Every Good Boy Deserves Favor and Professional Foul Read Online Free Page A

(
Cries
) Papa!
    ALEXANDER: —and then they gave in. And when I was well enough they brought me here.
This means they have decided to let me go. It is much harder to get from Arsenal’naya to a civil hospital than from a civil hospital to the street. But it has to be done right. They don’t want to lose ground. They need a formula. It will take a little time but that’s all right. I shall read
War and Peace
.
Everything is going to be all right.
(
Orchestra
.)
    SCHOOL
    This scene is enclosed inside music which ends up as the
DOCTOR ’
s violin solo into the following scene
.
    SACHA: A triangle is the shortest distance between three points.
    TEACHER: Rubbish.
    SACHA: A circle is the longest distance to the same point.
    TEACHER: Sacha!
    SACHA: A plane area bordered by high walls is a prison not a hospital.
    TEACHER: Be quiet!
    SACHA: I don’t care!—he was never sick at home. Never!
(
Music
.)
    TEACHER: Stop crying.
(
Music
.)
Everything is going to be all right.
(
Music to violin solo.
Lights fade on
SCHOOL. )
    OFFICE
    DOCTOR
in his
OFFICE
playing violin solo. Violin cuts out
.
    DOCTOR: Come in.
( ALEXANDER
enters the
DOCTOR ’
s light
.)
    DOCTOR: Hello. Sit down please. Do you play a musical instrument?
    ALEXANDER: (
Taken aback
) Are you a patient?
    DOCTOR: (
Cheerfully
) No, I am a doctor.
You
are a patient. It’s a distinction which we try to keep going here, though I’m told it’s coming under scrutiny in more advanced circles of psychiatric medicine. (
He carefully puts his violin into its case
.) (
Sententiously
) Yes, if everybody in the world played a violin, I’d be out of a job.
    ALEXANDER: As a psychiatrist?
    DOCTOR: No, as a violinist. The psychiatric hospitals would be packed to the doors. You obviously don’t know much about musicians. Welcome to the Third Civil Mental Hospital. What can I do for you?
    ALEXANDER: I have a complaint.
    DOCTOR: (
Opening file
) Yes, I know—pathological development of the personality with paranoid delusions.
    ALEXANDER: No, there’s nothing the matter with me.
    DOCTOR: (
Closing file
) There you are, you see.
    ALEXANDER: My complaint is about the man in my cell.
    DOCTOR: Ward.
    ALEXANDER: He thinks he has an orchestra.
    DOCTOR: Yes, he has an identity problem. I forget his name.
    ALEXANDER: His behaviour is aggressive.
    DOCTOR: He complains about you, too. Apparently you cough during the diminuendos.
    ALEXANDER: Is there anything you can do?
    DOCTOR: Certainly. (
Producing a red pill box from the drawer
.) Suck one of these every four hours.
    ALEXANDER: But he’s a raving lunatic.
    DOCTOR: Of course. The idea that all the people locked up in mental hospitals are sane while the people walking about outside are all mad is merely a literary conceit, put about by people who should be locked up. I assure you there’s not much in it. Taken as a whole, the sane are out there and the sick are in here. For example,
you
are here because you have delusions, that sane people are put in mental hospitals.
    ALEXANDER: But I
am
in a mental hospital.
    DOCTOR: That’s what I said. If you’re not prepared to discuss your case rationally, we’re going to go round in circles. Did you say you
didn’t
play a musical instrument, by the way?
    ALEXANDER: No. Could I be put in a cell on my own?
    DOCTOR: Look, let’s get this clear. This is what is called an
Ordinary
Psychiatric Hospital, that is to say a civil mental hospital coming under the Ministry of Heath, and we have
wards
. Cells is what they have in prisons, and also, possibly, in what are called
Special
Psychiatric Hospitals, which come under the Ministry of Internal Affairs and are for prisoners who represent a special danger to society. Or rather, patients. No, you didn’t say, or no you don’t play one?
    ALEXANDER: Could I be put in a ward on my own?
    DOCTOR: I’m afraid not. Colonel—or rather Doctor—Rozinsky, who has taken over your