Tales of madness and enchantmentfrom the back ward
From The Dinosaur Man--Tales of Madness and Enchantment from the
Back Ward, copyright 1991 by Dr. Susan Baur (HarperCollins).
Liken Oliver Sacks, Susan Baur explores the imaginations and
behavior of deeply disturbed people and their extraordinary delusional
worlds. "Stick to polite conversation, wash, and keep your fly zipped
up"-this is all she is supposed to convince her schizophrenic patients to
do. But Baur, abandoning convention, is swept into the poetry and pain
behind her patients' bizarre stories. Eventually she comes to see these
tales as heroic attempts of the afflicted to make sense of a world their
brains distort.
WHEN I WAS ASSIGNED to care for a man who was routinely described
by clinicians as the craziest human being they had ever met, I did not
expect to be dealing with a dinosaur. However, according to Maurice
Nouvelle (the dinosaurschizophrenic's name), our story began 100 million
years ago, and its cycles of fractures and mendings, sadness and
sweetness continue even now to turn as endlessly as the seasons and with
the seasons' same disregard for whom they affect. In more conventional
terms, the story began on a hot day in August as my new keys jangled in a
lock, a wooden door opened and I stared down the pink-tiled corridor of
ward 9-2-D at Mountain Valley Hospital.
I could see a dozen or so men pacing up and down and another
half-dozen shuffling into line for cigarettes. It was in this slouching
line of castaways that I first saw Mr. Nouvelle. A slight man with a halo
of gray hair radiating from his head, he was dressed in a peculiar
uniform made up of army fatigues decorated with strings and badges. His
disconcertingly intense stare and bizarre gestures suggested that he was
actively engaged in private negotiations of a complex and pressing
nature, and I learned later that this 56-year-old man had spent his
entire adult life in mental institutions. He was so persistently
delusional that routine information, such as the names of brothers and
sisters, was missing from his record.
IT WAS EARLY WINTER before Mr. Nouvelle offered me a glimpse of his
private world. He materialized in my path just outside the dayroom and
quietly, intensely told me that he remembered me from long ago.
"I, ah...watch you now all the time," he said, twisting his hands
nervously, "and I think that perhaps--maybe a long time ago--I think I
was the husband dinosaur and you were the wife dinosaur." He went on to
tell me that he was a Nicodemosaurus and I a Tracodamosaums and that as
such we had privileges not shared by others on the ward. If I could
arrange to get him a day pass, for example, he would drive me around the
neighboring town of Hillsdale in a limousine--escorted by a dozen
motorcycles, he added, noting my hesitation. Escorted by fleets of cars.
Accompanied by bulldozers.
Then, suddenly, we were talking about sex, or rather, he was; but
I, not having made the transition, momentarily maintained the
companionable stance of the previous conversation.
"Of course, I try not to touch myself and, uh, keep chaste" he was
saying, the words now tumbling over them selves. "But if I were with a
woman now, if I were touched, I would probably just go---" And he snapped
his right forearm rigid, bent at the elbow.
A dozen ways to flee flashed across my mind.
"Are you leaving me now?" asked Mr. Nouvelle, reading my thoughts
as persons with near-intolerable levels of sensitivity are often able to
do.
"Yes," I answered.
"But you aren't leaving me forever... yet." And he smiled a
quizzical smile and held me a moment more with his golden hazel
eyes.
INITIALLY, MR. NOUVELLE AND I MET IN A small room across from the
nurses' station. Our early meetings were totally confusing. He was a
Venetian policeman, an inspector general, my father, or even me; and I in
turn was Mother, wife, son, daughter, duck egg, or dinosaur. Yes meant
no, and every word we used slid out from under its usual meaning and
hustled us toward sex or violence.
He said, "When a woman has too much Mother, which is not good for a
grown man, she mustn't pull out her words like '0ooooo, Maurice, come
onnnn.' So I punched her in the head and beat her head on the floor, and
she lay there curled up like a baby. 'Are you all right?' 'Noooooo.' But
I did what was right."
"Mr. Nouvelle," I said, after watching him silently relive the kind
of incident which I knew happened among the profoundly mentally ill. "Mr.
Nouvelle, do not hit me. Do you understand?" "I frightened you, didn't
I?"
And so our conversations went--many utterly incomprehensible,
others making more and more sense as I learned his language. At first he
was loath to tell me anything about himself unless transported into
dinosaur stories. He told me, for example, that these great creatures
live 100 million years and that each ordinary day seems to them like
'days within days and years within years." On winter afternoons,
especially when the snow swirls between the steep-roofed hospital
buildings and the dinosaurs drift among them" like enormous shadow, time
stands still, frozen and unpromising. "Will it ever be spring for me?"
the dinosaurs ask then.
Tags:
army fatigues,
behavior,
brain distortion,
castaways,
clinicians,
conventional terms,
day in august,
delusions,
dinosaur man,
dr susan,
enchantment,
hot day,
imagination,
imaginations,
liken,
madness,
new keys,
polite conversation,
private negotiations,
schizophrenic patients,
susan baur
