In the Garden of Scheol (a short story of a young women with schizophrenia tendencies)

In the Garden of Scheol

They were living in Babenhausen, Germany then, and the bridge to the brewery, crossed a canal that ran from one end of the township to the other end. They could see the Old Tower, built in around AD 1714 from their 3rd story apartment windows. Up a ways from the center of town where they lived, was a park, and the Babenhausen, Schlosshof (where there was a café and art shows, along with small concerts).
It was a town-let, sort of, where people wore—for the most part, back in the early to mid seventies—wore common and plane cloths, a hard working class community, along with a hard drinking class, of German stock, that filled the guesthouses every night of the week. There were also, a few select bars where the young folks hung out.
It was a city were folks rode their bicycles as much as they drove their cars, across the two bridges, the second one being in the center of town, where a creek run through, paralleling the bridge a mile away near the brewery.
Kids wildly escaping the grip of their mother’s hands, to run up to the few venders selling bratwurst, with mayonnaise and French Fries, with mustard on the side. It was for the most parks, thought Sherwood Sullivan.
They drank—more so him, than her—in the cafes and guesthouses in Babenhausen during those days. There were three in particular he preferred.
It was early in the summer of 1974, and everyone in town was seemingly busy. It was a warm and somewhat friendly town, and the young couple liked their furnished apartment, which only had three rooms, and a thin hallway.
The apartment they lived in looked similar to the hotel room Ernest Hemingway rented out while living at the Hotel Ambos Mundos, in Havana, Cuba, in the late 1930s; it had many windows and a balcony, and from the balcony, you could see the Old Tower from there, and the top of many houses.

They were always broke, but they ate well, and he smoked two packs of cigarettes a day, and had his six-pack of beer nightly, either at home, or at the bar, or guesthouse.
He ate breakfast at home usually; the Germans could never satisfy his American tastes in that category. He liked two eggs, sunny-side up, toast, bacon, and dark strong coffee, and if time allowed fried potatoes (he was twenty-seven years old, she, twenty, he had met her when she was seventeen, and he had just come home from the Vietnam War).
Breakfasts seemed to help him with his hangovers, recover faster, especially the dark coffee, he liked it plain.
She drank it to reduce her headaches; she had them quite often, too often for the likes of her husband (coffee, coke or chocolate, anything with caffeine in it).
On this morning, he was not in a hurry as often he was to find a quiet place to do his writings (he was working on a book called “A Romance in Augsburg,” where he had spent a year of his life, back in 1970, prior to going to Vietnam, in 1971), he was with his wife Carla, and he stopped at a corner guesthouse, one he often frequented, along the creek, and bridge, that lead towards the Schlosshof, ordered two hard boiled eggs, knowing they didn’t make the kind he liked, salted them down, ordered some sweetbread with jam, coffee, and her, she ordered a pouched egg, they were all small he noticed, but he knew better then to complain, it wouldn’t do any good, it was that or nothing, he happily, half swallowed and half chewed them down, washing it down with coffee.
In the middle of the night they had made love, or had sex, it was quick and unemotional, and sparse, in that they only had sex once every three to four months now.
They both watched the cars and bicycles go by, she was buttering her sweet bread.
“What are you thinking of?” asked Carla.
“Nothing much, why?”
“It must be something, you’re kind of are daydreaming it seems.”
“Just feeling alone, that’s all.”
“How can that be, I’m here! Right here by your side:”
“Yes, you seem happy.” Sherwood replied.
“I like feeling happy,” she said, adding, “isn’t that normal?”
“Oh…yes, of course,” then hesitated, but added, “you’re not happy all that much,” he said almost in a whisper.
“Ah,” she said, in a disappointed tone, “I don’t care I’m happy now, and we don’t have to worry, or even think of anything in particular, do we?”
“Not one thing.” He answered.
“What do you want to do today?” She asked frigidly.
“I don’t know, you tell me.”
His mind was drifting, daydreaming as she had mentioned, and it was on an issue he didn’t bring up—not after it happened anyhow, he had put it to rest because it wouldn’t do any good to belabor it: it was about her cutting up with a scissor, all his cloths, except the cloths he had on his back, and those he picked up at the drycleaners after that event. She had gotten mad, with jealously, painted herself up like a whore, and when he came home, was dancing about, trying to lure him into bed, saying ‘You like whores, here I am!’ and when he went to change cloths, he noticed all his cloths was shredded, that was two weeks ago, and he was waiting for a check to purchase more, then he’d head up to Darmstadt, where he usually bought most thing, such as steno equipment, cloths, shoes, and so forth.
“I want to go somewhere, anywhere, I’ll stay happy, I promise! Maybe to Dieburg, I like the little shops, or to Darmstadt, no, Munster, we can catch the train there and go on to Frankfurt and spend the day. Or go see that pink camel in Aschaffenburg?”
“Let’s think about it after breakfast, when we get to the park, there we can decide what to do, I’ll not write today.”
“No! I think I want to go back to the apartment and take a nap!”
“Wow! That’s a sudden and new idea,” he said,
“You know I get these abrupt flashes of depression and agitated behavior, I’m not happy anymore, take me back.”
“Ok,” he said, knowing she could be destructive. Matter of fact, it was just yesterday in a shop in Dieburg, a town a few miles away, she had a manic explosion in front of the clerk, who begged him to take her out of the store quickly before she called the police…



The Shop in Dieburg


(Carla wanted to do some shopping in Dieburg, a gift for her sister in Erie, Pennsylvania, for their new son).

It was early in the afternoon, and the two, Sherwood and Carla, had taken a bus from Babenhausen, to Dieburg, there was no trains, the black road crossing the streets, the dark blue sky, right above their heads, the boulevard that seemed long and stretched out, the hot sun like a desert over their shoulders and penetrating her neck, it all seemed to fall flat onto Carla’s brain. Sherwood could almost see her mood change, her thoughts coming through her eyes, he knew by instinct, something was being planted. Some cars rode by, young people in them, slowly she looked at the magnificent orange car, a BMW,
“It’s a lovely car,” she said to her husband.
“There’s the shop, let’s go see what we can get for your sister’s child.” Sherman said, trying to change the subject before he’d end up in the middle of the street arguing about why he couldn’t buy a new car like that for them, he knew, and was learning more about her dreadful behaviors, it could destroy the whole day, and too often did erode good parts of one just by a moments incitation of some mishap, or difference of opinion, logical or not. This illness she had he didn’t fully understand but it was biological in its origins he figured, because she had no control over it.

On, and into the shop they went, she looked about, as normal as anyone would, and the proprietor, a middle aged woman, slim, dark brown hair, perhaps thirty-five years old or so, asked, “Can I help you?” Then pointed to some wooden figures, saying, “These things over here are strange little men, the baby can play with when it gets older,” said the shopkeeper.
“I suppose so.” Said Carla, “but it also can chew on it and end up dead, lead poisoning or something like that. Yes, yes, yes, yes, it all looks good, oh yes it all looks like a playful thing, so awfully new and nice, so new and new and nice, nice, nice, nice…but it will kill, yes kill, kill the child, but it is a wonderful gift, such a wonderful gift, but you shouldn’t sell it to a child, give it to a child, a small child, what is the matter with you…tell her so Sherwood, be once on my side, be my good friend, be on my side, tell her, tell her, her behavior is ill meant, not helpful…! Be on my side for once.”
“Sir, what is the matter with your wife? Please keep it down, or leave, matter of fact it would be better if you both did leave” said the shopkeeper in a calm voice that was becoming fearful with Carla’s manic behavior.
She moved close to her husband, her head was on her shoulder, as if her head hurt, she then saw a wooden horse, a rocking horse,
“That’s good,” she said, “That’s what I’m looking for. That’s safe, but it’s…its, too something, something not sure what, but something I don’t like about it.”
“Its $80-dollars Ms,” said the shopkeeper.
“Mrs. I’m a Mrs., I’m married, can’t you see that!” said Carla in a high energetic voice.
She was feeling some high, irritable and sad feelings, high energy, overly “high” with some restlessness, excessively along with some euphoric m ood when she saw the rocker, thinking about her nephew, but she was shifting like the approaching dark shadowy clouds in the sky.
The shop lady saw her anxiety mounting, “If she’s going to go off again, you to take her out of here, I can’t take her, I rally can’t, if she starts up again I will have to call the police.”
“Sure,” Sherwood said, and he nudged her lightly, saying, “We’ll have a good time looking in the other stores, let’s go. There are plenty of places to go to, we might even find a better deal.”
“God,” she said as loud as her voice would carry, “that would be just wonderful, and we’ll look across the street.”
The proprietresses smiled, said, “Then go….”
“You know dear, I haven’t done anything wrong today, I had to let her know, you know that.”
He didn’t say another word on the subject (as they walked across the street), he just listened to her babble on, then entered another store where they purchased a shaggy looking rocking horse, for $120. Dollars, that looked like a horse, more so than the previous one. And he wiped his forehead, knowing he had saved the day for while, she was happy again.

•

“I feel unsafe again, maybe you ought to get rid of your gun in the apartment, I imagined you were going to kill me the other nigh, that’s why I woke you up, and pointed the gun at your head—are you still mad about that?” she asked.
“You look sleepy, I’ll take you home.”
“Really Sherwood, don’t lull yourself into some phony security, you see dear I could have pulled the trigger thinking it was not loaded, and you say it was.”
The both of them sat quietly there for a moment longer, almost as if they had lulled themselves into numbness.
“I’ll go home by myself, I know the way,” she said.




Babenhausen, Schlosshof (1974)
•

They stepped outside the guesthouse, onto the sidewalk, the morning sun was getting hotter, but there was a fresh breeze mixed into the warm air.
He gazed about for a moment, only a flash of a second perhaps or maybe ten-seconds at most, but a million bits of information flooded his cerebellum: he wished she was normal, like the majority of people, with ordinary behavior, with no ebbing consequences, no abrupt changes, that could take place in any minute of any day; he wish she and likewise, himself—being on the end side of her spectrum—would not have to endure anymore psychological bent emotions, or schizophrenia tendencies she’d produce somewhere in her mental makeup: she was so easily angered, and frustrated. She had mood changes likened to the flick of a card in pokier, long deep sleeping spells, those hard looking blank, rock like eyes when she didn’t get her way. He knew it was her genes, she didn’t even like her mood swings, for such a young and lovely, and intelligent woman (her ancestors being of German stock themselves), and she had no more control over them than the man in the moon, had over night and day. And so they fought back and forth like cats and dogs, rats and cats, and until he would leave and get drunk, that was the only thing that stopped the ongoing, enduring, squabbling, until he returned that is.
She was almost a constant shadow in his mind, he walked on egg shells when he was around her, and held his breath hoping she was asleep when he’d return from an afternoon walk, or writing period, or drinking spell in the evening; sex was a dreary event to say the least too, it was hard to have, to produce an erection, to get excited, when being beaten over the brow with scornful and hurtful, words throughout the day, hard to kiss, make love as if nothing had taken place, it was better often to go into the bathroom and do what you needed to do, to relieve the urge, lest you feel awful afterwards, and used like an old dirty rug, to be stepped on later on with those same dirty shoes from yesterday, or that very same day the praetor used. Oh it wasn’t all her fault, he knew that, but it was as it was, nonetheless, and enduring, agonizing, never-ending, a born-again cycle of being drained of your life’s resources. Therefore, he tried to allow himself daily to do some writing he could do, usually in the park, where he could find the right setting, a calm, sedate setting, where birds sang freely and without disruption, and the flowers seemed to reach out to you with adoration, not an expectant penitence for breathing God’s air, and the butterflies circled his head as if he were a prince and they wanted to give him a crown, and the mood to write his paragraphs, descriptions, dialogue, and explanations, would flow like a kite on a breezy day, and he’d work out his plot, and scheme, and theme, and so forth unabated.
He took another step, another quiet ten-second rushed his cerebellum, he acquired some anxiety looking at her staring with her blue unblinking eyes, he looked at her and his mouth went dry, she had taken an abrupt lunge, her continence in her face was wild like, a hellish look drooped over it like a purple curtain. He looked back around him, he heard something, and it was the waiter in the window he was cleaning up the table they had sat at.

“Well, take good care of yourself, I’m going home,” she said.
“There he stood as she started to walk away, he thought and thought, and thought, ‘What sort of wife is that? She’s happy one minute, the next she’s unhappy.’
He watched her walking down the street, knowing the only way to quiet her down was to tire her out, but in the process—which took hours--he got fatigued.
There was a darkness in this women, one he never fully understood, he had sent her to the psychologist, saying if she’d not go, he’d send her home, that was months ago, they gave her some Minnesota test, and it came out positive for paranoia schizophrenia, among some other mentally ill classifications. At times he even felt, he was a surrogate parent, not a husband.
But the psychologist seemed to be pretty much in the right area, when he talked to them both it all seemed to fit her profile, in that her reality was interpreted abnormally, especially with thinking he wanted to kill her so she’d kill him first with the gun. On the other side of the coin, she could function pretty well on daily matters, her memory was ok also, but her concentration was going down hill, and her suicidal behavior, she tried to drawn herself in the bathtub, and he told her, almost humorously, “You can’t kill yourself that way, your internal system will fight against it.”
He thought about that later, it was a bad thing for Carla to do, and there was no purpose in him making fun of it. That’s when the doctors put her on medication.
She had told him, “I want you to have friends, men or woman, it doesn’t matter, and just don’t fall in love with them.”
And when he’d bring them around, she’d get jealousy, and spiteful; one evening, when he had several professors from the University of Maryland over, she threw all the plates of food upside down by pulling, and jerking the table cloth. That was the end of the party, and a nervous bunch of friends.
She had told him, “I don’t run around with women or men, you know that.” And so that was her way of saying, she didn’t want friends. On the other hand, she told her husband, “Just be with me to help me, support me, do the laundry and we can sleep together now and then.”


No More Surprises


Sherwood noticed as he crossed the bridge, now in the center of it, that led to the park, an old man fishing, a few boys, seven or eight years old were in the shallow waters of the creek, playing under the surface, more at splashing, and blowing bubbles, it wasn’t at all that deep, perhaps three to four feet.
There were many more people walking by, across the bridge, walking each way, some kid yelled,
“Look, the old man caught one!”
Sherwood looked, the fish seemed lean, but it was a fish. That was what life was all about, he told his second-self, the one that hides in the back of the mind, in some hidden chamber. The one you talk to, and normally do not get answers back, but is a good listener.
Several men were doing some roadwork, a few of them were on a building across the street, kitty-corner, doing some construction work, they all had bottles of beer, larger bottles of beer, lying about, one took a drink, then put it back down and went back to work.
Then Sherwood leaned over the bridge, his elbows on the iron rail as a few more kids seemed to come out of nowhere to see the old man’s fish.
“What is he?” asked a voice, but Sherwood couldn’t make out the category the old man put the fish into, the species that is.
Next, he turned about; saw the guesthouse he had just left, the waiter saw him by himself, as he kept sweeping the edge of the street in front of his place of work. He had seen him and his wife there plenty of times, more often him though, than both of them together, and he was sure he caught their dilemma, that being, knowing they were not good for one another, yet they remained with one another.
The water in the creek looked beautiful, fresh and cool, clear as a clean glass window.
“Yes,” he said talking out loud, perhaps to his second-self, or to the railing, or to whomever, even God perchance—looking over into the water, “it’s so true, she’s getting more dangerous to herself then to me,” he said in a convincing tone.
He then lit a cigarette, mumbled, “I’m going to change,” his mumble was stern though, “more than change,” he added, “it’s for her sake, mine also. Therefore, no more surprises by her, yet every minute with her is a surprise.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t let her go, what will she do? Oh yes, it’s very sad, but I thought about it long enough, and just how long is enough, and how much is enough, it’s enough now, today enough; it is something that she and I really want. It really is. Yes, it’s all right!”
He was trying to convince himself to let her go, once and for all, critically thinking out loud, it zoomed to the top of his head, and out his mouth, “Good,” he said, “I’ll let her go, since she wants to go. Yes indeed, it’s better to be alone, I’m alone anyways, that will be my surprise for her, I’ll let her go this time, and not look back.”


Evening Descending

He now found himself walking around the town aimlessly, as often he would, stopping at a few guesthouses, having a beer here and there a glass of red wine, ate a ham sandwich at one disco bar, listened to a Neil Diamond song, one he became found of, ‘Cracklin’ Rosie,’ he had heard it before, it wasn’t all that new new, but it was circulating throughout Germany, it made him happy, sad, and drifty in a nice kind of way, Cracklin’ Rosie was his bottle of beer, or wine his lover for the night, the girl he could have, because the one at home was the one he never did have, or would have. The exchange was a reasonable one he thought, as reasonable as he’d get (the song was befitting him, because his wine and his beer were all store bought as the song inferred, and it did make him sing like guitar humming. In his old neighborhood, they all bought cheap red wine and got drunk during the evenings, a Gallo product perhaps, a Ro-say wine, and the song brought him back to those far-off days also, so all in all the song made him melancholic).
Then he up and left the bar, told himself it was time to go back home, he told himself he’d have to make sure the gun was empty when he got home, he couldn’t sleep another night thinking she might be as dangerous as she says she feels.
He walked though the apartment door, “Good Evening,” he told his wife, the main room was dimly lit, and he was lightly drunk.
He was very careful not to disrupt her mood.
“Go back out and get drunker,” she told him, “come back when I’m sleeping, I’m going back to St. Paul, Minnesota tomorrow.”
He looked at her, she was curled up in a corner of the leather couch, with a cigarette in her hand, and he noticed three burn holes in the coach.
“Look at what you’re doing, I’ll have to pay for the whole coach now (it was a furnished apartment).”
She looked, “I think you did that a few nights ago!” she said, indifferently, “so don’t blame me, you’re drunk all the time, and you probably feel to sleep.”
“Did you take your medication?” he asked.
“Can’t you tell, I feel, and probably like a zombie?”
Sherwood reached up high on the bookcase, took his 45-automatic down, pulled the clip of bullets out.
“I see you’re taking my advice, smart boy.” She commented.
He had a beer in the refrigerator, he took it out, opened it up, sat in a chair, and smoked a Camel Cigarette, and dark a Beck’s beer, and let out a deep hidden sigh.

He tried to write a paragraph in his new book but everything seemed complicated. This was his third book, the previous two, “Romancing San Francisco,” and “Where the Bird’s don’t Sing,” were of the places he had been, between 1968, and 1971, this one was his third, about Augsburg, Germany, where he was in 1970. He crossed this out and that out until he couldn’t really see what was what, then dated it “July 5, 1974.”
He had come to the conclusion he was powerless in helping her, and for himself, he was becoming perhaps codependent, if not her on him, him on her, or both on each other, and he was fighting for his own preservation, to keep his own identity, before she swallowed it up, and he had none. They were like two drowning souls in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean without a life raft, naked as can be.
“Yes,” he said.
“Yes what?” she replied.
“Yes, I’ll find a ride to the train station in Aschaffenburg or Munster or Dieburg, one of the three, most likely, Munster by Dieburg, it’s closer, and buy your tickets for your departure, it will take you directly to ‘Frankfurt am Main,’ and you from there, can take a taxi to the airport, you got your passport, that’s all you need, and I’ll give you money tomorrow, I’ll go to the bank and take out $2000-dollars, that’s all we got until I get paid.”
“Give me a drink of your beer,” she asked.
“Good,” he said. She looked happy again. She had left him before, a number of times only to call him back up, wanting to return to wherever he was. But his thinking was different now; he knew it was a one way road for her, she couldn’t live on a two-way, and it would be a life of endurance, and more dangers by the pass of each year.
“I knew that would force you to send me home.” She said.
“What?” he asked.
“Telling you I’m getting more dangerous.”
“It’s a long night until tomorrow,” he said, “What do you want now?”
“Let’s go to bed, and do it!”
“I can’t,” he said.
Carla laughed heartily, “I swear you’re homosexual, and you like men don’t you.”
He shook his head, whispered to himself, as she went into the bedroom, and he moved over to the couch to sleep the night away, “I’ll wait (again the mood was dead).”

A New Morning


Sherwood woke in the morning, almost at first light, looked out the window, his legs were stiff from being crotched up in the couch. Sat on the edge, trying to wake up completely. He remembered everything that was said last night, and was hoping she’d had not changed her mind. He looked at her sleeping from the doorway of his bedroom, remembering how she was, her image when they first met, it was a good image. Then he went to the bathroom, took a warm shower, shaved, put on a t-shirt, and light windbreaker, a pair of slacks, and carefully looked back into the bedroom, she was awake; she stood up, she was sitting on the edge of the bed, and moved over to the door where he stood, and slammed it in his face without a word. Somehow he knew she’d be this way, she had to get her last sharpened lead out of her system, revolt against him once more for him marrying her. He figured it would be a dreadful morning, but perhaps the last with her.
She had finished all she needed to do, suitcase and her passport in hand, and said, “Let’s get to it.”


Departure


As she got onto the train, he found he knew much more about her than when he had first met her, the process, and the progress of getting to know the other person, your mate, have more dimensions than one expects sometimes. He felt fortunate she actually got on the train, she was not a simple woman, she got onto the train, never looking back at him, yet prior to getting on, she hesitated, as if she wanted him to talk her out of it, and he wanted to, but he couldn’t, and I think she knew that. Not a glance was missed by either one, because they didn’t want any glances given to remember the other by, so they gave none.

That afternoon he found himself improved with a normal heartbeat, and his breathing was back to normal, and he didn’t have to worry about walking on egg shells anymore she was gone, so his nervous system was being repaired, he felt. He wrote in the park that afternoon for a long while, now and it seemed to him, it would never stop, his inspiration was back intact.



Afterthoughts
(Schizophrenia)


He, Sherwood, had learned, by attending classes, and talking to the doctors, and observing her schizophrenia first hand, there are many possible combinations of symptoms: genetics, early environment, neurobiology, psychological and social processes are important contributory factors as multiple personality disorder or split personality, in popular culture the two are often confused, with schizophrenia, and did not belong to that category of abnormal behavior. On the other side of the coin, it was cognitive in nature, but it also usually contributed to chronic problems with behavior and emotion. Furthermore, the average life expectancy he learned for such folks with the disorder was 10 to 12 years less than those without, due to increased physical health problems and a higher suicide rate. All in all, he learned about her schizophrenia, and it was likely to have additional (co morbid) conditions, including major depression, which he already witnessed, and anxiety disorders, which he also witnessed, coupled with manic episodes. And that the safer side of the coin was not to get into substance abuse, it only worsened the situation.
Furthermore, he had asked the doctors about his experiences that she often became fearful and withdrawn, that it was causing difficulties having a wholesome relationship, and the doctors, specifically reminded him, it was the severe brain disorder he was dealing with.

He had learned her Bipolar disorder, also known as a manic-depressive illness, was a brain disorder that causes unusual shifts in a person’s mood, energy, and ability to function. It is what sparked the episode in the shop in Dieburg that provoked her shifts and mood changes. It was in essence, damaging their relationships, poor job and school performance, and even brought on suicide tendenicies. She had tried to work several jobs, and go to school during a few occasions, but her mood swings were too aggressive, too sharp for the employers, and even for her, and her teachers, and now had gotten to Sherwood himself.



Written February, 20 &21, 2009 (4045 words)
Afterthoughts and ‘The Shop in Dieburg,’ added 2-22-2009