ENCLOSURE 5: Psychoanalytic Notes of Dr. Charles Schatten, MD, 7 September 1944
[Excerpt begins]
DR CS: And was this the first time you had killed someone outside of aerial sorties?
S/L ORANGE: No, of course not. My third, in all, one previous having been an execution as well. So I don’t know why I still see it, still see him. Or go back to that island. The previous execution, it was one of my own, actually. One of the Flying Officers had been convicted of cowardice and desertion in the face of the enemy, and it had fallen upon me to carry out the sentence. Not one of my own officers, you understand, that’s why they assigned it that way. Right after I arrived in the Squadron, the new fellow, no strong attachment. That one still haunts me at times, during the day, deservedly. Wretched business, that, poor fellow had good reason, there was a girl… Doesn’t matter, I suppose, not germane here. At any rate, in the day that is the one that weighs on me, but at night… Then it pans out somewhat differently, I suppose, and that is why I am here, after all.
DR CS: Are there other events in the war that trouble you, beyond the killings? Which sound to be purely normal military affairs with all the right tokens and symbols present, I must note.
S/L ORANGE: What the devil… Of course things bother me, that’s the nature of war. If it didn’t bother me, I should wonder what I had been doing before, and bear close monitoring after, I shouldn’t wonder. But they don’t come back, night after night. Don’t keep me from sleeping, or send me to strong drink. Never sent me to a separate bedroom, for the sake of my own wife’s security. This dream appears, and when it appears, it isn’t just another dream, you follow. Always just when I am first falling asleep, if I haven’t drunk myself into a stupor, or as I am waking. And for a moment…
DR CS: Go on.
S/L ORANGE: I can’t move, you understand, when this happens. Only my eyes, and nothing else. And the room is just the room as it was when I fell asleep, no different, except for Him. In the corner, or at my footboard, or to the side. Never in my full line of sight, you understand, but always where I can struggle and strangle and fight and see Him, in the far corner of my view.
DR CS: And your eyes are always open?
S/L ORANGE: I… I don’t know. I suppose they are, at that. Never really considered, but… No, I don’t believe I have ever opened them, they are already opened and I can see the room and I feel the dread and then… And then I know that it will be one of those nights, that He is coming. And that is when he appears. And I cannot move a muscle, not a single finger or toe will twitch, until such time as He stretches out his hand and takes me by the hand and we walk together, Him striding in that strange way He has, me floating with only my arms moving, as though I were swimming close to the beach, legs trailing behind and arms pushing off the sand moment to moment, and the golden dawn all about us, and the walls vanish and then… And then we’re there. In Carcosa, the Carcosa of my dreams, like never seen but always known. A couple of nights ago I’d seen the Gardener there on the shore of Lake Hali, frozen in place in his chair as all the others danced by, everyone from the Circle. There was a freezing curve of blood rising from his head, like horns of a Mithraic bull, the one from that sculpture I visited when I was but a lad. I was frozen in place with him, with his body, joined into one by the act of murder.
DR CS: But you did not murder him, you conducted a lawful execution. In accordance with the…
S/L ORANGE: I didn’t murder him the first time, you mean. But the second and the third, and all the times after? That I surely did, and it was just as real as the first time, if not more so. And I enjoyed it, to be quite frank, after the first score or so of them. If only I could kill Him as well as His servant, I’d not regret even the dreams. But somehow my hand is stayed to the one course and not the other, deserving of it as He might be. Deserving isn’t a thing of war. Or dreams, for that matter, or even death. Deserving is what we tell ourselves to keep the dreams away. Justice is what comes inside them, though whose justice it may be is another matter entirely. I fear I haven’t the choice to recognize the authority of this court, but that doesn’t mean I don’t carry out the sentence, in the end.