I visited Dr. R. for several weeks, but I no longer recall how many. I talked a lot about life and love and my nerves, but there is one comment he made that stands out with the sublime distinctness that only recognition can bring. He said that that he thought that I was terribly afraid of violence in myself. He then pointed out that he was absolutely convinced that I was incapable of violence either against myself or against anyone else. As soon as the statement was out of his mouth, I felt huge relief. It was as if someone had come along and unloosened a long fat rope that had bound me from neck to toe.
A field trip to the state hospital in Faribault: The room is large and rectangular, with tall windows that line one of its blank walls. I walk down the aisle between rows of beds. The windows are on my left. A gray light streams through them from outside. I walk slowly and say nothing. Someone, probably the guide, a man or a woman, I don't remember, says that this room is for the “profoundly retarded.” In one bed there is a boy, a big child, perhaps ten or eleven, dressed only in diapers wrapped around his slender hips. His hair is dark and silky, and he lies on his back with one cheek turned onto the pillow. The flesh of his thin but flaccid body looked like an infant’s-beautiful, white and unmarred. His eyes have no focus. He drools. And then there’s a view. I see the parking lot from a distance-three orange school buses in weak sunlight and, behind them, tall and mostly bare trees. I can’t say with any certainty whether the view is from inside or outside the asylum, but because I seem to be looking down at the buses, I suspect that I saw it from inside, perhaps from a second-story window.
One may wonder why the school authorities imagined that trooping ten-and eleven-year-olds through the grim wards of a state hospital would be a beneficial outing. We weren’t studying anything that even distantly touched on the subjects or retardation, madness, or state asylums.