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  The girl said in a gentle and moderated voice, to Fat and not to the psych tech, ‘Our Lord God has prepared for us a place to live where there will be no pain and no fear and see? the animals lie happily together, the lion and the lamb, as we shall be, all of us, friends who love one another, without suffering or death, forever and ever with our Lord Jehovah who loves us and will never abandon us, whatever we do.’

  ‘Debbie, please leave the lounge,’ the psych tech said.

  Still smiling at Fat, the girl pointed to a cow and a lamb in the crude drawing. ‘All beasts, all men, all living creatures great and small will bask in the warmth of Jehovah’s love, when the Kingdom arrives. You think it will be a long time, but Christ Jesus is with us today.’ Then, closing up the magazine, the girl, still smiling but now silent, left the room.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ the psych tech said to Fat.

  ‘Gosh,’ Fat said, amazed.

  ‘Did she upset you? I’m sorry about that. She’s not supposed to have that literature; somebody must have smuggled it in to her.’

  Fat said, ‘I’ll be okay.’ He realized it; it dazed him.

  ‘Let’s get this information down,’ the psych tech said, seating himself with his clipboard and pen. ‘The date of your birth.’

  You fool, Fat thought. You fucking fool. God is here in your goddam mental hospital and you don’t know it; you see it but you don’t know it. You have been invaded and you don’t even know it.

  He felt joy.

  He remembered entry #9 from his exegesis. He lived a long time ago but he is still alive. He is still alive, Fat thought. After all that’s happened. After the pills, after the slashed wrist, after the car exhaust. After being locked up. He is still alive.

  After a few days, the patient he liked best in the ward was Doug, a large, young, deteriorated hebephrenic who never put on street clothing but simply wore a hospital gown open at the back. The women in the ward washed, cut and brushed Doug’s hair because he lacked the skills to do those things himself. Doug did not take his situation seriously, except when they all got wakened up for break-fast. Every day Doug greeted Fat with terror.

  ‘The TV lounge has devils in it,’ Doug always said, every morning. ‘I’m afraid to go in there. Can you feel it? I feel it even walking past it.’

  When they all made out their lunch-orders Doug wrote:

  SWILL

  ‘I’m ordering swill,’ he told Fat.

  Fat said, ‘I’m ordering dirt.’

  In the central office, which had glass walls and a locked door, the staff watched the patients and made notations. In Fat’s case it got noted down that when the patients played cards (which took up half their time, since no therapy existed) Fat never joined in. The other patients played poker and blackjack, while Fat sat off by himself reading.

  ‘Why don’t you play cards?’ Penny, a psych tech, asked him.

  ‘Poker and blackjack are not card games but money games,’ Fat said, lowering his book. ‘Since we’re not allowed to have any money on us, there’s no point in playing.’

  ‘I think you should play cards,’ Penny said.

  Fat knew that he had been ordered to play cards, so he and Debbie played kids’ card games like ‘Fish.’ They played ‘Fish’ for hours. The staff watched from their glass office and noted down what they saw.

  One of the women had managed to retain possession of her Bible. For the thirty-five patients it was the only Bible. Debbie was not allowed to look at it. However, at one turn in the corridor – they were locked out of their rooms during the day, so that they could not lie down and sleep – the staff couldn’t see what was happening. Fat sometimes turned their copy of the Bible, their communal copy, over to Debbie for a fast look at one of the psalms. The staff knew what they were doing and detested them for it, but by the time a tech got out of the office and down the corridor, Debbie had strolled on.

  Mental inmates always move at one speed and one speed only. But some always move slowly and some always run. Debbie, being wide and solid, sailed along slowly, as did Doug. Fat, who always walked with Doug, matched his pace to his. Together they circled around and around the corridor, conversing. Conversations in mental hospitals resemble conversations in bus stations, because in a Grey-hound Bus Station everyone is waiting, and in a mental hospital – especially a county lock-up mental hospital-everyone is waiting. They wait to get out.

  Not much goes on in a mental ward, contrary to what mythic novels relate. Patients do not really overpower the staff, and the staff does not really murder the patients. Mostly people read or watch TV or just sit smoking or try to lie down on a couch and sleep, or drink coffee or play cards or walk, and three times a day trays of food are served. The passage of time is designated by the arrival of the food carts. At night visitors show up and they always smile. Patients in a mental hospital can never figure out why people from the outside smile. To me, it remains a mystery to this day.

  Medication, which is always referred to as ‘meds,’ gets doled out at irregular intervals, from tiny paper cups. Everyone is given Thorazine plus something else. They do not tell you what you are getting and they watch to make sure you swallow the pills. Sometimes the meds nurses fuck up and bring the same tray of medication around twice. The patients always point out that they just took their meds ten minutes ago and the nurses give them the meds again anyhow. The mistake is never discovered until the end of the day, and the staff refuses to talk about it to the patients, all of whom now have twice as much Thorazine in their systems as they are supposed to have.

  I have never met a mental patient, even the paranoid ones, who believed that double-dosing was a tactic to oversedate the ward deliberately. It is patently obvious that the nurses are dumb. The nurses have enough trouble figuring out which patient is which, and finding each patient’s little paper cup. This is because a ward population constantly changes; new people arrive; old people get discharged. The real danger in a mental ward is that someone spaced out on PCP1 will be admitted by mistake. The policy of many mental hospitals is to refuse PCP users and force the armed police to process them. The armed police constantly try to force the PCP users onto the unarmed mental hospital patients and staffs. Nobody wants to deal with a PCP user, for good reasons. The newspapers constantly relate how a PCP freak, locked up in a ward somewhere, bit off another persons’ nose or tore out his own eyes.

  Fat was spared this. He did not even know such horrors existed. This came about through the wise planning of OCMC, which made sure that no PCP-head wound up in the North Ward. In point of fact, Fat owed his life to OCMC (as well as two thousand dollars), although his mind remained too fried for him to appreciate this.

  When Beth read the itemized bill from OCMC, she could not believe the number of things they had done for her husband to keep him alive; the list ran to five pages. It even included oxygen. Fat did not know it, but the nurses at the intensive cardiac care ward believed that he would die. They monitored him constantly. Every now and then, in the intensive cardiac care ward, an emergency warning siren sounded. It meant someone had lost vital signs. Fat, lying in his bed attached as he was to the video screen, felt as if he had been placed next to a switching yard for railroad trains; life support mechanisms constantly sounded their various noises.

  It is characteristic of the mentally ill to hate those who help them and love those who connive against them. Fat still loved Beth and he detested OCMC. This showed he belonged in the North Ward; I have no doubt of it. Beth knew when she took Christopher and left for parts unknown that Fat would try suicide; he’d tried it in Canada. In fact, Beth planned to move back in as soon as Fat offed himself. She told him so later. Also, she told him that it had infuriated her that he’d failed to kill himself. When he asked her why that had infuriated her, Beth said:

  ‘You have once again shown your inability to do anything.’

  The distinction between sanity and insanity is narrower than a razor’s edge, sharper than a hound’s tooth, more agile t
han a mule deer. It is more elusive than the merest phantom. Perhaps it does not even exist; perhaps it is a phantom.

  Ironically, Fat hadn’t been tossed into the lock-up because he was crazy (although he was); the reason, technically, consisted of the ‘danger to yourself law. Fat constituted a menace to his own well-being, a charge that could be brought against many people. At the time he lived in the North Ward a number of psychological tests were administered to him. He passed them, but on the other hand he had the good sense not to talk about God. Though he passed all the tests, Fat had faked them out. To while away the time he drew over and over again pictures of the German knights who Alexander Nevsky had lured onto the ice, lured to their deaths. Fat identified with the heavily-armored Teutonic knights with their slot-eyed masks and ox-horns projecting out on each side; he drew each knight carrying a huge shield and a naked sword; on the shield Fat wrote: ‘In hoc signo vinces,’ which he got from a pack of cigarettes. It means, ‘In this sign you shall conquer.’ The sign took the form of an iron cross. His love of God had turned to anger, an obscure anger. He had visions of Christopher racing across a grassy field, his little blue coat flapping behind him, Christopher running and running. No doubt this was Horselover Fat himself running, the child in him, anyhow. Running from something as obscure as his anger.

  In addition he several times wrote:

  Dico per spiritum sanctum. Haec veritas est. Mini crede et mecum in aeternhate vivebis. Entry #28.

  This meant, ‘I speak by means of the Holy Spirit. This is the truth. Believe me and you will live with me in eternity.’

  One day on a list of printed instructions posted on the wall of the corridor he wrote:

  Ex Deo nascimur, in Jesu mortimur, per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus.

  Doug asked him what it meant.

  ‘ “From God we are born”,’ Fat translated, ’ “in Jesus we die, by the Holy Spirit we live again”.’

  ‘You’re going to be here ninety days,’ Doug said.

  One time Fat found a posted notice that fascinated him. The notice stipulated what could not be done, in order of descending importance. Near the top of the list all parties concerned were told:

  NO ONE IS TO REMOVE ASHTRAYS FROM THE WARD.

  And later down the list it stated:

  FRONTAL LOBOTOMIES ARE NOT TO BE PERFORMED WITHOUT THE WRITTEN CONSENT OF THE PATIENT.

  ‘That should read “prefrontal”,’ Doug said, and wrote in the ‘pre’.

  ‘How do you know that?’ Fat said.

  ‘There’s two ways of knowing,’ Doug said. ‘Either knowledge arises through the sense organs and is called empirical knowledge, or it arises within your head and it’s called a priori.’ Doug wrote on the notice:

  IF I BRING BACK THE ASHTRAYS, CAN I HAVE MY PREFRONTAL?

  ‘You’ll be here ninety days,’ Fat said.

  Outside the building rain poured down. It had been raining since Fat arrived in the North Ward. If he stood on top of the washing machine in the laundry room, he could see out through a barred window to the parking lot. People parked their cars and then ran through the rain. Fat felt glad he was indoors, in the ward.

  Dr Stone, who had charge of the ward, interviewed him one day.

  ‘Did you ever try suicide before?’ Dr Stone asked him.

  ‘No,’ Fat said, which of course wasn’t true. At that moment he no longer remembered Canada. It was his impression that his life had begun two weeks ago when Beth walked out.

  I think,’ Dr Stone said, ‘that when you tried to kill yourself you got in touch with reality for the first time.’

  ‘Maybe so,’ Fat said.

  ‘What I am going to give you,’ Dr Stone said, opening a black suitcase on his small cluttered desk, ‘we term the Bach remedies.’ He pronounced it batch. ‘These organic remedies are distilled from certain flowers which grow in Wales. Dr Bach wandered through the fields and pastures of Wales experiencing every negative mental state that exists. With each state that he experienced he gently held one flower after another. The proper flower trembled in the cup of Dr Bach’s hand and he then developed unique methods of acquiring an essence in elixir form of each flower and combinations of flowers which I have prepared in a rum base.’ He put three bottles together on the desk, found a larger, empty bottle, and poured the contents of the three into it. ‘Take six drops a day,’ Dr Stone said. ‘There is no way the Bach remedies can hurt you. They are not toxic chemicals. They will remove your sense of helplessness and fear and inability to act. My diagnosis is that those are the three areas where you have blocks: fear, helplessness and an inability to act. What you should have done instead of trying to kill yourself would have been, take your son away from your wife – it’s the law in California that a minor child must remain with his father until there is a court order to the contrary. And then you should have lightly struck your wife with a rolled-up newspaper or a phonebook.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Fat said, accepting the bottle. He could see that Dr Stone was totally crazy, but in a good way. Dr Stone was the first person at the North Ward, outside the patients, who had talked to him as if he were human.

  ‘You have much anger in you,’ Dr Stone said. ‘I am lending you a copy of the Tao Te Ching. Have you ever read Lao Tzu?’

  ‘No,’ Fat admitted.

  ‘Let me read you this part here,’ Dr Stone said. He read aloud.

  ‘Its upper part is not dazzling;

  Its lower part is not obscure.

  Dimly visible, it cannot be named

  And returns to that which is without substance.

  This is called the shape that has no shape,

  The image that is without substance.

  This is called indistinct and shadowy.

  Go up to it and you will not see its head;

  Follow behind it and you will not see its rear.’

  Hearing this, Fat remembered entries #1 and #2 from his journal. He quoted them, from memory, to Dr Stone.

  #1. One Mind there is; but under it two principles contend.

  #2. The Mind lets in the light, then the dark; in interaction; so time is generated. At the end Mind awards victory to the light; time ceases and the Mind is complete.

  ‘But,’ Dr Stone said, ‘if Mind awards victory to the light, and the dark disappears, then reality will disappear, since reality is a compound of Yang and Yin equally.’

  ‘Yang is Form I of Parmenides,’ Fat said. ‘Yin is Form II. Parmenides argues that Form II does not in fact exist. Only Form I exists. Parmenides believed in a monistic world. People imagine that both forms exist, but they are wrong. Aristotle relates that Parmenides equates Form I with “that which is” and Form II with “that which is not”. Thus people are deluded.’

  Eyeing him, Dr Stone said, ‘What’s your source?’

  ‘Edward Hussey,’ Fat said.

  ‘He’s at Oxford,’ Dr Stone said. ‘I attended Oxford. In my opinion Hussey has no peer.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Fat said.

  ‘What else can you tell me?’ Dr Stone said.

  Fat said, ‘Time does not exist. This is the great secret known to Apollonius of Tyana, Paul of Tarsus, Simon Magus, Paracelsus, Boehme and Bruno. The universe is contracting into a unitary entity which is completing itself. Decay and disorder are seen by us in reverse, as increasing. Entry #8 of my exegesis reads: “Real time ceased in 70 C.E. with the fall of the Temple at Jerusalem. It began again in 1974. The intervening period was a perfect spurious inter-polation aping the creation of the Mind”.’

  ‘Interpolated by whom?’ Dr Stone asked.

  ‘The Black Iron Prison, which is an expression of the Empire. What has been –’ Fat had started to say, ‘What has been revealed to me.’ He rechose his words. ‘What has been most important in my discoveries is this: “The Empire never ended”.’

  Leaning against his desk, Dr Stone folded his arms, rocked forward and back and studied Fat, waiting to hear more.

  That’s all I know,’ Fat said, becomin
g belatedly cautious.

  ‘I’m very interested in what you’re saying,’ Dr Stone said.

  Fat realized that one of two possibilities existed and only two; either Dr Stone was totally insane – not just insane but totally so – or else in an artful, professional fashion he had gotten Fat to talk; he had drawn Fat out, and now knew that Fat was totally insane. Which meant that Fat could look forward to a court appearance and ninety days.

  This is a mournful discovery.

  1) Those who agree with you are insane.

  2) Those who do not agree with you are in power.

  These were the twin realizations which now percolated through Fat’s head. He decided to go for broke, to tell Dr Stone the most fantastic entry in his exegesis.

  ‘Entry number twenty-four,’ Fat said. ‘“In dormant seed form, as living information, the plasmate slumbered in the buried library of codices at Chenoboskion until – ”’

  ‘What is “Chenoboskion”?’ Dr Stone interrupted.

  ‘Nag Hammadi.’

  ‘Oh, the Gnostic library.’ Dr Stone nodded. ‘Found and read in 1945 but never published. ‘ “Living information”?’ His eyes fixed themselves in intent scrutiny of Fat. ‘ “Living information”,’ he echoed. And then he said, ‘The Logos.’

  Fat trembled.

  ‘Yes,’ Dr Stone said. ‘The Logos would be living information, capable of replicating.’

  ‘Replicating not through information,’ Fat said, ‘in information, but as information. This is what Jesus meant when he spoke elliptically of the “mustard seed” which, he said, “would grow into a tree large enough for birds to roost in”.’

  ‘There is no mustard tree,’ Dr Stone agreed. ‘So Jesus could not have meant that literally. That fits with the so-called “secrecy” theme of Mark; that he didn’t want outsiders to know the truth. And you know?’

  ‘Jesus foresaw not only his own death but that of all –’ Fat hesitated. ‘Homoplasmates. That’s a human being to which the plasmate has crossbonded. Interspecies symbiosis. As living information the plasmate travels up the optic nerve of a human to the pineal body. It uses the human brain as a female host –’