OTTO FISK: A WINTERY
TALE
In all other ways, Otto Fisk was
normal. He just heard voices, that’s
all. These voices, though, could be
silenced by drugs. So long as he took
them, he was no different from anyone else.
The voices, however, would intrude upon him if he neglected to take his
pill. He was fifty years old when the
voices started, and the psychiatrists he consulted all agreed that it was rare
for someone his age to begin showing such symptoms.
They began late one afternoon in December after he had finished writing
the brief for the case he was taking to court the next day. He leaned back in his chair, his secretary
leaving the office to clear his own desk before quitting for the day, when they
began. He had tried to relax, closing
his eyes and clearing his mind. He had
to wait in his office for his wife to call and let him know where to meet her
in town, for they planned to dine out that evening in a pre-Christmas
celebration with friends. He wanted to
rest a bit anyway, so he put his hands behind his head as he leaned back in the
chair. That’s when he heard them
whispering, saying his name, their voices clearly discernable as different
individuals. At first he sat there
curious and listened, thinking he was overhearing conversations from the office
adjoining his own. But they were saying
his name and saying things he couldn’t quite make out but with such urgency
that it was clear they were trying to get and hold his attention. He stood up and left the office and looked
into the one next to his, only to find that his colleague, a married man with
children, had already left for the day.
He went back to his desk and sat down, eyes open, listening hard. The voices returned, insistent, saying his
name, urgently trying to tell him something.
It was so weird and disturbing that he all but ran out of his office and
out of the building, got into his car, and drove into the snowy streets. He called his wife on the cell phone and
luckily she was still at her office. He
told her he was going home because he didn’t feel well. Disappointed, she said she would meet their
friends alone and would see him later when she got home.
At
home, he was fine, at first. It was not
until late in the evening, after his wife went to bed, that the voices
returned. He tried to keep himself from
panic by speaking back to them. It
seemed to work, for as soon as he spoke to them, addressed them as, “You,
voices in my head, hello!” they quieted and for a while he was free of
them. But then they came at him again
with renewed intensity, several of them speaking at the same time.
One
voice finally prevailed. Otto couldn’t
help the feeling that there was someone in the room. The illusion of presence was unsettling. With half his mind he was aware the voice was
in his head, yet he also had the dreadful feeling that there was someone with
him, another person.
“Otto
Fisk,” the voice was saying, over and over.
“Whoremaster, bastard, cold-hearted son-of-a-bitch. . . .”
“Oh, this is hard, this is hard,” he said out loud to himself, then,
addressing the other, “Why are you saying these things?”
“Shameless,
shameless” it almost chanted.
“Why?
Why? Why?” Otto broke in, meekly, feeling his stomach weaken and the panic that
made him run from his office return.
This was, he was sure, the beginning stages of insanity!
“We
have succeeded at establishing a mind-link,” the voice said mysteriously,
suddenly changing attitude. “Your
consciousness is serving as a bridge between your world and ours. Our worlds have merged in you.”
“Ha,”
Otto laughed in disbelief. “It just so
happens, does it, that people in your world speak English! What kind of fool do you think I am?” He had shouted the last angrily, as though he
were speaking to someone standing in front of him, and then continued, “What’s
happening? I’m not stupid. Oh God! Oh God!” What he feared was the obvious: paranoia,
schizophrenia, sanatoriums; an old age spent staring at the walls; burly
attendants guiding him to fitness rooms and cafeterias; visitors. But mostly it was the vision of staring that
unsettled him, the voices in his head co-opting his will, leaving him
catatonic. “Oh God! Oh God!”
He
got up, paced the living room, swearing at himself for his stupidities,
wondering how he could be so childish.
Other worlds, how trite! If he
had to listen to voices, couldn’t they at least say something interesting? And then he cringed when the vileness of the
“Shameless, shameless” chanting returned.
The voice that spoke that harsh judgement was filled with a tone of
revulsion and hatred. This, on the one
side; the stupidity of “other worlds” on the other. Tears formed in his eyes and dread came over
him. He tried to block the voice by
putting his palms to his ears, covering his eyes, humming at the same time it
spoke, but none of these strategies succeeded; however, he found that though
speaking aloud wouldn’t stop the voice, he could stop it by keeping his own voice
speaking in his head. When he went to
bed, he kept an internal monologue running until he fell asleep.
During the course
of the next week, he found that when he focused his mind on some task, the
voices, for there were more than one, were usually silent. They got through only when he relaxed his
attention, and then they all but screamed at him, reviling, condemning,
berating, maligning, demanding that he pay attention to them. He would become mentally exhausted by the
effort at concentration, and, losing his grip at last, would give in. The voices would return almost instantly, and
he would get a glazed look in his eyes.
At
such times, Otto would curse and stomp off wildly somewhere to be alone. This happened frequently enough to begin to
alarm others in the office, and it became so disruptive that he could no longer
go to court. It wasn’t long before he
became a fifth wheel in the firm. By
mid-January, it was gently being suggested by concerned colleagues that he see
a psychiatrist.
He saw more than
one. None of them seemed to think that
what he was experiencing was unusual—only that the symptoms should have come on
so late with no other warning signs.
They all prescribed anti-psychotics, and, giving in finally to the
diagnosis, he tried them. It was with
great relief he found that they worked.
Taking the pills every day made it possible for him to go back to work
and resume his normal load in the office.
During these trying times, however, he said nothing to his wife about
the voices. He told her that he was
distracted by undue burdens at the office and that he was beginning to wonder
whether he shouldn’t retire. She was
concerned, of course, seeing how haggard he was becoming, and recommended he
see a doctor. But, fortunately for Otto,
she had her own burdens to bear, and at this stage in their lives, she paid
little attention to him. She told him to
do what was best and left it at that.
He worked as usual
and tolerated the side effects of the drugs, which included sudden spastic movements
and a perpetually dry mouth, which he treated by constantly drinking
Pepsi. He would stand in court facing
the judge in some civil proceeding when his right arm would begin to wave
around like he was leading a band. He
would apologize and grab his arm with his other hand and hold it down. The judge would try to ignore these
outbursts, having been spoken to in private about Otto’s problem. Patiently, he would say, “Get on with it, Mr.
Fisk,” and look away, trying to keep his composure.
All this was an
ordeal for Otto who, at fifty, found it difficult to adjust. He never had health problems. He was one of those rare people who never
caught the flu and never got a cold, even in winter, and, therefore, never
spent a day in his life worrying about his health. Having to adjust at his age to the eruption
of a disorder so completely disruptive of ordinary life had the effect on Otto
of making him feel eccentric, especially when his muscles began to twitch and
his body began to jerk about uncontrollably.
It was not surprising, considering the humiliations he was subjected to,
that he should conveniently forget to take his pill in the morning and end up
spending the day pretending at the office or in the courtroom that he wasn’t
hearing voices. On these occasions, the
voices would return with a vengeance, demanding, shouting, sometimes even
cursing him most vilely for being a blockhead and a coward.
Then one evening
in February, after an exhausting day spent battling with the voices, his having
refused to accompany his wife to some event downtown to which they were both
invited and gone home to collapse, he gave in and sat in the recliner in the
living room to have it out with his “enemies,” as he had come to call them,
resolving to commit himself in the morning.
This decision to commit brought about some considerable relief, for it
meant that he could turn over control to professionals who knew how to help
him, and thus lift the burden from his own shoulders. He had poured a double brandy and placed the
glass on the lamp table next to the chair.
He pulled the lever and leaned back, letting his legs stretch out full
length, and kicked off his shoes. The
recliner was near the radiator, and its warmth was a deep comfort to him. He cleared his mind and relaxed, took a sip
of the brandy, and waited.
He was wakened
from a drowse by the voice of a person, a man, so familiar that it seemed a
part of his everyday life, like hearing his father’s voice in the living room
when he was a child playing in the bedroom.
The voice itself made him feel secure and comfortable, until he attended
to what it was saying.
“You are
disgusting, Otto. You are the most
wretched being who has ever existed. You
should be dead, you shouldn’t exist, vileness that you are, sick, revolting,
corrupt monster. . . .”
He started up,
shouting, “Stop!” and reached for the brandy.
He took a sip. Then, he rested
back and listened. He thought, “How can
I live like this?”
Then the voice
came back, blacker and more filled with hatred.
He just listened, lifted the glass of brandy again, sipped, and held it
cupped in the palm of his hand. It occurred to him then, suddenly discovering
something about himself that he had never known before, that he had resources
to battle his enemies. He relaxed and
waited. The voice droned on, filled with
contumely, arrogance, hatred.
“I am a dog,
whoever you are,” he responded to the voice.
“Damn you. You’ve got it
right! Who the hell are you!? Are you my father?” He had learned how to mimic the silent inflections
of mental speech when he went to work unfortified by his pill, and so he sat
with his fists clenched and jaw locked but otherwise unmoving. Then he heard the voice again, and he felt a
certain relief for the rebuke it hurled upon him.
Otto sat calmly,
sipping the brandy, listening at first, but, gradually, as he accepted
everything—the voice, the tone, the judgement, his failures and inadequacies,
his marriage—he began putting it all aside.
“Yes,” he thought,
“this is the way. Don’t fight it,
whoever, whatever, you are. The way
through is to accept everything.
Yes. I am vile. Yes, yes.
So what else is there to say? I
am vile. Can you add to that? Oh?”
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