realized that most of my patients were beyond help. The most I could hope for was to understand them. But wasn’t that enough? To walk with the patients through the dark side, seeing their world as they saw it, feeling it as they felt it—wasn’t that the most valuable gift anyone could give them? And at the famous Palmer Institute, with its small patient population and superior resources, I could go even farther, maybe even leading a few of them back towards the light.
It was a dangerous path—far more dangerous than I imagined—and I must have been incredibly naive not to be aware of its dangers. But naive and presumptuous as I was, after two months at the Institute I felt that I could do something for the Morgan twins that no one else had been able to do. Personally I was lonely, living by myself in the Institute’s residential wing, even a little depressed.
The only woman I ever talked to, other than mental patients and aging nurses, was a twenty-four-year-old tart named Julietta who sat at the receptionist’s desk filing her nails when she wasn’t sneaking off to one of the empty bedrooms with one of the physicians. I sympathized with the patients, possibly a little more than I should have. In any event I set my goal at rescuing the twins from the parallel universe of schizophrenia where they had been doomed to spend their lives. And so that afternoon when Hunter Morgan sat down at the piano and gave his astonishing performance, I knew I wouldn’t rest until I understood where that music had come from.
Since Dr. Palmer was in San Francisco for a professional meeting, the only colleague I could talk to about Hunter’s piano playing was Dr. Jeffrey Gottlieb, the Associate Director. Approaching him was never an appealing prospect. He was an ungainly little wretch who never seemed to do anything right and usually found someone else to blame for his misfortunes. If you asked him a question, he would squint at you from beneath his beetle brows and tilt his balding head ever so slightly in case his words and tone of voice failed to convey the right level of disdain. As a psychiatrist he was
a cynical subscriber to the dope-‘em-up school. But he was the Associate Director and I was the new kid on the block, and in Dr. Palmer’s absence I felt I had to tell someone about Hunter’s extraordinary behavior. Predictably, Gottlieb was not impressed and his advice was more medication.
“If he’s acting out like that, you’ve got to titrate his dosages upwards. Whatever he’s taking, give him more of it.”
“But he’s already taking about twice the recommended dosages.”
“What’s the alternative, Hoffmann? Piano lessons? This is medicine we’re practicing, not occupational therapy. Raise his dosages.”
I hesitated, and Gottlieb treated me to one of his dreaded let-me-give-you-some-friendly-advice looks. He stepped closer and probably would have put one of his paws on my shoulder if he’d been able to reach that high. “At this Institute,” he said, “we follow the physiological model of illness and treatment. We don’t believe in Freud, Jung, aroma therapy, spiritualism or any other form of quackery.”
“I know that.”
“It hasn’t always been that way. When this place was founded, psychiatry was still in the Middle Ages and Miles’s brother did everything he could to keep it there.”
“I know all about Miles’s brother,” I said.
“Peter Bartolli. They’re half brothers, actually.”
“I’ve heard all this before.” In fact Gottlieb was the one I’d heard it from, three or four times. I started to walk away.
“Bartolli’s a complete quack,” Gottlieb continued, following me down the hall, “and he’d like nothing better than to wheedle his way back in here.”
The nurse,
Mrs. Paterson, called me from the end of the hall. “Dr. Hoffmann?”
“
I have to see one of my patients,” I said, trying to escape.
Gottlieb
grabbed my elbow. “Just a word of advice: you don’t want to be labeled a heretic—”
“A heretic?”
“And you don’t want to be perceived as neutral in the rivalry between Miles and his brother. This is Cain versus Abel and there’s no upside being in the middle of it. Raise the dosages.”
“Thanks, Jeff,” I said, hurrying away. “Thanks for the advice.” I was offended by Gottlieb’s portrayal of
Dr. Palmer, and although I wouldn’t have admitted it, I didn’t share Gottlieb’s disdain for Freud and Jung and some of the other innovators he dismissed as quacks. Wasn’t it possible that Hunter’s piano playing represented the first step in a therapeutic encounter with the unconscious? Wasn’t that something we ought to encourage rather than artificially suppress?
Imagining that I knew all the answers, I shook off Gottlieb like an annoying insect and paid no attention to his advice
. Instead, as if going out of my way to defy him, I decided to lower the dosages of Hunter’s medications.
At that time there was another patient, Nicole P., who had been requiring most of my a
ttention. Nicole was twenty-eight years old and a graduate student in literature at a prestigious university in New York City. She had checked in to the Institute two weeks earlier with symptoms of anxiety and disorientation. Her natural cheerfulness, she told me, had been overtaken by a sense of impending doom and the fear that she was on the brink of going crazy. Still her green eyes sparkled with humor and intelligence. She spoke English with a lilting accent she said was Irish, though she was quick to add that she’d been educated in England, where she took a first in modern languages at Oxford. Recently she’d gone through a painful breakup with a boyfriend named Richard who had abused her and then begged her not to leave him, but most of her anxiety seemed to stem from her inability to find a topic for her dissertation.
Nicole was nimble and petite
and very pretty. No, I take that back—“pretty” doesn’t come close to doing her justice. She was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen, with cascading red hair and a bold, astonished look in her eyes that made her seem at once wild and angelic. But since my profession has liberated society from all of its taboos save one—that a psychiatrist shall not fall in love with his patient—all I could do was listen sympathetically as she pulled herself back together and prepared to return to her studies. I put her on appropriate medications and she began to make progress immediately.
As it happened, Nicole had been in the lounge when Hunter sat down to play the piano.
Later that same afternoon I met with her for the last therapy session before her discharge, which was scheduled to occur in a couple of days. She and I had spent a good deal of time together, talking of subjects that people usually reserve for their closest relationships. We were both young and unattached, lonely and frustrated with the challenges of making our way in the world. I wanted her to find me as fascinating as I found her, but of course that was impossible. My job was to expose her deepest secrets while acknowledging none of my own, to elucidate the rules of her troubled dreams while concealing those inner demons that were just beginning to make their presence known in my life.
When she sat down in front of my desk that morning, she looked as beautiful and vulnerable as ever. And she had the same anxious spark in her eyes that I had seen the night she was admitted. “Nicole,” I said after a few preliminaries, “you’ve done very well here. Do you feel that you’re ready to go back to the University?”
“Of course,” she smiled. “Everyone’s mad in my department. They’ll scarcely notice.”
I smiled back, glad
to see that she was able to defuse her anxiety with humor. “I’m glad it’s been a positive experience for you.”
“It gave me some space, some time to think. And the people
here have been wonderful.”
“Our staff does a great job.”
“I was thinking of the other patients, actually.”
“The patients?”
“You know I’m quite fond of Hunter and Antonia.”
“Of cou
rse,” I nodded. “Hunter and Antonia.” I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. Nicole had spent most of her time during the past two weeks with the twins. I had assumed that she was humoring them.
“I mean,” she went on, animated by the warmth of her feelings toward the twins, “obviously they’re both very special and have their own unique ways of dealing with the world, but there’s something that shines through, isn’t there?”