Chapter 22

The white-coated medical man--he said that he was associate psychiatrist at the Phipps Clinic--beckoned me to follow him into a side-room. He waved me to be seated and closed the door.

“You see, Mr. Tompkins,” he told me, “everybody’s crazy.”

There is no point in recounting the stages which had converted my panic flight from the wrath of the Secret Service into this interview with one of Johns Hopkins psychiatric staff, except that I had been amazed by the ease with which he had drawn me aside shortly after I had sat down in the waiting-room.

“Of course I realize, doctor,” I replied, “that everyone must be abnormal since that is how you establish an average normality. My case is so peculiar, though, that I’d like to have you check on me.”

“Here we can take you only on the recommendation of a registered physician or psychiatrist,” he told me. “We’re understaffed and over-crowded as it is. My advice to you would be to return to your home--you live near New York, you say--and put yourself in the hands of your regular family physician. There are plenty of institutions in your part of the country which are fully qualified to give the necessary treatment. Even if you were recommended to us now we could only put you on the waiting list.”

I murmured something vague about war-conditions and neurotics, but he raised his hand like a traffic-cop and interrupted me.

“The war, at least so far as active service is concerned, has taken a load off us, Mr. Tompkins,” he informed me. “You see, in normal times people live under any number of pressures which force them to restrain their natural impulses. War gives them outlets--including sex, a sense of gang solidarity, and permission to commit acts of violence and homicide--which would result in jail-sentences for them at other times. Of course, there are a good many psychos coming out of actual combat but the government takes care of them. No, the bulk of our current cases are essential civilians: generals, administrators, politicians, business executives--who find that the war simply redoubles the pressures on them. Some of them are really insane in the medical sense but their positions are so high that we dare not insist on their hospitalization. Instead, we have a simple prescription which most of them find no difficulty in taking. Perhaps it would help in your case.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Oh, just go out and get drunk now and then, and find yourself a girl-friend. Blow off steam, in other words. Find an outlet for your natural impulses. If the White House had consulted me, Roosevelt might still--Oh, well, no use crying over spilt milk. Half the mental trouble in this country is due to people trying to be something they are not, and the other half is due to people trying not to be something that they naturally are. Primitive people are rarely troubled with neuroses.”

“But you said that everybody’s crazy, doctor,” I objected. “How does that fit into the picture?”

“Mr. Tompkins,” the psychiatrist remarked, “you must have noticed that the only sane people today are the alleged lunatics, who do what makes them happy. Take the man who thinks he is Napoleon. He is Napoleon and is much happier than those who try to tell him that he isn’t. The real maniacs are now in control of the asylum. There’s a theory among the psychiatrists that certain forms of paranoia are contagious. Every now and then a doctor or a nurse here and at other mental clinics goes what they call crazy and has to join the patients. My theory is that it is sanity which is contagious and that the only sane people are those who have sense enough to be crazy. They are locked up at once for fear that others will go sane, too. Now, take me, I’m--”

At that moment two husky young men came in and led him away. After a short interval one of them returned.

“I’m sorry this happened, sir,” he apologized. “Dr. Murdoch is a tragic case. He was formerly employed here and every now and then he still manages to escape to one of our consultation rooms. He’s quite harmless. What was he telling you?”

“That the only sane people in the world were the lunatics,” I said.

The young man nodded. “Yes, that’s his usual line. That’s what got him committed in the first place. For my money, he’s right but he oughtn’t to go around saying it. And what can we do for you?”

I told him that the “associate psychiatrist” had advised me to put myself in the hands of my family doctor and had prescribed a dose of wine, women and song as a method of restoring my mental balance. I was troubled by serious loss of memory, I said, and needed treatment.

He nodded again. “Boy, when I finish my internship and start private practice, am I going to clean up in the upper brackets with that one! Murdoch’s crazy to waste that on these people in Phipps. They can’t follow his advice. This one is strictly for Park Avenue.”

I left the clinic, phoned the hotel in Washington from a pay-booth in a corner drug-store, and told Germaine to join me at Pook’s Hill. I said that I had had to leave Washington in a hurry and would explain when I saw her. I added that I’d just had a consultation at Johns Hopkins and had decided to take medical treatment.

“I know one thing you don’t need treatment for--your nerve!” she replied and hung up on me.

When I reached the house in Bedford Hills, I was welcomed by Mary-Myrtle at the front door and by the loud barking of Ponto from my bedroom. Germaine had not yet returned.

“How’s Ponto?” I asked the maid.

“Oh, he’s fine,” she told me, “just fine. He eats his food and sleeps regular and is just like he was.”

“Good, I’ll take a look at him.”

I went upstairs and held my bedroom door ajar.

“Hullo, Ponto old boy,” I said in the curious tone one uses towards dogs, children and public men. “Here I am back from Washington.”

He lay on my bed, with ears pricked up, gazing at me intently.

“Yes, Ponto,” I continued. “I got the Order of Merit from President Truman himself and met all the big shots, so if you take a bite at me now it will be sabotage.”

Ponto put his ears back and let his tongue dangle from the side of his mouth, while his tail made a haze as it thumped delightedly on the pillow. If he hadn’t been an animal, I would have said he was laughing.

“There, old fellow,” I soothed him.

He wuffed affectionately, jumped to the floor, and stood beside me, panting and drooling.