The Thanatos Syndrome

gift for Azazel.
    Mohammedans believe that Azazel is a jinn of the desert, formerly an angel. When God commanded the angels to worship Adam, Azazel replied, “Why should a son of fire fall down before a son of clay?” Whereupon God threw him out of heaven and down into the Syrian desert, a hell on earth. At that very moment his name was changed from Azazel to Eblis, which means despair.
    Milton made Azazel the standard-bearer of all the rebel angels.

II
    1. MONDAY MORNING . Sitting on the front porch of my office waiting for a patient, sailingpaper P-51s, and watching the sparrows flock around the martin hotel.
    I am not paranoid by nature, but I think someone is following me. Several times this week I’ve seen a Cox Cable van, sometimes following, sometimes ahead of me, sometimes parked and fixing a cable.
    Ellen’s gone to Fresno alone. She seemed sober this morning, unhungover, cheerful, and in her right mind, full of practical plans. Van Dorn, she said, may join her later. How could he not? They have never lost a tournament. If not, at least he had promised to save her from the humiliating ordeal of the partnership desk, would fix her up with a worthy partner in the Mixed Pairs competition.
    Worried about Ellen. Call home to try to reach Chandra.
    Chandra answers, offhandedly, “Yeah?”
    â€œChandra, I want you to do me a favor. Would you?”
    Chandra, alerted, voice suddenly serious: “I will.”
    â€œChandra, I am counting on you to help me with the kids while my wife is gone. Can I depend on you to be there after three when the kids get home from school?”
    â€œYou certainly can,” says Chandra in her new Indiana voice but not sounding put-on.
    â€œThank you.” I can count on her.
    â€œBut—”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œMrs. More said she made other arrangements.”
    â€œWhat other arrangements?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    Other arrangements. “Chandra, don’t worry about the other arrangements. I need you there when the children get home.”
    â€œI’ll be here.”
    A note in the mail and a recorded message on the machine, both from my cousin Lucy, Dr. Lucy Lipscomb.
    The note, dashed off on a prescription pad: “Tom” (not Dear Cousin Tom, though we are cousins, certainly not cud’n): “I need to see you. Important. Bob C. and Van Dorn are up to something. It concerns you, dope. Call me. L.”
    That’s her laconic style all right, maybe slightly overdone, what with her new doctoring manner. She’s completed her residency at Tulane and is back here as house physician at the local hospital.
    I call. Can’t reach her at Pantherburn, where she lives, or at the hospital, but leave message: I’ll be at the hospital later to see Mickey LaFaye.
    The sweet-gum leaves are speckled with fall but the morning sun is already hot. Sparrows flock. The martins are long gone for the Amazon. My nose has stopped running.
    Taking stock.
    Time was when the patients I saw suffered mainly from depression and anxiety: prosperous, attractive housewives terrified for no apparent reason; rich oilmen in a funk after striking it rich; in a funk after going broke; students, the best and the brightest, attempting suicide for reasons unknown to themselves; live-in couples turning on each other with termagant hatred.
    I had some success with them. Though I admired and respected Dr. Freud more than Dr. Jung, I thought Dr. Jung was right in encouraging his patients to believe that their anxiety and depression might be trying to tell them something of value. They are not just symptoms. It helps enormously when a patient can make friends with her terror, plumb the depths of her depression. “There’s gold down there in the darkness,” said Dr. Jung. True, in the end Dr. Jung turned out to be something of a nut, the source of all manner of occult nonsense. Dr. Freud was not. He was a scientist, wrong at times, but a scientist nonetheless.
    Two years in the clink have taught me a thing or two.
    I don’t have to be in a demonic hurry as I used to be.
    I don’t have to plumb the depths of “modern man” as I used to think I had to. Nor worry about “the human condition” and suchlike. My scale is smaller.
    In prison I learned a certain detachment and cultivated a mild, low-grade curiosity. At one time I thought the world was going mad and that it was up to me to diagnose the madness