Snow White and Rose Red

6

Sarah looked radiantly beautiful.

She was dressed entirely in white. White slacks and sandals, a white scoop-necked blouse. She smelled of soap. She told me she was not allowed to have perfume; she guessed they thought she would try to drink it or something. She told me she had showered and dressed a full two hours before I was expected. None of the patients were allowed to shower unattended, she said; a member of the staff was always watching. She wondered aloud if anyone had ever tried to drown herself in the shower. Or perhaps tried to eat a bar of soap.

We were sitting in what the hospital called its Sun Room.

Wide windows covered the entire eastern wall of the second-story room, creating a greenhouse effect marred only by the bars on the windows.

“They’re afraid we’ll try to jump out,” Sarah explained.

Across the room, a man was playing checkers with a woman. Visitors and patients sat everywhere around us on wicker chairs with yellow and green cushions. I wondered if Mr. Holly would be visiting his wife, Becky, today. Sarah listened attentively as I told her about my conversations with Mark Ritter and the arresting officer and Dr. Nathan Helsinger. Her eyes never left my face. Her attention was complete; it never wandered, never wavered. I could not imagine her as someone who was not in complete possession of all her mental faculties. My own attention bordered on scrutiny. I was looking for clues to support the possibility that everything Dr. Helsinger had told me was true.

“What did you think of him?” Sarah asked.

“Helsinger? He seemed competent.”

“Do you mean mentally competent?” she asked, and smiled.

“I meant... no, no.”

“Mentally incompetent then?”

She was still smiling.

“He seems to know his job,” I said, and returned the smile.

“And of course he told you I am totally apeshit.”

I had decided that I would be completely honest with her at all times. If she was sane, she was entitled to an open lawyer — client relationship. If she was what they said she was, then perhaps her reaction to the truth would reveal something I could not detect on the surface.

“He said you’re a very sick person, yes.”

“Did he describe my delusional system?” Sarah asked.

“Not in detail. He said it’s... elaborate, was the word he used.”

“Yes. And am I hearing voices and such?”

“Are you?”

“The only voice I’m hearing right now is yours. And I’m also picking up snatches of conversation between Anna and her daughter there. Anna thinks the FBI is investigating her for making pornographic films. Writing, directing, starring in, and producing skin flicks.”

She glanced over toward where a woman in her seventies was sitting in quiet conversation with a younger woman who kept patting her hand.

“That’s Anna’s delusion,” Sarah said.

“And yours?”

“My alleged delusion? The one they cooked up to get me in this place? Ah, elaborate indeed. But then, Dr. Schlockmeister knows his job, as you pointed out. He certainly wouldn’t have come up with a garden-variety delusional system, would he?”

“Dr. who?” I said.

“No, Who’s on first,” Sarah said, and smiled. “Schlockmeister — that’s short for Helsinger. Or long, as the case may be.”

“And you feel he’s the one who, in effect, created a phony delusional system and attributed it to you?”

“Oh, how pretty the man talks,” Sarah said, and rolled her eyes. “Sure. That’s what he did.”

“What sort of delusional system?”

“We start with an unresolved Electra situation,” Sarah said, and sighed. “The so-called delusional atmosphere, a fixation on dear Daddy as evidenced by a fondness for horseback riding and an unnatural desire to please the master of the house. We take it from there to the onset of the delusional system itself, the certainty that Daddy is having an affair with a person unknown—”

“Was he?”

“This is my supposed delusion, Mr. Hope. Do I have to call you Mr. Hope?”

“You can call me Matthew, if you like.”

“Does anyone call you Matt?”

“A few people.”

“I prefer Matthew.”

“So do I.”

“Done, then,” she said, and smiled again. “In this ‘elaborate’ delusional system I am alleged to have evolved, Daddy was having an affair with one or perhaps many women, it varies from day to day — we lunatics are not often consistent, you know — which naturally infuriated his only daughter because it deprived her of the love and affection to which she was entitled as her birthright. Are you following me?”

“Yes.”

“In short, despite empirical evidence to the contrary — there was not even a hint that Daddy was ever anything but completely faithful to my mother — I persisted in believing that he was screwing around outside the marriage, and confronted him with this certain belief. A delusion, you see, isn’t simply a vague feeling. It’s a positive belief unwaveringly held in the face of—”

“Yes, Helsinger told me.”

“Yes,” she said. “So I’m supposed to have gone to Daddy and told him to quit playing around because he was being unfaithful not only to my mother but to me as well. Moreover, if he really wanted to play around, I am alleged to have said, why didn’t he play around with me? I was free, white, twenty-four, and reasonably attractive — do you find me reasonably attractive, Matthew?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I wasn’t begging for a compliment,” she said. “Or perhaps I was. The one thing you never feel in this place is beautiful. Or even mildly attractive. Unless you’re Anna the Porn Queen, who claims she gets telepathic messages every day from her millions of panting fans out there. In any event, my delusional system is supposed to include anger over severe deprivation — because Daddy never thought I was as beautiful as the woman he was seeing outside the marriage. And I’m supposed to have gone to him and — well, propositioned him, I suppose is the word — an unseemly and unnatural thing for a daughter, however loving, to have done. Shades of incest, shame, shame, shame.” She smiled. “Am I frightening you?” she said. “Don’t worry, I’m not Becky, I won’t try to bite your cock.” I must have reacted. She looked at my face and said, “Oops, now you’ll think I’m as crazy as she is. You must forgive me, I’m far too outspoken, I know. But it’s best to say what’s on one’s mind, isn’t it? Especially when one is supposed to be out of that mind.”

I thought suddenly of Terry Belmont, who also said everything that was on her mind. Terry wasn’t crazy — at least I didn’t think she was. Did Sarah saying what was on her mind make her crazy? Or did someone’s mere presence in a mental institution cause everything she said or did to become suspect?

“I want you to say what’s on your mind,” I said. “But not just to shock me.”

“Touché,” she said. “I was trying to shock you.”

“Why?”

“Because you seem so very staid and proper.”

She looked at me steadily.

“You are thinking I’m nuts, aren’t you? But I have to be able to tell you whatever I think, Matthew. Otherwise it’s no good.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Can you see why it wouldn’t be any good if I had to pretend sanity? To be on guard every moment against any stray thought that might be considered insane?”

“Yes, I can understand that.”

“Allow me to breathe, Matthew,” she said. “God knows, the rest won’t.”

“Okay,” I said again.

“Good,” she said. “Where were we?”

“You were propositioning your father, I believe.”

“In my mad, delusional way, yes. He was shocked, too. In fact, he suffered a heart attack two weeks later. Small wonder, your own daughter inviting you to an orgy.” She rolled her eyes again.

“When was this?” I said.

“When I’m supposed to have propositioned him? Or the heart attack that killed him? He died on the third of September, so I guess Schlockmeister sets the infamous proposition sometime in the middle of August.”

“He was informed of this?”

“Helsinger? Of course not. It never happened. The alleged proposition is part of the invented delusion, don’t you see? If I’m not delusional, then none of it happened. If I am delusional, then they were right to send me here, and I’m wasting your time. And mine, too, by the way.”

“Okay. According to them, you suddenly went to your father—”

“Well, none of this happens suddenly. The delusional ‘atmosphere’ is supposed to have existed for a long time. Every little girl has a crush on her father, you know — are you aware that the horse is a fixed dream symbol for Daddy? A little-known fact, but true. Have you ever wondered why so many prepubescent girls take to horseback riding, whereas boys of the same age couldn’t care less? An attempt to resolve the Electra situation, which if not dealt with can become an Electra complex — Oedipus in reverse. They would have it that this was the start of all my trouble. Loving Daddy too intensely. Lusting for Daddy, if you will. My father was a very demonstrative man, you see. Always hugging and kissing me. Quite the contrary, in fact, to what my delusional system maintains.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t—”

“Forgive me. you’re not as well versed on my insanity as I am. I’m supposed to believe that he loved another woman more than he loved me.”

“So, if I understand this correctly, sometime in the middle of August you supposedly confronted him with his infidelity—”

“Yes, so they say. And suggested all sorts of lewd alternatives to him.”

“And he died of a heart attack two weeks later.”

“Yes.”

“Then what?”

“The delusional system erupted full-blown. They say.”

“In what way?”

“You understand that this is all their bullshit, don’t you?”

“Yes, I understand.”

“Okay. Ten days after my father’s death, Mark Ritter called to read me the provisions of the will. Those relating to me. He told me I’d inherited six hundred and fifty thousand dollars and that I was now a very rich girl. That was the word he used, girl. It irritated me then, and it still irritates me. In Mark Ritter’s sexist world, apparently everyone under the age of fifty is still a ‘girl.’ Anyway, I asked him how the rest of the estate had been divided—”

“You did ask this?”

“Yes, of course I — oh, I see. You mean, is this supposed to be part of my delusion? No, this actually happened. Because I was curious, you see. I knew my father was worth a fortune, and I wanted to make sure he hadn’t left the rest of it to a cat hospital or something. Mark told me that the bulk of the estate had gone to my mother. We’re talking almost a billion dollars, Matthew. Less the six-fifty I got. Which, as it turns out, I haven’t got, since my mother is now guardian of my property.”

“So you learned, on or about—”

“Matthew, this isn’t a court of law.”

“Sorry. Ten days after your father’s death, you learned that your mother had inherited the bulk of his estate and you had inherited the comparatively small sum of six hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

“That is what I learned, yes.”

“Then what?”

“That is what I actually learned.”

“I understand.”

“Well, here’s where the supposed delusional system comes in again. It’s difficult to separate fact from reality for you, Matthew, because they’ve contrived such a bullshit story about my imaginary illness—”

“By ‘they’—”

“My mother. And Mark, and Helsinger, and God knows who else. I’m sure Cyclops has to be in on it, or I wouldn’t be kept here, would I?”

I remembered what Helsinger had told me: “She knows with certainty that she is being persecuted, deceived, spied upon, cheated, and even hypnotized by her mother and/or people in her mother’s employ.”

“And they’ve all fabricated, you think, an elaborate delusional system—”

“And attributed it to me, yes.”

“But it doesn’t actually exist.”

“Of course not.”

“And this delusional system, when you learned about the inheritance—”

“I’m supposed to have gone off the deep end. First, I believed I was being cheated—”

“Do you believe so?”

“Of course not. To begin with, my father didn’t have to leave me a dime. Where is it written, Matthew? Six hundred and fifty thousand dollars is more than I could spend in a lifetime. But in addition to that, a provision of the will makes it mandatory for my mother to name me the sole beneficiary of her will. In short, the money — all of it — will be coming to me, anyway, when Mother dies. So why would I have believed I was cheated?”

“What else are you supposed to have believed?”

“That a large portion of the estate went to his girlfriend. This despite the black-and-white evidence of the will itself.”

“You saw the will?”

“Read every page of it.”

“And no one else was named except you and your mother?”

“No one. But this didn’t stop me from embarking on a wild-goose chase in search of this imaginary woman Daddy was shacking up with — in my mind. That’s what they say I did. Please realize, Matthew, that all of this was reconstructed after the fact. None of it happened. But it’s all supposed to have happened before the night of September twenty-seventh, when they broke into my room and carted me off.”

“They say, do they—”

“That I ran hither and yon, trying to find Daddy’s girlfriend.”

“Which you didn’t do.”

“Matthew, you’re falling into the trap. Either I believed, still believe, my father was having an affair — or I don’t believe it, and didn’t then. If I’m sane, I didn’t go running off after a person who existed only in my mind.”

“And this was when? This alleged search of yours?”

“Shortly after I learned how much Daddy had left me.”

“Which would place it — he died on the third and Ritter called you on the thirteenth. It was shortly after that?”

“The third week in September, I guess.” She paused. Her eyes met mine. “They say I heard voices commanding me to find her.”

“Who says this?”

“Schlockmeister. And Cyclops. And the staff psychiatrists here.”

“And of course you heard no such voices.”

“None.”

“Did not go looking for her, and did not — of course — find anyone.”

“How can you find someone who doesn’t exist?”

“How long do they say you were out looking for this woman?”

“Until the afternoon of the twenty-seventh. Which is why I tried to slit my wrists, you see. Because I couldn’t find her. But this is all bullshit, Matthew, don’t you see? This is what they cooked up when they decided to put me away.”

“Why do you think they decided that, Sarah?”

“Several reasons. One, Mother hates me,” she said matter-of-factly. “Why else would she be persecuting me this way? The night the cop came — it was a Thursday, you see, all the help was off — Mother herself cooked dinner for the two of us. ‘Your favorite, darling,’ she said. ‘Just a quiet dinner alone together, darling.’ She was deceiving me, of course. She knew all along that Helsinger had signed that damned certificate and that the police would be arriving.”

“You did not attempt to slash your wrists at about six o’clock that night?”

“I did not.”

“What were you doing at six?”

“Bathing. Getting ready for dinner.”

“Did Dr. Helsinger come to examine you at seven o’clock?”

“Mother and I were eating alone together at seven o’clock.”

“Where?”

“In the dining room. Where? Where do people normally eat?”

“Was anyone serving you?”

“No, she gave the entire staff the night off. Because she knew what was about to happen, you see. Knew they were getting ready to spirit me away.”

“The psychiatrist who examined you at Dingley—”

“Dr. Bonamico, yes. He’s on the payroll, too. The same as Cyclops and all the shrinks here.”

“The payroll?”

“They’re being paid off,” Sarah said. “To falsify records. To say I really am hearing voices, hallucinating, whatever the hell, all in support of a delusional system Helsinger himself invented. Each time they hypnotize me—”

“They hypnotize you?”

“Oh, regularly. As part of my so-called therapy. To get at the roots of my illness, don’t you know? Each time they hypnotize me, they try to feed me the delusion. I was hot for Daddy’s bod, I suspected he had a lover, I offered myself to him, I went searching for the woman, tried to commit suicide when I couldn’t find her. They tell me I’m hearing voices that don’t actually exist — they have to tell me this? Don’t I know there aren’t any voices? Shoot me up with sodium pentothal, whatever, put me under, and feed me the line of bullshit.”

“And you believe They’re falsifying records?”

“I know they are.”

“How can you know that?”

“They’re constantly taking notes. Why would anyone be taking notes if they weren’t going to be typed up later and made part of the record?”

“How do you know the notes themselves are false?”

“Because I’m still here. If the records weren’t faked, I’d be out of here in a minute.”

“I see.”

“I know what you’re thinking, Matthew. you’re thinking paranoia, the lady’s a bedbug. Is it paranoia when someone is spying on you even when you go to the toilet? Ask Brunhilde if she doesn’t stand outside the open bathroom door every time I pee.”

“Who’s Brunhilde?”

“One of the attendants on North Three. That isn’t her real name. I call her that because she reminds me of a concentration camp matron.”

“What is her real name?”

“Christine Seifert. Five feet eight inches tall, two hundred and twenty pounds, tattoo on her left forearm, ‘Mom’ in a heart.” Sarah smiled. “I made up the tattoo, but the rest is real. Why don’t you ask her why she spies on me whenever I go to the john? Does she think I’m going to strangle myself with the roll of toilet paper? Stick my head in the bowl and drown myself?” She paused. Her eyes met mine directly again. “You didn’t think I knew her real name, did you? You were even wondering if she really existed. You think I’ve surrounded myself with make-believe witches and villains. My mother, Ritter, Helsinger, Cyclops — and now Brunhilde. you’re thinking I may be everything they say I am, and you’re wondering what the hell you’ve got yourself into.”

I said nothing.

“Isn’t that the truth, Matthew?”

“Sarah...”

Across the room, the woman playing checkers said, “King me!”

I turned to look at her. She was smiling pleasantly, but she had captured the attention of a white-coated attendant who stood watching her now, alert to any situation that might develop. None developed. The lady only wanted to be kinged. The man sitting across the board from her moved a checker on top of the one she indicated. The guard relaxed, stifling a yawn.

“You were about to say—” Sarah said.

“I was about to say... Sarah, you realize, don’t you, that you’re suggesting a conspiracy?”

“Suggesting? No, Matthew. Stating it. Baldly and as an absolute fact. I loved my father only as a proper daughter should. I never lusted for him, and I never thought of him as anything but a faithful, generous, decent, hardworking man. Faithful, yes. To my mother and to me. No cuties on the side, Matthew. Generous when he was alive, and even more generous in death. The six hundred and fifty thousand was a gesture, Matthew, one of the nicest gestures anyone could make. He knew I would come into a fortune when my mother died. The additional money — I thought of it as that, additional money, spending money, play money, whatever — was his way of telling me he thought I was a woman responsible enough to handle such a huge sum. Did I feel cheated? I felt rewarded, Matthew! Six hundred and fifty thousand dollars? I was twenty-four years old, and he was trusting me with all that money! With almost a billion more to come when my mother died! How could I have felt anything but intense gratitude for an act of such generosity and faith? I wept for days after he died. He was the most wonderful man I’ve ever known.”

She sighed heavily.

“If I’m crazy,” she said, “then I believe everything that is contrary to what I actually know to be the truth about my father. I believe he was carrying on with another woman. I believe that I could easily have taken her place and suggested this to him. I believe that he was cheating me sexually while he was alive, and that he cheated me monetarily after he was dead — all for this phantom woman. I believe that I tried to commit suicide when I couldn’t find her. I believe all these absolute lies.”

She sighed again.

“Matthew,” she said, “there is a conspiracy.”

“Why?”

“I told you. My mother hates me. Besides, she wanted all of it. All the money. And now she’s got it.”

I nodded. Not in agreement; I was far from agreeing with her completely. The order appointing Alice Whittaker as guardian had specified that she was required to post bond in the amount of $650,000. This meant that $650,000 of her own money was at forfeit. So I could not easily accept Sarah’s flat accusation. I nodded only to indicate that I understood what she was telling me.

“They say I made an obscene suggestion to my father,” she said. “You’ll probably find that in the fake records, Matthew, the suggestion I’m supposed to have made to my father. Worse than Becky wanting to bite her husband’s cock. Far worse than that. Look at me,” she said.

I looked at her.

“I’m a virgin,” she said.

I kept looking at her.

“Twenty-four years old,” she said, “and a virgin. As pure as the driven snow, Matthew. A snow-white virgin.”

Her eyes refused to leave my face.

“I’d have cut out my tongue before saying anything like that to my father. Cut out my tongue first. And drowned myself later.”

Dr. Silas Pearson was indeed blind in one eye, and that eye was covered with a black patch. He was, I supposed, in his mid-fifties, a lanky, Lincolnesque man wearing a pale blue summer-weight suit. He greeted me warmly and asked me to make myself comfortable. He offered me coffee or iced tea. I accepted the iced tea. His office was in Administration and Reception. Through the large, unbarred corner windows, I could see patients and visitors strolling about the lawn. Sarah had been taken back to North Three. She had blown me a kiss as Jake led her away.

“So you’ve been talking to Sarah, have you?” Pearson said. His voice was pitched very low, its effect soothing. I imagined him in conference with patients. I imagined him with Sarah, his soothing voice probing the depths of her illness — if it existed.

“Yes,” I said, “I’ve been talking to her.”

“And to others, I understand.”

Had Helsinger called him? Ritter? Sarah’s mother?

Was there a conspiracy?

“Yes, I have.”

“And what do you think?” he said.

The soothing voice. Brown eyes studying me, long fingers toying with a gold chain that hung across his vest. Was he one of the psychiatrists who hypnotized Sarah?

“Dr. Pearson,” I said, “in my several conversations with Sarah, I’ve seen nothing but an intelligent—”

“Yes, she’s very intelligent,” Pearson said.

“—imaginative—”

“Indeed.”

“—lucid—”

“Quite.”

“—reasoning—”

“Oh yes.”

“—aware—”

“Enormously so.”

“—alert—”

“Always alert,” he agreed.

“—sensitive—”

“Even shy and vulnerable at times.”

“In short, a young woman — I must be frank with you — who exhibits none of the symptoms Dr. Helsinger led me to believe were indicative of paranoid schizophrenia.”

Pearson smiled.

“I see,” he said. “But you are, of course, a lawyer. Not a doctor.”

“That’s true. Still...”

“They can sometimes fool even qualified professionals,” Pearson said. “It doesn’t surprise me — your reaction, I mean. They can be quite charming when they choose to be. The charm, in fact, can be part of the delusional system.”

“I see no evidence that Sarah is deluding herself about anything.”

Pearson smiled again.

“She calls me Dr. Cyclops, did she tell you that?”

“Yes. But that would hardly seem—”

“Which, in the mind of someone who was not schizophrenic, would be an apt association. The slant-rhyme with Silas, the obvious patch over one eye. Very good. Sarah, however, is schizophrenic, albeit — as you say — quite intelligent. And imaginative. Only an intelligent and imaginative person could have constructed a delusional system as elaborate as hers.”

“She seems to feel the system was devised for her,” I said.

“The whole world against little Sarah, right? Everyone persecuting poor little Sarah. And you don’t find that odd, Mr. Hope?”

“According to Sarah—”

“You cannot accept anything Sarah believes as having any basis in reality, Mr. Hope.”

“Dr. Pearson, with all due respect for your professional experience, Sarah is too well aware—”

“Of anything and everything that serves her delusional system,” Pearson interrupted.

“The same thing might be said of any so-called sane woman. That she is aware of anything and everything that serves her well-being.”

“I mentioned nothing about well-being,” Pearson said. “Sarah’s awareness does not, in fact, serve her well-being. On the contrary, it serves only her severe illness. Her awareness, as you will have it, her powers of reasoning, her application of knowledge, her intelligence, her imagination, her alertness, are all being channeled toward supporting a systematized belief that she is being wrongly persecuted, deceived, cheated—”

“Yes, Dr. Helsinger told me all that.”

“Supported by the further belief that this very system she herself has constructed was devised for her by others — against her will, against her powers to resist. That, Mr. Hope, might easily be a classic definition of paranoid schizophrenia.”

“Let me understand this,” I said.

“I’m trying to help you understand it.”

“Let’s take Napoleon, for example.”

“Fine.”

“A person who believes he’s Napoleon.”

“Okay, sure,” Pearson said, and smiled. “If you want to fall back on the cliché, fine.”

My partner Frank once remarked that clichés are the folklore of truth. I did not mention this to Pearson. I did not yet know whether he was honestly trying to help me. If Sarah was right — but Sarah was supposed to be crazy.

“This person believes he’s Napoleon, isn’t that so? I mean, he actually believes it. He doesn’t just guess he’s Napoleon, or feel he’s Napoleon, he knows he’s Napoleon.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“Does he know he’s deluding himself?”

“In most cases, he does not.”

“Dr. Pearson... Sarah knows about her alleged delusional system.”

“Yes, she’s made this knowledge an extension of the delusion.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand that.”

“It’s difficult, admittedly. Let’s go back to Napoleon, if you will. If you try to reason with this man, if you tell him he cannot be Napoleon because here is his birth certificate, and the birth certificate says in black and white that he is, in fact, John Jones, do you know what he’ll do? he’ll look at the birth certificate and he’ll say, ‘Someone’s changed the name on it. It’s supposed to be Napoleon Bonaparte.’ And if you tell him no one has changed the name, this is when he was born and this is his name, Napoleon is dead, he died in 1821, the man will say, ‘How can I be dead, when I’m standing right here in front of you?’ Okay, if you tell this man he is going to be taken to another facility, removed from Knott’s Retreat, taken to an island in Georgia, let’s say, he’ll incorporate this into his delusion as well. He is not John Jones being transferred to another mental hospital, he is Napoleon being exiled to Elba.”

“We’re not talking about the same thing, Dr. Pearson. Sarah knows what her delusion is supposed to be. She—”

“Are you familiar with Laing?” Pearson said. “R. D. Laing? His book Knots?”

“I’m sorry, no.”

“In it, he writes a series of... well, I’m not sure what one would call them. Dialogue scenarios? In any event, they express various patterns of behavior, and one of them in particular might easily apply to Sarah’s case. It goes like this:

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“If we apply it to Sarah by extension, she knows what her delusional system is, but at the same time she doesn’t realize that her knowing it is an integral part of the system.”

“That sounds like double-talk.”

“No, it’s not, Mr. Hope. I wish it were. It would be a very simple thing to say that a person who knows he believes he’s Napoleon is as sane as you or I. Except that being aware of the belief doesn’t in any way change the belief. The man still believes he’s Napoleon.”

“Sarah doesn’t believe she’s anything but what she actually is.”

“Sarah believes her father was having an affair with another woman. He was not. Sarah believes his unfaithfulness deprived her of his fatherly love. It did not, because in fact he was a loving and trustworthy man. Sarah believes she should have been the sole object of her father’s affection, that she should have and could have replaced his imaginary lover. To this extent, she suggested to him — well, perhaps I shouldn’t go into this.”

“Please do,” I said.

“She suggested cunnilingus. She said, in fact, ‘I want you to come here, and get down on your hands and knees, and lick my pussy till I come all over your face.’ ”

“I don’t believe that.”

“She has repeated it on countless occasions to her therapist here. Whether she actually said it is another matter. But she believes she said it. It’s in the records, Mr. Hope.”

“Sarah says the records are falsified.”

“Ah yes. We’re all involved in a deep conspiracy to keep her locked away. Her mother has paid us all off — Mr. Ritter, Dr. Helsinger, Dr. Bonamico, me, the entire staff at Knott’s — to make certain she stays here. We’ve falsified records, We’ve hypnotized her—”

“Have you hypnotized her?”

“Her treatment does not include hypnosis.”

“What does it include?”

“She is currently seeing a psychotherapist three times a week. In addition we are administering one of the phenothiazine derivatives — chlorpromazine, the brand name is Largactil — in one-hundred-milligram doses t.i.d.”

“What does ‘t.i.d.’ mean?”

“Excuse me, that’s three times a day.”

“Are you using shock treatment on her?”

“It does not seem indicated as yet. In fact, she seems to be responding favorably to the drugs. You should have seen her when she first came to us. I don’t think you’d have recognized her as the same young woman who can now sit with you for an hour or two and have a pleasant, intelligent conversation. Although I must warn you, Mr. Hope, it is not unusual for a paranoid schizophrenic to feel safe and relaxed in a hospital situation — especially with someone who’s trusted, as you seem to be. In such a ‘safe’ environment, the patient will often be able to discourse for hours on end in a coherent, well-informed, and often witty manner — provided the subject matter remains neutral.”

“Sarah and I were not discussing anything that could even remotely be considered neutral. We talked about her father, his death, his will — we talked about her supposed delusional system—”

“Supposed? No, Mr. Hope. Real. Sarah Whittaker is a very sick person.

“She does not seem sick to me.”

“Well,” Pearson said, and spread his hands, “not as manifestly sick as when she first arrived. We can thank the drugs for that. But believe me, she is still a long way from—”

“How was she any different then?” I asked.

“Well, to begin with — and this is usual in cases of paranoid schizophrenia — she told us at once that she hadn’t come here of her own volition, but was brought here by force. Her manner—”

“Which happens to be the case,” I said.

“Yes, after observation, and after a hearing, and after she’d been adjudged mentally incompetent. I’m sure you know that her commitment was—”

“Yes, all by the book.”

“And the judgment was appropriate. She was not admitted without cause, Mr. Hope.”

“She’s coherent now. Was she coherent when you admitted her?”

“Absolutely so. But that, again, is not unusual. The content of her speech, however — that was quite another matter.”

“In what way?”

“Well, her conversation focused almost exclusively on the plot, the conspiracy. She had not attempted suicide—”

“The police officer who took her to Good Samaritan saw neither a razor blade nor bloodstains in her room.”

“Dr. Helsinger saw a wound on her left wrist.”

“Presumably a police officer, trained to observe such things—”

“With all due respect for the police in Calusa, Dr. Helsinger is eminently more qualified to judge a suicide attempt. The point, Mr. Hope—”

“The point would seem to be—”

“The point is that she was unquestionably incompetent when we received her here. Hostile, suspicious, tense — all symptoms of a paranoid condition. She—”

“I imagine I would have been all those things, too, if I knew I was sane and being committed to a—”

“Mr. Hope, she was not sane. She is not sane. Please.”

“I’m trying to learn why you believe so.”

“And I’ve been trying to tell you. When we admitted her, her entire focus was on her belief that she was being wrongly persecuted. This is still her belief, nothing has changed in that respect. She said she’d been out searching for her father’s phantom lover — was that against the law? The police were after her for something that wasn’t a crime. Voices had commanded her to find ‘Daddy’s bimbo,’ as she called her, confront her, get back the money that was rightfully hers — Sarah’s, that is — stolen from her by her mother and her father’s mysterious girlfriend. The police were in cahoots with her mother. She had done nothing to break the law, but the police had taken her here against her will. Not to mention her father’s will, the different words assuming the same meaning in her mind. When it was pointed out to her that her father’s will had named only her and her mother as beneficiaries, she maintained that the police had changed the will — the real will named her father’s bimbo as well. Anyway, her father wasn’t really dead, you see. As soon as he found out she was here, he would come to get her and then we’d all be sorry because his wrath would know no bounds. She—”

“Sarah knows her father is dead,” I said. “She gave me the exact date, September third, she knows for a fact—”

“She knows it, Mr. Hope, but she doesn’t know it. Laing’s knot. She pretends to know everything, but the voices say her father is still alive, and she believes that as surely as she believes she is sane. Within days of her admission, she was hallucinating freely, seeing her father, talking to him, begging him to perform all sorts of sexual acts with her, repeatedly beseeching him to leave this woman who had stolen his love from her, come home to the loving arms of Snow White, the Virgin Queen. That’s what she calls herself — Snow White, the Virgin Queen. Her virginity is a figment of her imagination, Mr. Hope. Mrs. Whittaker has told the therapists here that Sarah was introduced to sex when she was twelve years old, by a man who’d been hired to teach her horseback riding. Sarah often confuses this man with her father in her delusions; she calls both of them the Black Knight. Apparently her father’s hair was black until the day he died, and whereas her mother seems deliberately vague about this, we feel positive that the riding instructor who seduced Sarah was a black man. She labels everyone, Sarah does, all part of her systemic filing cabinet. Her mother and the imaginary sweetheart are both the Harlot Witches; she uses the term interchangeably for each of them. Her father and the riding instructor are the Black Knights, as I mentioned. Mark Ritter, the attorney, is the Prime Minister of Justification. Dr. Helsinger is Dr. Schlockmeister, and I am Dr. Cyclops. One of the attendants on her ward is Brunhilde and another is Ilse. And in her therapy session after your last visit, she labeled you the White Knight.

“Mr. Hope, I wish I could impress upon you the depth of her delusional system. It is, in effect, a network of overlapping systems, a labyrinth of intricate constructions, a Rube Goldberg contraption that is self-propelling, self-nourishing, and self-perpetuating. She has even incorporated into it imaginary systems for some of the other patients. We have a woman here, for example, who is not at all delusional. But Sarah has labeled her as she has all the other players in her vivid inner life. This harmless, senile woman has become Anna the Porn Queen, and Sarah has constructed for her a delusional system that would have her the prime mover in an empire designed to bury America in an avalanche of pornographic films. Just as she has constructed a secret life for her father, she has also constructed one for poor Anna. And incorporated it into her own system. Can you imagine the energy involved in keeping all of this intact and manageable? And can you imagine the effort it must take to present herself to you as someone entirely reasonable in her request to be released from what she calls the Tomb of the Innocent? That’s Knott’s Retreat, Mr. Hope. The Tomb of the Innocent. Sarah the Virgin Queen buried here alive and struggling desperately to get out — if only the White Knight will help her.”

I remained silent.

“Sarah’s prognosis is a dim one,” Pearson said, “because her delusional system is so intricate. One plucks away at it as one would the threads in a tapestry, attempting to unravel now this one and now that one. But Sarah is busily stitching away in her mind, and the moment we make some progress, the moment we trace a yellow skein to its end, there is a green one to replace it, or a red one, or a blue one — and the task seems endless. You said she was intelligent and imaginative. Yes, too intelligent and too imaginative, constantly generating new data to feed into the computer bank of her already overwhelming system. Eventually, Mr. Hope, if we make no more progress than We’ve already made — the drugs, you know, are not a cure — she will retreat further and further into this private and essentially hostile universe she’s created for herself. The inner logic of her system will collapse... she will hallucinate more frequently... her delusions will grow too complex to manage within the safe parameters she has defined for herself, too inconsistent with the original master plan. And they will consume her until the disintegration of her personality is complete.”

Pearson sighed and looked across the desk at me.

“You do her a great disservice by supporting the delusion that she is sane, Mr. Hope. She has incorporated you into that system, and you have become a willing dupe — the White Knight. But the support you are giving her only strengthens the delusion. You are helping her to destroy herself.”