As his horse jogged along, a new and daring hypothesis occurred to Simão Bacamarte. It was so daring, indeed, that, if substantiated, it would revolutionize the bases of psychopathology. During the next few days he mulled it over. Then, in his spare time, he began to go from house to house, talking with the towns-people about a thousand and one things and punctuating the conversations with a penetrating look that terrified even the bravest.
One morning, after this had been going on for about three weeks, Crispim Soares received a message that the alienist wished to see him.
“He says it’s important,” added the messenger.
The druggist turned pale. Something must have happened to his wife! The chroniclers of Itaguai, it should be noted, dwell upon Crispim’s love for his Cesaria and point out that they had never been separated in their thirty years of marriage. Only against this background can one explain the monologue, often overheard by the servants, with which the druggist reviled himself: “You miss your wife, do you? You’re going crazy without her? It serves you right! Always truckling to Dr. Bacamarte! Who told you to let Cesaria go traveling? Dr. Bacamarte, that’s who. Anything he says, you say amen. So now see what you get for it, you vile, miserable, groveling little lackey! Lickspittle! Flunky!” And he added many other ugly names that a man ought not call his enemies, much less himself. The effect of the message on him, in this state of mind, can be readily imagined. He dropped the drugs he had been mixing and fairly flew to the Green House. Simão Bacamarte greeted him joyfully, but he wore his joy as a wise man should—buttoned up to the neck with circumspection.
“I am very happy,” he said.
“Some news of our wives?” asked the druggist in a tremulous voice.
The alienist made a magnificent gesture and replied:
“It is something much more important—a scientific experiment. I say ‘experiment,’ for I do not yet venture to affirm the correctness of my theory. Indeed, this is the very nature of science, Soares: unending inquiry. But, although only an experiment as yet, it may change the face of the earth. Till now, madness has been thought a small island in an ocean of sanity. I am beginning to suspect that it is not an island at all but a continent.”
He fell silent for a while, enjoying the druggist’s amazement. Then he explained his theory at length. The number of persons suffering from insanity, he believed, was far greater than commonly supposed; and he developed this idea with an abundance of reasons, texts, and examples. He found many of these examples in Itaguai, but he recognized the fallacy of confining his data to one time and place and he therefore resorted to history. He pointed in particular to certain historical celebrities: Socrates, who thought he had a personal demon; Pascal, who sewed a report of an hallucination into the lining of his coat; Mohammed, Caracalla, Domitian, Caligula, and others. The druggist’s surprise at Bacamarte’s mingling of the vicious and the merely ridiculous moved the alienist to explain that these apparently inconsistent attributes were really different aspects of the same thing.
“The grotesque, my friend, is simply ferocity in disguise.”
“Clever, very clever!” exclaimed Crispim Soares.
As for the basic idea of enlarging the realm of insanity, the druggist found it a little far-fetched; but modesty, his chief virtue, kept him from stating his opinion. Instead, he expressed a noble enthusiasm. He declared the idea sublime and added that it was “something for the noisemaker.” This expression requires explanation. Like the other towns, villages, and settlements in the colony at that time, Itaguai had no newspaper. It used two media for the publication of news: hand-written posters nailed to the doors of the town hall and of the main church, and the noisemaker.
This is how the latter medium worked: a man was hired for one or more days to go through the streets rattling a noisemaker. A crowd would gather and the man would announce whatever he had been paid to announce: a cure for malaria, a gift to the Church, some farm land for sale, and the like. He might even be engaged to read a sonnet to the people. The system continually disturbed the peace of the community, but it survived a long time because of its almost miraculous effectiveness. Incredible as it may seem, the noisemaker actually enabled merchants to sell inferior goods at superior prices and third-rate authors to pass as geniuses. Yes, indeed, not all the institutions of the old regime deserve our century’s contempt.
“No, I won’t announce my theory to the public,” replied the alienist. “I’ll do something better: I’ll act on it.”
The druggist agreed that it might be best to begin that way. “There’ll be plenty of time for the noisemaker afterwards,” he concluded.
But Simão Bacamarte was not listening. He seemed lost in meditation. When he finally spoke, it was with great deliberation.
“Think of humanity,” he said, “as a great oyster shell. Our first task, Soares, is to extract the pearl—that is, reason. In other words, we must determine the nature and boundaries of reason. Madness is simply all that lies beyond those limits. But what is reason if not the equilibrium of the mental faculties? An individual, therefore, who lacks this equilibrium in any particular is, to that extent, insane.”
Father Lopes, to whom he also confided his theory, replied that he was not quite sure he understood it but that it sounded a little dangerous and, in any case, would involve more work than one doctor could possibly handle.
“Under the present definition of insanity, which has always been accepted,” he added, “the fence around the area is perfectly clear and satisfactory. Why not stay within it?”
The vague suggestion of a smile played on the fine and discreet lips of the alienist, a smile in which disdain blended with pity. But he said nothing. Science merely extended its hand to theology—with such assurance that theology was undecided whether to believe in itself or in science. Itaguai and the entire world were on the brink of a revolution.