“Hearing voices is not as uncommon as you might think. It can be a symptom of some physical ailment. Alzheimer’s, for instance. Parkinson’s. A brain tumor. Or it could be the manifestation of some psychic affliction. Or it might have other causes entirely. In most cases we can treat it with medication. Are you taking any kind of pills at the moment?”
“Now and then some ibuprofen for a backache, nothing else.”
“Drugs?”
“No.” I rubbed in vain at a little spot on my pants.
“Alcohol?”
“Sure, but not much.”
“How much?”
“A glass of wine with dinner. Sometimes two.”
“When was the last time you were really drunk?”
“Oh, God, it’s been forever. In college.”
He nodded quickly. “Various drugs can have a hallucinogenic affect. They are a common cause of hearing voices.”
I wondered whether he believed me.
He pondered. “Does the voice seem familiar to you?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“There are people who have lost a friend, a parent, or a partner who later hear that person’s voice.”
“I haven’t lost anyone close to me since my father died fourteen years ago.”
“In other words, there’s no individual to whom you could assign the voice?”
“No. And it doesn’t boss me around or insult me, either.”
He smiled. “I see you’ve already done some research on the subject. Do you ever have the feeling that other people can read your thoughts?”
“No.”
“Do you sometimes feel watched or followed?”
“Only by the voice.”
“Do you sometimes feel that other people can influence your thoughts?”
“Don’t they always?”
A delicate smile was his answer. He eyed me critically.
My tension mounted. I was entrusting my inner life to him, at least a part of it, and I did not have the feeling that it was in good hands. For a moment I considered cutting the session short. The thought of once again being plagued by the voice held me back. I needed his help.
“Where is the voice coming from?” I asked after a pause. “How do I get rid of it?”
He rocked thoughtfully in his chair. “To judge by your portrayal I would assume that it is merely a psychotic or near-psychotic reaction.”
“What is that? Why would it happen?”
“It varies. That sort of thing can emerge suddenly in stressful situations, during critical phases of transition. With young adults, for instance, when they move away from home. Starting a new job. Moving. The death of a family member, as I mentioned, could be a cause. Have you experienced any extraordinary strains in recent months?”
I hesitated briefly. “No.”
“Of course, I can’t rule out some form of schizophrenia at this point. But the way you describe the voice, I don’t really think it’s likely. In order to establish a clearer diagnosis I would need to know more about you and to follow the further developments. We’ll see.”
He saw the fear in my eyes and added, “But don’t worry. Even in that case, we have medication for it. Has anyone else in your family had a mental illness?”
“My mother suffers from depression.”
“Since when?”
“As long as I can remember.”
“You, too?”
“No.”
“Your siblings?”
“No.”
He nodded thoughtfully and took a few notes. “Is there, or has there been, to the best of your knowledge, anyone in your extended family who hears voices?”
“My father could hear heartbeats,” I answered spontaneously without thinking about what I was saying.
Dr. Erikson laughed. He took it for a joke.
I was not interested in letting him string me along. He had asked, and now he was going to get an answer: “He was born in Burma. His father died young, and his mother abandoned him because she was convinced that he was the cause of her misfortunes. A neighbor raised him. He was stricken blind when he was eight years old. In compensation he discovered the gift of hearing. He could distinguish birds by the beat of their wings. He knew whenever a spider was spinning a web nearby because he could hear it.” I paused to see how the doctor was reacting. He was staring at me in disbelief, quite uncertain whether I seriously meant what I was telling him. I was gratified by his confusion and continued:
“And, as I said, he was able to hear heartbeats.”
“Heartbeats?” echoed Dr. Erikson, as if attempting to ascertain whether he had heard me correctly.
“Yes. My father could recognize a person by his or her heartbeat, and he discovered that every heart sounds different, and that the tone of the heartbeat, as with a voice, was a window onto a person’s inner state. He fell in love with a young girl because he had never before heard any sound as beautiful as the beating of her heart.”
“Very interesting,” he said with a worried expression. “Do you have other fantasies, or do you sometimes see things that others cannot see?”
“The girl’s name,” I continued, undeterred, “was Mi Mi. She was extremely beautiful but could not walk on her own because her feet were misshapen. So my father would carry her on his back. He became her legs, and she his eyes, if you understand what I mean.”
Dr. Erikson nodded. “Of course I understand what you mean, Ms. Win.”
“Later, thanks to an operation, he regained his sight but lost the gift of extraordinary hearing. Not that he became deaf, but his hearing was no longer so remarkably acute.”
“And you?” he asked carefully. “Can you also hear heartbeats?”
“Unfortunately not.”
Dr. Erikson looked at his watch, skepticism palpable on his face.
What do you want here?
The moment I had been dreading the whole time.
—Keep quiet, I commanded her.
What do you want from this man?
—Help. I want help.
You don’t need help.
—Oh, yes I do.
This man can’t help you.
—Why not?
Because he didn’t understand a word you said. He thinks that people see with their eyes. How is he supposed to help you?
—How do you know that?
It’s plain to see.
“Is something wrong?”
“What would be wrong?”
“You’ve gone pale. Your lips are quivering. Are you hearing the voice now?”
I nodded.
“What is it saying?”
“That I don’t need any help.”
A knowing smile flitted across his face. “Anything else?”
“That you cannot help me.”
“Why not? Has it revealed that to you, too?”
Tell him. He doesn’t understand you.
I thought about it briefly. “No, it hasn’t.”
“I figured as much. The voice within you feels threatened by me. It’s a typical defensive reaction.”
He’s crazy.
“Try to ignore it.”
“If it were that easy I wouldn’t be sitting here.”
“I know, but try. You need to learn how. Just let the voice talk. Don’t listen to it. Whatever it says is unimportant. It has nothing to do with you.”
He’s got no idea what he’s talking about. He’s nuts. Trust me. He’s a typical Saya Gyi.
What was a Saya Gyi? I thought about U Ba. I thought about Amy. My head was spinning.
“I’m going to prescribe Zyprexa,” I heard him telling me as if through a wall. “Take five milligrams later today and then the same amount every evening for the next seven days. That will help you. It can cause side effects. You’re likely to feel tired and sleepy for the first few days. You should take the rest of the week off from work. Many patients also complain of weight gain. Dizziness. Constipation. In most cases it’s temporary. No action without a
reaction. But with this medication you’ll be ready for work again just after Thanksgiving, at the latest. You should come to see me again in a week. You’ll be doing much better by then. I promise.”
I had what I wanted: a first diagnosis. A prescription and a confident assurance that it would work. All the same, I left the office more stressed than when I had arrived.
THE CLERK AT the pharmacy explained the side effects of the medication a second time, but I was too exhausted to pay close attention. Back at home I went straight to the kitchen without even taking off my coat. I filled a glass with lukewarm water, took the medicine out of my pocket, and pushed a pill out of the packaging.
Don’t take it! Leave it alone.
Try to ignore it.
It’s not going to help you.
You need to learn how. Don’t listen to it.
Don’t do it.
Whatever it says is unimportant.
I put the pill on my tongue and took a mouthful of water.
Shortly thereafter I was overcome by an infinite weariness. I lay down on my bed fully dressed and went right to sleep.
Chapter 6
IN THE DAYS that followed the voice continued to torment me with questions; at night she woke me with her sobbing. The lack of sleep was wearing me down. My body ached; I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I would put the newspaper down after only a few minutes. Reading a book was out of the question.
No matter what I was doing, no matter where I went or what I saw, I thought of nothing but the voice in my head. Even when she was quiet.
I apologized to Mulligan in a dramatic e-mail referring to serious health problems on which I did not elaborate; further rigorous testing was going to be necessary. He replied full of concern and wished me a speedy recovery.
On one of my restless wanderings about the city I noticed a man in the Union Square subway station. He was about my age, wearing a black suit and a white shirt. A briefcase between his legs. All around him people were bustling from one platform to another. The man stood rooted to the spot. Amid the deafening roar of the arriving trains I could just make out isolated phrases. “Hearken unto the Lord … we are sinners all … put your faith in the Lord … you have gone astray …” No one besides me paid him any mind. Even if someone had taken pity on him and stayed to listen, they would not have been able to pick up even one complete sentence. I wondered what drove him to it. Did he, too, hear a voice? Did it command him to preach to arriving trains in one of New York’s biggest subway stations? What power would my voice acquire over me with time?
IN SPITE OF my fears I took the prescribed medication only twice. It was not the objections of the voice that held me back. Nor was it the possible side effects. It was the intended effect. The thought that I would be consuming a chemical substance that would overpower me. Direct me, control me. A strange heaviness had overcome me already that first time. The feeling of being a stranger in my own body.
Every fiber of my being resisted it. Under no circumstances was I willing to enslave myself to these little white pills. It had not yet come to that. There must be some other way to rid myself of the voice. I needed to try something completely different, only I didn’t know what. Should I follow Amy’s advice and withdraw with her to the forests of upstate New York? Meditate? I feared that the quiet there would only exacerbate my condition.
The one thing that helped was classical music. When I lay on the sofa listening to Mozart, Bach, or Haydn, the voice fell silent. The tones of the violin, the cello, and the piano worked on her like an exorcist. As if their melodies could lay her to rest. I had to be careful, though, not to do anything else at the same time. No reading, no cleaning up, no cooking. She would chime right in. Knock it off. Make up your mind: Listen to music or read. Listen to music or get dinner ready. It won’t do to try both at once. I was always trying to do much too much at once rather than concentrating on a single thing. That was not going to turn out well. She would not stand for it.
Thanksgiving only made things worse. For the first time in my life I would be spending the holiday alone. Amy was visiting a relative in Boston. The few other friends whose company I might have enjoyed were celebrating with their families. Half the country was going to be traveling. I had turned down my brother’s halfhearted invitation to San Francisco weeks ago.
I had never seen the city so empty. Nary a car on the street, shops and cafés closed. Even the homeless man who always sat at the corner of Second and Fifty-ninth had disappeared. I called half a dozen restaurants looking to order in; not one was open.
By dinnertime the whole building smelled like roasting turkey. From the other apartments on the floor came the laughter of the revelers. The clink of glasses. The aroma of cranberries, glazed carrots, green beans, sweet potatoes, and pumpkin pie.
The miserable stench of loneliness.
I ate leftovers from the fridge and, against the vociferous objections of the voice, drank almost a whole bottle of red wine. She turned out to be right. The alcohol did me no good. I started to pity myself. I ended up huddled in tears on the couch.
On Sunday evening Amy returned from Massachusetts. We had talked on the phone several times over the past few days. She was relieved when I went off the meds, and she kept inviting me to spend a few days in the countryside with her. She was really worried about me now. Wouldn’t I come with her to the Buddhist center after all? It would do me good to disengage. She promised. And if it didn’t, we could be back in Manhattan within three hours. I had nothing to lose.
By that point I didn’t care where we went. I was at the end of my rope. I couldn’t stand to be alone anymore. I needed to get out of the city.
Chapter 7
THE TAXI TURNED around and rolled slowly back down the dirt road. The driver shot us one more look of pity, then disappeared around the bend.
Amy and I stood there surrounded by an eerie silence. No birds, no insects. Not even the wind whispering in the treetops.
I looked around. Not much color. Leafless trees, scraggy brush, boulders thrusting up out of the earth. A world in grayish brown. Vacant.
For one long moment I felt as if I had been marooned.
Amy shouldered her backpack, nodded to me, and led the way. We walked up a path and crossed through a bit of forest until a bizarre building appeared on a hill before us. The bottom part looked like a blocky, flat conference center with large windows. Above that someone had set a pagoda roof, complete with octagonal cupola, little towers, golden ornamentation, and Buddhist symbols presiding over the corners. Our path led straight to it.
A slender woman in a light-pink robe met us at the entrance. Her hair was cropped short. Her smile and her soft features masked her age. She and Amy were apparently well acquainted with each other, but she greeted me with no less warmth. We followed her around the main building to the guest quarters. Breathing heavily, she climbed up to the second floor and showed us where we would be staying.
My room was maybe eight feet by ten. There was a bed, a chair, and a little cabinet. On the nightstand stood a Buddha made of light-colored wood. Behind it, in a vase, a red plastic hibiscus blossom. On the wall hung a painting of a meditating Buddha and a plaque with some of his aphorisms: “No sorrow can befall those who never try to possess people and things as their own.”
I thought of my brother in Burma. Had he internalized this idea? Is that why he could remain so serene? In spite of the poverty in which he lived?
The nun led us into the hallway and showed us where to find the bathroom and the shower. On the first floor, she told us, was a shared kitchen. The food in the refrigerator and the cabinets was available to all. There would be five other guests in the house. If we wished, we were welcome to participate an hour from now in the communal meditation that happened every afternoon at four. Dinner was at six, and, as with all the activities, participation was voluntary.
Amy wanted me to drink a cup of tea with her before the meditation, but I was not in the mood.
; I put my backpack down, closed the door, and opened the window.
A world without police sirens. Without cars. Without music from the next apartment.
A silence without voice.
She had not uttered a word since our departure from New York. It had been days since she had held her tongue for such a long time. Why had she suddenly clammed up?
—Hello? Tentatively.
—Where are you? More tentatively still.
No answer.
I lay down on the bed. Waited. Impatiently. On the one hand I wished for nothing more fervently than to be rid of her for good.
On the other hand.
The vague awareness that it would not happen of its own accord. That I was going to have to get to the bottom of what was going on inside myself. Where the voice came from. What she wanted from me.
THE MEDITATION HALL was bigger than it had looked from the outside. It could accommodate several hundred people. Red carpeting on the floor. In one corner were piles of red blankets and blue meditation pillows. In three glass cases a range of Buddhist statuary; on small tables in front of them were offerings: a couple of oranges, bananas, cookies. The sweet fragrance of smoldering incense sticks filled the hall.
I arrived somewhat late. Amy and the others were already sitting in a row meditating. I took a pillow and a blanket and sat in a lotus position beside them. I closed my eyes and listened to the quiet breathing of the others. Peace like theirs eluded me. My heart beat fiercely; my breath was shallow and quick. There was a din in my head. Thoughts flitted past like clouds before a brisk wind. I thought of Mulligan with his bushy eyebrows. Of my brother’s small ears, inherited from our mother. Of U Ba’s threadbare green longyi. I saw an ice floe slowly melting in a lake until it vanished entirely. I thought of my shoes, which needed polishing. Of the milk spoiling in my refrigerator.
The harder I strove to concentrate, the more banal and intrusive my thoughts became. It was like the times I had tried to meditate in yoga class. My teacher’s deep Om had not resonated with me. Relaxed emptiness, Buddhist serenity, had not descended on me. Frustration, rather. At myself. Why was I unable to sit still and do nothing? Why could I not stem the persistent flow of thoughts in my mind?