So few and far between were his ejaculations that I had to be wary of putting words into his mouth and could not tell for sure if the picture I was building up of him was true, or merely a fabrication purposely designed to trap me.

Of the violence itself, he said the following. His parents had gone to work. His elder brother, who works the night-shift at a helicopter factory, was asleep. Funny, I’d had Nat down as an only child! His younger brother, with whom he shares a room, was at school. First Nat had tried jabbing at his arm with a variety of bizarre sharp objects. These included a jaw-bone of unknown origin, and some eighteenth-century scissors. (Perhaps a tetanus was in order after all.) Then he had taken a kitchen knife, which had recently been sharpened by his father, who was once a saw-doctor. Such personal minutiae seemed to obsess the gawky youth. This knife was the one the nurse and I had seen. Then Nat had set out for a nearby wood, “Oval Wood” I believe he called it. He had known it as a child. It was here that Nat had hacked away at his wrists but, he claimed, become too bored with the murderous task to finish the job. Lacking this passion, he had returned home, where his mother found him when she got back from her part-time work.

“It must have been very painful”. I found myself adopting his pathos-filled grimaces. Although I quite often choose to mirror patients’ expressions, this reaction was involuntary.

He spoke slowly but bravely of the most painful emotions, but refused to discuss sex. The abrupt ending of his spiritual quest had brought to the surface some previous conflict which he had been obliged to reenact.

We spoke, and gazed into space and at one another, for over two hours. His eye contact was good, if a little alarming at times. Eventually I concluded that he wasn’t mad and informed him of my verdict. He looked a little disappointed, as if he felt he might belong in an “asylum”, but it was difficult to tell. Whatever was happening to him was happening internally.

I told Nat I had some free time, late in the afternoons, and would be more than content to see him. I also informed him that I was well qualified psychologically speaking. We mutually agreed on an appointment for the following day. I gave him my card and he read it softly to himself: “Dr. Rodney H. Dweller M.A., M.B., B.Chir., D.Obst., R.C.O.G.…”