The Palace of Versailles: A Novel

By Jay Hoyland

The Palace of Versailles centers on the life of psychiatrist Sam Carmine, torn between his commitment to his work and his personal needs. He becomes a nationally known figure when he is appointed to the leadership of a major psychiatric facility. His path to this appointment, the nuances of feelings and events in the lives of his friends, family and patients are the substance of this touching and helpful view of human nature.

Parallel plots concern the staff and their emotional and intellectual growth in learning to work with patients, as well as the polarity of joy in treating patients who can be helped and the sadness and sense of failure when treatment fails. The patient's personal stories, their intense suffering and satisfaction in achievements, and their feelings toward the staff and each other are interwoven. Intrigue, mystery, and surprise take the reader on an emotional roller coaster. The title, The Palace of Versailles, juxtaposes the French Versailles with an American Versailles, and implies comparison of fantasy and glitter to rational acceptance of life with knowledge that it can be changed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 19, 2001
• ISBN: 9781469749372

Jay Hoyland

This is the first novel written by a student of human nature, James G. Hall. In psychiatric practice for many years he has now retired to pursue other creative aspects of life. He resides in Laguna Beach, California.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

THE END IS THE BEGINNING

September 4, 1945…a day of peace and hope for the world, but for Captain Sam Carsten a day of turmoil. A lean man, his thin face reflected the paleness of recovery, but his eyes…the most striking thing about him…burned intensely: deep brown, soulful, yet bright and inquisitive, looking inward at least as much as outward. His eyes…sorrowful and penetrating…seemed to see and had seen too much.

His dark brown hair was freshly trimmed, and he had shaved his facial hair so closely his lower face and chin appeared faintly bluish. His brass caduceus sparkled in the early morning sun.

Wrestling with past memories and a now uncertain future, he rode alone; the only man wearing an Army uniform in a noisy civilian railroad car crowded with passengers celebrating the end of the war. The Rock Island left Kansas City Union Station headed east. September 4, 1945 would be the date signed into history on board the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, while he traveled across Missouri on a train half the world away, headed toward the unknown.

He shut his eyes to blot out the railway car, and to observe himself. Once more he attempted to control the memory which intruded on his thought, and again washed him in sweat.

In the memory he bolts awake from restless sleep and sits upright. Hitting his head on mosquito netting, he instantly senses the fetid predawn jungle is too quiet. Shots crack. Yelling splits the feverish gray light. His pounding heart drowns out the sounds of enemy attack. He reaches for his forty-five. The door to the dispensary where he is sleeping flies open, and in the first light of day he stares into the almond eyes of a soldier the size of a small boy.

Memories blur, but he now clearly recalls being captured and held prisoner on one of those countless unnamed islands near Luzon. He and medic Sgt. Allan do what they can with primitive medical supplies. The counter-attack finally comes and their captors attempt to flee. He and Allan are left behind with the wounded and dead. An incoming round rips Sam’s left shoulder with searing white pain. In memory he again yells warning, but too late. Allan, motionless and bloodied with great vacant eyes, never moves again. Then the memory of cool relief from morphine sulfate given by an unknown round eyed medic…You’re finally free, Sammy-boy…the words echo through the black chambers of morphia…sleep…more pain…hospital ship…VA Hospital.

Now the captain opened his eyes and looked around the crowded railway car, but he could still see the eyes of the lost medic. The others on the train laughed and joked; not one of them knew his memory or secret wish the war had not ended. His secret alone. He sat ramrod straight in his seat while part of his soul still struggled out there somewhere near Bougainville or Luzon.

He rubbed his left arm and shoulder. The wound had become infected and did not heal with sulfa. It finally granulated to a healthy scar with Dr. Fleming’s new miracle, penicillin. That was good luck. But the fungus…that was bad luck. Jungle rot delayed recovery, and when he was finally fit for re-assignment the bombs exploded Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The war ended. Without him.

The train gained speed and fragments of his life flashed by. He thought, Damn…I’ll bet the medics are having quite a time…Docs Moore and Rosen…drinking purloined gin in their rotting tent…forgetting nights without end…sleeplessness…men’s wounds which will never heal even with time…probably celebrating right this minute…they’d know how to celebrate out there…somewhere out there in the Pacific Theater…Damn.

Now he was alone.

He touched his upper lip. In the hospital he grew a mustache, but shaved it off yesterday reassuring himself he would make a better impression clean-shaven. Without the mustache his upper lip felt cool and naked, strangely exposed.

Staring out at the golden fields with corn stubble rows in line like giant corduroy, Sam thought, life’s been tabled for the duration, and the duration’s here…this is it Sammy-boy…peace…freedom…freedom to have fresh, ice cold milk with bubbles on top whenever…freedom from powdered eggs…forever…freedom from typed official orders to go where you want…and, damnit, free to face your father’s unwritten orders.

Soon to be twenty-five, Sam admitted with self-loathing his father had made almost all the decisions. While Sam had been in medical school, his father…the famous surgeon who devised the Carsten needle and suture…planned to use political influence to get Sam a safe stateside assignment to sit out the war. Sam had refused, and after graduation from his accelerated training tasted freedom in the military. His father now planned for Sam to get a prized surgical residency and later a staff position at a prestigious eastern medical faculty. The war had not changed his father, but Sam had changed. He vowed never to be trapped again.

Sam accepted he must carry the Carsten name to distinction in the field of medicine, but not as a surgeon. He’d had a lifetime of that with the evacuation of casualties from the first assault wave. No, he decided not surgery. While at Denver VA for physical therapy he used his medical library privileges to update, and he read an article in the New England Journal of Medicine about traumatic war neuroses written by Dr. Leslie Anders, a top psychiatric adviser to the Surgeon General. When Sam finished the article his heart pounded wildly, breath came rapidly, and he felt exhilarated and alive for the first time in months. Instantly he knew what he wanted to do after discharge. He wanted to better understand people and their motivation; to better understand war and violence.

He wrote immediately to the Anders Retreat inquiring about residency training to become a psychiatrist. The Retreat was located near Versailles, a small town hidden in the Missouri Ozarks. It was considered one of the three best psychiatric clinics in the country. Sam impatiently waited for mail calls, and the day he received the application he completed it and mailed it back.

Now he would soon be there for an interview.

The train neared Versailles. A sudden clearing in the dense scrub brush indicated the approach to a town. The shrill whistle pierced the quiet morning, warning the crossing ahead. Another blast, then a third echoed through the train and beyond. With the third, the train slowed, and with a final resigned blast, the train stopped.

Trying to be inconspicuous, Sam looked from the window across the aisle. Only a small station was visible on the south side of the tracks with broad open fields and tree lines to the north. No one else in his coach prepared to leave as he picked up his gear. The captain made his way to the back of the car, feeling a reluctance to leave the sanctuary he found on the train.

The conductor quickly put steps down to the cinder bed, which crunched loudly under foot. As soon as the passengers got off the conductor replaced the steps and waved a lantern. With great clouds of steam and rushing noises which shook the ground, the train headed toward St. Louis. It receded with shrill whistle blasts echoing in the distance.

Sam stood alone on the platform watching until the light of the caboose was no longer in sight. In this now silent moment he knew his war journey had ended and his post war journey had just begun.

CHAPTER 2

VERSAILLES

Sam walked across the rough creosoted platform worn smooth in places by years of travelers treading to and from trains. Passengers arriving today were greeted by friends and families who ran from waiting automobiles and crowded out from the old yellow depot with fading brown trim.

Holding his olive drab duffel bag with Carsten stenciled across the sides, the captain cautiously asked two other soldiers and a mail handler how to get to the Anders Retreat. They could not help. No one seemed to know.

He saw a dusty Ford taxi with faded black paint near the depot. The driver, a cantankerous appearing sallow-faced man wearing a sweat stained bill cap, sat sleepily and watched him approach.

Taxi, Captain? the driver drawled with a pleasant twang.

I hope so…Yes. He added reluctantly, That’s if you can take me to the Anders Retreat. I am expected there.

The driver’s face clouded with a frown as he eyed the captain with a studied look. Before he answered another man, dressed in a black uniform, emerged from the dark shadows of the depot.

Are you Dr. Carsten? Dr. Samford Carsten?

Yes. Yes, I am. the captain answered.

I am Alvin Stoker, the Anders Retreat driver, he said, and easily lifting the duffel bag to his shoulder he turned and walked rapidly toward the station. Sam hesitated momentarily, but quickly followed.

The driver stowed the duffel bag in back of a wooden sided station wagon, and opened the back door for Sam. They drove down residential streets lined with large maple and elm trees, some beginning to show the effects of cool fall evenings. The houses seemed neat and well cared for, but cars on the streets were rusty and old. Sam realized one of the impacts of war on civilians had been their inability to buy any new cars during the last five years. After several blocks he saw a group of brick buildings clustered around a square.

The county courthouse topped with a dome dominated the square, and Sam noted the cornerstone dated 1889. Several men on the east side of the building were sitting on the stairs, a few talking and getting warmth from the morning sun.

How far to the Retreat? Sam asked, relieved to hear his own voice after what seemed like days of not talking.

About five miles, the driver said. The silence resumed. Sam watched the countryside as they drove south from the city limit sign into the hills, covered with tall oak trees, which provided mottled shade for the woodland floor. They drove past a well cared for graveyard, and turned left to leave the pavement for a gravel road. Dust sprayed out in their wake, and settled on the scrub oak densely lining the road.

The county road stretched and wound around and over hills, and descended into valleys with rich bottom land bordering clear running streams. Sam noted a few lanes and rutted paths leading into dense woods, but only rarely did he glimpse a house or barn in distant meadows. After several miles, the station wagon turned into a lane lined with dark green cedar trees. Only a small sign indicated the Retreat ahead. At the end of the long lane stood a large red brick building. Four stories with columns from the ground floor to the veranda roof, it reminded Sam of pictures he had seen of southern plantations. They stopped in front.

The driver opened the door, and as Sam got out he noticed the quiet, desolate beauty of hills and trees as far as he could see. A gentle wind blew across the Retreat grounds with an unmistakable aroma of autumn. A yardman raking leaves intently, glanced up but continued to rake. The driver nodded in silent greeting to the yardman, and took out the duffel bag. Quickly going up the broad stairs, the driver and Sam crossed the porch. The yardman paused in his work and watched them go inside.

The heavy oak door opened and Sam noted the central hallway with immaculate black and white tile led to a plant-filled solarium in the rear. A large winding walnut staircase rose to the upper floors. He could see up the stairwell to the fourth floor. The aroma of recently oiled wood smelled familiar and reassuring to him as it was the same oil his grandmother had used on her furniture when as a child he visited her for the summers at the shore. Indicating Sam should wait, the driver disappeared upstairs with the duffel bag. Above a table between two dark leather wing back chairs hung a large oil painting of the hills around the Retreat. Sam thought it was an excellent painting and noted the artist, Robinson Wood, signed it with a flamboyant signature. Robinson Wood was obviously a talented artist Sam had never heard of.

Sam felt alone again, and he had a strong wish to re-read the letter from Dr. Anders, to re-check the date and time for the appointment. But the letter was now somewhere upstairs with his luggage. He had read it so many times that he knew exactly what it said. He sat in one of the wing back chairs and leafed through a Look magazine on the table. He glanced toward the door across the foyer when it opened. A sophisticated appearing woman approached. She had white hair and wore a gray wool dress with a red scarf and lipstick which perfectly matched.

Dr. Carsten, I am Mary Leader, Dr. Anders’ secretary. Welcome to the Anders Retreat. He stood and shook her extended hand.

She guided him through heavy wooden doors into a long hallway with many closed doors on either side. Motioning him into the only open office and to a chair, she sat down behind her desk. He saw a file folder in front of her with his name on it.

Sam looked at her steadily. She seemed motherly and attractive, but her efforts to grow African violets on the windowsill were not meeting with much success.

How was your trip? she asked with a pleasant midwestern drawl.

Uneventful, thank you.

This is such a special day. I thought it would never come. I have a son about your age stationed in Italy. I pray he is home for this Christmas.

I hope so too.

Smiling, she said, Your itinerary, and handed him a typed page. First you’ll meet with Dr. Roln, our Director of Inpatient Services. He’11 meet with you this morning at ten o’clock and show you around our Retreat. Dr. Anders prefers that term to hospital.

Sam followed by reading the page in front of him.

Dinner tonight, she said with pleasure, will be with the staff. They will be so pleased to have a serviceman help celebrate. And tomorrow morning you’ll meet Dr. Bond, one of our psychologists, for testing. And then Dr. Anders. He’s been in Washington and won’t return until late tonight.

She closed the file. After you’re finished here tomorrow our driver will make sure you get to the station on time to catch the train to St. Louis. I understand you are on your way home to Connecticut.

Yes. My parents are there.

"I know they’re counting the hours. Enjoy your stay with us, and wel

come home. I’m sure I will…and thank you. Why don’t you go to your room and get settled before you meet Dr.

Roln. I’ll ring when he’s ready." Standing, she again extended her hand.

The driver reappeared as if by signal, and escorted Sam upstairs to a room in the residents’ quarters on the fourth floor. The small room had a large dormer window and felt homey and warm. The black walnut bedstead, chest and night stand were polished to a glow. A hunter green chair and ottoman with reading lamp and nearby desk completed the sparse room. He opened his luggage and took out his letter and reread it.

Dear Dr. Carsten,

I am pleased to receive your application for psychiatric residency training at the Anders Retreat. This letter is to confirm your interviews, which will include psychological testing required of all our applicants. The process will conclude in time for you to meet the east bound train the following day. You will be our guest in the residents’ quarters and are most welcome. In your letter you mention your father, Dr. Matt Carsten. Of course I remember Matt from medical school, and I even knew your mother before they married. Matt has made quite a name for himself in surgery. I shall look forward to meeting you and being brought up to date on your family.

Sincerely,

Leslie R. Anders,

M.D. Clinic Director

Sam replaced the letter, worn from being read so many times, in his bag and finished unpacking. He walked over to the window seat in the dormer window, sat down, and looked out at the silent isolated valley surrounded by thickly wooded hills.

The telephone ring startled him. It was precisely ten o’clock, and Dr. Roln was available. Sam straightened his tie, re-combed his hair, smiled wanly at his reflection in the mirror and quickly went downstairs.

CHAPTER 3

SQUATTERS

Harold Winston, an Anders Retreat yardman, painstakingly raked fallen leaves on a windblown section of the brown lawn and piled them on an acrid smoking fire. This chore for the day almost finished, he stamped out the last embers with his heavy boots. Ashes swirled around his feet.

The breeze from the west had changed earlier in the afternoon to a northern chilly wind, and more maple and sycamore leaves fell to the ground to be raked another day. Certain the fire was out, he began the last task of the day, carrying wood for the fireplaces.

He opened the service door with difficulty; both arms loaded with the splintery, sweet smelling oak wood. Speaking to no one in the day room he put the wood in the bin and left quietly. He still did not trust these people even though he had worked here many years. As a boy he had helped his father work on the grounds doing odd jobs. Now twenty-eight years old and his father gone, Harold assisted the head groundsman and did most of the heavy work. He supervised his small crew to keep the grounds as manicured as a golf course. He never understood what the patients and doctors did here and did not want to know. As he walked out through the service porch a cook called from the kitchen, Harold, how about some coffee? I just made fresh.

Shaking his head no, he went out into the cool afternoon. Harold Winston, a heavily muscled but graceful man, had stood over six feet tall since he went one spring from boy to man at age thirteen. His face and neck, etched and lined by dry riverbeds eroded from the sun, were as deeply colored as red-brown leather, and contrasted with the soft white skin below his collar line. He had broad powerful shoulders. His forearms and biceps were laced with thick cords of veins bulged from sawing, chopping, cutting, plowing; all tasks required to grow things and tend the land and hills he lived so close to and loved.

He wore bib overalls all year with a blue chambray shirt in summer and a plaid flannel work shirt over long underwear in winter. His light brown hair was thin and wispy, and he had sparse threads of hair on his chest and forearms. With high cheekbones and the keen almond shaped eyes of a hunter, his face was almost whiskerless. With grace and tensile strength he moved as quietly as a buck deer in the woods.

Going home for the day, he walked across the valley toward the hills to the west. He lived with his family in a log house, which legally became theirs by squatter’s rights.

His father, Eph, had chosen this place, hidden and remote, and then squatted secretly on the land long enough until it became theirs. Then Eph added a loft to the two-room cabin, and a porch in front to sit and cool off on warm summer evenings.

Harold and his brother, Juder, both born in the cabin, lived alone with Hetty, their mother. Eph had died of blood poisoning just before the War. He cut his leg rabbit hunting. Weren’t nothing, he said. But it was. The leg turned red and swelled up two times its size. Hetty did all she knew to do. They couldn’t afford a doctor in those days. She melted tallow and mixed it with turpentine for a poultice.

The poison moved through his body fast. Delirious near the end, he pleaded to Harold, Take care of the place and your Ma and Juder as long as they’s alive. In and out of his head by the time they tried to get medical care, it was too late. He fitfully went to sleep and died.

They buried Eph in a grassy slope near Soap Creek, alongside the three others.

Harold took his promise seriously. He fixed things up by putting on a new roof for the porch just like Eph had planned to do. He tilled, planted, and harvested the garden, his one great pleasure.

Harold felt good about his promise and about Ma, but Juder, now almost eighteen, was a worry. Like Harold, he’d quit school too early to learn to read and write. He got work at the Forster place. Since he had some money, mean friends in town had showed him to drink and gambling. He could talk to most anyone, even women. Harold prayed daily for Juder to stay out of trouble. More than one jaunt to Versailles had ended in fray bad enough that the county sheriff knew his name.

Harold kept this in his heart and protected Hetty from knowing Juder’s activities as much as he could. Part of his duty, he reckoned.

Recently Juder had been seeing Elizabeth Morgan, the young woman from over the next ridge to the south. Harold wanted to know her better himself, and allowed as how she’d have nothing to do with Juder as the good girls surely never would.

Now his work for the day over at the Retreat, Harold walked along a ridge and turned at a big cedar tree to go down into the next valley where their place nestled. The place he loved the most. Four miles from the nearest road, the closest neighbors lived two miles downstream.

Smelling the smoke from the cook stove, Harold crossed Soap Creek on a big oak carefully felled across the shallows, white with fury, which gave the creek its name. His father had made this bridge years ago when he had first gone to work for the county. Harold followed the path across a long brown meadow and arrived at the cabin.

I’m home, he said, taking the kerosene lantern without breaking his stride.

The cabin built of logs chinked and daubed with clay from the banks of the creek, consisted of two rooms divided by a log wall. In the corner of the larger room was the wood cook stove. In this room, used for both sitting and eating, were two doors, one to the front and one to the back. The smaller room was Hetty’s. Above the main room they had made a loft floor by nailing boards to the unbarked poles which served as ceiling joists.

Harold and Juder reached the loft by climbing a ladder fixed to the wall. They slept up there. Without windows it was always dark except for shafts of sun and moonlight filtered through slits between the hand split cedar shingles. Behind the house stood the smokehouse, a small barn, and a privy.

Harold went out the back door, as he had done every evening of his life he could remember, and milked the Jersey cow. The barn was almost dark. He did not want to light the lantern as it was nearly out of kerosene. He knew they had plenty to refill it in a large can out back, the spout sealed with a potato.

In the house Hetty stood up from the rocker. A stocky, short woman, her face was as round as a full moon, soft and wrinkled. Awake or asleep she had a gentle smile, which gave the impression she knew some inner secret, which gave peace.

She crossed over to the stove and stirred the fire with an iron poker. The coals flared, ready for cooking. She fried thick slices of pink ham until the fatty edges were crisp and brown. The beans had been slowly cooking all day until they were tender, and she took the biscuits, light and flaky and just browned, from the oven. She poured the cool buttermilk Harold loved. They ate together in silence.

Dusk progressed to darkness and the chilly wind turned cold. Harold sat by the fire. Hetty finished the few dishes, moved the leftover ham and biscuits to the center of the table, and covered them for the next day.

Where’d you reckon he is? She asked in her quiet, almost musical voice.

Don’t know, Ma. Likely Juder’ll be along shortly. He had not returned when they went to bed.

CHAPTER 4

THE PALACE

Lights blazed in the twilight at the Retreat. Sam and Dr. Roln completed the tour and their portion of the interview. Sam learned the Retreat had originally been the county poor farm built in 1914. A handsome, sturdy brick building, some early critics had called it The Palace. When it was vacated by the county the Anders Foundation purchased the property and remodeled extensively. Built as a respite for the impoverished and destitute, it now had become an asylum for the privileged and desperate.

The Retreat consisted of four wards, or units as Dr. Anders preferred. Two unlocked, South 1 and North 1 on the first floor; two locked, South 2 and North 2 on the second floor. The third floor housed offices, the patient library, dining room, and other rooms for patient activities. Sam favorably compared the atmosphere to a country club or lodge. The rooms all had open views of the countryside. The front ones looked across the drive to the hills beyond and the early morning sunrises and mists. The back room windows framed spectacular sunsets across the valley floor.

The Ozarks are particularly beautiful in fall, Dr. Roln said. The hickory turns yellow, sumac turns a brilliant red, white oak scarlet, and the witch hazel purple. But my favorite season is spring when sarvis, redbud, dogwood, even the oak buds are colorful.

Sam liked Dr. Roln. Supportive and warm, he thought, a lot like the hospital. Dr. Roln explained the treatment philosophy focused on the therapeutic setting, or milieu as they called it. Here the needs of the patients came first, and the highest staff priority was to make the hospital a healing experience.

Back in his room that evening, lying on the bed reviewing the day, Sam stared at the ceiling. It would be a long time until January when the Retreat decided which residents to accept, but a decision either way would close other doors. Years ago he decided to consider every alternative before taking the best course of action so he could remain free and not feel trapped like his parents. The military experience had been a close call, but he congratulated himself. He’d survived, done all right so far. No mistakes he was aware of…yet…and he did not want to start now.

Gazing at the ceiling, counting cracks in the plaster, he reached seven before anxiety about the rest of the interviews and psychological testing again flooded him. He thought, what if I don’t do well enough? What if they don’t want me? What then?

His mind drifted back in time. Trying so hard to please…parents preoccupied…mother depressed…father uninfluenced, apparently, by psychoanalysis after Steven died…rigid, distant…preferring his lab and work…and to be left alone. A vivid image of his father and mother sitting in front of the fireplace at home, drinking brandy on a winter night lept into his mind. They were both alone, with each other.

Sam glanced at his watch; surprised it was already time for dinner. He arrived at the dining room and found the others already celebrating.

Following introductions, Dr. Roln produced several bottles of champagne which he had brought home from France at the end of World War I. He had saved it for a special event. This was