The Thanatos Syndrome

rationale.”
    â€œHis rationale,” repeats the priest.
    I look at him steadily. “That every society has a right to protect itself against its enemies. That a society like an organism has a right to survive. Lucy agrees. So do I. My problem is—”
    The priest is watching me with his peculiar, round-eyed, almost risible expression. “Society,” he murmurs, and then, as if to himself, something I don’t quite catch: “Volk—” Volk something. Volkswagen?
    â€œWhat?” I lean forward, cock an ear.
    With his free hand he is turning the azimuth slowly, inattentively, until the sights line up on me. He appears sunk in thought and I fear I’ve lost him again. But he looks up and says, “May I ask you a question?”
    â€œSure. You want to know what I think, right? Well, I must confess—”
    But he is shaking his head. “No no,” he says. “Not that.” Wearily he rubs both eyes with the heels of his hands. “Could I ask you a professional question, a psychological question?”
    â€œSure sure,” I say, but I fear I showed my irritation. He sounds like priests often do when they talk to psychiatrists about ”psychological questions.”
    â€œSomething wrong, Tom?” the priest asks, eyeing me gravely.
    I have risen. Suddenly I don’t want to talk or listen. I am worried about Belle Ame. “I’m sorry, but if there’s nothing more I can do for you, I’d better be going. You eat something and you’ll be all right. I have to pick up Claude Bon. Drs. Comeaux and Gottlieb are waiting for me.” Besides, I feel a rising irritation. Did I come all the way over here to have a conversation about a “psychological question”?
    â€œI’m sorry, Tom. I didn’t send for you.”
    â€œThat’s all right. What’s the question?”
    â€œSomething happened to me yesterday after you left.” He is turning the azimuth. “No doubt it is a psychological phenomenon with which you are familiar. I know that you work with dreams. What I want to ask you is this: Is there something which is not a dream or even a daydream but the memory of an experience which is a thousand times more vivid than a dream but which happens in broad daylight when you are wide awake?”
    â€œYes.” I am thinking of his “spell.” It could be a temporallobe epilepsy—which often is accompanied by extraordinary hallucinations.
    â€œIt was not a dream but a complete return of an experience which was real in every detail—as if I were experiencing it again.”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œIs it possible for the brain to recapture a long-forgotten experience, an insignificant event which was not worth remembering but which is captured in every detail, sight, sound—even smell?”
    â€œYes, but I would question whether it was insignificant.”
    â€œYes, I expect you would. But it was absolutely insignificant.”
    He speaks with some effort, in an odd, flat voice and in measured syllables, like a person awakened from a deep sleep. “Yes, I expect you would,” he says again, rubbing his eyes. Now he moves the kerosene lamp, tries to focus on me.
    â€œWell?” I say after a pause, feeling irritation rise in my chest like a held breath.
    â€œI was dreaming of Germany. Germany! Why Germany? No, not dreaming. It happened. I was wide awake. I was lying down after you left yesterday. It was getting dark but the sky was still bright against the dark pines. It reminded me of—what? the Schwarzwald with its dark firs? I’ve told you about it before. I don’t know. Anyhow, it was as if I were back in Tübingen, where I’d been as a boy. I was lying in bed in my cousin’s house. It was so vivid I could have been there. I stayed with them a year. I would wake every morning to the sound of church bells.”
    He moves the kerosene lamp again, leans forward.
    â€œHave I spoken to you about this?”
    â€œAbout Germany? Yes.”
    â€œBut not about—” He stops, rubs his forehead with both hands. “Yes, the church bells. They had a special quality, completely different from our church bells, a high-pitched, silvery sound, almost like crystal struck against crystal. Even the air was different. It was thin and clear and silvery and high-pitched too, if you know what I mean. It had a different—smell. Or was it lack of smell?