The Thanatos Syndrome

priest-teacher teaching the dumb section at Holy Cross Prep.
    I am willing to play dumb. “I don’t know. I don’t see how we can get a triangulation fix from here.”
    â€œAnd you’re right! So we need a little help, don’t we? So—” He picks up the wall phone and dials a number. “Emmy,” he says in a different voice, “give me a reading on that brush job in 5-9. Okay, Blondie, I read. How goes it in Waldheim? All right. That’s a fiver-niner. You call it in. Over.”
    He speaks easily, good-humoredly. No, he’s not a priest-teacher. He’s a ham operator, one of those fellows who are shy up close but chummy-technical with a stranger in Bangkok.
    He turns to me. “Her reading is 2-9-2. She’s in the Waldheim tower.” He shows me a pin. “Here. Now, what are you going to do about it?”
    I pick up the string and the Waldheim sinker and hang it over pin 292. The weighted strings intersect at a crossroad on the map. The priest, I can see, is pleased by the elegance of the tight intersected strings. So am I.
    The priest is pushing one fist into the other hand, hard, taking turns. I realize he is doing isometric exercises. Now he is pulling against interlocked fingers.
    â€œWe know what the smoke is a sign of. We have located the sign,” he says between pushes and pulls. “Now we are going to act accordingly. That’s a sign for you. Unlike word signs.”
    â€œRight.” I look at my watch. I’m afraid he’s going to get going on the Germans. “It’s good to see you, Father, but I have an appointment. Do you wish me to tell Father Placide or Dr. Comeaux anything?”
    â€œSure,” says the priest, who is back in his place across the azimuth. “Now here is the question.” There’s a lively light in his eye. He’s out to catch me again. He has the super-sane chipperness of the true nut.
    â€œCan you name one word sign which has not been evacuated of meaning, that is, deprived?”
    â€œI don’t think I can. As a matter of fact, I’m afraid that—” Again I look at my watch.
    Two things have become clear to me in the last few seconds.
    One thing is that Father Smith has gone batty, but batty in a way I recognize. He belongs to that category of nut who can do his job competently enough, quite well in fact, but given one minute of free time latches on to an obsession like a tongue seeking a sore tooth. He called in the forest fire like a pro, but now he’s back at me with a mad chipper light in his eye.
    The second thing is that I promised Father Placide to make an “evaluation” of Father Smith’s mental condition. Can he do priestly work?
    No, three things.
    The third thing is that all at once I want badly to get out of here and see Lucy Lipscomb.
    â€œCan you name the one word sign,” Father Smith asks me, leaning close over the azimuth, “that has not been evacuated of meaning, that is, deprived by a depriver?”
    â€œI’m not sure what the question means. Later perhaps—”
    â€œWill you allow me to demonstrate,” says the priest triumphantly, as if he had already demonstrated.
    â€œOf course,” I say with fake psychiatric cordiality.
    â€œThe signs out there”—he nods to the shaggy forest—“refer to something, don’t they?”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œThe smoke was a sign of fire.”
    â€œThat is correct.”
    â€œThere is no doubt about the existence of the fire.”
    â€œTrue.”
    â€œWords are signs, aren’t they?”
    â€œYou could say so.”
    â€œBut unlike the signs out there, words have been evacuated, haven’t they?”
    â€œEvacuated?”
    â€œThey don’t signify anymore.”
    â€œHow do you mean?” From long practice I can keep my voice attentive without paying close attention. I wonder if Lucy—
    â€œWhat if I were to turn the tables on you, ha ha, and play the psychoanalyst?”
    â€œVery good,” I say gloomily.
    â€œYou psychoanalysts encourage your patients to practice free association with words, true?”
    â€œYes.” Actually it’s not true.
    â€œLet me turn the tables on you and give you a couple of word signs and you give me your free associations.”
    â€œFine.”
    â€œClouds.”
    â€œSky, fleecy, puffy, floating, white—”
    â€œOkay.