Кен Кизи – One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest / Пролетая над гнездом кукушки (страница 8)
“Ol’ man, I say you got —”
He saw the fist, but he was a bit too late. Pete’s fist pressed the black boy into the wall, the plaster cracked and he then slid down to the floor.
The nurse ordered the other two black boys to take Pete. They almost reached Pete when they remembered that Pete wasn’t wired under control like the rest of us.
Pete stood there in the middle of the floor, swinging that fist back and forth at his side. Everybody was watching him now. He looked from the big black boy to the little one, and when he saw that they weren’t going to come any closer he turned to the patients.
“You see – it’s a lot of boloney,” he told them, “it’s all a lot of boloney.”
The Big Nurse began to move toward her wicker bag. “Yes, yes, Mr. Bancini,” she was saying, “now if you’ll just be calm —”
“That’s all it is, a lot of boloney, nothing else.” His voice lost its strength, became urgent as if he didn’t have much time to finish what he had to say. “You see, I can’t help it, I can’t – don’t you see. I was born dead. Not you. You weren’t born dead. Ahhhh, it’s been hard…”
He started to cry. He couldn’t make the words come out right anymore; he opened and closed his mouth to talk but he couldn’t sort the words into sentences any more. He shook his head to clear it and blinked at the Acutes:
“Ahhhh, I… tell… you… I tell you.”
His fist became an open hand again. He held it cupped out in front of him as if he was offering something to the patients.
“I can’t help it. I was born a failure. I had so many injuries that I died. I was born dead. I can’t help it. I’m tired. I’m giving up trying. You got chances. You got it easy. I was born dead an’ life was hard. I’m tired. I’m tired out talking and standing up. I’ve been dead fifty-five years.”
The Big Nurse gave him a shot. There wasn’t really any need for the shot; his head had already begun to wag back and forth and his eyes were dull. The effort of the last couple of minutes had worn him out finally and completely, once and for all – you could just look at him and tell he was finished.
He had come to life for maybe a minute to try to tell us something, something none of us tried to understand, and the effort had drained him dry.
“I’m… tired…”
“Now. I think if you two boys are brave enough, Mr. Bancini will go to bed like a good fellow.”
“…aw-fully tired.”
Pete never tried anything like that again, and he never will. Now, when he starts acting up during a meeting and they try to calm him, he always calms. He’ll still get up from time to time and wag his head and let us know how tired he is, but it’s not a complaint or excuse or warning any more – he’s finished with that; it’s like an old useless clock that just keeps ticking and cuckooing without meaning nothing.
At two o’clock the group meeting is over.The nurse looks at her watch and tells us to bring the tables back into the room and we’ll resume this discussion again at one tomorrow. The Acutes click out of their trance, look for an instant in Harding’s direction. Their faces burn with shame; they feel that they have woken up to the fact that they have been played for fools again. They all are avoiding Harding. They’ve been maneuvered again into grilling one of their friends as if he was a criminal and they were all prosecutors and judge and jury. For forty-five minutes they have been cutting a man to pieces, almost as if they enjoyed it, asking him: What’s he think is the matter with him that he can’t please the little lady; why’s he insist that she has never had anything to do with another man; how’s he expect to get well if he doesn’t answer honestly? – questions and insinuations till now they feel bad about it.
McMurphy’s eyes follow all of this. He doesn’t get out of his chair. He looks puzzled again. He sits in his chair for a while, watching the Acutes.Then finally he stands up from his arm chair, yawns and stretches, and walks over to where Harding is off by himself.
McMurphy looks down at Harding a minute.Then he takes a nearby chair and straddle sit like a tiny horsein front of Harding. Harding is staring straight ahead, humming to himself, trying to look calm. But he isn’t calm at all.
McMurphy lights a cigarette, puts his cigarette between his teeth and looks at Harding for a while, then starts talking with that cigarette wagging up and down in his lips.
“Well say, buddy, is this the usual procedure for these Group Ther’py meetings?”
“Usual procedure?” Harding’s humming stops. He still stares ahead, past McMurphy’s shoulder.
“Flock of chickens at a peckin’ party?”
Harding’s head turns with a jerk and his eyes find McMurphy. He sits back in his chair and tries to look relaxed.
“A ’pecking’ party?” I fear I have not the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”
“Why then, I’ll just explain it to you.” McMurphy raises his voice. He doesn’t look at the other Acutes behind him, but he’s talking specially to them. “The flock gets sight of a spot of blood on some chicken and they all go to peck at it, see, till they tear the chicken to shreds, blood and bones and feathers. But usually a couple of the flock gets spots in the process, then it’s their turn. And a few more get spots and get pecked to death, and more and more. Oh, a peckin’ party can wipe out the whole flock in a matter of a few hours, buddy, I’ve seen it. A mighty awesome sight. The only way to prevent it – with chickens – is to put blinders on them. So’s they can’t see.”
Harding leans back in the chair. “A pecking party. That certainly is a pleasant analogy, my friend.”
“And that meeting, buddy, if you want to know the dirty truth, reminded me of a flock of dirty chickens.”
“So that makes me the chicken with the spot of blood, friend?”
“That’s right, buddy.”
“And you want to know somethin’ else, buddy? You want to know who pecks that first peck?”
Harding doesn’t answer and waits.
“It’s that old nurse, that’s who.”
Harding is trying to act calm.
“So,” he says, “it’s as simple as that, as stupidly simple as that. You’re on our ward six hours and have already simplified all the work of Freud, Jung, and Maxwell Jones and summed it up in one analogy: it’s a ’peckin party’.”
“I’m not talking about Fred Yoong and Maxwell Jones, buddy, I’m just talking about that meeting and what that nurse and those other bastards did to you.”
“Did to me?”
“That’s right. It seems that you have done something to make some enemies here in this place, buddy.”
“It seems that you don’t understand that any question or discussion raised by Miss Ratched is done solely for therapeutic reasons? I see that you haven’t understood a word of Doctor Spivey’s theory of the Therapeutic Community. I’m disappointed in you, my friend, oh, very disappointed. This morning I thought that you were more intelligent. But I was mistaken.”
“The hell with you, buddy.”
“Oh, yes; I forgot to add that I noticed your primitive brutality also this morning. Psychopath with definite sadistic tendencies, probably motivated by an egomania. Yes. As you see, all these natural talents certainly make you a competent therapist quite capable of criticizing Miss Ratched’s meeting procedure, in spite of the fact that she is an experienced psychiatric nurse with twenty years in the field. Yes, with your talent, my friend, you could work subconscious miracles, soothe the aching identity and heal the wounded superego. You could probably cure the whole ward, Vegetables and all, in six short months.”
McMurphy asks him calmly, “And you really think that these meetings are to cure you?”
“The staff desires our cure as much as we do. They aren’t monsters. Miss Ratched may be a strict middle-aged lady, but she’s not some kind of giant monster of the poultry clan, sadistically pecking out our eyes.”
“No, buddy, not that. She isn’t peckin’ at your eyes. She’s peckin’ at your balls, buddy, at your everlovin’ balls.”
Harding tries to grin, but his face and lips are so white that the grin is lost. He stares at McMurphy. McMurphy takes the cigarette out of his mouth and repeats what he said.
“Right at your balls. No, that nurse isn’t some kind of monster chicken, buddy, she is a ball-cutter. I’ve seen a thousand of ’em, old and young, men and women. Seen ’em all over the country and in the homes – people who try to make you weak so that they can make you follow their rules, live according to their rules. And the best way to do this, to make you knuckle under, is to weaken you by gettin you where it hurts the worst. If you’re in a fight against a guy who wants to win by making you weaker, then watch for his knee, he’s gonna go for your balls. There’s nothing worse. It makes you sick, it takes every bit of strength you got. And that’s what that old buzzard is doing, going for your balls, your vitals.”
“Our dear Miss Ratched? Our sweet, smiling, tender angel of mercy, Mother Ratched, a ball-cutter? Why, friend, that’s most unlikely.”
“Buddy, don’t give me that tender little mother crap. She may be a mother, but she’s tough as knife metal. She fooled me with that kindly little old mother bit for maybe three minutes when I came in this morning, but no longer. I don’t think she’s really fooled any of you guys for any six months or a year, neither. Hooowee, I’ve seen some bitches in my time, but she takes the cake.”