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

case, chose your cell- or rather ward-mate personally.
    ALEXANDER: He might kill me.
    DOCTOR: We have to assume that Rozinsky knows what’s best for you; though in my opinion you need a psychiatrist.
    ALEXANDER: You mean he’s not really a doctor?
    DOCTOR: Of course he’s a doctor and he is proud to serve the State in any capacity, but he was not actually trained in psychiatry
as such
.
    ALEXANDER: What is his speciality?
    DOCTOR: Semantics. He’s a Doctor of Philology, whatever that means. I’m told he’s a genius.
    ALEXANDER: (
Angrily
) I won’t see him.
    DOCTOR: It may not be necessary. It seems to me that the best answer is for you to go home. Would Thursday suit you?
    ALEXANDER: Thursday?
    DOCTOR: Why not? There is an Examining Commission on Wednesday. We shall aim at curing your schizophrenia by Tuesday night, if possible by seven o’clock because I have a concert. (
He produces a large blue pill box
.) Take one of these every four hours.
    ALEXANDER: What are they?
    DOCTOR: A mild laxative.
    ALEXANDER: For schizophrenia?
    DOCTOR: The layman often doesn’t realize that medicine advances in a series of imaginative leaps.
    ALEXANDER: I see. Well, I suppose I’ll have to read
War and Peace
some other time.
    DOCTOR: Yes. Incidentally, when you go before the Commission try not to make any remark which might confuse them. I shouldn’t mention
War and Peace
unless they mention it first. The sort of thing I’d stick to is ‘Yes’, if they ask you whether you agree you were mad; ‘No’, if they ask you whether you intend to persist in your slanders; ‘Definitely’, if they ask you whether your treatment has been satisfactory, and ‘Sorry’, if they ask you how you feel about it all, or if you didn’t catch the question.
    ALEXANDER: I was never mad, and my treatment was barbaric.
    DOCTOR: Stupidity is one thing I can’t cure. I have to show that I have treated you. You have to recant and show gratitude for the treatment. We have to act together.
    ALEXANDER: The KGB broke my door and frightened my son and my mother-in-law. My madness consisted of writing to various people about a friend of mine who is in prison. This friend was twice put in mental hospitals for political reasons, and then they arrested him for saying that sane people were put in mental hospitals, and then they put him in prison because he was sane when he said this; and I said so, andthey put me in a mental hospital. And you are quite right—in the Arsenal’naya they have cells. There are bars on the windows, peepholes in the doors, and the lights burn all night. It is run just like a gaol, with warders and trusties, but the regime is more strict, and the male nurses are convicted criminals serving terms for theft and violent crimes, and they beat and humiliate the patients and steal their food, and are protected by the doctors, some of whom wear KGB uniforms under their white coats. For the politicals, punishment and medical treatment are intimately related. I was given injections of aminazin, sulfazin, triftazin, haloperidol and insulin, which caused swellings, cramps, headaches, trembling, fever and the loss of various abilities including the ability to read, write, sleep, sit, stand, and button my trousers. When all this failed to improve my condition, I was stripped and bound head to foot with lengths of wet canvas. As the canvas dried it became tighter and tighter until I lost consciousness. They did this to me for ten days in a row, and still my condition did not improve.
Then I went on hunger strike. And when they saw I intended to die they lost their nerve. And now you think I’m going to crawl out of here, thanking them for curing me of my delusions? Oh no. They lost. And they will have to see that it is so. They have forgotten their mortality. Losing might be their first touch of it for a long time.
( DOCTOR
picks up his violin
.)
    DOCTOR: What about your