The Swan Thieves

He stood by the window of his new room, looking out of it, hands dangling at his sides. He turned as I came in. My new patient was an inch or two over six feet, powerfully built, and when he faced you head-on he stooped a little, like a charging bull. His arms and shoulders were full of barely restrained strength, his expression dogged, self-assertive. His skin was lined, tanned; his hair was almost black and very thick, touched with silver, breaking in waves off his head, and it stood out farther on one side than the other, as if he rumpled it often. He was dressed in baggy pants of olive corduroy, a yellow cotton shirt, and a corduroy jacket with patches on the elbows. He wore heavy brown leather shoes.

Robert's clothes were stained with oil paint, smudges of alizarin, cerulean, yellow ocher--colors vivid against that determined drabness. He had paint under his fingernails. He stood restlessly, shifting from foot to foot or crossing his arms, exposing the elbow patches. Two different women later told me that Robert Oliver was the most graceful man they had ever met, which makes me wonder what women notice that I don't. On the windowsill behind him lay a packet of fragile-looking papers; I thought these must be the "old letters" John Garcia had referred to. As I came toward him, Robert glanced directly at me--this was not the last time I was to feel that we were in the ring together--and his eyes were momentarily bright and expressive, a deep gold-green, and rather bloodshot. Then his face closed angrily; he turned his head away.

I introduced myself and offered my hand. "How are you feeling today, Mr. Oliver?"

After a moment he shook hands firmly in return but said nothing and seemed to slip into languor and resentment, folding his arms and leaning against the windowsill.

"Welcome to Goldengrove. I'm glad to have the chance to meet you."

He met my gaze but still said nothing.

I sat down in the armchair in the corner and watched him for a few minutes before speaking again. "I read your file from Dr. Garcia's office just now. I understand you had a very difficult day last week, and that's what brought you to the hospital."

At this he gave a curious smile and spoke for the first time. "Yes," he said. "I had a difficult day."

I had achieved my first goal: he was talking. I composed myself so I wouldn't show any pleasure or surprise.

"Do you remember what happened?"

He still looked directly at me, but his face registered no emotion. It was a strange face, just balanced between the rough and the elegant, a face of striking bone structure, the nose long but also broad. "A little."

"Would you care to tell me about it? I'm here to help you, first by listening."

He said nothing.

I repeated, "Would you like to tell me a little about it?" Still he was silent, so I tried another tack. "Did you know that what you attempted to do the other day was reported in the papers? I didn't see the article myself, at the time, but someone's just given me a clipping. You made page four."

He looked away.

I persisted. "The headline was something like this--Artist Attacks Painting in National Gallery.'"

He laughed suddenly, a surprisingly sweet sound. "That's accurate, in a way. But I didn't touch it."

"The guard seized you first, right?"

He nodded.

"And you fought back. Did you resent being pulled away from the painting?"

This time a new expression came over his face: it was grim, and he bit the corner of his lip.

"Yes."

"It was a painting of a woman, wasn't it? How did you feel when you attacked her?" I asked as suddenly as I could. "What made you feel like doing that?"

His response was equally sudden. He shook himself, as if trying to throw off the mild tranquilizer he was still on, and squared his shoulders. He seemed even more commanding in that moment, and I saw that he could have been quite intimidating if violent.

"I did it for her."

"For the woman herself? Did you want to protect her?" He was silent.

I tried again. "Do you mean you felt she somehow wanted to be attacked?"

He looked down then and sighed as if it hurt him even to exhale. "No. You don't understand. I wasn't attacking her. I did it for the woman I loved."

"For someone else? Your wife?"

"You can think whatever you like."

I kept my gaze fixed on him. "Did you feel you were doing it for your wife? Your ex-wife?"

"You can talk with her," he said, as if he didn't care one way or the other. "You can even talk with Mary if you want. You can look at the pictures if you want. I don't care. You can talk to anybody you want."

"Who is Mary?" I asked. It was not his ex-wife's name. I waited a little, but he was silent.

"Are the pictures you mentioned pictures of her? Or do you mean the painting at the National Gallery?"

He stood in utter silence before me, gazing somewhere over my head.

I waited; I can wait like a rock when I need to. After three or four minutes, I observed placidly, "You know, I'm a painter myself." I don't often comment about myself, of course, and certainly not in an initial session, but I thought it was worth the small risk.

He flashed me a look that could have been either interest or contempt, and then he lay down on the bed, stretched out full length on his back with his shoes on the bedspread and his arms behind his head, gazing upward as if at open sky.

"I am sure only something very difficult could have compelled you to attack a painting."

That was another risk, but it, too, seemed worth taking.

He closed his eyes and rolled away from me, as if preparing for a nap. I waited. Then, observing that he wasn't going to speak further, I stood up. "Mr. Oliver, I am here whenever you need me. And you are here so that we can care for you and help you get well again. Please feel free to have the nurse call me. I'll come see you again soon. You can ask for me if you'd simply like a little company--there's no need to talk more until you're ready."

I couldn't have known how thoroughly he would take me at my word. When I visited the next day, the nurse said he hadn't spoken to her all morning, although he had eaten a little breakfast and seemed calm. His silence wasn't reserved for the nurses; he didn't speak to me either--not that day or the next, nor for the following twelve months. During this period his exwife did not visit him; in fact, he had no visitors. He continued to display many of the symptoms of clinical depression, with periods of silent agitation and perhaps anxiety.

During most of the time he was with me, I never seriously considered releasing Robert from my care, partly because I could never be completely sure whether or not he was a possible risk to himself and others, and partly because of a feeling of my own that evolved a little at a time and to which I'll admit gradually; I've already confessed that I have my reasons for considering this a private story. In those first weeks, I continued treating him with the mood stabilizer John had started him on, and I also continued the antidepressant.

His one previous psychiatric report, which John had sent me, indicated a serious recurrent mood disorder and a trial of lithium--Robert had apparently refused the drug after a few months of treatment, saying it exhausted him. But the report also described a patient frequently functional, holding down a teaching job at a small college, pursuing his artwork, and trying to engage with family and colleagues. I called his former psychiatrist myself, but the fellow was busy and told me little, except to admit that after a certain point he had found Oliver an unmotivated patient. Robert had seen a psychiatrist mainly at his wife's request and had stopped his visits before he and his wife had separated more than a year before. Robert had not had any long-term psychotherapy, nor had he been previously hospitalized. The doctor hadn't even been aware that Robert no longer lived in Greenhill.

Robert now took his medication without protest, in the same resigned way in which he ate-an unusual sign of cooperation in a patient so defiant as to hew to a vow of silence. He ate sparingly, also without apparent interest, and kept himself rigorously clean despite his depression. He did not interact with the other patients in any way, but he did take supervised daily walks inside and outside and sometimes sat in the bigger of the lounges, occupying a chair in a sunny corner.

In his periods of agitation, which at first occurred every day or two, he paced his room, fists clenched, body trembling visibly, face working. I watched him carefully and had my staff do the same. One morning he cracked the mirror in his bathroom with the butt of his fist, although he, didn't injure himself. Sometimes he sat on the edge of his bed with his head in his

hands, jumping up every few minutes to look out the window, then settling again into that attitude of despair. When he was not agitated, he was listless.

The only thing that seemed to interest Robert Oliver was his package of old letters, which he kept close to him and frequently opened and read. Often, when I visited him, he had a letter in front of him. And once during the first weeks, I observed before he folded the letter up and put it back into its faded envelope that the pages were covered with regular, elegant handwriting in brown ink. "I've noticed you're often reading the same thing--these letters. Are they antiques?"

He closed his hand over the package and turned away, his face as full of misery as any I'd seen in my years of treating patients. No, I could not discharge him, even if he had stretches of calm that lasted several days. Some mornings I invited him to talk to me--with no result--and some I simply sat with him. Every weekday I asked him how he was doing, and Monday through Friday he looked away from me and out the nearby window.

All this behavior presented a vivid picture of torment, but how could I know what had been the trigger for his breakdown when I couldn't discuss it with him? It occurred to me, among other ideas, that he might be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder in addition to his basic diagnosis; but, if so, what had the trauma been? Or could his own breakdown and arrest in the museum have traumatized him this much by themselves? There was no evidence of a past tragedy in the few records I had at my command, although likely his split with his wife would have been upsetting. I tried gently, whenever it seemed the right moment, to prompt him toward conversation. His silence held, and so did his obsessive and private rereading. One morning I asked him whether he would consider allowing me to look at his letters, in confidence, since they clearly meant a great deal to him. "I promise I wouldn't keep them, of course, or if you let me borrow them, I could have copies made and return them safely to you."

He turned toward me then, and I saw something like curiosity on his face, but he soon grew sullen and brooding again. He collected the letters carefully, without meeting my gaze anymore, and turned away from me on his bed. After a moment, I had no choice but to leave the room.