“I’ll not mislead you: I am here to decide your final disposition. Should we lock you away for five or ten years, or should we find some other solution? But do not think you can lie your way into my good graces. You have, after all, answered these questions several times. We must reach an understanding, you and I, based solely on your current state of mind. I can smell lies, you know. They may look like treacle, but they smell like poison.”

I had given this speech, or a variant of it, so many times that it came all too easily to me.

“Let me not mislead you,” he replied, no longer leaning back in his chair, “I am now firmly of the belief that Ambergris, and all that is associated with Ambergris, is a figment of my imagination. I no longer believe it exists.”

“I see. This information does not in any way mean I will now pack up my briefcase and set you free. I must question you.”

He looked as if he were about to argue with me. Instead, he said, “Then let me clear the desk. Would you like me to give you a statement first?”

“No. My questions shall provide you with the means to make a statement.” I smiled as I said it, for although he need not hope too much, neither did I wish to drive him to despair.

X was not a strong man and I had to help him lift the typewriter off the desk; it was an old, clunky model and its keys made a metallic protest when we set it on the floor.

When we had sat down, I took out a pen and pad of paper. “Now, then, do you know where you are and why?”

“I am in a Chicago psychiatric ward because I have been hallucinating that a world of my creation is actually real.”

“When and where were you born?”

“Belfont, Pennsylvania. In 1968.”

“Where did you grow up?”

“My parents were in the Peace Corps—are you going to write all of this down again? The scribbling irritates me. It sounds like cockroaches scuttling.”

“You don’t like cockroaches?”

He scowled at me.

“As you like.”

I pulled his file out of my briefcase. I arranged the transcripts in front of me. A few words flashed out at me: fire … Trial … of course I loved her … control … the reality … It was in the room with me …

“I shall simply check off on these previous interrogatories duplications of answers. I shall only write down your answers when they are new or stray from the previous truths you have been so kind as to provide us with. Now: Where did you grow up?”

“In the Fiji Islands.”

“Where is that?”

“In the South Pacific.”

“Ah … What was your family like? Any brothers or sisters?”

“Extremely dysfunctional. My parents fought a lot. One sister—Vanessa.”

“Did you get along with your sister? How dysfunctional?”