Against the Wind by Madeleine Gagnon Page B

asked him to come in.
    Joseph had never seen anything like it. Dr. Ibraïm sat enthroned at a huge desk, like a judge, with the whole team – most of whom had become Joseph’s friends – seated in armchairs around him. There were a dozen young men and women sitting on straight chairs along the wall as if they were at a trial, with notebooks and pens in hand, ready to take notes.They were wearing white coats and sitting motionless, and were not looking at Joseph. Joseph learned later that they were psychiatry interns who were there for an examination that would be evaluated by “the great Ibraïm.”
    Ibraïm motioned to him to sit down, there, on a straight chair across from him, right in the middle of the room.
    Joseph looked Ibraïm straight in the eye – he looked like an aging, weary Orson Welles – and waited. He knew, without having to be told, that he was not supposed to speak first. He looked around him, and his incredulous eyes met those of Dr. Laporte, Rebecca, Dena, everyone he had spent the past three weeks with in total innocence. They all looked away and turned toward Ibraïm, and Joseph understood that, like him, they were subject to Ibraïm’s authority. This thought gave him the strength to quietly await his verdict.
    And Ibraïm spoke! In a stern, categorical tone, he directed Joseph to give the reasons for his being in the hospital and to explain why, after being depressed to the point of wanting to die, he now considered himself ready to return to “normal life” after so little time in hospital.
    Joseph complied. He recounted, without too many details – because he sensed that details would only annoy Ibraïm – how he had come to be there and why he wished to leave. Why and how. How the madness he had encountered the first day had frightened him and made him want to leave.Why, because of the law, he had been
obliged
to stay. How he had come to better understood madness and his own existential pain. How he had been helped here (he named, in order, Dr. Laporte, Rebecca and Dena, and turning his eyes toward them, he saw that this recognition pleased them). Why he would never come back to the hospital for minds – no, never again!
    Without losing his cold authority or what looked like hostility or scorn, Ibraïm said to Joseph, “Young man, that was very eloquent, but I still don’t understand why you look so sad.When I look at you, I see only sadness. I haven’t seen a smile on your face since we’ve met. How do you explain this?”
    While the scribes scratched away on their notepads, Joseph looked Ibraïm in the eye and answered that he had not seen a smile on
his
face either, and that he was sure that if Dr. Ibraïm spent entire days and nights here without going home or even walking in the streets of the city, he too would become terribly sad, “infinitely sad, just seeing this emotional misery, this sorrow, this pain.”
    Ibraïm looked at all the files spread out on his desk. Joseph thought that these papers must be about him, that they must contain the results of examinations and tests and reports of all kinds. Rifling through them as if he had taken a speed-reading course, Ibraïm appeared somewhat discouraged, but sure of himself. He told Joseph, “You’re free, young man. You can go back home. Let me give you some advice. Be very careful. The mind is our most precious ally. Try not to let things go so far before asking for help. Don’t wait so long.”
    He walked over to Joseph, shook his hand and indicated that he could leave, saying, “Good luck to you, Joseph,” with a slight smile behind which Joseph glimpsed a longing as old as the world.
    After the noon meal, taking advantage of nap time, Joseph said a few last goodbyes.
    On the other side of the iron door, which had been unlocked for him, he felt what prisoners must feel when they regain their freedom. But Joseph also