has proven powerful enough to slow down his endless quest for perfection.The strain on Howie is terrible. The circles and bags under his eyes attest to his chronic battle with fatigue, and he suffers constantly from colds and other minor afflictions.
What happened to him? Why does one artist end up at Carnegie Hall and another in a mental hospital? Howie's father was a very demanding man, intolerant of mistakes. When little Howie stood up to play the violin he was terrified of making the slightest false note and offending his father, whom he loved deeply. But the better he became the more he realized how much he did not know, and how much more room for error there was than he had imagined. In order to be certain of playing his instrument perfectly he threw himself into music in all its aspects, trying to learn everything about the subject. When he realized that even this would not be sufficient, he took up other fields of study with the impossible goal of learning everything there was to know about everything.
But even that isn't enough for Howie, who spends each summer cataloging the birds and insects and counting the blades of grass on the lawn outside. In the winter he catches snowflakes, systematically recording and comparing their structures. On clear nights he scans the skies looking for anomalies, something that wasn't there before. Yet these are mere avocations for Howie. Most of the time he reads dictionaries and encyclopedias while listening to music or language tapes. Afraid he will forget something important he is constantly taking notes and making lists, then organizing and reorganizing them. Until that day in the recreation room I had never seen him when he was not frantically counting, recording, or studying. It was a struggle to get him to take time to eat.
I edged up to the table with my guest, trying to catch a bit of the conversation without scaring anyone off. From what I could gather, they were querying prot about life on K-PAX. They clammed up when they finally noticed us, however, and both Ernie and Howie scuttled away.
I introduced prot to our visitor, and took the opportunity to ask him whether he would mind submitting to a few additional tests on Wednesday, our regular meeting day. He not only didn't mind, he said, but he looked forward to it. We left him smiling broadly, apparently in eager anticipation.
ALTHOUGH we would not receive the official report from the State Board of Health for several months, the representative did point out two or three minor deficiencies that needed to be corrected, and I brought these up at the regular Monday morning staff meeting. Among the other items discussed at that meeting was the news that the search committee had narrowed down their list of possible candidates for permanent director to four-three from outside the hospital, and myself. The chair of that committee was Dr. Klaus Villers.
Villers is the kind of psychiatrist usually portrayed in films: sixtyish, pale, trim gray goatee, heavy German accent, and a strict Freudian. It was clear that he had selected the other three names personally. I was familiar with their work and each, on paper, was a reasonable facsimile of Villers himself. But all had outstanding credentials, and I was looking forward to meeting them. My own candidacy was not unexpected, but I had mixed feelings about the directorship-it would have meant permanently giving up most of my patients, among other things.
When that business was taken care of I summarized for my colleagues what I had learned so far about prot. Villers and some of the others agreed that it would be a waste of time to proceed with ordinary psychoanalysis, but thought my attempt to 'humanize' him would also prove fruitless, suggesting instead some of the newer experimental drugs. Others argued that this approach was premature and, in any case, without the consent of the patient's family, the legal ramifications could become complicated. Thus, it was generally agreed that a greater effort should be made, by the police as well as myself, to determine his true identity. I thought of Meyerbeer's opera L'Africaine, in which Inez awaits the return of her long-departed lover, Vasco da Gama, and I wondered: Was there a family somewhere in this wide world fervently hoping and praying for a missing husband and father, brother or son to reappear?
Session Three
THE testing took all morning and half the afternoon of May twenty-third. I had other pressing duties much of that time, not the least of which was an emergency facilities committee meeting to approve the purchase of a new linen dryer for the laundry room following the irreversible breakdown of one of the two old ones. Betty McAllister served very well in my place, however.
At the time, Betty had been with us for eleven years, the last two in the capacity of head nurse. She was the only person I had ever met who had read all of Taylor Caldwell's novels, and as long as I had known her had been trying to get pregnant. Although she had resorted to almost every known scientific and folk remedy, she eschewed the so-called fertility pills because, as she put it, 'I only want the one, not a whole menagerie.' None of this affected her work, however, and she consistently performed her duties cheerfully and well.
According to Betty's report, prot was extremely cooperative throughout the examination period. Indeed, the eagerness with which he attacked the tests and questionnaires supported my earlier speculation of an academic background. How far he had progressed with his education was still a matter of conjecture, but it seemed quite likely, based on his confident demeanor and articulateness, that he had at least attended college and possibly even a graduate or professional school.
It took a few days to process the data, and I must confess that my curiosity was such that I let lapse some things I had planned to do at home in order to come in on Saturday to finish what Betty had not completed by Friday afternoon. The final results, though generally unremarkable (as I had expected), were nonetheless interesting. They are summarized as follows:
IQ 154 (well above average, though not in genius category)
Psychological tests (left/right, mazes, mirror tests, etc.-addnl. to std. admission exam) normal
Neurological tests normal
EEG (performed by Dr Chakraborty) normal
Short-term memory excellent
Reading skill very good
Artistic ability/eidetic imagery variable
Musical ability below average
General knowledge (history, geography, languages, the arts) broad and impressive
Math and science (particularly physics and astronomy) outstanding
Knowledge of sports minimal
General physical strength above average
Hearing, taste, smell, tactile acuities highly sensitive
'Special senses' (ability to 'feel' colors, sense the presence of other people, etc.) questionable
Vision
1. Sensitivity to white light marked!
2. Range can detect light at 300-400 A (UV)!
Aptitude could do almost anything; particular affinity for natural history and physical sciences
As can be seen, the only unusual finding was the patient's ability to see light at wavelengths well into the ultraviolet range. His apparent sensitivity to visible light could have been due to a genetic defect; in any case there was no obvious retinal damage (nevertheless, I made a note to call Dr. Rappaport, our ophthalmologist, first thing on Tuesday, Monday being Memorial Day). Otherwise there was no suggestion of any special alien talents.
The patient's knowledge of languages, incidentally, was not as broad as he pretended. Although he spoke and read a little of most of the common ones, his understanding was limited to everyday phrases and idioms, the types found in books for travelers. Another thing that caught my eye was some information the patient volunteered about the stars in the constellation Lyra-their distances from Earth, types, etc.-nothing that required space travel to obtain, certainly, but I decided to check this out as well.
Driving home that afternoon to the accompaniment of Gounod's Faust, I marveled once again, as I bellowed along, at what the human mind can do. There are well documented cases of superhuman strength arising from a desperate need or fit of madness, of astounding performances far beyond the normal capabilities of athletes or rescue workers, of people who can go into trancelike states or 'hibernation,' of extraordinary endurance exhibited by victims of natural or man-made disasters, accounts of paralyzed people who get up and walk, of cancer patients who almost seem to cure themselves or, by force of will alone, manage to hang on until a birthday or favorite
