Кен Кизи – One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest / Пролетая над гнездом кукушки (страница 6)

He conducts these tours – serious women in blazer jackets, who nod to him as he points out how much things have become better over the years. He points out the TV, the big leather chairs, the sanitary drinking fountains; then they all go and have coffee in the Nurse’s Station.

Ten-forty, – forty-five, – fifty: patients go in and out of little rooms to different appointments for treatment.

The ward is a factory for the Combine. The hospital is for fixing up mistakes made in the neighborhoods and in the schools and in the churches. When a finished product goes back out into society, all fixed up, good as new, better than new sometimes, it brings joy to the Big Nurse’s heart; something that came in all twisted different is now a functioning, adjusted component. He’s adjusted to surroundings finally…

“Why, I’ve never seen anything like the change in Maxwell Taber since he’s got back from that hospital; a little black and blue around the eyes, a little weight lost, and, you know what? he’s a new man. God, modern American science…”

And the light is on in his basement window long after midnight every night as the Delayed Reaction,which the technicians installed in him, lend speed to his fingers as he bends over the drugged figure of his wife, his two little girls just four and six, the neighbor he goes bowling with on Mondays; he adjusts them as he was adjusted. This is the way they spread it.

When he finally dies after a pre-set number of years, the town loves him dearly, and there’s his picture in the paper, showing him helping the Boy Scouts last year on Graveyard Cleaning Day, and his wife gets a letter from the headmaster of the high school how Maxwell Wilson Taber was an inspirational figure to the youth of our fine community.

A successful Dismissal like this is a product that brings joy to the Big Nurse’s heart and speaks high of her skills and the whole industry in general. Everybody’s happy with a Dismissal.

But an Admission is a different story. Even the best-behaved Admission must be taught routine. An Admission might really make a hell of a mess and be a threat to the order. And, as I explain, the Big Nurse gets really angry if anything threatens her smooth organization.

At ten minutes to one the black boys are telling Acutes to clear the floor for the group meeting. All the tables are carried out of the day room.

The Big Nurse watches all this through her window. The day-room floor gets cleared of tables, and at one o’clock the doctor comes out of his office down the hall, nods once at the nurse as he goes past her window, and sits in his chair just to the left of the door. The patients sit down when he does; then the little nurses and the residents come in. When everybody’s down, the Big Nurse comes out into the day room, carrying the logbook and a basket full of notes. She sits just to the right of the door.

Soon after she’s sat down, Old Pete Bancini turns his face to McMurphy and starts complaining. “I’m tired. Whew. O Lord. Oh, I’m awfully tired…” he always does so whenever there’s a new man on the ward who might listen to him.

The Big Nurse doesn’t look at Pete. She’s going through the papers in her basket. “Somebody, go and sit beside Mr. Bancini,” she says. “Quiet him down so we can start the meeting.”

Billy Bibbit goes, sits down beside Pete and pats his knee. Pete realizes that nobody is going to listen to his complaint today. The nurse takes off her wrist watch and looks at the ward clock and puts the watch face toward her in the basket. She takes a folder from the basket.

“Now. Shall we get into the meeting?”

She looks around, smiling. The guys don’t look at her; they’re all looking at their nails. Except McMurphy. He’s sitting in an armchair in the corner, and he’s watching her every move. He’s still wearing his cap. A deck of cards in his lap opens and shuts with a loud sound. The nurse’s eyes stay on him for a second. She’s been watching his playing poker all morning and though no money has passed hands she suspects that he’s not exactly the type that is going to be happy with the ward rule of gambling for matches only. The deck opens and shuts again and then disappears somewhere in one of those big palms.

The nurse looks at her watch again and pulls a piece of paper out of the folder she’s holding, looks at it, and returns it to the folder. She puts the folder down and picks up the logbook.

“Now. At the end of Friday’s meeting… we were discussing Mr. Harding’s problem… concerning his young wife. He had stated that his wife’s bosom attracted stares from men on the street and that this made him uneasy.” She opens a place in the logbook. “According to the notes in the logbook, Mr. Harding says that she ’damn well gives the bastards reason to stare’. He also says that he knows her reason to look for sexual attention. He says, ’My dear sweet but illiterate wife thinks that any word or gesture that isn’t brutal is a word or gesture of weak dandyism’.”

She continues reading silently from the book for a while, then closes it.

“He has also stated that his wife’s big bosom at times gives him a feeling of inferiority. So. Does anyone care to touch upon this subject further?”

Harding shuts his eyes, and nobody else says anything. McMurphy looks around at the other guys to see if anybody is going to answer the nurse, then holds his hand up like a school kid in class; the nurse nods at him.

“Mr. – ah – McMurry?”

“Touch upon what?”

“What? Touch–”

“You ask, I believe, ’Does anyone care to touch upon’–”

“Touch upon the – subject, Mr. McMurry, the subject of Mr. Harding’s problem with his wife.”

“Oh. I thought you mean touch upon her – something else.”

“Now what could you —”

But she stops. Some of the Acutes hide grins, and McMurphy stretches himself, yawns, winks at Harding. Then the nurse, calm as anything, puts the logbook back in the basket and takes out another folder and opens it and starts reading.

“McMurry, Randle Patrick. Sent by the state from the Pendleton Farm for Correction.For diagnosis and possible treatment. Thirty-five years old. Never married. Distinguished Service Cross in Korea, for leading an escape from a Communist prison camp. A dishonorable discharge, afterward, for insubordination. Followed by a history of street brawls and barroom fights and a series of arrests for Drunkenness, Assault and Battery, Disturbing the Peace, repeated gambling, and one arrest – for Rape.”

“Rape?” The doctor looks up.

“Statutory, with a girl of —”

“Whoa. Couldn’t stick that,” McMurphy says to the doctor. “Girl wouldn’t testify.”

“With a child of fifteen.”

“Said she was seventeen, Doc, and she was plenty willin’.”

“A court doctor’s examination of the child proved entry, repeated entry, the record states —”

“So willin’, in fact, I began to sew my pants shut.”

“The child refused to testify in spite of the doctor’s findings. It seems, there was intimidation. Defendant left town shortly after the trial.”

“Hoo boy, I had to leave. Doc, let me tell you” – he leans forward to the doctor across the room, lowering his voice – “that little hustler would have actually frazzled me by the time she reached legal sixteen.”

The nurse closes up the folder and passes it across the doorway to the doctor.

The doctor puts his glasses on. He’s smiling a little as he turns through the folder, but he doesn’t let himself laugh. The doctor closes the folder when he gets to the end, and puts his glasses back in his pocket. He looks at McMurphy.

“You’ve no other psychiatric history, Mr. McMurry?”

“McMurphy, Doc.”

“Oh? But I thought – the nurse was saying —”

He opens the folder again, looks through the record for another minute before he closes it, and puts his glasses back in his pocket. “Yes. McMurphy. That is correct. I beg your pardon.”

“It’s okay, Doc. That lady there made the mistake. I’ve known some people who did that. I had this uncle whose name was Hallahan, and he went with a woman once who acted as if she couldn’t remember his name right and called him Hooligan just to get his goat. It went on for months before he stopped her. Stopped her well, too.”

“Oh? How did he stop her?” the doctor asks.

McMurphy grins and rubs his nose with his thumb. “Ah-ah, now, I can’t tell that. I keep Uncle Hallahan’s method a strict secret, you see, in case I need to use it myself someday.”

He says it and looks right at the nurse. She smiles right back at him, and he looks over at the doctor. “Now; what were you asking about my record, Doc?”

“Yes. I asked if you’ve any previous psychiatric history. Any analysis, any time spent in any other institution?”

“Well, speaking of state and county coolers —”

“Mental institutions.”

“Ah. No, this is my first trip. But I am crazy, Doc. I really am. Well here – let me show you here. I believe that other doctor at the work farm…”

He gets up and comes across the room, leans over the doctor’s shoulder and thumbs through the folder in his lap. “Believe he wrote something, back at the back here somewhere…”

“Yes? I missed that. Just a moment.” The doctor takes his glasses out again and puts them on and looks to where McMurphy is pointing.