Ignorance is Bliss, Charlie Walsh ’22

Charlie Walsh ’22

Ignorance is Bliss

I remember when our cat left. I was three. One day she was dozing around the house, the next she simply was not. It wasn’t death—I didn’t understand what that meant then—just departure, a state of nonbeing. She might not have existed at all. Over the years, she faded to a shadow, a mere phantom in a dream. I imagine it was more real for my parents and my older sister. They knew what death was.

It’s not pleasant to know what death is. I first realized that at my job decades later. I’m in the business of helping people forget—it’s all very clinical. War meant good business: more paperwork for the clerks, sure, but more clients ready to get strapped into the machine and simply forget. Childlike naïveté was their aim, the last refuge from whatever awful trauma they had endured. I didn’t care much about the reasons myself, of course. I’ve never been much attached to emotional affairs, which made me a perfect candidate to operate and monitor the machine. I must not interfere with the process, which is just fine with me. It’s all very impersonal. Some rail against memory manipulation, as the media calls it; it is unnatural, disabling, humiliating. Really, it is nothing more than selectively removing memories, tweaking some emotions and chemical imbalances, straightening things out. They like to get angry at me, but I just pull the lever. Through the one-way mirror, I see clients enter with long stares, eyes alternatingly shining or empty. They grimace, or their jaws hang. They are strapped in by an assistant. The assistant leaves, I flip the switches, I pull the lever. I look away—the process unnerves me, like few things do. After mere minutes, I look back, and their lips slowly contort into an unfamiliar smile, a child’s face, one that their face has not felt in years. With wonder, abandon, and unbothered innocence, they look around the now-unfamiliar room as the assistant takes off the restraints. Their eyes are always a dull black. They are led into the discharge center to re-learn basic skills of living, but they will ultimately be dependent. The process is complete. As a matter of procedure, I check over their entrance papers, liability forms, waivers. The most common reason for treatment is death, of a child, maybe, or comrades, brothers-in-arms, patients, friends, acquaintances, even strangers who happened to be near the admitted at the time of their passing. Always death.

I remember when my mother left. I was 54. I knew about death then, but it was much the same as the cat. The hours were long at my job and I was never much of a family man. I had no kin of my own and no real contact with or sentimental connection to my parents. They didn’t really know what I did, only that I worked at some medical facility. She had given up on conversation with me long ago. When I used to see her, I saw a longing in her eyes, the want for a son who reciprocated her instinctual, overwhelming love. But I am the way I am, and it was better for both of us to stay apart. She departed because of cancer in the end. I understood what death was then. I was at her wake, her funeral; I sent my father flowers. Wet earth was thrown over the modest coffin, and I clocked into work not long after. My father’s face was stony, blank. There was no need to delay over something that happens to everyone.

Months passed. I spent most hours behind the one-way mirror, pulling the lever and flicking the switches, looking away and looking back. Things carried on.

The assistant led in a stooped man, wispy white hair barely covering a blemished scalp, which wrapped closely around his skull. As I glanced up from my lever, my switches, I could see he was the empty-eyes type. Not unusual. A flash of recognition—I glanced again—the face was familiar, but so aged, so cruelly wrinkled. The face of my father, wearied, sallow, resigned. The months had not treated him well. Behind the mirror, I looked down at the paperwork one of the white-clad assistants had dropped on my desk. An unusually nervous yet still recognizable scrawl detailed the reason for treatment, filled out the liability forms, and a signature I knew adorned each sheet. Reason: death of a loved one (wife). I knew death. I did not know forgetting. I only pulled the lever. A slow panic built up inside me, a feeling I had not known for a while. The assistant routinely strapped my father in, and I could only watch through the glass, my eyes widening with the fear of what I might have to do. My job was to pull the lever. My job was to flick the switches. My job was to glance over the paperwork, make sure it was all in order. That was all I had to do. My father stared blankly at the mirror, into and past my own eyes. He did not know I was there. He wished only to forget, wanting to escape the autonomy of a man taken by grief. My job was to pull the lever. They told me that in the interview. They told me I must be impersonal. Slowly, clinical rationality began to pour back into me. My eyes relaxed, my frantic heartbeat slowed. I had been doing the same thing for decades. People I knew, whom I had

seen on the streets as I walked to my job, whom I bought my groceries from, had been put through the forgetting process under my watch. This was no different. It was my father’s wish to do this, and it would help him in the end. I was paid to do my job, and the organization relied on me doing my job. The assistant left the room. I pulled the lever. I flicked the switches. I could not tear my eyes away. In the beginning of the process, I could see a faint light in my father’s eyes, two quarters glimmering at the bottom of twin wells. I had never watched the process all the way through. His mouth slowly, so slowly, closed, his thin lips pressing together with a resolute firmness. His limbs, so stiffly positioned in the restraints, unconsciously loosened themselves, as if they were relearning their longforgotten youthful flexibility. His cracked lips curled up at the ends, now smirking, now smiling, now letting out sudden exuberant laughter. I could stand no more. After a moment, I looked back—the client’s eyes were bottomless, with no light, no faint shine of hope. The two quarters were stolen away by some unknown force. The assistant came back, the restraints were taken off. The patient left with an unfamiliar grin, the carelessness of his smile unsuitable for his weathered, cracked skin. My part of the process was complete, at least.

Something changed that night. I left work feeling some string had snapped within me, some veil protecting me had at last been torn away. I rolled in bed, the mattress now feeling more lumpy than luxurious, the blanket more scratchy than fuzzy. It was wrong. The routine was broken. I could no longer pull the lever.

Waking up from fitful sleep, I dressed myself in plain clothes, the normal ones. I had my cup of coffee. It was bitter and not in the way I liked. I walked past my place of work. I kept walking until I arrived at another branch about a half hour away. They didn’t know me there. They handed me waivers, liability forms, the usual paperwork. It was familiar to me, and I completed it quickly. An assistant, dressed in spotless white, entered the waiting room. He beckoned me to follow. I obeyed, feeling weightless, as though no longer fully attached to this world. I sat in the chair, was restrained. It grounded me. I had never been on this side of the mirror before. I wondered what their lever-puller, their switch-flipper, was thinking right now. He thought he knew death, he thought he could be entirely clinical, impartial, I was sure. He did not know forgetting. The assistant left. I heard the lever clank down with impersonal authority. I began to forget. It all became so trivial—my mom, a memory, joining my

cat in the dream-world, my dad, an excellent playmate! What fun we would have! The whole white room around me, the black restraints holding my arms and legs in place—so much fuss just for me! What an excellent idea! Without even realizing it, laughter bubbled up from within me, because what a hilarious thing this all was, this thing we call life. To think I was once sad! The stern lines of my face cracked against a wide smile, my white teeth gloriously presented, and my joy filled the room! The nice assistant walked in, a frown-smile dancing across his lips. He undid the restraints, as I urged him to strap himself in and give it a go—what a profoundly joyful device! He seemed unaffected (no matter!) as he walked me to the re-teaching center, where I would learn all sorts of things. I remembered how happy my father had been in the same walk—what a time we would have together! Why on Earth had it taken us so long to learn how to be happy? Laughing and shaking my head at our foolishness, I stepped through the doorway to the teaching center. A slogan adorned the far wall, written in large red letters: “IGNORANCE IS BLISS.” I gurgled out another carefree laugh. Indeed it was! Indeed it was.