Кен Кизи – One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest / Пролетая над гнездом кукушки (страница 7)

“Right here, Doc. The nurse didn’t read it while she was summarizing my record. Where it says, ’Mr. McMurphy has evidenced repeated – I just want to make sure I’m understood completely, Doc – ’repeated outbreaks of passion that suggest the possible diagnosis of psychopath.’ He told me that ’psychopath’ means I fight and fuh – pardon me, ladies – means that I am, as he put it, overzealous in my sexual relations. Doctor, is that very serious?”

He asks it with such a little-boy look of worry all over his broad, tough face that the doctor bends his head to hide another little smile in his collar, and his glasses fall from his nose back in his pocket. All of the Acutes are smiling too, now, and even some of the Chronics.

“I mean that overzealousness, Doc, have you ever been troubled by it?”

The doctor wipes his eyes. “No, Mr. McMurphy, I’ll admit I haven’t. I am interested, however, that the doctor at the work farm added this statement: ’But there’s the possibility that this man might be feigning psychosis to escape the hard work of the work farm’.” He looks up at McMurphy. “And what about that, Mr. McMurphy?”

“Doctor” – he stands up to his full height, wrinkles his forehead, and holds out both arms, open and honest to all the wide world – “do I look like a saneman?”

The doctor can’t answer because he tries not to snigger again. McMurphy turns away from the doctor and asks the same thing of the Big Nurse: “Do I?” She doesn’t answer. She stands up and takes the folder away from the doctor and puts it back in the basket under her watch. She sits back down.

“Perhaps, Doctor, you should advise Mr. McMurry on the rules of these Group Meetings.”

“Ma’am,” McMurphy says, “have I told you about my uncle Hallahan and the woman who didn’t pronounce his name properly?”

She looks at him for a long time without her smile. Finally she says, “I beg your pardon, Mack-Murph-y.” She turns back to the doctor. “Now, Doctor, if you would explain…”

The doctor folds his hands and leans back. “Yes. I think I’ll explain the complete theory of our Therapeutic Community, while we’re at it. Though I usually speak about it later. Yes. A good idea, Miss Ratched, a fine idea.”

“Certainly the theory too, doctor, but what I had in mind was the rule that the patients stay seated during the meeting”.

“Yes. Of course. Then I will explain the theory. Mr. McMurphy, one of the first things is that the patients stay seated during the meeting.”

“Sure, Doctor. I just got up to show you that thing in my record book.”

He goes back to his chair, stretches himself again and yawns, sits down, and moves around for a while like a dog coming to rest. When he’s comfortable, he looks over at the doctor, waiting.

“As to the theory…” The doctor takes a deep, happy breath.

McMurphy doesn’t say anything all the rest of the meeting. Just sits and watches and doesn’t miss a thing that happens or a word that’s said. The doctor talks about his theory until the Big Nurse finally decides he’s used up time enough and asks him to stop so they can talk about Harding, and they talk the rest of the meeting about that.

McMurphy sits forward in his chair a couple of times during the meeting as if he might have something to say, but he decides better and leans back. There’s a puzzled expression on his face. He thinks that something strange is going on here. He can’t quite put his finger on it. There’s something strange about a place where the men don’t laugh, something strange about the way they all knuckle under to that smiling flour-faced old mother there with the too-red lipstick and the too-big boobs. And he thinks that he’ll just wait awhile and see what the story is in this new place before he makes any kind of play. That’s a good rule for a clever gambler: watch the game awhile before you draw yourself a hand.

I’ve heard that theory of the Therapeutic Community enough times to repeat it forwards and backwards – how a guy has to learn to get along in a group before he’ll be able to function in a normal society; how the group can help the guy by showing him where he’s out of place; that society decides who’s sane and who isn’t. The doctor goes into the theory every time we get a new patient on the ward. He says that the goal of the Therapeutic Community is a democratic ward; the patients themselves run this ward and work toward becoming normal citizens, who will go back Outside onto the street. He says that the chief method of therapy is the discussing of all personal, emotional problems in the group,in front of patients and staff. Talk, he says, discuss, confess. And if a friend says something during the course of your everyday conversation, write it down in the logbook, where the staff can see it. It’s not, as the movies call it, “squealing,” it’s helping your fellow. Bring these old sins into the open, participate in Group Discussion, help yourself and your friends probe into the secrets of the subconscious. There should be no need for secrets among friends.

Our goal, he usually ends by saying, is to make this as much like your own democratic, free neighborhoods as possible – a little world Inside that is a small prototype of the big world Outside in which you will one day take your place again.

At this point the Big Nurse usually stops him, and in the pause old Pete stands up and tells everybody how tired he is, and the nurse tells somebody to calm him, so the meeting can continue, and Pete is usually calmed and the meeting goes on.

Only once, four or five years ago, it was different. The doctor had finished his speech, and the nurse had asked, “Who will start? Tell us about those old secrets.” And she’d put all the Acutes in a trance by sitting there in silence for twenty minutes after the question. When twenty minutes had passed, she looked at her watch and said, “So, there’s not a man among you that has done something that he has never confessed?” She reached in the basket for the logbook. “Must we go over past history?”

At the sound of those words coming from her mouth, some acoustic device in the walls turned on. The Acutes stiffened. Their mouths opened in unison. Her eyes stopped on the first man along the wall.

His mouth worked. “I robbed a cash register in a service station.”

She moved to the next man.

“I tried to take my little sister to bed.”

Her eyes clicked to the next man.

“I – one time – wanted to take my brother to bed.”

“I killed my cat when I was six. Oh, God forgive me, I stoned her to death and said my neighbor did it.”

“I lied about trying. I did take my sister!”

“So did I! So did I!”

“And me! And me!”

It was better than she’d dreamed. They were all shouting, telling things that wouldn’t ever let them look one another in the eye again. The nurse was nodding at each confession and saying ’Yes, yes, yes’.

Then old Pete was on his feet. “I’m tired!” he shouted, a strong, angry tone to his voice that no one had ever heard before.

Everyone stopped shouting. They were somehow ashamed. It was as if he had suddenly said something that was real and true and important and it had put all their childish shouting to shame. The Big Nurse was furious. She turned and glared at him, the smile left her face.

“Somebody, calm poor Mr. Bancini,” she said.

Two or three got up. They tried to calm, pat him on his shoulder. But Pete didn’t stop. “Tired! Tired!” he kept on.

Finally the nurse sent one of the black boys to take him out of the day room by force. She forgot that the black boys didn’t hold any control over people like Pete.

Pete’s been a Chronic all his life. Even though he didn’t come into the hospital till he was over fifty, he’d always been a Chronic. His head had been traumatized at the time of his birth by the tongs with which the doctor had jerked him out. And this made him forever as simple as a kid of six.

But one good thing – being simple like that put him out of the influence of the Combine. They weren’t able to adjust him. So they let him get a simple job on the railroad, where he waved a red, green or yellow lantern at the trains according to the position of the switch. And his head wagged according to the position of that switch. And he never had any controls installed in him.

That’s why the black boy didn’t have any influence over him. But the black boy didn’t think of that any more than the nurse did when she ordered to take Pete from the day room. The black boy walked right up and gave Pete’s arm a jerk toward the door.

“Tha’s right, Pete. Let’s go to the dorm.”

Pete shook his arm free. “I’m tired,” he warned.

“C’mon, old man. Let’s go to bed and be still like a good boy.”

“Tired…”

“I said you goin’ to the dorm, old man!”

The black boy jerked at his arm again, Pete stopped wagging his head. He stood up straight and steady, and his eyes came clear as blue neon. And the hand on that arm that the black boy was holding became a strong fist. Nobody was paying any attention to this old guy and his old song about being tired. Everybody thought that he would be calmed down as usual and the meeting would go on. They didn’t see the hand that had turned into a strong fist. Only I saw it. I stared at it and waited, while the black boy gave Pete’s arm another jerk toward the dorm.