/*2. The Syndrome*/
Milton's eyeglasses glinted unsettlingly as he took in my crumpled
clothes and unruly hair:
"So, you traveled all night, by yourself, in a hired car, to ask me
this? She must mean all the world to you!"
He hasn't changed: cherubic, lecherous, bald, and clad in fading
dungarees and Sellotaped, stapled sandals. Milton smelled of coffee
grounds and incense.
He laid a hirsute hand on my shoulder and I retreated inadvertently and
then apologized. He smiled mischievously:
"You are tired. Let's go to my office. You can refresh yourself there
and I will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the Capgras
Syndrome and never dared to ask."
"Capgras Syndrome???"
"Coffee first!" - Milton pronounced and wheeled me forward.
*****
Ensconced in an ancient armchair, steamy libation in hand, I listened
intently, absorbing every word that came out of the mouth of arguably
the world's greatest expert on delusions.
"It's nothing new." - Said Milton, chewing on an ancient, ashen clay
pipe - "It was first described by two French psychiatrists in 1923.
Elderly people believe that their relatives have been replaced by
malicious, conspiring doubles. They lock themselves in, buy guns, change
their wills, complain to the authorities. If not checked with
antipsychotic medication, they become violent. Quite a few cases of
murder, resisting arrest, that sort of thing."
"What goes wrong with these people?"
Milton shrugged and tapped the empty implement on a much-tortured edge
of his desk:
"Lots of speculation around, but nothing definite. Some say it's a
problem with face recognition. You heard of prosopagnosia? Patients fail
to identify their nearest and dearest, even though they react
emotionally when they see them. Capgras is the mirror image, I guess: a
failure to react emotionally to familiar faces. But guess is what we
have all been doing in the last, oh, eight decades." - He concluded with
undisguised disgust.
"I need help with this client, Milton," - I interjected - "and you are
not helping me at all."
He chuckled sarcastically:
"How often do I hear it from my patients?"
"She is not paranoid, you know. Her mind is sharp and crystal-clear and
balanced."
He nodded wearily:
"That's what confounds us with this syndrome. The patients are 'normal'
by any definition of this word that you care to adopt. They are only
convinced that family members, friends, even neighbors are being
substituted for - and, of course, they are not."
He crouched next to my seat:
"Soon, she will begin to doubt you and then herself. Next time she
catches her own reflection in a mirror or a window, she will start to
question her own identity. She will insist that she has been replaced by
an entity from outer space or something. She is bad news. The literature
describes the case of a woman who flew into jealous rages at the sight
of her own reflection because she thought it was another woman trying to
seduce her husband."
Milton was evidently agitated, the first I have seen him this way. As my
teacher and mentor, he kept a stiff upper lip in the face of the most
outlandish disorders and the most all-pervasive ignorance. And in the
face of our budding, dead end love.
"What do you advise me to do?" - I mumbled almost inaudibly.
"If she refuses anti-psychotic medication, bail out. Commit her. She is
a danger both to herself and to others, not the least of whom, to you."
"I can't do that to her." - I protested - "I am the only person she
trusts in the whole world. She is so scared, it breaks my heart. And
just imagine what the family is going through: she even wants to change
her will to disinherit them."
Milton's pained expression deepened:
"Then you are faced with only one alternative: psychodrama. To save her,
you must enter her world, as convincingly as you can. Play her game, as
it were. Pretend that you believe in her lunatic delusions. Act the part."
/*3. Dinner*/
"Will you?" - Enthused Isabel - "That's mighty fine of you! I have
arranged for everyone to join me for dinner tomorrow evening. It's a
Saturday, so people don't have to go to work the next day."
"How very considerate." - I stammered and Isabel laughed throatily:
"Don't be so distrait. It won't be as awkward as you fear. Sit next to
me and watch the show as I expose these fraudsters and frustrate their
plans!".
About to exit, she turned around, her wrinkled face suddenly smooth and
becalmed:
"I will be expecting you. Be there. You must be present. For your own
sake as much as for mine."
And she left the door ajar as she swooshed down the hall and out the
building, into the flaking snow.
****
Isabel never looked more imposing as she sat at the head of the
elongated table, attired in a sleeveless white chiffon dress, no hint of
make-up on her imperious, commanding face. A beetle-shaped brooch
complemented a lavish pearl necklace that emphasized the contours of her
truly delicate neck. She was very animated, laughed a lot, and
administered light touches of familiarity and affection to her husband
and son, who flanked her.
Her spouse, a rubicund mount of a man, face varicose and hairy hands
resting on his folded napkin, was clearly still smitten with his wife,
paying close and ostentatious attention to her minutest wishes and
utterances. His enormous girth twitched and turned towards her, like a
plant craving the sun. His deep blue eyes glittered every time she
humored him or re-arranged his cutlery.
The son was more reluctant, contemplating his mother with suspicion and
his father with an ill-disguised hint of contempt. He was lanky, with a
balding pate, and sported a failed attempt at a moustache, inexpertly
daubed on his freckled face. He was also myopic and his hands fluttered
restlessly throughout the evening. I found him most disagreeable.
There was a third person at the table: a mousy, inconsequential thing
with an excruciatingly bad sartorial taste. She stared at everyone
through a pair of dead, black, enormous pools that passed for eyes. Her
hands were sinewy and contorted and she kept fidgeting, clasping and
unclasping an ancient purse ("a gift from mother"), and rearranging a
stray curl that kept obscuring her view. No one introduced us and she
made it a point to avoid me, so I let it go.
The dishes cleared, Isabel came to the painful point:
"Dears," - she declared - "I summoned you today to make an important
announcement. As you well know, my previous will and testament left
everything to you, the two exclusive loves of my life." - A hiss of
withdrawn breaths welcomed the word "previous".
"However, in the last couple of weeks, I have had reason to suspect foul
play."
They stared at her, not comprehending.
"I am convinced that you are not who you purport to be. You look like my
dearest but you are actually impostors, doubles, hired by the
perpetrators of a malicious operation, bent of absconding with my
inheritance."
The silence was palpable as her kin, jaws dropped in disbelief, listened
to the unfolding speech with growing horror.
"I don't know yet what you have done with my real relatives but, rest
assured, I intend to find out. Still, I am being told by one and sundry
that I may be wrong or, frankly, that I am off my rocker, as they say."
"Hear, hear!" - Interjected her son and rose from his seat, as though to
leave the table.
"Sit down!" - Snapped Isabel and he did, meekly, though clearly resentful.
"I have devised a test. Should you pass it, I will offer you all my most
prostrate apologies and hope for your forgiveness. If you fail, his
shall be proof of the subterfuge. I am then bent on altering my will to
exclude all of you from it and bestow my entire estate on my good
companion here." - And she pointed at a mortified me.
They all turned in their chairs and studied the intruder at length. The
son's lips moved furiously but he remained inaudible. The husband merely
shrugged and reverted to face his tormentor. Only the third guest
protested by extending a pinkish tongue in my direction, careful to
remain unobserved by her hostess.
"I will ask each one of you three questions." - Proceeded my new
benefactor, unperturbed - "You can take as much time as you need to
respond to them. Once you have given your answers, there is no going
back, no second chance. So, think carefully. Your entire pecuniary
future depends on it. These are the terms that I am setting. You are
free to leave the room now, if you wish. Of course, by doing so, you
will have forfeited your share of my riches." - She sneered
unpleasantly. No one made a move.
"I take it then that we are all agreed." - Isabel proceeded and turned
toward her husband:
"John, or whoever you are," - He recoiled as if struck with a fist -
"what was the color of the curtains in the small hotel where we have
consummated our love for the first time?"
"Must I go through this in public, in front of my son and this complete
stranger?" - He bellowed, his monstrous frame towering over her. But she
remained undaunted and unmoved and finally, he settled back in his
creaking chair and resignedly mumbled:
"The room had no curtains. You complained all morning because the
sunlight shone straight on your face and wouldn't let you fall asleep."
His visage was transformed by the memory, radiant and gentle now, as he
re-lived the moment.
"True. You have clearly done your homework." - She confirmed reluctantly
and addressed her son:
"Edward, what did you see in a book that made you cry so violently and
inconsolably when you just a toddler?"
"It was an art book. There was a color reproduction of a painting of a
group of patricians standing on an elevated porch, glancing over the
railing at a scene below them. I can't recall any other detail, but the
whole atmosphere was tenebrous and sinister. I was so frightened that I
burst into wails. For some reason, you were not there, you were gone!" -
And he pouted as he must have done back then when he had felt abandoned
and betrayed by his mother.
"Althea, what was I wearing the first time we met, when Edward
introduced you to me?"
Althea, the mouse, looked up in surprise:
"You introduced me to Edward, not the other way around!" - She protested
- "I met you at the clinic, remember? Lording it over everyone, as
usual." - She laughed bitterly and I shot her a warning glance, afraid
that she might provoke Isabel into violent action - "Anyways, you were
wearing precisely what you have on today, down to the tiniest detail.
Even the brooch is the same, if I can tell."
And so it went. All three were able to fend off Isabel's fiendish
challenges with accurate responses. Finally, evidently exhausted, she
conceded defeat:
"Though my heart informs me differently, my head prevails and I am
forced to accept that you are my true family. I hereby offer you the
prostrate apologies that I have promised to make before." - She sprang
abruptly from her seat - "And now, I am tired, I must sleep." - She
ignored her husband's clumsy attempt to kiss her on the cheek and, not
bidding farewell or good night to any of us, she exited the room in an
apparent huff.
/*4. Post-Mortem*/
"What did you make of what you have just witnessed?"
Isabel snuck into the guest bedroom and settled into an overstuffed
armchair at a penumbral corner. She was still wearing the same dress,
though her jewelry was gone. I watched her reflection in my makeup
mirror, as I was removing the war paint from my face, clad in my
two-part, lilac-strewn pajamas. I felt naked and embarrassed and violated.
"They did pretty well." - I hedged my answer, not sure where she might
be leading.
"They did rather too well." - She triumphantly proclaimed, her eyes shining.
"What do you mean by that?" - I enquired, my curiosity genuinely awakened.
"Pray, tell me, what was I wearing when we first met?"