Haiku
© Stephen Cain
1538 words
Rene opened the book. Right there on the first page blended with the fibres of the newsprint on which the words were printed were a few grains of Christmas-card glitter. He did not think about how they came to be there. They glinted in that special shade of blue-green that he always thought of as his own secret colour and the tiny arrows of light touched him deep inside. This particular book, he realized, was a magic theatre (not for everyone), but he had been granted admission and these greenly glittering grains were the proof. When the noises from the party upstairs grew too loud for reading he put the book down.
Mary lived upstairs with her flatmate, Jo (Jo was a woman). He tried not to think too much about Mary and Jo because he knew they would not be thinking about him. Not that they were unkind, they were quite friendly, especially Mary. Jo was the administrator for the block of flats. Rene did not remember what Mary did, but she was otherwise memorable part Polynesian with finely chiselled features that made him think of war-canoes slicing through green oceans, unusually combined with fair skin, a mane of natural blonde hair, and huge, sky-blue eyes. They had invited him to the party Jo had asked him in for a cup of tea just as Mary had emerged Aphrodite-like from the shower partially wrapped in a minute towel. Rene thought it best not to read anything into her unselfconsciousness. Anyway, he hated parties. They were only asking out of politeness.
He did not have to go to the office in the morning as the following day was a Saturday, but felt nevertheless that sleep was the best option. He rolled a joint. This would usually knock him out quite quickly. An ancient Beach Boys anthem was playing upstairs and each "Barb" of the "Barb-Barb-Barb Barb-arbra-Ann" chant was a new quivering petal-breast on the golden goddess-flower that filled his universe from top to bottom and took away his pain. Consciousness gradually faded.
Grass made him feel better, but Rene worried that it might be making his condition worse. He had described his symptoms to a doctor who had made an appointment for him to visit with a psychiatrist at Auckland hospital. The psychiatrist had seemed too young to be a psychiatrist. She had not wanted to know much beyond the fact that Rene heard voices all of the time. She loved to talk though and he discovered, among other things, that she had just returned to work after having taken a year off to have a baby. There was a painting on the wall behind her depicting a skeleton emerging from a cupboard. Rene did not recognise the artist, but he thought that it was an old Dutch painting reproduction, obviously. He wondered whether it was his skeleton or hers creeping out of the cupboard. Perfect for a psychiatrist's office though, he thought.
The doctor suggested he could be admitted as a voluntary patient and Rene decided to give it a go. He had been given drugs as soon as he arrived and he had passed out on a bed in a room he could not remember. He could remember sitting at a table with toast and marmalade and cups of tea amid the confusion of noises in the patient's cafeteria the following morning. A girl, very young, with unwashed hair, was also sitting at the table. He thought she was unusually pretty, although she did not make him anxious the way Mary did. All were equals in this place. Rene was especially pleased at her prettiness because it had occasionally occurred to him that people with mental illnesses were all ugly and he sometimes thought that this might be what was really wrong with them. He could never decide whether his own face was ugly or not, but could see that it was quite asymmetrical. This pretty girl seemed to have decided he was good enough to talk to anyway. They talked about their symptoms, as psychiatric ward inmates do.
She said, "I'm much better now, but when I arrived here everything was under water. If you looked out of that window over there," the ward was on the 10th floor and there was a panoramic view of Auckland city and its harbour "it was all under water. Everything was under water you know?"
Rene tried to imagine the scene through the window rippling like a B-movie rendition of a bad trip. He even added a few Hieronymus Bosch hybrids floating in the air, but still felt unsure about what she had meant. Their conversation was interrupted when an awed hush fell on the cafeteria crowd. Looking around to see what all the silence was about, Rene saw that a tall, lean, middle-aged man with a deep tan, well-cut suit, and greying hair had joined the cafeteria queue. Rene thought he must be a doctor, but why would he be queuing for breakfast in here?
"That's lithium," a voice whispered in his ear. Rene had long ago stopped wondering who it was that spoke to him out of the air. Clearly, this lithium was something special. Rene did not imagine that it would have been pleasant to take, but the results were spectacular. This fellow was a living advertisement for the effectiveness of modern mental health care. Rene felt quite sure that his medication would not have anywhere near as wondrous an effect as this. Rene's medication came in big tablets that he felt were made of clay beneath their smooth, blue coating. They were not made of clay. They made him relax at first, but soon after made him feel indescribably uncomfortable. They made him want to be unconscious or dead. That was why he had to leave the hospital after a few days.
When he awoke the morning after returning to his flat he discovered that he had brought a bottle of the big blue tablets with him. He could not remember how he had got them. He still felt unbearably restless and decided to go out for a drive while the remainder of the "medicine" drained from his squirming veins. He drove for hours, eventually drawing up at a deserted beach. He parked the car beneath a gnarled pohutukawa tree.
"I've got the top cop!"
It was Mary. Rene did not bother to look around she would not have brought her body. He did not even want to guess what she had meant by "top cop".
"I have something right at the centre of my mind."
He could not imagine what she might have at the centre of her mind either.
"Go away!" He knew perfectly well that nothing he could have said would make the voice go away; it is just that it is what you say when you want more than anything else in the universe for someone to go away. He began to remember why he had sought treatment. He wanted to cry, but could manage only a dry, choking rage at the intolerable intrusion. You never really get used to it.
"Right at the centre of my mind, right in the very middle "
"Please leave me alone!" He knew that his mind would start trying to make sense of the words that would soon be tumbling anomalous as a rain of frogs from a clear blue sky. Failing, it would start to check remote possibilities, then remoter possibilities, the paranormal, Tales from the Crypt... that is what minds do. They try to make sense of things. Even utterly senseless things. Sense is a kind of pattern, but where there is no sense you can still make patterns.
He had once drawn a picture of his own mind. The drawing had looked a bit like the cabalistic tree of life. He had not finished it because he was unable to think of all the things of which his mind consisted, but he had known what was at the centre. He knew because on his second LSD trip he had begun to think about death. Almost as soon as he began to think about death he realised that what he was right at centre, what he really, absolutely was, what he was beyond all analysis or discussion, was pure being, no more and no less and pure being cannot become non-being any more than non-being can become being. He was immortal move over Jesus! until the acid wore off. He still had no idea of what the Mary-voice was trying to say to him.
"Do you want to know what it is?" asked the blue-robed sky.
Rene thought of the real Mary. Perhaps it really is telepathy. The sky was not usually quite so solicitous. "Yes," he blurted, regretting as he spoke.
"Right at the centre of my mind, right in the very middle, I have a bottle-brush."
Rene took the tablets from his briefcase, swallowed the prescribed dose and sat motionless in the car. Gradually, very gradually, he began to see through the eyes of someone else, someone who saw things from a greater distance: Pohutukawa tree by the water. Christmas-card glitter through fading flowers. Red mat covering an empty car.