A Cure for Suicide Read online

  ALSO BY JESSE BALL

  Silence Once Begun

  The Curfew

  The Way Through Doors

  Samedi the Deafness

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by Jesse Ball

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Ltd., Toronto.

  Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Ball, Jesse, [date]

  A cure for suicide : a novel / Jesse Ball.

  pages ; cm

  ISBN 978-1-101-87012-9 (hardcover : acid-free paper). ISBN 978-1-101-87013-6 (eBook).

  1. Man–woman relationships—Fiction. I. Title

  PS3602.A596C865 2015 813'.6—dc23 2014206919

  eBook ISBN 9781101870136

  www.pantheonbooks.com

  Cover image: Cyanotypes by Karen Fuchs

  Cover design by Kelly Blair

  eBook adapted from printed book design by Maggie Hinders

  v4.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Jesse Ball

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1. The Process of Villages

  A Place You Go Last

  Acknowledgments

  A Note About the Author

  In honor of TB,

  and for GGG

  THE EXAMINER closed the gate behind her with a swift, careful motion. She listened to it shut, and then proceeded. Ahead on the right, outbuildings loomed in the murk of early morning. The sun’s rise was slow; she felt it behind her, coloring the barn with the least possible gesture.

  On she continued up the path. A rut in the ground showed a gurney had been dragged past in the night. These were the signs she knew well—it was her profession, her task to know them. A hollow anticipation stiffened in her and grew to a faint point of tension in her cheeks. The gentlest village. Here she was in the gentlest village. The path led her past the barn and on to a tall Victorian house, the door of which stood open. In she went.

  The rooms were furnished simply and with taste. Everything about it was identical to all the other houses she had ever been in, in all the villages she had ever been in. But this, this was the gentlest village. There would be things that were different.

  In the sitting room, there was no one. In the parlor, no one. Up the stairs, she went. In the first bedroom, no one. In the upstairs sitting room, a piano—and no one. In the second bedroom, which she entered softly, as softly as could be, there was someone. Indeed there was.

  There was a man lying flat on his back, breathing shallowly, and staring with his eyes open at the ceiling. His chest moved up—and down—and up. His hands trembled slightly.

  She stood there watching, noting every detail of his countenance.

  He did not notice her.

  SO, THIS WAS THE CLAIMANT. This, then, was her task. She looked at him awhile and when she was satisfied with this first look, she went to the study and took out a piece of blank paper. She placed it on the writing desk.

  From her pocket she drew out the letter she had received the day before. She unfolded it.

  ++

  Report to Gentlest Village D4. The stamp on this letter will gain you admittance.

  Claimant is on schedule three, as per size and responsiveness to medication, which will have been administered 12 hours prior to your arrival. This gives you 20 and one half days before Mark 1.

  You were selected based upon your recent success. It is expected that you will serve with even greater distinction going forward.

  In First House protocol for Gentlest Village, you will write daily reports, which will be collected from the locked desk in which you leave them. The unlocking and locking of the desk will signal the desire for a pickup to be made.

  There need be no verbal contract with the claimant, as in your previous work. Prior to Mark 1, the claimant will be utterly biddable, indeed nigh helpless.

  The manner of treatment is your choice. First House examiners need not follow treatment routines such as you have been accountable to in the past. Reprocessing decisions need not be confirmed. Move of station to Gentler Village will be made based upon your written recommendation, and can be effected within an hour of your writing.

  All success in your endeavor,

  General Secretary

  Emmanuel W. S. Groebden

  Process of Villages

  ++

  On the blank paper, she wrote:

  ++

  Have arrived, seen claimant.

  ++

  She put both letters in the desk and closed it.

  1

  —THIS IS A CHAIR, said the examiner. A person is made in such a way that he can sit where he likes. He can sit on the ground,

  she knelt and patted the floor

  or even on the table itself,

  she patted the table.

  —However, if you are in company, it is best to sit in a chair unless there is a good reason to sit elsewhere. In a chair, one can sit with good posture, that is, with the skeleton set into good order.

  He looked at her with puzzlement.

  —The skeleton, she said, is a hard substance, hard like wood, like the wood of this chair. It is all through the inside of your body, and mine. It keeps us stiff, and allows our muscles something to pull and push on. That is how we move. Muscles are the way the body obeys the mind.

  —Here, she said. Come sit in the chair.

  She gestured.

  The claimant came across the room slowly. He moved to sit in the chair, and then sat in it. He felt very good sitting in the chair. Immediately he understood why the house was full of chairs.

  —They put chairs wherever someone might sit.

  —They do, she said. And if your needs change, you can move chairs from place to place. Come, let us eat. We shall walk to the kitchen, and there we will get the things we shall eat; also, we will get the things on which we shall eat, and the things with which we shall eat. We will not eat our food there; we’ll go to the dining room, or to the enclosed porch. This will be a nice thing for us. Having gotten the food and the implements, we will decide whether we want to eat on the porch or in the dining room. Do you know how we will decide that?

  The claimant shook his head.

  —You do. Think carefully. Say what comes to mind.

  —If it is a nice day, outside…

  —That is one reason, one of many reasons, why a person would choose to sit outside. It is a good reason. It is always best to have a good reason for doing things, a reason that can be explained to others if you must. One should not live in fear of explaining oneself—but a rational person is capable of explaining, and even sometimes likes to do so.

  —Rational?

  —A person whose life is lived on the basis of understanding rather than ignorance.

  —Am I ignorant?

  —Ignorance is not about the amount of knowledge. It is about the mechanism of choosing actions. If one chooses actions based upon that which is known to be true—and tries hard to make that domain grow, the domain of knowledge, then he will be rational. Meanwhile, someone else who has much more knowledge might make decisions without paying any attention to truth. That person is ignorant.

  —A mechanism, she continued, is the way a thing is gone about.


  They went into the kitchen. On the wall was a painting of a woman feeding chickens with millet. The millet poured from her hand in a gentle arc. Around about her feet the chickens waited in a ring, looking up at her. When the arc made its way to the ground, they would eat.

  Beside it was a photograph of a hill. There was a hole somewhere in it.

  The claimant paused at these wall hangings, and stood looking. The examiner came and stood by him.

  —What is different about these? she asked him.

  He thought for a while.

  —About them?

  —What’s the difference between them? I should say. When I say, what is different about these, I am making two groups—them and the rest of the world. When I say between them, I am setting them against each other. Do you see?

  —This one happens less often. He pointed to the woman with the chickens.

  —Less often?

  —If you go looking for them, outside the house, he said, you could probably find the other one, no matter when you looked. But, you can’t find this one.

  —Why not? Because it is a painting?

  —A painting?

  —Because it is made by hand—with strokes of a brush? Or for another reason?

  —I didn’t mean that, he said. I am tired. Can I sit down?

  —Yes, let’s go to our lunch. We can return to this later.

  THE CLAIMANT sat watching her. He was in something she called a window seat. She had her hands folded and was sitting in a chair. They were in a room with what she called a piano. It made loud noise and also soft noise.

  The examiner was a girl. The claimant didn’t know that word, but it is how he saw her. He had known others, he was sure of it. Her soft yellow hair fell about her shoulders, and her bones were thin and delicate. He felt that he could see where the bones were through the skin. His own bones were larger.

  She was helping him. He didn’t know why. It occurred to him that he hadn’t asked.

  —Why am I here? he said suddenly.

  The examiner looked up from her book. She smiled.

  —I was waiting for you to ask that. Actually,

  —she looked at a little clock that lay across her leg,

  it is just about the right time for you to be asking that. Nearly to the minute.

  She laughed—a small, distinct laugh.

  —You are here because you have been very sick. You almost died. But, you realized that you were sick, and you went to get help. You asked for help, and you were brought here. It is my job to make you better. You and I shall become good friends as you grow stronger, and as you learn. There is much for you to learn.

  —But, he asked, where was I before?

  —In a place like this, she said. Or in some place so different as to be unknowable to us when we are here. I can’t say.

  —Why do I keep falling asleep?

  —You are learning—learning a great deal. It is too much for you, so your body bows out. Then you wake up and you can continue. It will be like this for a time. I have seen it before.

  —Are you the only one like me? he asked.

  —No, no, no.

  She laughed to herself.

  —There is a whole world full of people like us. Soon, you will meet others, when you are ready.

  —How will we know?

  —I will know, she said.

  ON THE THIRD DAY, she pointed out to him a gardener. The man was in the distance, trimming a bush.

  —There, she said. There is one.

  He stood and watched the man for at least an hour. The man had gone away, and the claimant stood looking at the bush that had been clipped, and at the place where the man had been. He asked the examiner if the gardener was likely to be in that spot again. Not that exact spot, she said, but another near to it. This was the gardener window, then, he said. I can watch the gardener from here. They are all gardener windows, she said. There are others, and others. It’s a matter of how far you can look, and if things are in the way. She took him to another window. Out of that one, he could see three people in a field, in the extreme distance. They were scarcely more than dots, but they were moving. At this distance, she said, you can’t tell if they are men or women. They could even be children, he said. It might be hard to see a child that far off, she said. They could be, he insisted. The examiner did not tell him: there are no children in the gentlest village.

  On the fifth day, she told him about fire, and explained what cooking was. He found fire to be very exciting. He could hardly bear the excitement of it. She wrote this down.

  On the sixth day, he closed a cupboard door on his hand, and cried. She explained crying to him. He said that it felt very good. In his opinion, it was almost the same as laughing. She said that many people believe it is the same. She said there was perhaps something to that view, although of course, it appeared to be a bit reductive.

  SHE WROTE THINGS in her notes, things like: Claimant is perhaps twenty-nine years of age, in good health. Straight black hair, grayish brown eyes, average height, scars on left side from accident, scar under left eye, appears to be a quick learner, inquisitive. Memory is returning relatively quickly. Claimant is matching given data with remembered data—a troubling development.

  ON THE MORNING of the seventh day, he refused to get up. She told him to get up. He refused.

  —What’s wrong?

  —The other day, you said that I almost died. That I was sick and that I almost died.

  —You were sick. Now you are convalescing. You are regaining your strength. You are young and have a long life ahead of you in a world full of bright amusements and deep satisfactions, but you have been sick, and you must regain your ability to walk far and parse difficult things.

  —What did you mean when you said I almost died?

  —It isn’t very much. It is a small thing. The world is full of organisms. You are an organism. A tree is an organism. These organisms, they have life, and they are living. They consume things, and grow, or they have no life, and they become the world in which other organisms live and grow. You almost became part of the world in which organisms live, rather than that which lives. It is nothing to be afraid of—just…

  —But it would be the end? he said. There wouldn’t be any more?

  —It would be an end, she said. Do you remember the conversation we had, the second night? About going to sleep?

  He nodded.

  —What happened?

  —I went to sleep, and then in the morning everything was still here.

  —Death is like that. Only, you work in the world with a different purpose. The world works upon you.

  —How did I die?

  —You didn’t die. You nearly did.

  —How?

  —We will talk about this later, when you have more to compare it with. Here, get out of bed. Perhaps it is time for us to go for a walk. Perhaps we should leave the house.

  He got up and she helped him dress. They had clothes for him, just his size in a wardrobe that stood against the wall. They were simple, sturdy clothes: trousers, shirt, jacket, hat. She wore a light jacket also, and a scarf to cover her head. He had never seen her do this. I often cover my head, she said, when I go outside. One doesn’t need to, but I like to.

  They went into the front hallway, an area that he had not understood very well. It appeared to have no real use. But now when the door was opened he could see very well why there should be this thing: front hallway. He went out the door and down the stairs and stood by her in the street. He could feel the length of his arms and legs, the rise of his neck.

  Going outside, he thought—it is so nice! The things that he had seen through the window were much closer. He could see houses opposite, and suddenly, there were people inside of them, and lights on. There was no one in the street, though. He walked with the examiner, arm in arm, and they went up the street a ways.

  The houses looked very much the same. He said so.

  —Do you know, she asked�
�do you know which one is ours?

  He looked back in fright. The houses were all the same. They were exactly the same. He had no idea which one was theirs. She saw his fright and squeezed his arm. I will take you back to it, don’t worry. I know which one is ours.

  The street wound past more houses, and they gave way to buildings that she called shops. No one was in these shops, but the windows were full of things that she said might be bought. He did not understand, and did not ask.

  On down they went to a little lake. Fine buildings were in a circle around the lake. There was a bridge in the lake to a little island (as she called it), and on the island there was a small house with no walls. They sat in it, and she poured him a glass of water from a pitcher that sat on a tray on a bench at the very center.

  WHEN HE WOKE UP, he was back at the house again, in bed. It was the afternoon, he guessed—as light was all in the sky.

  —Did I fall asleep again?

  But she was not in the room. He went out to the landing. There was a carpet, but the old wooden boards of the house creaked beneath his feet. He winced, trying to step as quietly as possible. The railing ran along the top of the landing. The balusters were worked with lions and other beasts. He knelt by the edge and listened.

  She was speaking to someone else. He couldn’t hear what she was saying. The door shut, and she came up the stairs. When she saw him kneeling there, she smiled.

  —Did you wake already?

  —Who was that?

  —Friends. They helped to bring you here. You didn’t think I could carry you all by myself?

  —Can I see them?

  —Not yet, she said.

  —What about the other people—the people in the other houses?

  —Not yet, she said.

  —How will you know?

  —I will know.

  SHE WROTE in her report,

  ++