Posttraumatic

PROLOGUE WASHINGTON THE SCREAMERS ARE at it again. Never was there a more unnerving opera. The steel bars offer no shelter to the choir members. At times the jarring quality of wailing voices ebbs to a single raw larynx but the effort invariably surges. Outside the walls, on a boarded-up street in a rundown part of the capital there is no hint of life within the Anacostia Asylum for the Criminally Insane. This is a private performance. Eight miles to the west, the pinkish White House greets the spring morning flushed with the color of blood; the first blush of dawn. In the District of Columbia, it is the early hour. Timeless monuments glitter cold and electric. Whisks of clouds run up to the south. The morning is turning warm and humid with the occasional drizzle. Take a look through the bars at a male patient. Being insane, one can accept that this man may have a reason to scream. You see him unclench his bloodshot eyes as pearls of sweat gather in old scars. You see him draw a breath, deep as his straitjacket allows and launch upon a full-throated bellow. It is a song so triumphant that it drowns out all the other voices that encroach on his private space. One more timbre to the great score. This is troubling. One scream is within reason, a concert is not. Maybe it is part of some healing program to get rid of blocked aggression? Perhaps they reward the inmates with food or benefits to share in this wild opus? As always there is a reason. As often, it eludes us. This early morning, the lights are on in the bowels of the Anacostia Asylum. The Institute has a modern operating theater on the top floor but the auxiliary unit in the basement comes in handy mostly for the odd Postmortem. At this early hour, the basement dissection table is fitted with leather straps to hold down a bulky old man. His white and sallow skin, streaked with fresh seams of blood would raise an inquiring eyebrow in any postmortem suit. The fresh blood forms thin intricate patterns as it dries under the brilliant clique lights. The crying old man is in obvious shock and clearly untouched by the clear radio voice of Donna Elvira. The morning opera carries softly from the background to blend into the more distant aria being performed by the disagreeing screamers on the upper floors. A heavy industrial machine by the wall is challenging both recitals with its empty growl; a Soviet-made combination bone-crusher and meat-grinder. This is an ancient type used in the Soviet Gulags to turn bones and slaughterhouse produce into the gritty essence of halfway edible soup. Converted from diesel to electricity, this antique grinder growls under a steel-framed Soviet poster from before the Second World War. The poster depicts a young blonde muscular man who raises his scythe above a field of golden corn. Behind him, on her knees, knowing her place, a woman gathers golden straws to her bosom. The two workers are cheered on by the idle multitudes of the proletariat, an unintended pun that is more prescient than the artist intended. Below this idyll, another bold prescient message is proclaimed in Cyrillic text. YOU FOR ME AND I FOR YOU. A heartbeat across town, the elected officials in the House or Congress use a more modern variation of the prehistoric proverb. ‘You scratch my back, and I will scratch yours’. No law passed on the Hill has ever failed to find harmony in that generous principle. Another old man in green surgeon’s scrubs attends the dissection table, even he of medium height and stocky built. The gray well-groomed hair is cropped short above a balding forehead that glistens in the warmth from the brilliant clique lights. Given the mood set by upstairs screamers, there is something vaguely sinister about this man, especially given the prewar Soviet poster. His bearing brings to mind the hulking figures on the Lenin mausoleum in long bygone days. The man speaks Russian. “Too much bad vodka, Orlov,” in a deep voice without humor. For a moment, he studies the yellow-spotted fat-lined liver, weighs it in his latex-gloved hand, and chucks it indifferently into the grinder. The abrasive growl of the grinder softens slightly, and below the steel-framed poster, a mound of minced meat squirts into a steel drum lined with clear plastic. Above the drum, a single drop of dark livery juice lands to run down the poster glass. A thick hand poses a small gleaming scalpel over an old, calloused foot. The old man waits patiently, seeking the left eye of his old comrade, the one still left in place. There is much to talk about. Later, after the old man’s screams have wilted with his foot removed, the metallic sound of the heavy grinder turns briefly to a more labored tune. The Anacostia Asylum for the Criminally Insane is owned and managed by an overseas fund with its seat in Luxembourg. Little is known of the anonymous owners except that their lobbyists on the Hill have deep pockets. In this capital, as every other, political survival is never measured in smiles. The Anacostia Asylum is housed in a massive three-story cube of rendered concrete. The grounds in this rundown area near Fort Stanton Park are small and well-kept. Cast in concrete a decade ago, without a single window, its bulk feels like a fortress. Visitors, who enter this bunker, pass up the front steps through a small expanse of thick glass that is seamlessly sunk into the concrete. The glass gives a pleasant green hue to the marble reception. After dark, lit from within, the reception becomes a brilliant display of golden green. One would assume it makes a tempting target for the drive-by shooters in Anacostia who work unstintingly to make their mark on the neighborhood. Some years back, there were times when the bulletproof glass reminded the few and furtive stragglers that passed the building more of a lunar landscape than the entrance to a medical institution. The replacement costs of the asylum entrance were inhibitive. Such attacks were rarer these days and the perpetrators were never repeat offenders. Should you take the time to ask, you would find that any repeat offenders had met with some gruesome fate or another; an outcome that raises few eyebrows in Anacostia. With two murders a day, nobody on Capitol Hill felt the need to ask why. In this part of Anacostia, the perps were all young and black. On the desolate streets of this neglected part of the capital, expansive blank walls like these are known to arouse a prehistoric itch. Since time immemorial, man has portrayed the hunt on cave walls to raise spirits and mark territory. Even today, many modern shamans in the slums are overcome with the urge to use the paint canister. This is the heartland of graffiti. The walls of the Anacostia Asylum are spotlessly clean.