The Treatment and the Cure

by Peter Kocan

  There are some men down in the vegetable gardens working with spades and mattocks. Some of them are bare to the waist and brown from the sun. They’re working slowly, and you can hear the soft sound of the mattocks hitting the earth and a faint sound of the talking and sometimes a shout or a joke. Screws are standing around on the high ground watching the men, or strolling among them. One screw’s listening to the mid-week races on a transistor radio. Across the wall, the lake is a different colour from before lunch, darker blue and all ruffled by a lovely breeze that you can feel on your face.

  At three o’clock two pantry workers carry a big tea-urn and a tin of biscuits down to the garden workers, then come back and bring another urn and more biscuits out to the verandah. You line up with some other men for a cup of the tea and a biscuit. The tea has milk and sugar in it. You begin to feel cheerful again, thinking that, anyhow, this is better than gaol.

  At six o’clock the men start gathering near two heavy doors at each end of the verandah where the cells are. All the screws are there with their bunches of keys. The men go through the doors and start undressing and putting on pyjamas. Each man has a little plastic cup of water and some of them have a book or magazine too. Then a screw leads each man to his cell and locks him in. Your cell is halfway down the row. It has pale yellow tiles on the walls and the floor is some kind of rubber. It has a bed and an open rubber tub like the gaol tubs for pissing in. You can shit in them too, but they’re so small it’s hard to squat over them properly, and the shit smell fills up the cell all night.

  When everybody’s locked up, the screws go away. You sit on your bed and look around the cell. It has a window with a sort of steel lattice over it. You can see the main wall a few yards away, and along to the left you can see part of the main gate. There’s a rose bush growing under the window, but you can only see the top of it because of the angle of the sill. It’s very quiet, with only a cough or squeak of bedsprings from the other cells. You can faintly hear a television set from another part of the ward where five men are sitting up till nine-thirty. You’ve been told about the roster for sitting up, and that you’ve been put on the roster for another night. All the cell lights are left on till the rostered men are locked in their cells. The light in your cell seems awfully bright, with the bare bulb over your head and the reflection from the yellow tiles. A low rhythmic sound of moving bedsprings comes from one of the cells.

  “Hey Don!” a voice calls.

  “What?” another answers.

  “Stop fucking yer fist!”

  “Get stuffed!”

  After a while the night screws come down the row of cells, trying all the locks and looking through the narrow peephole in each door. You see an eye looking at you.

  “G’day,” the screw says.

  “Hullo,” you reply.

  The eye disappears. From the window you can see the day screws going out with their kitbags and then hear the noise of cars driving away. It’s very quiet again.

  You stay at the window, watching the sky getting dark above the wall and the leaves of the rose bush jerking in the breeze. Then you think you’ll try to sleep. You get into bed and pull the blanket up over your head to block out the light. You find it hard to breathe like that, so you try screwing your eyes shut tight instead, but the light is still bright through your eyelids. You try facing the wall, but the tiles are reflecting the bulb straight into your face. You lie there, trying to think of something. You think of the roll of toilet paper beside your tub. You could lay a few thicknesses of toilet paper across your eyes and maybe tie them behind your head so they’ll stay in place. You congratulate yourself on your brilliance, but then realise that the screws might think you are mad if they peep in and see you with toilet paper tied around your head. Shock treatment. Medication. No, you don’t dare risk it. You toss and turn for what seems like hours, then you drift into sleep.

  A loud banging wakes you up and daylight is in the cell. Your door is thrown open. Men are carrying their tubs outside to empty them at the lavatory on the verandah. You take yours out too, come back and make your bed, then get your clothes from the piles at the end of the corridor, and dress. You wash and shave with a locked razor at a row of basins on the verandah.

  The morning is beautiful. The sky is hazy blue and the sun coming up from the other side of the lake makes the water like a sheet of blazing steel, so blinding you can only look at it for a moment. Birds are singing. The men are cheerful. Two of them are playing ping-pong and the sound of the ball going back and forth seems a bit like birdsong, only faster. There are several card games going and the players are slapping the cards down with great energy and talking and arguing loudly. Not all the men are active though. Some have gone back to lie on the benches they’d been stirred from the night before. The same little blue columns of cigarette smoke are rising from them again. There’s a whirring sound coming from the television room where somebody’s buffing the floor with an electric polisher. You have ten minutes walk up and down the verandah to stretch your muscles, falling into step with Bill Greene and Dave Lamming who’re doing the same thing. Dave’s a thin little timid man. He’s worried. Yesterday he told the Charge he had a headache and asked for an Aspro. The Charge said he’d speak to the doctor about it. Bill Greene is disgusted.

  “You’ll never learn, Dave!” he says.

  “It was a bad headache,” Dave replies.

  “Electric Ned’ll give ya more than a bloody headache when Arthur tells him about it.”

  “I get my headaches a lot.”

  “Well, Electric Ned will say your headaches are really just a sign of mental distress and he’ll whack some shock into you.”

  “I’ll tell him I’m all right.”

  “He can’t believe anything you say. You’re mentally distressed.”

  “I’ll ask Arthur if I can clean some windows,” Dave says.

  Cleaning windows is Dave’s own therapy for when he’s upset. Whenever you see Dave with a bucket and rag you know he’s trying to soothe himself. Dave is very upset now. His voice is trembling.

  “You don’t really think they’ll give me shock do you?” he asks Bill.

  “Aw, probably not,” Bill replies in a softened tone.

  “D’you reckon they will, Len?” Dave asks you.

  “Aw, probably not,” you say. You’ve no idea really, but you hope they won’t. You’re telling yourself never to complain of a headache or ask for an Aspro. Be careful about windows too.

  Breakfast is delicious. Orange juice, scrambled eggs, two slices of buttered bread. You’re very hungry after the long night in the cell.

  After breakfast the garden workers start putting on work-boots and wide hats. You’re called to the Charge.

  “How d’you fancy a bit of gardening?” he asks.

  “I’d like it,” you reply, having to check yourself from adding “Sir”. You don’t dare call him “Arthur” yet.

  “Well, Grumps will give you some work gear.”

  Grumps is an old inmate who looks after the clothing store and does errands for the screws. He wears old tatty slippers and shuffles along swearing and moaning under his breath. You go with Grumps and he gets you a pair of boots and a straw hat. He takes a long time because he keeps stopping to swear and groan.

  When you’ve put on the boots and the hat you go to join about twenty other men waiting at the verandah gate. Five or six screws are there and the senior screw unlocks the gate and you all go through into the outer yard. The screw unlocks another gate and you file through into the vegetable garden. The men amble over to a tin shed and another screw hands out spades, mattocks and hoes. Then they wander to various parts of the vegetable garden and start digging or hoeing or turning soil over.

  You ask a screw where you’re supposed to work. He points to a plot where another man is digging.

  “You can help Zurka,” he says.

  Zurka is a Pole. You remember the name vaguely from the news a long time ago. He ran amok in a train wi
th a butcher’s chopper. Killed a couple of people. You don’t remember much about it, just the name. You start digging beside him. It feels good, the strain on your muscles, the earth under your feet, the warm sun on you. After a while you’re sweating and the drops are trickling down under your shirt. The soil is already warm and dry on top from the sun and it throws up little bursts of dust when you turn each spadeful over, but an inch or two down it’s still damp. You work very hard for a while, to show the screws how willing you are, until you start to get very sore in your back and shoulders, and also in your hands from gripping the smooth spade handle.

  “The new bloke’s a goer,” you hear a screw say. Then he calls out to you: “Don’t bust yourself, mate!”

  You grin back at him, wondering if he’s being sarcastic. You have a breather and look around at the other men. None of them are working hard. They seem to be taking a minute’s breather for every minute’s work. You do the same, but cautiously, in case you overdo it and get into trouble for bludging. The breathers give you plenty of time to look around and listen to the birds. There are small brown darting birds like sparrows—finches, you think—that fly so close over your head you hear their wings, and magpies walking about on the turned soil as though they’re inspecting the work, and other birds sitting in rows on the top of the wall, and lots of seagulls wheeling in bunches and crying out.

  There’s some talking among the men and among the screws who sit or stand around on high points keeping watch. Whenever there’s a question about planting or watering or anything important about the work, the screws will call out to ask Mario what he thinks. Mario is a very dark Sicilian who used to be a market-gardener, and he’s the unofficial foreman here. His English is very poor. He only has two phrases: “Issa good” and “Issa no good”, so you have to ask him very simple questions.

  “We water carrots? Yes?”

  “Issa good!”

  If Mario doesn’t agree he shakes his head sadly as though he’s in despair at such foolishness.

  “We dig this bed, Mario?”

  “Issa no good. Issa no good.”

  “We dig that one then?”

  “Issa no good.” More despair. More head shaking.

  “What about this other one?”

  “Ah, issa good!” Mario brightens up.

  “Mario a cunt? Yes?”

  Mario makes a rude Sicilian sign with his fingers.

  At ten-thirty the morning tea and biscuits are brought down and we all lie on the grass around the urn for fifteen or twenty minutes. Sometimes, if there’s an interesting conversation going on, we stay drinking tea and lying on the grass for half an hour. It’s lovely lying there with a pleasant tiredness in your muscles and the sun on your face, listening to the talk. Then a screw will sigh wearily and say: “Ah well, boys, we’d better strike another blow or Arthur’ll be after our balls,” and the men get up slowly and go back to work. We stop work at eleven-thirty and hand our tools in at the tin shed. Anyone who wants a swim can go to the pool. Almost everyone does. There are piles of swimming trunks and towels and a big red ball to play with. For thirty minutes you float in the cool blue chlorinated water or join in a rough game of water-polo, or sunbake, hardly able to believe you’re really in the madhouse you’ve heard such awful tales about.

  Electric Ned comes round after a couple of days. He wants to see the new man.

  “He’s a bit absent-minded,” Bill Greene tells you. “Once he asked old Tom Hawksworth how he was settling in. Tom had been here for twenty-two years.”

  This incident is famous here. If anyone asks you how you’re settling in, you know they’re having a joke.

  Electric Ned wears thick glasses and a white coat. He comes up to you on the verandah and shakes your hand very politely.

  “You’re Mr Tarbutt then,” he says.

  “Yes, doctor.”

  “How are you settling in?”

  “Very well, thanks.” You get ready to grin, but he’s quite serious.

  “No problems?”

  “No, doctor.”

  “Feeling all right?”

  “Yes, doctor.”

  “Doing a bit of work around the place?”

  “Yes, gardening, doctor.”

  “Fine.”

  He gives you a long look through the thick lenses and goes away into the office.

  “He seems all right,” you remark to Bill Greene. Your heart is still thumping. You wonder what he’s doing in the office. Maybe ordering immediate treatment for you.

  “Yeah, as long as you stay on the right side of him,” Bill replies.

  You’re going to try. Christ, you’re going to try!

  It’s almost nine o’clock and you’ve got your work gear on and you’re waiting near the verandah gate with the other men. A screw comes down the verandah carrying a tray with a cloth over it. You can see things sticking out. A silver kidney tray and cotton wool and some short lengths of rubber hose about four inches long. There’s an antiseptic smell. The screw goes into a small room at the end of the verandah. Then Dave Lamming comes down the verandah looking deathly afraid. A screw is walking beside him, holding him by the elbow, and the doctor and Arthur are coming behind. As Dave goes past you turn your eyes away, as though there’s something terribly interesting on the far side of the lake. Dave and the doctor and Arthur go into the small room after the screw. There is silence for a couple of minutes and then you hear Dave yelling: “I don’t want it! Please! I’m all right! Oh please don’t! Oh please! Oh please!” There is a sound of struggling. You hear screws’ voices: “Don’t be such a bloody kid, Dave!” and “The doctor knows what’s best!” and “Hold his arms!” and other things. Then there’s a sudden buzzing sound and a choking and gargling, then silence. Your stomach is watery and you’re shaking.

  “Poor little bastard,” says one of the men.

  “He’ll need Aspros now,” says Bill Greene.

  A screw comes to unlock the gate.

  “Come on,” he says, “it’s not a friggin’ side-show!”

  You go down into the garden with the others and start digging. You work steadily, not daring to take a breather much. You want to show what a good inmate, a model inmate, you are. Dedicated. Eager to please. Then you get afraid you might be giving a wrong impression. You might be overdoing it. Showing “Obsessional Tendencies”. Digging too much might be like cleaning windows too much. Two screws are sitting on a knoll a little way behind you. You imagine what they might be saying:

  “Tarbutt’s going pretty hard.”

  “Yeah, I noticed.”

  “Seems agitated.”

  “Better mention it to the doctor.”

  So you slow down and take a lot of breathers. Then you get afraid again. You wonder what the screws are saying. Maybe:

  “Tarbutt seems a bit lethargic.”

  “He was going like steam a minute ago.”

  “Yeah, he’s very erratic, isn’t he.”

  “We’d better mention it.”

  So you work a bit faster, but not too fast, or too slow. You’re concentrating so hard on timing every move to what you think is a proper balance between fast and slow that you feel giddy. You imagine what the screws might think if you fell over:

  “Tarbutt fell over.”

  “Yeah, for no apparent reason.”

  “Peculiar.”

  “We’ll have to report it.”

  You try to steady yourself. You take deep breaths. You’re sure the screws are watching you and talking about you and you feel a wild urge to go up to them and assure them that you’re not mentally disturbed or anything like that. You imagine how it would go:

  “Er, I was wondering if you’ve noticed anything odd about my behaviour?” you might say. “How d’you mean, Len?”

  “I mean … well … whether you think I’m mentally disturbed.”

  “Why should we think that?”

  “Because of the way I was working.”

  “What about the way you were working?
”

  “Well, fast and then slow.”

  “Why were you working like that?”

  “I was a bit, sort of worried about how it might look. I mean, I wasn’t worried, I was just thinking how it might look to anyone who was watching me.”

  “Do you think someone’s watching you?”

  “Well, no, I mean, not really. I mean, I’m not worried about it.”

  “You seem worried.”

  “No.”

  By now you know that you’ve made things much worse. You’ve delivered yourself to that small room at the end of the verandah.

  “Tell us about this person you think is watching you.”

  “I don’t think anyone is watching me.”

  “You said someone or something is watching you.”

  “No.”

  “Do you hear this person’s voice when he’s watching you?” “No.”

  “He just watches you.” “Nobody watches me.”

  “That’s not what you said a minute ago. Is it?” “No.”

  “This creature or whatever it is, can you see him?”

  “There isn’t any creature.”

  “So he’s a person then? A human?”

  “No.”

  “A sort of spirit?”

  “Look, he’s nothing!”

  “A sort of nothingness that watches you?” “There’s nothing there at all!”

  “Does this nothingness ever try to harm you? Does he tell you to do things?”

  “Do what things?” “You tell us, we want to help you.” “Christ! You’re twisting everything around!” “Don’t get upset, Len.”

  “I can’t help getting upset when you twist things.” “Is that what the nothingness tells you? That we’re twisting things? That we’re trying to harm you?”