The Reflection by Hugo Wilcken Page A

even noticing. I backed off, in a daze.
    “I’m going to leave you a couple of pages from the file. Have a good look at them. Someone will be in to see you in an hour or so. All right?”
    I didn’t say anything. The doctor moved to the door, slowly, deliberately, as though he were in a stable with a horse he didn’t want to frighten. As he opened it, I glimpsed a coupleof orderlies waiting on either side. The door clicked shut, and I could hear the turn of the key. I sprang out of bed. It was as if I were watching myself at the door, about to hammer at it. But then I had an attack of dizziness. Stars were in my eyes and my body went limp. It was all I could do to haul myself back onto the bed and lie down, stare up.
    White ceiling, white walls. Nothing changed. Beside me were the papers the doctor had left me. After a period of just lying there, I picked them up, and listlessly scanned them. “Serious, nonfatal head injuries … identified from social security card on his person … second suicide attempt …” I put them down and closed my eyes, exhausted, and thinking of nothing.

3
    From then on, the doctor-caricature with the pince-nez disappeared from my life. I was strapped to a gurney and wheeled to the operating room to get the staples out. When I came to from the anesthetic, a different doctor was leaning over me. Later, I found out his name: Dr. Peters. A man of around my own age and build, he came every morning and afternoon. For a few days I’d refused to talk to him, at first out of shock, then from anger and confusion. Once I’d regained some equilibrium, though, I changed tactics. By now it was clear enough that I was in a psychiatric hospital and I was more than familiar with the setup. There would be the padded cells for violent patients. The next step up would be my current situation: confined to one’s room. But patients who were docile and cooperative enough could spend their time in a communal hall, where there might be books, magazines, newspapers, perhaps a radio set or gramophone player.
    “So. Where did you say you were you born?”
    “Hackensack, New Jersey. A couple of years later I was sent to live with my aunt and uncle, on Long Island.”
    “Why was that?”
    “My parents died.”
    “How did they die?”
    “A theater fire. Here in Manhattan, if that’s where I am. Quite a few people died in the fire. It was reported in the
Times
, if you’d care to check. I’m fairly sure the date was April 17, 1919.”
    Dr. Peters scribbled on his pad, although whether he was noting the date or something entirely different, I didn’t know. He was making me go through the whole story of my life again. I’d wearily protested that I’d already done that, at some length, with the previous doctor, but he’d been adamant. And, like before, there’d always be some detail that interested him—my parents’ death, for example—and we’d go over it again and again. I recognized the technique from police interrogations I’d seen with D’Angelo. I’d also occasionally used it myself. I’d make a patient obsessively go over some aspect of his narrative—it almost didn’t matter which—until eventually, in the retelling, and the retelling of the retelling, its fault line would reveal itself.
    The same story, told in the same words. But after a while it isn’t the same. With repetition, a story loses its flavor, stops feeling like the truth, stops
being
true. It’s just another performance. Why had I been so keen to give the date of the report on the theater fire in the
Times
? I’d once discussed the subject of police interrogations with D’Angelo: if there are
no
holes in a story, he’d said, then generally it’s not true. People who are telling the truth tend to be slipshod about it; they contradict themselves, forget crucial details. They have no ready answers when pulled up on their inconsistencies. The seamless narratives, where every loose thread iscarefully woven back into