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Dwellers In Neurotica

Creator: Eleanor Rowland Wembridge (author)
Date: 1927
Publication: The American Mercury
Source: Available at selected libraries

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IT OFTEN happens that the citizens of adjacent countries, despite their constant association with each other, preserve national characteristics which are entirely distinct. Witness the Turk and the Armenian; the French and the German on either side the Rhine. So with the dwellers in Moronia and Neurotica. These countries adjoin each other to the extent that their citizens must constantly meet in court, the workhouse and the jail. But they understand each other as little as either of them are understood by the inhabitants of Normalcy, which their own lands touch and across whose border the slow migrations move.

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The origin of the Morons is hidden in obscurity. No one knows exactly where they come from, nor why they exist at all. But recent researches among the Neurotics would indicate with some certainty that their ethnic origins are among the Normals, and if trained among them from early youth they prefer that land to Neurotica. Not so the Morons. They are a contented people. They love Moronia. Being born there, they refuse to live elsewhere. In contrast to them, the Neurotics are a restless tribe, continually on the move. Sometimes they spend months in Normalcy, only in later life to penetrate so deep into the jungles of Neurotica that they cannot find their way back. But wherever they are, they are distressed. To be as contented as a Moron might be a proverb; to be as discontented as a Neurotic is equally so.

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Another difference: When the Neurotic nomad travels for one reason or another outside the confines of his own country, he is usually recognized by the Normals, whereas the easy-going Moron has a protective coloring which makes it possible for him to masquerade as almost anything but what he is. It is strange that the clever Neurotic has so little skill at disguising himself and the slow-witted Moron so much. But if the Neurotic so much as enters a business office, a school, or a hotel, the chances are that even the boots and the chambermaid, if they have a chance to observe him, will soon be whispering behind his back: "That fellow is nuts. He's dippy. There's something bughouse about him." All of which are synonyms in the vernacular for the Neurotic. The Moron may drive them all to frenzy by his behavior, but it will be blamed to everything but the one fact -- that he is a Moron.

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Perhaps one reason for this odd circumstance is that the Neurotic, unless too far from Normalcy, generally knows his citizenship. He admits, under pressure, that he is "nervous." But the Moron is as ignorant of his race as are his accusers, and so he cannot help them out when they ask him where he came from. With no effort, he deceives them all (if he is good-looking) and himself as well. As a final difference, I might add that as a race the Morons are a more likeable people. They tend to be kindly, affectionate, and easily led. But the Neurotics, while some are extraordinarily lovable, can be crafty and morose, resentful of kindness, ungrateful for favors, and persistent in blocking any efforts to help them out. Two characteristics they share: an imperative need for patient friends, and another for a good bank account.

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These being our neighbors across the border, listen to a story of Neurotics whose affairs were brought to a climax by Mattie the Moron. Helva, the display girl for kitchen-ranges, was the first one who brought Mattie to our attention. "I just don't see how I can feed anyone else, now my health is so poor," she explained. "It seems I've got to fainting. And a demonstrator just can't fall on a stove, in a window and all, and keep her job," she went on with a curious passivity.

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"Faint! Why do you faint?" was the natural question.

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"I don't know. The doctors say there's nothing the matter with me. But a girl don't faint for fun." "But you are married. What's the matter with your husband?" was the next natural inquiry, to which she returned the unexpected answer: "Chaliapin says he can't practice his art until he has four more years training. But now that Mattie sits in the house all day, I have to feed them both, and I can't afford it. They have to have the best."

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An investigation of Mattie suggested that she was a dubious daily companion for an idle artist in the absence of his wife. And since Mattie was only a neighbor, it was hard to see why the fainting Helva was responsible for feeding her with high-priced dainties. Rex, the husband, demanded them as a matter of course, but why should Mattie? So we sent for Rex, and somewhat to our surprise he came with apparent eagerness. Furthermore, he dazzled us completely, as he had evidently dazzled Helva when she married him. He was a handsome, courtly young man, with a slight accent, and the manners of a tolerant and kindly genius thrust suddenly among the Philistines.

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"An artist can express himself only through his art," he explained gently. "I have no commercial ambitions. My art is my all. But four more years is necessary to complete my training, as M. Chaliapin wrote when he heard me," and he placed before us the letter in which that great artist stated suavely that with at least four years' practice, his visitor's voice would doubtless show some improvement. As Rex pointed out, this was equivalent to the statement that all was over (so to speak) except the shouting! Nothing further was required but the mere trifle of Helva's paying the household bills until he, in his stellar roles, should repay her sacrifice a thousandfold. As for Mattie -- a wave of the hand. "The artist's heart is always touched by the unfortunate," he explained with a smile.


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Now, nothing is more exciting than the discovery of a genius, and nothing is easier to recognize than a voice. One merely needs to listen to it. A singer, only four years from stardom, is surely a musical find, especially when he carries piano technique as a kind of sideline, which both Helva and Rex assured us that he did. Would he" sing for us? He would and did, in a weak baritone appropriate to some understudy of a village choir, presiding at a funeral in the absence of the tenor. His mild melody he accompanied with three shaky chords, in which he was occasionally able to employ his left hand profitably, but more often not. A change of bass note was too great a strain on his virtuosity. But his poise throughout this entertainment was magnificent. For some moments we doubted which of us had lost our minds. We pictured the bewildered Chaliapin in his forced interview, gazing at the singer with a dazed stare, while he penned his testimonial to get rid of him.

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Such was Rex. Punctilious in manner, elegant in speech, armed with all the lingo of the artist, more than ready to exhibit a voice which he did not possess, accompanied by quavering notes which he called piano-playing, Helva gazed at him like an adoring but tone-deaf dog. His performance was meaningless to her, but so was all music. His must be better than the rest because he said so. She pretended to no expertness beyond her stove, but with a dry smile made the comment: "Rex knows my business better than I know his. If the coffee is less than seventy-five cents a pound he knows it and throws it out."

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II

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Needless to say, if a lady enjoys the luxury of an ornamental husband well enough to feed him like a king at her expense she has a right to do so without interference. And all might still have been as happy as in the Wild Duck's attic before reform set in if Helva could have kept in Normalcy herself, while Rex enjoyed his delusions across the border.

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But unfortunately she had her own reasons for hovering near Neurotica's sultry clime. Helva had suffered in her childhood from the periodic rages of a drinking father, who had often attacked her mother in her presence. His violence had been accompanied by loud and profane boasts of his infidelities, and had so frightened the child that she had become dizzy from terror, and fainted. She recalled that before she lost consciousness the first time she had noticed a spool on the table slowly revolving, and that was how she knew she was fainting. All this was years ago. But now that Mattie like a snake had entered her Eden, the fainting was renewed. Helva had accepted Rex's artistic refusal to work, either at his art or at anything else, with philosophic composure. His support was a small price to pay for such an elegant companion. But when she demurred at feeding two idle persons he became extremely irritable, even vindictive, in temper, and teased her with faultfindings, and jokes about Mattie's charms.

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He finally took to calling her not Helva, but by the first syllable alone. "Hell, Hell," he would shout at her maliciously when she made protests, and would insist that he had only called her by her name. Suddenly a spool on the table began to whirl and Helva fainted. From then on she fainted frequently, and since ladies demonstrating in shop windows must not fall into their puddings, it looked as if she were going to lose her job. We promised to relieve her of the expense of Mattie's upkeep. Then, with some hesitation at venturing to criticise such perfection, we turned to tell Rex a few things that he needed to know. However, when he found that he had been summoned for a scolding rather than for a musical engagement, as he had fondly supposed, his interest and his fine manners died out together. As he truly remarked, we had nothing "on him," and he left abruptly, with Helva swaying slightly in his wake.

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What next? Obviously a job for Mattie was essential, and one not taxing to a mind that functioned neither wisely nor well. Curiously enough, two lines of work dear to the mentally infirm are those involving the safety or destruction of hundreds of human lives, namely, running an elevator and driving a truck. Since Mattie could not aspire, on account of her sex, to the greater glory of slaughtering pedestrians, she yearned for the minor hazards of the elevator shaft. So she applied for an elevator job in a certain office-building in which we had come to have an interest because of our dealings with Maida, one of the clerks.

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But on application to Maida we found that she had just left her job under a cloud. To be exact, she had forged a check for $93.86 on her employer, and had disappeared disguised as a man. The news did not come wholly as a surprise, for persistent purchases beyond one's means are certain to lead to trouble sooner or later. And Maida, despite excellent wages and a head adequate to disburse them, had been involved in a "crush" with Rose, a stack girl in the library, which involved an almost complete buying out of the florist after every squabble.


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The mystic slogan to "Say it with flowers," had certainly been worked overtime with Maida. She walked home with the telephone-girl one day instead of waiting for Rose -- and an apology had to be said with two dozen carnations. She was reproached by Rose for a hurried good morning, minus the usual kiss; it had to be explained by a corsage of violets. A Christmas show -- orchids. A ball-game -- chrysanthemums. A birthday -- lilies of the valley and one symbolic rosebud. Their telephone conversations sounded harmless enough, yet both girls were ravaged by them. "You weren't there. Oh, you were? Oh, you know what I mean. You will? You will for sure? I got a headache. You would? You would for always? I'm lonesome. I know you aren't. Yes you are. I know what daisies say. Don't go. I was only fooling. Say you wouldn't."

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At her last telephone call, when Maida announced her departure, and the connection was suddenly broken. Rose, blinded with tears, had fairly staggered through the door into the arms of Hank, who was lingering outside the library wherein she worked, merely because he had no other place to go. Hank piloted her home rather awkwardly, for he did not know who she was, and he was not accustomed to girls. But it was through Hank, now lurking outside the office building as he had lurked outside the library, that we learned where Rose was. Mattie had to be left to hunt her own job, for according to Hank and her employers. Rose's case was now more urgent. She had not left her room since the night Maida absconded, and she said flatly that she did not intend to.

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As was to be expected, we viewed the unknown Hank with the cold eye which every male person must brace himself to meet, when, before righteous matrons, he exhibits an interest in a sobbing girl. "Young man, what is the meaning of this?" is all he gets for his pains. But Hank turned out to be discreet and above reproach. In fact, we got so that we found him excellent company -- out of doors. For his self-possession left him when he ventured inside. Hence his tendency to lurk in entries. Which in turn was explained by the fact that, once under a roof, he had to perform the dreaded act of taking off his hat, thus revealing the soul-racking tragedy that, although only twenty-four, he was partially bald. Slight though this fact may seem in significance, it had not only driven him to the edge of Neurotica, but he had fairly crossed the border. In short, he had the thing called an inferiority complex.

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He was by no means a fool. He had finished high-school, and even yearned toward journalism, for which he had a considerable knack. But any craft of a literary nature apparently demanded that he should from time to time take off his hat -- and no sooner had he done so than he felt the morbid world concentrating on his baldness. He had tried all the outdoor trades of manly men, such as ice and coal, trucking, and automobile mechanics. But he had no physique or gift for any of them, and failed in all, which did not help the complex. He tried to be a postman -- in vain, there were no vacancies. Policeman or fireman -- he was too thin. So by persistently trying to do the things in which he must inevitably fail, guided always by the desire to seem a burly man or to keep his head covered -- he had got failure so engraven on his heart that it seemed but a matter of time till the workhouse would have another occupant. To Hank in such a state of mind, lingering near the library in the dusk, longing for a book which he dared not doff his hat to get -- to Hank, it can be readily seen, no more manly and inspiriting adventure could have taken place than for a weeping girl to fall into his arms. With her imagination intent upon the departed Maida, Rose accepted the support of Hank's arms as she would have leaned against a lamp-post. Hank, on the contrary, thrilled to his first masculine adventure. In the dark she could not see him. His derby was firmly on his head, and he dared be bold. As we strolled around the block, discussing Rose tactfully, with covered heads. Hank's ideas were excellent and well expressed. If he and Rose could only have emerged from Neurotica long enough to become seriously interested in each other, all might have been well. Both were lonely and both had bookish tastes. They might as well have led each other into Normalcy, as to have left the business for someone else. But Hank was not bold enough to woo without considerable assistance from the lady herself, and the lady unfortunately wanted her room rent paid, and then to be left alone, far more than she wanted his company. So Hank, after a flash in the pan of feeling like a real Romeo, enlisted in the army, where hats are kept on heads, and that hoped-for romance was blasted in the bud.

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What, then, was to become of Rose, when her rent was up? She was anasmic and had a list of minor ailments that would have depleted the energy of even a well-balanced girl who had eaten three square meals, which Rose had not done for a week. Moreover, when we urged her to eat, the question still obtruded itself: who was to pay for the delicacies we so enticingly described? Perhaps Mrs. Pinkard the landlady, would help us out. She answered our knock with reluctance.


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III

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A substantial looking middle-aged woman, she glanced around with caution, and urged us in a whisper to close the door. She showed no disposition to advise us about Rose, for it appeared that the girl was but the climax of all that she had been obliged to suffer recently from an unknown enemy, and she expected to have to move. So great was her concern that we joined her in a tour of her well-kept house, and viewed with her the depredations of her malignant visitors. Two spots on the window frame were solemnly pointed out. There was a loose spindle in the stair railing, and the hasp on the screen-door was bent.

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But in the bathroom was the culmination of their vandalism. She led us to the tub, and to the porcelain faucet marked Hot. Bending over it, we viewed a speck, so minute that only by careful search could it be found. This, it seems, was their most recent attack. They had climbed through the cellar window after smudging the plaster by the coal-bin. They had crept to the bathroom and with a needle had attempted to pierce the hot water faucet -- for reasons as obscure as they were doubtless deadly.

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"You can see," said Mrs. Pinkard with quiet triumph, "that Rose is crying because she knows about the plot. If you think it safe for her to stay here -she shrugged her shoulders-, all I ask is police protection.''

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We agreed with her that it was hardly safe, and tiptoed out through what had come to seem a host of unseen enemies, pecking at plaster, and pricking faucets for their dreadful ends.

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At this juncture appeared Jane, our last Neurotic, who, to preserve the dramatic unities, linked our two plots together. It turned out that Rose had been a previous admirer of Jane's, and although the latter had since married Ike, she maintained a careless interest in her old inamorata. Jane's conduct in the office was odd. She sat still for a moment, then paced the floor, laughed suddenly, looked out of the window at a blank brick wall, and then reseated herself, only to pace again. She acted as if under the influence of a powerful stimulant, although she was apparently neither drugged nor drunk. With a singular absence of any personal emotion save her peculiar restlessness, she remarked that she would like to take Rose in for old time's sake, except that she had been similarly kind to Mattie, and during one of her temporary absences from home Ike "had got Mattie into trouble," a catastrophe of which we now heard for the first time. Ike, it appeared, was still living with Jane, his wife, but now Maftie had sent word that she wanted to come back. "Shall I take in Rose and Mattie both?" asked Jane, staring fixedly at us for a moment, and then resuming her agitated inspection of the room.

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Was her absence from home, by any chance, in a hospital for nervous patients, we inquired. It was. She confessed that she usually had to go once a year, and that it was now about her time. When she came out she earned a good living as a canvasser -- a trade that seemed well fitted to her restless habits. Ike, as soon as he heard of our interest, left town. We never met him, and almost with a sigh of relief we returned to cheerful Mattie, whose crisis was even more acute, than we had supposed, and who all unconsciously had dragged this drama to a stage. Unmarried, pregnant, simple, and satisfied with her lot! After so many obscure neuroses, how much less complicated was a mere Moron! No rancor toward anyone. No anxiety. No plan. She adjusted her little hat, enjoyed the spotlight, smiled at us all, and agreed to everything.

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Seven Neurotics and a Moron accurately diagnosed by the bailiff in a swift aside as "a bunch o' nuts."

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IV

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If the plot seems heavily freighted with Neurotic characters, we are but in line with all the popular dramas of antiquity or today. Without delusions of grandeur, where are King Lear, Beau Brummell, or Merton of the Movies? Without "overvaluation of the sexual object," where are Titania and her Donkey, Beauty and the Beast, or the hero of "Seventeen"? Without "mother fixation," "inferiority complex," or "day dreams of the repressed," where are Hamlet, "The Hairy Ape," or the fascinations of "The Sheik"? It is my conviction that the dramatists no less than the police court depend upon citizens of Neurotica to keep them in material (always excepting the plays produced strictly for the Moron trade). For with characters dominated by common sense alone, surely the dramatic coil would insist upon unraveling in the first act. It takes Neurotics to keep it going till the third.

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The dramatist can, however, leave his characters, or kill them off when he is finished. But what are the judge, the teacher, and the average parent to do? The only conclusion is apparently that at which the Chinese have arrived, on the question of binding feet. To best avoid the tortures of unbinding -- do not allow them to be bound.

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When nervous young vagrants show signs of hankering to escape from the bracing air of Reality into the enervating climate of Delusion, let the guardians at the frontier turn them back before their souls are so relaxed in that morbid heat that they do not want to come. The hysterics, the perverted, the repressed, the over-fixated, the melancholies and the introverts are always beckoning a welcome to a land in which one need no longer face the facts, but can play forever with fairy tales. If the pickets at the border call too late, their voices find no listeners. The Neurotic hears them as we hear in dreams, and finally he hears them not at all. The Pied Piper of Delusion plays a song which grows more seductive as he turns his back upon the boundary-line, and makes for the deep thickets of Insanity, from which no traveler returns.


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In conclusion, let me repeat: Neurotica has room for the rich in many a quiet sanitarium, luxurious ranch, or palace on the Riviera. But as for the Neurotic who is poor, may Heaven have mercy on his soul -- for Earth assuredly has none!

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