9. WHILE I WAS TALKING to Bob Comeaux and Max Gottlieb in my cell at Angola, I asked the former casually what drugs they used in the pedeuthanasia program at the Qualitarian Life Center. He answered as casually, without thinking about it, as one doctor to another, “Amobarbital and secobarbital, IV.”

“That’s peaceful, isn’t it?”

“They go to sleep like the babies they are.”

“How about the adults?”

“Secobarbital IV and”—he rouses, showing interest—“do you know what I hit on more or less by accident and what is now state of the art?”

“No.”

“Secobarbital plus THC.”

“THC?”

“You know, tetrahydrocannabinol, the active constituent of marijuana—and you want to know something, Tom?”

“Yes.”

“There is an exaltation, a joyousness, a sense of acceptance and affirmation you would have to see to believe.”

“I believe you.”

Max Gottlieb is frowning uneasily and moving toward the door. Bob detains him.

“I don’t mind telling you guys that for the first time we have actually achieved the full meaning of the Greek word eu in euthanasia. Eu means good. I may be simpleminded, but I think good is better than bad, serenity better than suffering. You know what you ought to do, Tom?”

“What?”

“You ought to tell Father Smith about THC.”

“I will.”

“I mean as a therapeutic agent.”

“I understand.”

He looks at me curiously. “Why is your friend Father Smith so dead set against us?”

After a pause—actually I don’t know how to answer him—I think of an answer which might also satisfy my own curiosity. “He thinks you’ll end by killing Jews.”

“What’s that?” Bob asks sharply; then, for some reason, also asks Max, “What’s that? What do you mean?”

Both Bob and Max are embarrassed, Bob for me and Father Smith—I’ve exposed his nuttiness. Max is embarrassed because he is one of those Southern Jews who are embarrassed by the word Jew.

“What does he mean?” asks Bob, opening his hands to both of us.

Max, frowning, is having none of it.

“Tom?” asks Bob Comeaux.

I shrug. “He claims it will eventually end as it did with the Germans, starting out with euthanasia for justifiable medical, psychiatric, and economic reasons. But in the end the majority always gets in trouble, needs a scapegoat, and gets rid of an unsubsumable minority.”

“Unsubsumable?” asks Max, who, I think, wouldn’t mind being subsumable.

“Unsubsumable.”

Bob Comeaux is shaking his head mournfully. “Ah me. I thought I had heard it all. Sorry I asked. Does he think I’m anti-Semitic, for God’s sake?”

“No.”

“Let me tell you something, Tom. I mean, hear this, loud and clear, Doctor!” He is standing arrow-straight, hat held over his heart, addressing me, but for Max’s benefit. “Some of my very dearest friends—”

But Max has had enough of this, of both of us. “Let’s go, Doctor,” he says wearily, holding out one hand to the door, handing along Bob Comeaux with the other.