The Thanatos Syndrome

them to help me out at the hospice. I need them. They are good. They willingly volunteer and often spend a day with me in the AIDS wing or the Alzheimer’s pavilion. All you have to do, I discover, is ask people. They do it because they’re generous and, I think, a bit lonely. I work with them because I need their help and I’ve nothing better to do. In return, I give them couple’s counseling, no charge. They might get back together.

8. CHANDRA IS A BIG SUCCESS on local stereo-V. She didn’t make anchorperson as she had hoped, but eventually did become weatherperson, where she was an immediate hit, her pert manner and general sassiness contrasting with the bland Indiana style of the other members of “NewsTeam-7.” She became a “personality”—”Watch Chan on Channel 7” went the promo.
    During the minute or so of happy talk at the end of a newscast, when other members of NewsTeam-7 are smiling and making pleasantries and semi-jokes as they stack their papers, Chandra will have none of it: no grins, no banter. Instead, she often challenges the anchorman: “What you talking about, have a nice day—what’s nice about that?”—socking the weather map with her pointer.

9. WHILE I WAS TALKING to Bob Comeaux and Max Gottlieb in my cell at Angola, I asked the former casually what drugs they used in the pedeuthanasia program at the Qualitarian Life Center. He answered as casually, without thinking about it, as one doctor to another, “Amobarbital and secobarbital, IV.”
    â€œThat’s peaceful, isn’t it?”
    â€œThey go to sleep like the babies they are.”
    â€œHow about the adults?”
    â€œSecobarbital IV and”—he rouses, showing interest—“do you know what I hit on more or less by accident and what is now state of the art?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œSecobarbital plus THC.”
    â€œTHC?”
    â€œYou know, tetrahydrocannabinol, the active constituent of marijuana—and you want to know something, Tom?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThere is an exaltation, a joyousness, a sense of acceptance and affirmation you would have to see to believe.”
    â€œI believe you.”
    Max Gottlieb is frowning uneasily and moving toward the door. Bob detains him.
    â€œI don’t mind telling you guys that for the first time we have actually achieved the full meaning of the Greek word eu in euthanasia. Eu means good. I may be simpleminded, but I think good is better than bad, serenity better than suffering. You know what you ought to do, Tom?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYou ought to tell Father Smith about THC.”
    â€œI will.”
    â€œI mean as a therapeutic agent.”
    â€œI understand.”
    He looks at me curiously. “Why is your friend Father Smith so dead set against us?”
    After a pause—actually I don’t know how to answer him—I think of an answer which might also satisfy my own curiosity. “He thinks you’ll end by killing Jews.”
    â€œWhat’s that?” Bob asks sharply; then, for some reason, also asks Max, “What’s that? What do you mean?”
    Both Bob and Max are embarrassed, Bob for me and Father Smith—I’ve exposed his nuttiness. Max is embarrassed because he is one of those Southern Jews who are embarrassed by the word Jew.
    â€œWhat does he mean?” asks Bob, opening his hands to both of us.
    Max, frowning, is having none of it.
    â€œTom?” asks Bob Comeaux.
    I shrug. “He claims it will eventually end as it did with the Germans, starting out with euthanasia for justifiable medical, psychiatric, and economic reasons. But in the end the majority always gets in trouble, needs a scapegoat, and gets rid of an unsubsumable minority.”
    â€œUnsubsumable?” asks Max, who, I think, wouldn’t mind being subsumable.
    â€œUnsubsumable.”
    Bob Comeaux is shaking his head mournfully. “Ah me. I thought I had heard it all. Sorry I asked. Does he think I’m anti-Semitic, for God’s sake?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œLet me tell you something, Tom. I mean, hear this, loud and clear, Doctor!” He is standing arrow-straight, hat held over his heart, addressing me, but for Max’s benefit. “Some of my very dearest friends—”
    But Max has had enough of this, of both of us. “Let’s go, Doctor,” he says wearily, holding out one hand to the door,