The Manticore

"Yes. Over the judge's head, where they are always displayed."

"And what is the difference?… Another of your pauses, Mr. Staunton. This must mean a great deal to you. Please describe the difference."

"It"s nothing very much. Only that the animals are complete."

"The animals?"

"The supporters, they are called. The Lion and the Unicorn."

"And are they sometimes incomplete?"

"Almost always in Canada. They are shown without their privy parts. To be heraldically correct they should have distinct, rather saucy pizzles. But in Canada we geld everything, if we can, and dozens of times I have sat in court and looked at those pitifully deprived animals and thought how they exemplified our attitude toward justice. Everything that spoke of passion – and when you talk of passion you talk of morality in one way or another – was ruled out of order or disguised as something else. Only Reason was welcome. But in Mr. Justice Staunton's court the Lion and the Unicorn are complete, because morality and passion get their due there."

"I see. Well, how did the case go?"

"It hung, in the end, on the McNaghten Rule."

"You must tell me what that is."

"It is a formula for determining responsibility. It takes its name from a nineteenth-century murderer called McNaghten whose defence was insanity. He said he did it when he was not himself. This was the defence put forward for Staunton. The prosecution kept hammering away at Staunton to find out whether, when he shouted in the theatre, he fully understood the nature and quality of his act, and if he did, did he know it was wrong? The defence lawyer – Mr. David Staunton, a very eminent Q.C. – urged every possible extenuating circumstance: that the prisoner Staunton had been under severe stress for several days; that he had lost his father in a most grievous fashion, and that he had undergone severe psychological harassment because of that loss; that unusual responsibilities and burdens had been placed upon him; that his last hope of regaining the trust and approval of his late father had been crushed. But the prosecutor – Mr. David Staunton, Q.C., on behalf of the Crown – would not recognize any of that as exculpatory, and in the end he put the question that defence had been dreading all along. 'If a policeman had been standing at your elbow, would you have acted as you did? If a policeman had been in the seat next to you, would you have shouted your scandalous question at the stage?' And of course the prisoner Staunton broke down and wept and had to say, 'No,' and then, to all intents, the case was over. The Judge – Mr. Justice Staunton, known for his fairness but also for his sternness – didn't even leave the Bench. He found the prisoner Staunton guilty, and the sentence was that he should seek psychiatric help at once."

"Then what did you do?"

"It was seven o'clock on Sunday morning. I called the airport, booked a passage to Zurich, and twenty-four hours later I was here. Three hours after arrival I was sitting in Dr. Tschudi's office."

"Was the prisoner Staunton very much depressed by the outcome of the case?"

"It could hardly have been worse for him, because he has a very poor opinion of psychiatry."

"But he yielded?"

"Doctor von Haller, if a wounded soldier in the eighteenth century had been told he must have a battlefield amputation, he would know that his chances of recovery were slim, but he would have no choice. It would be: die of gangrene or die of the surgeon's knife. My choice in this instance was to go mad unattended or to go mad under the best obtainable auspices."

"Very frank. We are getting on much better already. You have begun to insult me. I think I may be able to do something for you. Prisoner Staunton."

"Do you thrive on insult?"

"No. I mean only that you have begun to feel enough about me to want to strike some fire out of me. That is not bad, that comparison between eighteenth-century battlefield surgery and modern psychiatry; this sort of curative work is still fairly young and in the way it is sometimes practised it can be brutal. But there were recoveries, even from eighteenth-century surgery, and as you point out, the alternative was an ugly one.

"Now let us get down to work. The decisions must be entirely yours. What do you expect of me? A cure for your drunkenness? You have told me that it is not your disease, but your symptom; symptoms cannot be cured – only alleviated. Illnesses can be cured when we know what they are and if circumstances are favourable. Then the symptoms abate. You have an illness. You have talked of nothing else. It seems very complicated, but all descriptions of symptoms are complicated. What did you expect when you came to Zurich?"

"I expected nothing at all. I have told you that I have seen many psychiatrists in court, and they are not impressive."