Feeling rather as though he’d stepped into a puddle and found himself being carried down a raging millrace instead, Flamen ventured, “But how much of this are you blaming on Mogshack? Surely one man can’t be refor the entire neo-puritan movement-isn’t it a reaction against the permissivity of the last century, as Victorianism was against the bawdiness of early times?”
“I’m not blaming Mogshack for the phenomenon itWhat I detest about him is the way he’s swum with the tide, exploited his influence for personal advanceWhat’s good about the current phase of our socycle? Practically nothing. Yet what does Mogshack’s doctrine amount to? A bunch of catch-phrases about ‘being an individual’ and’retiring and regrouping’ and all the rest. Do you find him applying any standard of judgment to determine whether the result is going to be a good individual? Not that I’ve noticed! Bland, shapemalleable-yes. Original, creative, stimulating-never!”
Flamen said nothing, thinking of Celia.
“And that’s the man they entrust with the responsifor the mental hygiene of the State of New York!” Conroy continued, glancing out over the city. By now they were at the regular five-hundred meter level for private skimmers, and being slotted tidily through a mulgaggle of traffic bound for the New England resorts. “Has your mental health improved? The hell it has. The Ginsberg is twice the size of any previous hosit’s only a few years old-but already it’s overand life in the city is intolerable because you never know when riots may break out, when you’ll be burgled or mugged or just shot for the amusement of a gang of teenagers! When you give someone an imporjob you expect him to show results. You don’t expect him to be content with soothing banalities about the inevitability of his failure.”
His tone was not venomous, merely resigned; howFlamen was pleased to hear him voice such hosHe said, “In that case you’ll probably be interested to learn how I propose to-uh-topple the windmill.”
Conroy turned his head expectantly.
“It’s. Well, it has to do with my wife Celia. She was committed to the Ginsberg around the beginning of the year. Breakdown. Not very pleasant. Ah.” He hesibut forced out the damning admission. “She took to sykes and wound up with Ladromide. I didn’t know until about her third or fourth dose.”
“How long had you been married?” said Conroy caus
“It does sound improbable, I guess.” Flamen felt his cheeks growing hot; he hadn’t blushed for years. “But I’m afraid that before the-uh-crisis we’d drifted apart to some extent. I have business, my own friends, all sorts of distractions, and the temperature had kind of cooled, to the point where we had separate rooms and like if she was asleep when I got home I didn’t intrude on her.”
He broke off with an effort. Here he was meeting
Conroy for the first time and already pouring out things he seldom confided to anyone, even old friends, as though needing to offer excuses for himself.
“Be an individual!” Conroy sighed. “Separate rooms! Your own private lives! Damnation, when it reaches down the middle of a marriage to pry the spouses apart how can anyone defend that attitude?”
“She was committed while I was on a business trip,” Flamen said very rapidly. “When I found out she was in the Ginsberg I didn’t take her away because my brothLionel Prior recommended Dr. Mogshack very highly and so I settled for simply paying for her care. I mean, having her a ward of the State government would have been.” He shrugged.
“So?” Conroy prompted.
“So I don’t like what they’ve done to her. I don’t like the-the walking talking dummy she’s been turned into. I want her packled to find out whether she’s been helped or harmed by what Mogshack’s done to her. And I want the parameters for the packling set by someone like you who-uh-who has a different approach to mental health.”
“Packling!” Conroy said, and twisted his mouth as though he had bitten a rotten fruit. “That’s half of what’s wrong with our society in itself! Getting computo set up patterns for human beings to copy-did you ever hear of anything so absurd?”
He hunched forward energetically. They were in sight of two of the LR sites from Thursday night, and over both aerial cranes were grappling up wreckage in great dust-shedding nets so that new buildings could be erected as rapidly as possible. Shooting out his arm to point at the nearer one in Harlem, he said, “There’s a ready-made parable for you! What do they call those in the news? They call them ‘LR,’ or at most ‘last restrikes, don’t they? A perfect piece of Mogshacka phrase that implies all the whining excuses: ‘I couldn’t help it, I did my best, they didn’t play fair!’