The Quantity Theory of Insanity Read Online Free PDF Page A

shelf of clipboards and Biros, pushed the rest of him back and up on two wheels of his swivel chair. As I stood and observed him, he rocked gently from side to side, his body unconsciously mirroring the short, tight arcs that his eyes made across the page.
    I shuffled my feet a little on the linoleum to warn him that he was no longer alone. ‘Good morning.’
    He looked up from his book with a smile. ‘Hi. What can I do you for?’
    ‘I’m Misha Gurney, the new art therapist, I start on the ward today and Dr Busner asked me to come in early to get a feel for things.’
    ‘Well, hello Misha Gurney, I’m Tom.’ Tom swung his feet off the ledge and proffered a hand. It was a slim, white hand, prominently bony at the wrist with long, tapering fingers. His handshake was light and dry but firm. His voice had the contrived mellowness of some Hollywood pilgrim paterfamilias. There was something unsettling in the contrast between this and his beautiful face: sandalwood skin and violet eyes. The body, under the stretchy black clothes, moved in an epicene, undulant way. ‘Well, there’s not a lot to see at this time. Zack isn’t even in yet. He’s probably just getting out of bed.’ Tom rolled his lovely eyes back in their soft, scented sockets as if picturing the psychiatrist’s matitudinal routine. ‘How about some tea?’
    ‘Yeah, great.’
    ‘How do you take it?’
    ‘Brown – no sugar.’
    I followed Tom down the corridor that led to the staff offices and the consultation rooms. There was a small kitchenette off to one side. Tom hit the lights, which flickered once and then sprang into a hard, flat, neon glare. He squeaked around the lino in his sneakers. I examined the handwritten notices carefully taped to the kitchen cabinets. After a while I said, ‘What do you do here, Tom?’
    ‘Oh, I’m a patient.’
    ‘I assume you’re not on a section?’
    He laughed. ‘Oh, no. No, of course not, I’m a voluntary committal. A first-class volunteer, exemplary courage, firstin line to be called for the mental health wars.’ Again the light mocking irony, but not mad in any way, without the fateful snicker-snack of true schizo-talk.
    ‘You don’t seem too disturbed.’
    ‘No, I’m not, that’s why they let me go pretty much where I please and do pretty much what I want, as long as I live on the ward. You see, I’m a rare bird.’ A downward twist of the corner of a sculpted mouth, ‘The medication actually works for me. Zack doesn’t really like it, but it’s true. As long as I take it consistently I’m fine, but every time they’ve discharged me in the past, somehow I’ve managed to forget and then all hell breaks loose.’
    ‘Meaning …?’
    ‘Oh, fits, delusions, hypermania, the usual sorts of things. I carry the Bible around with me and try and arrange spontaneous exegetical seminars in the street. You know, you’ve seen plenty of crazies, I’ll bet.’
    ‘But … but, you’ll forgive me, but I’m not altogether convinced. If you’re on any quantity of medication …’
    ‘I know, I should be a little more slowed down, a little fuzzier around the edges,
un peu absent
. Like I say, I’m an exception, a one-off, an abiding proof of the efficacy of Hoffman La Roche’s products. Zack doesn’t like it at all.’
    The kettle whistled and Tom poured the water into two styrofoam cups. We mucked around with plastic dipsticks and extracted the distended bags of tea, then wandered back to the association area. Tom led me over to the windows. The lower decks of the hospital poked out below us. Up here on the ninth floor, more than ever, one could appreciate the total shape of the building – a steeply sloping bullion bar, each ascending storey slightly smaller than the one below it. On the wide balcony beneath us figures werewafting about, clad in hospital clothing, green smocks and blue striped nightdresses, all bound on with tapes. The figures moved with infinite diffidence, as if wishing to offer