The Treatment and the Cure

by Peter Kocan

  “I don’t think you’re trying to harm me at all.” “You said we’re twisting things.” “I just mean that you’ve got it wrong.” “We’re trying to understand, Len. We really are. If you tell us about this nothingness, this spirit or whatever it is, we’ll be able to understand better.”

  “Can’t we just forget the whole thing?”

  “No, Len, we can’t. This belief of yours about the Nothingness Spirit is obviously making you very distressed and unhappy.”

  “There isn’t any Nothingness Spirit! Please believe me!”

  “But you just told us about it.”

  “I didn’t!”

  “Well, how would we know about it if you didn’t tell us.” “You just invented it.”

  “No, it’s something in your own mind, Len.”

  “My mind’s all right. Honestly.”

  “Do you know what this place is, Len?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “What is it?”

  “A psychiatric hospital.”

  “That’s right. And why do people come to psychiatric hospitals?”

  “Because of mental problems.”

  “Right. And you’re here, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, but my mind’s all right.”

  “Are you saying you’re being held unjustly?”

  “No, I wouldn’t say that.”

  “So, you admit that you need treatment?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “That’s fine. It shows you have what’s called ’insight’. You’ve done the right thing by telling us about the Nothingness Spirit. We’ll tell the doctor all about it and he’ll be able to help you. Any time the Nothingness Spirit starts to bother you, you let us know. Will you do that?”

  “Yes,” you say, defeated, knowing you’ve destroyed yourself. Knowing that within an hour the Nothingness Spirit will become a reality in your file. A true presence in cold print on the page. A living force that will be summoned by other minds to explain every sleepless night, every change of mood, every odd remark, every laugh, every tear, and every facial expression you will wear for the rest of your life.

  You have created your own demon.

  You know it would go something like that. Even if the details are wrong, it would go something like that. So you can’t say anything to the two screws who are probably watching you. You struggle to calm yourself. You take deep breaths. You have a breather and stare away to the blue haze of the sky with your eyes half shut against the sun and try to think the sky down into yourself. The sky is so very calm and old and has seen more troubles than your own. You suddenly remember some words: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me.”

  Lovely words. They give you a feeling you can face whatever might happen. You’re not religious. You’ve never been to church. You suppose the words are something about God, but it’s the words themselves, and the strong, gentle sound of them, and the picture they give you that suddenly makes you feel all right, or nearly all right. They must have been written thousands of years ago, yet it’s as though they’re meant for you, yourself, right now. You let out a deep breath and there’s a sort of good tightness in your chest and you don’t feel very afraid of the two screws talking, or about digging fast and slow, or even about the room at the end of the verandah.

  It’s Thursday, the night you’re rostered to sit up watching television. At six o’clock, when the other men are going into their cells, you go into the television room with the four who are rostered with you and the screws lock the door behind you. There’s a billiard table in the middle of the room and the television set is up on a high stand near the window. The five of you move your chairs into position near the billiard table so you can rest your feet on the side of it if you want to. Or you can pull two chairs together to make a couch and lie full length. There’s Bill Greene and Ray Hoad and Zurka and another man named Williamson, whom they call The Wild Man as a joke because he’s so timid. The Wild Man has got a brass whistle and a cigarette lighter the screws gave him. It’s forbidden to take your own matches or lighter into the television room at night, so they let The Wild Man have an official lighter for the five men. Nobody uses it. They all bring their own lights anyway. The whistle is to call the screws from the office if anyone goes berserk or anything. The Wild Man is very embarrassed about having the whistle.

  “Blow yer whistle, mate,” Bill Greene says to him.

  The Wild Man grins, very sheepishly.

  “Give it a blast. Go on,” says Ray Hoad.

  “No, it’s all right,” says The Wild Man.

  “You’d better test it,” says Ray Hoad. “The pea might’ve fell out.”

  “I heard something drop,” says Bill Greene.

  “Jesus, The Wild Man’s lost his pea!” cries Ray Hoad.

  “He’ll be buggered without it,” says Bill Greene.

  “Sure it’s not in yer pocket?” says Ray Hoad.

  “Turn ’em out,” says Bill Greene. He starts helping to turn out The Wild Man’s pockets.

  “That pea’s government property!” says Ray Hoad.

  “The whistle won’t work without it,” says Bill Greene.

  “What if somebody goes berserk?” says Ray Hoad.

  “There’ll be murder done!” says Bill Greene. “Blood all over the room!” says Ray Hoad. “They’ll probably tear The Wild Man to bits!” “It’s his own fault. Won’t keep his bloody whistle in workin’ order.”

  They both look solemnly at The Wild Man. “Yer in a tight corner, mate.” “Up shit creek!” “Without a paddle.”

  Bill and Ray make a show of conferring together.

  “D’you reckon we can do anything?”

  “We’ll do what we can.”

  “But we can’t promise anything.”

  “No.”

  “We might be able to save him from gettin’ killed.” “Just depends.”

  “He might get hurt pretty bad.”

  “Luck of the game.”

  “He’s not a bad sort of a bloke.”

  “Good fella.”

  “Except for his temper.”

  “I forgot about that.”

  “Ya can’t hold him when he gets goin’.”

  “He goes berserk.”

  “He might go off any minute.”

  “Look at his face.”

  “It’s turnin’ savage.”

  “Blow the whistle, mate.”

  “Can’t. The fuckin’ pea’s lost!”

  The Wild Man is still grinning. Sheepish. He’s used to this. There’s a musical show on, and a beautiful girl is singing “Help Me Make it Through the Night”. The camera is right up on her face and lips and you can see the little throbbing pulse in her throat when she sings the long notes, and when the camera draws back, you see the swell of breasts out of her dress and then her leg through a slit at the side. The men are all quiet, watching, not wanting the song to stop.

  You’re not thinking about sex, exactly, but about something more, something harder to put into words, as though the girl isn’t just one girl, but all the girls and women in the world wrapped into herself. You keep your eyes on her until the song’s finished and then you realise you’re feeling miserable all of a sudden. A drama show comes on, with police cars and sirens and a lot of punching and chasing up fire escapes. It seems stupid. You stand looking out of the window at the dark night. There are some trees being blown by the wind. If you listen carefully when the television goes quiet for a moment you can hear the chain of the main gate clanking whenever a big gust comes.

  At eight o’clock the two night screws come in with the tea-urn. One of them is called Eddie. He’s got a sharp face and a way of sneering when he speaks. His favourite word is “fuck”. but he pronounces it “faaark”. like the cry of a crow.

  “Faaark, you blokes have it easy,” Eddie says to us. “Nobody brings me a cuppa, not even me faaarkin missus.”

  “Well, you wouldn’t be bri
ngin’ us one either if it wasn’t in the regulations,” says Ray Hoad. Ray isn’t afraid of screws.

  “Faaarkin oath I wouldn’t!” says Eddie. “If I was in control I’d have all you faaarkin blokes put down.”

  “Thousands ’ud agree with ya,” says Ray Hoad.

  “That’s faaarkin right. Why should the taxpayers be keepin’ you cunts in food and clothes?”

  “If it wasn’t for us, you’d be out of a job.”

  “Don’t faaarkin kid yerself!”

  Everyone is pretending that this is just a bit of friendly banter.

  “Hitler had the right faaarkin idea. Crims, pervs, poofters, all into the faaarkin oven.”

  “What about morons?” says Bill Greene, looking directly at Eddie.

  “Faaarkin morons too!”

  Eddie and the other screw go out and lock the door behind them.

  “Faaark. Faaark. Faaark,” croaks Bill Greene, flapping his elbows like a giant crow. Then he farts loudly.

  At nine-thirty we’re put to bed. After the screws have gone and everything is quiet, you lie listening to the wind. The moon is near the top of your window and throws a silver sheen against the foot of the bed. You sleep for a while. Then you are awake and someone is shouting from one of the cells. George Pratt is yelling that the “Sallies” are after him. He’s got an obsession about the Salvation Army, and often shouts in the night like this. Voices from other cells are telling him to shut up. Then you hear the screws in the corridor, and Eddie’s voice.

  “Shut yer faaarkin noise or I’ll give yer a faaarkin needle in yer faaarkin bum!”

  George Pratt’s yells fade to low sobbing and you go back to sleep.

  2

  You’ve been here a few weeks now.

  It’s hard sometimes, having to go into your cell at six o’clock every night, especially on hot stuffy nights when the walls seem to press in on you and you know you won’t be able to sleep for hours yet and you don’t feel like reading. You can stand at your window and look out at the patch of grass and wall and the dulling edge of sky above the wall, but you’ve stared at them so often and so long that they seem to be closing in on you too, just like the cell. At times you feel so closed in you almost panic and have to get a grip on yourself. And when you’ve got your panic under control a little and are feeling better, you realise you’ve only been in the cell for maybe an hour and there are more hours to go before you’ll be able to sleep, then you get panicky again. All you can do is lie on your bed, with your face turned away from the light and think, except that you don’t want to think too much.

  The cell is about the same size as the little rented room you had when you were free. You lie thinking about the last night in that room, when you were preparing to do the thing that you got the Life Sentence for.

  You were sawing the barrel from a .22 rifle. The hacksaw blade was too light for gunmetal and kept bending and warping. You were also worried about the noise of it. The walls were very thin and you were afraid the men in the other rooms might get suspicious. They might even be spying through some crack or peephole, though you’d often examined the walls for openings and could find none. Still, you couldn’t be sure, and the thought bothered you, especially whenever you masturbated.

  When the barrel was off you began sawing the stock, halting every few seconds to listen. The stock came away after a long time. You put the sawn off pieces in the bottom of your wardrobe and then sat looking at the gun. It was small and neat, yet somehow larger than itself, as though huge forces lay inside it. You imagined it displayed one day in a glass case with a printed card describing what it had done.

  For a long time you stood posing with the gun in front of the dressing table mirror, striking attitudes, experimenting with angles and postures. It was a new self you saw: the set of the shoulder, the curve of the cheekbone, the elbow cradling the gun, all seemed suddenly significant. You felt a kind of hum coming from inside yourself, like the hum of a live bomb.

  You were thinking, again, about the problem of the photograph. It seemed impossible. You’d wanted to leave a picture of yourself where the police and reporters could find it; one showing you at just the right angle, with the gun held just so, and a smile on your lips. The smile was important. You weren’t a glowering maniac, but a young instrument of fate. A blond death bringer. Your smile, frozen forever on the photo, would symbolise the poignant tragedy of everything. The picture mustn’t look posed, though, more like a lucky accident that future historians would be grateful for. But how to do it? You couldn’t ask anyone to photograph you. You knew nobody. Besides, the gun would cause alarm. For weeks you thought you’d had the answer—you’d take a photo of yourself in the mirror: then you realised you’d only get a picture of yourself taking a picture. You weren’t stupid, exactly; it was just that your mind ran into blind alleys like that. Now it was too late to arrange anything. You didn’t have a camera nor any money to buy one. The last of your money had gone on the gun.

  You’d put the gun back into the brown paper wrapping and into the old carry-bag with the box of bullets. You thought vaguely of trying to tidy up the room. The police and reporters would be coming here and you wanted to make the right impression. Some things would have to be got rid of, such as the pile of girlie magazines. They weren’t part of the image. The police and reporters would snigger and think you were one of those men who can’t get a girlfriend. They wouldn’t understand how you had chosen to live without girls and all that stuff. Had chosen the harsh road of destiny. They’d just think you were inadequate.

  You began to feel that sweaty, nervous arousal that always came on you when you’d been thinking too long and too hard. All day you’d been preoccupied with the gun and the plans and now your mind was starting to race and whirl, like an epileptic’s brain when a fit is coming. Masturbation was the best thing then, because it made you calm afterwards and stopped the racing and whirling in your head.

  You sat pondering the problem of Mrs Cassidy’s bra again. Mrs Cassidy was the landlady. A big, talkative woman with floppy breasts that swung and wobbled inside her blouse. She hung her washing, including underwear, on the clothesline near the door of your room. You wanted to steal her bra and masturbate with it. It would be tricky. You’d have to do it under cover of darkness. You could keep the bra until just before dawn and then return it to the line. It made you terribly excited, thinking what you could do with Mrs Cassidy’s bra. You could ejaculate into the cups. The sperm would dry and probably be unnoticeable against the white of the fabric. Mrs Cassidy might then wear it, actually wear your dried sperm against her nipples! You got a big horn just imagining it.

  You opened the door and looked out into the yard to where the bra dangled almost within reach. Your heart hammered loudly. Then, as always, you got scared at the last moment. Perhaps the bra had been set as a trap. Everyone in the house thought you peculiar. They might have a system for keeping you under surveillance, watching the clothesline day and night. No, you weren’t going to fall for it.

  Mrs Cassidy cleaned your room every day. You would rather she didn’t, but she just barged in with her own key when you were at work. For that reason, you kept the girlie magazines locked in the wardrobe. She, too, would misunderstand about them. Once, though, you’d deliberately left them out where she’d see them, excited by the thought of what her thoughts might be. Seeing the magazines, she might visualise you masturbating, naked and sweating on the bed. Many times since then you’d masturbated over your own mental picture of her mental picture of yourself.

  All that was safe, or as safe as anything sexual could be. As long as you never actually showed sexual feelings to anyone you could feel in control of the situation. Even leaving the magazines for Mrs Cassidy to see was fairly safe. Even if she did have the thoughts you imagined her having, she’d blame her own dirty mind and you wouldn’t be implicated. In your dealings with Mrs Cassidy, and everyone else, you came across as a polite, aloof young man with important things on his mind. So
metimes Mrs Cassidy and her male lodgers sat drinking beer in the kitchen, laughing and joking for hours. They’d invited you to join them at the beginning. Of course you never did. You were too shrewd to be caught like that. They never asked you again.

  At work, too, you kept apart. The noise of the machinery in the factory was maddening, but at least it prevented conversation. At smoko and lunchtime, when the other men sat outside against the wall and talked about cars and football and sex, you always went down the street and sat in a quiet spot by yourself where you could think your own thoughts. That was the great thing, to be able to think, and you couldn’t do it with people around. Sometimes you felt as if you had hardly any body at all, just thoughts. There were even moments when you’d suddenly become aware of your body … a hand … a foot … and been astounded that you were an actual person with flesh and hair.

  Now you hadn’t been to work for several days. There wasn’t any point.

  The sexual arousal had gone. You sat staring around the room. You thought again of tidying up, but it seemed too much trouble. Torn butts of cinema tickets lay on the floor. Films were your only luxury and you spent most of your money on them. In a cinema you could float out of yourself into the bodyless world of feeling on the screen. To stop being yourself was lovely, it was happiness. Films had one terrible drawback though … they came to an end. The lights always came on and the real world was there waiting.

  Last night you’d seen “Dr Zhivago” for the seventh time and the return afterwards had been very bad. The final scene, where Lara walks out into the street under huge portraits of Lenin and Stalin, to disappear forever, “a nameless number on a list afterwards mislaid”. had filled you with a sort of ecstasy of grief.

  You wanted to explode, literally, like a skyrocket, into nothingness. That was feeling, pure, untouchable, and you’d gladly have died right there in the seat rather than return to yourself and face the street outside with its squalor of traffic and people.

  On the bus ride home you tried to keep that scene unspoiled in your mind, staring straight ahead with blank eyes like a shellshock victim, and whispering “Lara, Lara” under your breath. It was no use. The conductor came for the fare. Then a fat man sat beside you. The dirt on the floor and the traffic and the grinding of the bus’s gears and the press of the fat man crept steadily through your consciousness until Lara was completely gone and all beauty and feeling with her. You were just yourself again, a shabby youth on a dirty bus. You knew it couldn’t continue.