The Thanatos Syndrome

most talented people, people of the loftiest sentiments, the highest scientific achievements, and the purest humanitarian ideals.”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œYou have to turn it,” he says, noticing my efforts to open the trapdoor.
    â€œThank you.” No, that doesn’t work either.
    â€œThe Holocaust was a consequence of the sign which could not be evacuated.”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œWho remembers the Ukrainians?”
    â€œTrue.”
    â€œLet me tell you something, Tom. People have the wrong idea about the Holocaust. The Holocaust, as people see it, is a myth.”
    Oh my. My heart sinks. On top of everything else, is he one of those? I try harder to open the damn door.
    While he is talking, he has taken hold of my arm.
    I remove his hand. “Goodbye, Father.”
    â€œWhat’s the matter, Tom?”
    â€œAre you telling me that the Nazis did not kill six million Jews?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThey did kill six million Jews.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThen what are you saying?”
    â€œWhat I’m trying to tell you is that the origins of the Holocaust are a myth—”
    â€œNever mind. I’m leaving.”
    â€œVery well. What are you going to tell Father Placide and Dr. Comeaux?”
    â€œI am going to tell Father Placide that you are too disturbed to be of any use to him at St. Michael’s. I am going to tell Dr. Comeaux that you are also too disturbed to operate the hospice and that I hope you will sell it to him. Now will you let me out of here?”
    â€œI appreciate your frankness,” says the priest, nodding vigorously, hands making and unmaking fists in his pockets. “Shall I be frank with you?”
    â€œSure, if you’ll open this damn door.”
    â€œI will. But please allow me to tell you something about yourself for your own good.”
    â€œPlease do.”
    â€œYou are an able psychiatrist, on the whole a decent, generous, humanitarian person in the abstract sense of the word. You know what is going to happen to you?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYou are a member of the first generation of doctors in the history of medicine to turn their backs on the oath of Hippocrates and kill millions of old useless people, unborn children, born malformed children, for the good of mankind—and to do so without a single murmur from one of you. Not a single letter of protest in the august New England Journal of Medicine. And do you know what you’re going to end up doing? You a graduate of Harvard and a reader of The New York Times and a member of the Ford Foundation’s Program for the Third World? Do you know what is going to happen to you?”
    â€œNo,” I say, relieved to be on a footing of simple hostility, “—even though I did not graduate from Harvard, do not read The New York Times, and do not belong to the Ford Foundation.”
    The priest aims the azimuth at me, but then appears to lose his train of thought. Again his preoccupied frown comes back.
    â€œWhat is going to happen to me, Father?” I ask before he gets away altogether.
    â€œOh,” he says absently, appearing to be thinking of something else, “you’re going to end up killing Jews.”
    â€œOkay,” I say. Somehow I knew he was going to say this.
    Somehow also he knows that we’ve finished with each other. He reaches for the trapdoor, turns the rung. “Give my love to Ellen and the kids.”
    â€œSure.”
    At the very moment of his touching the rung, there is a tapping on the door from below. The door lifts against his hand.
    â€œThat’s Milton,” says Father Smith in his workaday ham-operator voice and lifts the door.
    A head of close-cropped iron-gray hair pops up through the opening and a man springs into the room.
    To my astonishment the priest pays no attention to the new arrival, even though the three of us are now as close as three men in a small elevator. He takes my arm again.
    â€œYes, Father?”
    â€œEven if you were a combination of Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, and Charles Kuralt rolled into one—no, especially if you were those guys—”
    â€œAs a matter of fact, I happen to know Charlie Kuralt, and there is not a sweeter guy, a more tenderhearted person—”
    â€œRight,” says the priest ironically, still paying not the slightest attention to the stranger, and then, with his sly expression, asks, “Do you know