The soloist Read online

  Naturally I found this image absolutely chilling. I had experienced moments like those he was describing in some of my last concerts, where I observed myself with grotesque self-consciousness; my fingers on the strings felt and looked like clumsy sausages, the bow in my hand seemed as heavy as an oar, and I became terrified that I might go blank and lose my place in the music. Panic and anger and despair all mixed together. I could easily believe that someone who felt that way all the time, day after day, would fall apart.

  Dr. Libertson told us that as the disease worsens, the patient's thoughts, feelings and actions get mixed up. He may be thinking of something very positive while at the same time feeling crushed with sadness. Some patients lose control over their thoughts, and actually think they are hearing voices or commands coming from outside them. This, he explained,

  (121)

  is why so many schizophrenics are convinced they are acting upon orders from God, or the Devil, or the CIA. Most of these unfortunate people become withdrawn and terribly shy in order to compensate for what they feel is a lack of self-control. It is also why most of them are far from dangerous, the doctor emphasized; if anything, they tend to be nervous, frightened hermits. Occasionally, however, a schizophrenic will have what psychiatrists call a psychotic episode, an acute phase of psychosis. Then the symptoms become so overwhelming that the patient really does lose control of himself

  Ms. Doppelt asked if Philip Weber had been psychotic when he killed the Zen master.

  The doctor nodded vigorously and tapped against the rail with his finger for emphasis. "Absolutely," he said. "And something to remember is that once he slipped into that state of mind there was nothing he could have done to pull himself out of it. Once a patient becomes psychotic, he or she loses all coherent sense of reality, and therefore of self-control." He shook his head and looked up at the ceiling, appearing to be searching for words. Then his face lit up and he leaned forward in his chair again. "You know," he said brightly, "it's kind of like what physicists say about 'black holes,' those collapsed stars floating around out there in space: if you get too close to one and get caught in its field of gravity, you can't escape. You have nowhere to go but down, nothing to do but fall. Nothing is strong enough or fast enough to get out, not even light. With a schizophrenic, once he becomes psychotic the part of him that you might think should 'know better'—the nice person his family and friends once knew— that person, that self, can't resist the forces that are throwing his mind into confijsion. He's being tossed around with nothing to hold on to, and everything around him becomes

  (122)

  a jumbled mess." The doctor looked at the defendant, who was calmly jotting down notes on one of Ms. Doppelt's yellow legal pads, then turned to face us in the jury box. ''Those of us who are healthy should all be grateful we don't know what that feels like."

  The ''black hole" analogy really struck home with me; Fd finished the astronomy book I bought in Santa Barbara, and black holes were discussed in it at some length. I got distracted from the doctor's testimony plaving with that analogy because there were ways that it could be expanded upon. Physicists say there may be only one way to escape from a black hole, and that is by falling right through it and popping out into a separate universe. You may be the same as before, but evervthing around yoii will be changed. Because of what Philip Weber had done during his psychotic phase, I was thinking that even if he could be successfrilly treated, his life would be forever changed. All of us—the rest of the world, to him—saw him differendy after that. He was a killer, someone who had taken another man's life. He really was living in a paraDel universe; with treatment he might even become a reasonably healthy man, but he would certainly never be perceived as one. For the first time I felt a kind of pity for this young man, who was beginning to look more pathetic than evil to me.

  When I turned my attention back to Dr. Libertson, he was saying that during his psychotic episode at the church Philip Weber suddenly found himself swept up in a euphoric delirium, and in that delirium imagined that the correct answer to the puzzle "Kill the Buddha in the road" was to attack the Zen master with his staff.

  The testimony became particularly interesting, I thought,

  (123)

  when the doctor talked about some of the kinds of situations that can trigger these psychotic episodes. He said that sometimes they occur without any apparent reason, but nine times out of ten they can be traced to an emotionally stressful situation, like a visit to one's parents' home, or having to ride a public bus and risk being stared at, or having to take part in any social situation that would make one feel more self-conscious than usual.

  Ms. Doppelt asked if the doctor thought that the Zen retreat could have triggered Weber's psychotic episode, and the psychiatrist actually laughed out loud. He shook his head with an almost bitter expression on his face and said, "Ms. Doppelt, I find it hard to believe that even you or I could participate in an activity like that without some sort of breakdown. As a matter of fact, it is my opinion that this is precisely what most so-called religious experiences are: episodes of nervous exhaustion brought on by sensory deprivation, extreme fervor—"

  "Objection," Mr. Graham interrupted. "The doctor's opinion concerning normal religious experience isn't relevant, your Honor. It biases the jury against the religion that Mr. Weber chose to adopt."

  "Sustained."

  Dr. Libertson didn't seem upset. He shrugged and continued pretty much where he had left off. He said it was quite common for exhausted people to experience mild hallucinations and interpret those hallucinations as evidence of deep insight, visions of God or divine commands. There was no doubt in his mind, he said strongly, that the retreat had triggered Mr. Weber's psychosis. "Frankly," he added, "from my point of view the activities of this retreat . . . Put it this way: it would take an evil genius to create an atmo-

  (124)

  sphere more likely to produce psychosis in a schizophrenic patient/'

  ''Could you be specific, Doctor?" Ms. Doppelt asked. ''What specifically about this retreat do you think caused Mr. Weber to become psychotic?'"

  "Well, just about evervthing," the doctor mused, tugging at his compact beard and fi-owning. "But, yes, I can be more specific. First of all, there are the hours and hours a day of meditating, all the time sitting cross-legged without moving, with no talking or moing about allowed. That's sensory deprivation, which leads to disorganized thinking and delusions in anyone if it goes on long enough, but in a much shorter time with schizophrenics. Then the participants in the retreat are allowed only four or five hours of sleep a night; they are awakened at four in the morning and have to rush around in complete silence to get to the meditation hall, where they must do a series of one hundred fijll prostrations in ft-ont of an image of the Buddha before settling into their meditation. Sleep deprivation and repetitive motor activities also lead to disorganized thinking, along with increased re-ceptiit^ to hypnotic suggestion. Then there are those puzzles that they're supposed to be concentrating on all day and night. I'm told that Zen students are led to believe that solving these puzzles will bring them profound insights into the 'true nature' of the universe, which presumably contain the answers to all their questions about the meaning of life and so on. These puzzles, I'm told, make no sense whatsoever, and apparently that is their point. As I think I mentioned, disorganized thinking practically defines schizophrenia. What could be more stressfiil for such a person than to engage in rigorous exercises that were purposely created to short-circuit our conventional notions of reality?"

  (125)

  The doctor told us about a fascinating case in England involving an extremely talented theater student at Oxford who was cast as a schizophrenic in one of the drama company's plays. One night, in the middle of an exhausting performing tour around England, he got into character and couldn't get out. He spent the rest of his life in a mental hospital. Obviously he was vulnerable to the disease, to begin with, but the exercise of having to pretend to be psyc
hotic clearly pushed him over the edge.

  "These Zen exercises," Dr. Libertson said emphatically, "are carried out in an atmosphere of severe discipline, allowing for no relaxation of one's will or self-control. What happens to a person who is terrified of losing his self-control, and who knows that he has very little of it in the first place.>"

  The doctor shook his head and an almost despairing expression came over his face. "Then there's the fact that the Zen master is considered a spiritual authority, whose clear, spiritual vision allows him to see through all of the illusions we ordinary people live under. Presumably he can see through any false pretenses, and since he claims to understand the nature of the universe, presumably he knows you better than you know yourself How does someone with a deep fear of seeming shallow or false feel in the presence of such an authoriry? Terrified, I should think. Terrified of being discovered, of being positively identified as a spiritual and social failure. Add to this the tradition that allows the Zen master to strike students with a huge wooden pole as punishment for making unnecessary noise, and the situation becomes even more frightening. When Philip started to lose control over himself by crying, then laughing, and the master struck him with the pole, he quite simply became hysterical. That blow with the stick was ... it was the point of no return

  (126)

  for him. After that he had no sense of what he was doing."

  The doctor inferred that since Zen masters have shaved heads and wear robes, and since Mr. Okakura was Asian like the Buddha, Philip probably thought that the master was some sort of apparition, a ghost of the Buddha, and acted according to the behavior described in the puzzle. This is where hypnotic suggestion plays a part, he said. Philip had repeated the puzzle to himself perhaps thousands of times over the four days of the retreat; in a situation of extreme psychological distress, it would have taken on such resonance in his mind that he felt it was coming from all around him— from the universe itself, or perhaps from God.

  *Tn any case," the doctor summed up, "Philip believed at that moment, and still believes, that he did the right thing, the only thing he could do, and that he had the moral force of the entire universe behind him. That is why he seems to have no sense of remorse at all. His sense of reality is utterly inconsistent with our own agreed-upon reality."

  Ms. Doppelt nodded smardy, took a few steps toward the counsel table, then stopped and half turned toward the stand. ''Dr. Libertson, was Philip aware that he was killing a man when he swung that pole.>"

  "N—" the doctor checked himself for an instant, then continued. "Not in any practical sense. To him, what was happening that day had no substance or reality—it was all a kind of dream, or nightmare. He acted the way we might in our nightmares because, in light of his psychosis, he was no more in control of himself than we are in our dreams."

  I hadn't decided whether I thought Philip Weber was insane when he committed his crime, but if he had really been in the state of mind Dr. Libertson was describing, it seemed

  (127)

  plausible that he could have killed someone without understanding what he was doing. I knew from a very brief but unforgettable experience that it was possible to be wide awake but feel and act just as in a dream. It happened to me after that last recital in Chicago. I'd put the cello down on the floor of the stage and walked away. Once Td made it behind the curtains a stagehand led me to the dressing room. My mother came into the room, and I remember being surprised at how calm she seemed. Someone delivered my cello to the room and my mother put it in its case for me, and it occurred to me that this was the first time I'd ever seen her touch the instrument. We left by the stage door and walked toward a waiting cab.

  My mother was trying to put the cello in the front seat when all of a sudden, with an almost audible whoosh, I felt my normal sense of being present drain out of me. Just as in a dream, I saw myself walking down the sidewalk. Everyone I could see was staring at me, or so it seemed. They looked drained of their souls; they seemed to be marionettes sculpted out of pliable rubber. I must have stopped walking, because next I remember the marionettes standing in what appeared to be a perfect circle around me. The buildings stood in a larger concentric circle around us, with me at the dead center of it all. The composition of the scene, like that of a Persian miniature, seemed too symmetrical to be real. Then, as suddenly as it had arrived, the feeling of unreality disappeared. Things looked asymmetrical and mundane again, people looked less puppetlike and once again seemed to have souls, and I felt my sense of presence—of being an awake mind inside a real body— return to me. The whole episode probably lasted less than ten seconds—I had taken only four or five steps away from

  (128)

  the cab—but for that time I was truly lost. If my body had decided to suddenly jump into the street or push someone into the traffic, I could no more have stopped myself than I could have willed my heart to stop beating or my stomach to cease digesting its food.

  When it came time to cross-examine the doctor, Mr. Graham asked which of the psychological tests given to the defendant confirmed the diagnosis of schizophrenia. Dr. Lib-ertson smiled, as if he had been waiting for the question, and answered that no test can absolutely confirm a diagnosis of schizophrenia; the disorder has to be inferred from behavior, and from responses to treatment.

  "I see," Mr. Graham mused, waing a fly off the railing in front of the witness stand. ''And what about insanity—is there any test that can confirm a diagnosis of insanit^^"

  ''No. Insanit)^ is a legal term, not a medical one. It's up to the court to decide if he was legally insane or not."

  The prosecutor nodded politely and said in his soothing voice, "Yes. Thank you, I was just about to get to that. Yd like to read something aloud to the court. . . . Just a moment . . ." He went back to his desk and pulled a sheet of paper out of his briefcase. "Here it is. . . . This first quote is from a report published by the American Psychiatric Association. It says, 'The line between an irresistible impulse and an impulse not resisted is probably no sharper than the line between twilight and dusk.' Would you agree with that. Doctor.>"

  "In theorv', yes," the doctor conceded.

  "Ah. Thank you. This second quote is from another report on the insanity defense, published by the American Bar Association. This says, 'Experience confirms that there is still

  (129)

  no accurate scientific basis for measuring one's capacity for self-control or for calibrating the impairment of such capacity. There is, in short, no objective basis for distinguishing between offenders who were undeterrable and those who were undeterred, between the impulse that was irresistible and the impulse not resisted, or between substantial impairment of capacity and some lesser impairment. . . . The question is unanswerable or, at best, can be answered only by moral guesses.' "

  Mr. Graham looked at the doctor, again without seeming confrontational at all, and asked, "What about that.> Does it sound right.>"

  Dr. Libertson did not look pleased at the way the testimony was going, but he kept his composure and answered, "I have no choice but to agree that there is no absolutely objective basis for telling the difference, no."

  Mr. Graham nodded gently, then said, "So all of this means, doesn't it. Doctor, that in the absence of a conclusive medical diagnosis of insanity, it will be the jury's moral sense that decides, won't it.>"

  "Objection!" Ms. Doppelt cried out. "This line of reasoning is gratuitous. He's trying to invalidate the doctor's testimony by asking him legal-philosophy questions, not medical ones."

  "Sustained. Mr. Graham, please."

  The older lawyer bowed his head toward his female opponent in a gesture of penitence. "Dr. Libertson," he resumed, facing the doctor once again. "Isn't it true that many criminals who are not insane nevertheless have personality disorders that make them violently antisocial, and without any sense of remorse for what they do.>"

  "That's a different type of illness, but yes."

  (130)

  "Ah. The reason I m
ention this, Doctor, is that I want to remind the court that mental illness by itself does not automatically make a man legally insane."

  "Objection," Ms. Doppelt protested. "The prosecutor is testifying, not questioning."

  "Sustained."

  I was intrigued by the quote about self-control—the one that suggested that trying to establish the boundary between an irresistible impulse and an impulse not resisted was like trying to determine when twilight ended and dusk began. We all think we can tell when someone is mentally ill or psychologically out of control; an inappropriate facial expression, a voice with an unnatural rhythm, a subtle awkwardness of movement—even the slightest cues give us an immediate sense of recognition. But maybe we aren't as good at identifying mental illness as we think. In a way I wished the defense attorney would let Philip Weber get up on the witness stand, because I felt I could tell a great deal from listening to him and watching him react. But Judge Davis had warned us that the defendant did not have to testify, and Ms. Doppelt had made a point of informing us that sometimes it serves justice better to let the evidence argue on behalf of the accused rather than the other way around.

  (131)

  Our day ended with the doctor's testimony. On the shuttle ride out to the parking lot I at last had an ^^^ opportunity to ask Maria-Teresa how she liked the tape Vd given her.

  "You want the polite answer or the rude one?" she asked.

  "The honest one, I suppose."

  "Saint-Saens sucks," she said, grinning and lighting a cigarette.

  "Do you mind not smoking in here."" Mrs. Friedman asked loudly, glancing at me as she spoke. She had not failed to notice the attention Fd been paying Maria-Teresa. I suppose I shouldn't have given it any thought, but I'm not used to being disapproved of.

  "It wasn't really that bad," Maria-Teresa explained, tossing her cigarette out the window, "I mean, I'm sure it's incredible music and I'm just too thick to get it, but it just didn't hit me. All those instruments, all those fast notes, but it didn't mean anything; it was like hearing a whole crowd of people talking in another language."