The Treatment and the Cure (11 page)

You’ve arrived, and had the standard pep-talk from the Charge, and now you’re sitting on the verandah trying to keep the exact mixture of expressions on your face to show gladness and gratitude and a few other things. You mustn’t let it look like an act. It must look like your true feelings coming out, as if the last thing on your mind is that screws might be observing you. Then you get worried that maybe you’re being too passive. A mentally well person would take an interest in new surroundings. So you stroll halfway down the yard and gaze about, taking care not to seem too interested in the fence. The fence is just wire netting with a single strand of barbs on top.

You can see into the yard of Ward 5 on the left where some old women are wandering as if deep in thought, or as though they’re looking for something they’ve lost. And you can see into Ward 7 on the other side. There are wheelchairs parked on a scrap of lawn and figures slumped in them with shining strings of spit hanging from their mouths. There are mongols too, retarded patients, little monkeyish boys who rush about, or stare at the sky, or pick at their bodies as if they’ve just discovered that they have bodies. One is clinging naked and upside down on the fence. Ward 7 looks bad, as though THE END was written across it invisibly. Of course all the wards are like that and you always want to think some other ward is worse than your own.

Down in front is a dirt road with nurses’ cars parked, and beyond a wooden building with the noise of something like a power saw coming out of it and half-finished baskets piled around the entrance. A sign says Occupational Therapy. Past the wooden building you can see vegetable gardens and then a row of willow trees and then a big swampy pond. A long way away to the right are some buildings set among trees. The biggest of them has a boxy shape and might be the hall. Another could be the library. It has a sign on it that you can’t quite read, but the sign has the right number of letters to say Library. Someone comes out with what are probably books under her arm. You hear the faint squeak of the flyscreen door and then the bang when it shuts. You feel a slight flutter in your stomach, thinking how that person could have been Marian. Marian used to be the hospital librarian and you used to be in love with her. But Marian left long ago. The building next to the library is small and without windows. The sign has the right number of letters to say Morgue.

That’s about all you can see from here. You could perhaps see a bit more from the bottom of the yard, but you don’t dare go that far yet. The screws are watching your first reactions and especially your reaction to the flimsy netting with its one strand of barbs. You half imagine screws crouched inside, like runners on their starting-blocks, ready to sprint out and grab you if you approach the fence too eagerly. Nearly five years in maximum security—the place they call MAX—have made high brick walls and whole thickets of barbed wire seem proper. This feels like a mistake.

Everyone in MAX dreams of a transfer here. It can be the first step to eventual release and only about one in ten ever makes it. You’re remembering how you shook hands with blokes whose transfers had come through, dying with envy, wondering what it’d be like to crack the one-in-ten lottery with the single ticket that cost years to buy. And after the Charge was killed with a pitchfork by mad old Lubecki you’d begged God to get you out of MAX. It was very bad after the killing. The screws acted as though we’d all had a hand in it, which wasn’t fair. You can sort of understand, though, that they didn’t feel much like being fair. Ray Hoad and Bill Greene wanted to have a wreath sent from all of us and you argued against it, not because you didn’t agree with showing respect but you were afraid it might be taken the wrong way. Flowers from the culprits. The screws finally allowed the wreath, on condition it was anonymous.

Now you’re here and you just feel lost and lonely. There are too many possibilities here, though you don’t know yet what they are. In MAX there were so few possibilities, but you knew them exactly; they fitted tight around your life like the high walls. Even this stretch of dirt road seems too much. The road comes from somewhere and goes somewhere and the world—or bits of the world—travel past. There was nothing in MAX to remind you of the world coming and going and so you got used to living in a kind of stillness that you only really sense now you’re out of it. There isn’t that stillness here, even though it’s a quiet afternoon with little happening. You’ll never have that stillness in your life again. Unless you make a cock-up and get sent back.

Except for some of the screws there isn’t a single face you know. A few men are lying on the grass. A few more are sitting on the verandah or pacing along the fence. They mostly wear baggy grey hospital-issue and look like dills. A dill is a patient who’s too mad or stupid to know what’s going on and you can never be mates with a dill because you can’t rely on him. These are scrapings from other chronic or retard wards, put here for being especially difficult or disturbed. Refractory types, which is why this ward is called REFRACT. They’re here as a punishment and that alone sets them apart from someone like you who had to sweat years to get here. Two or three men are going in and out of the pantry door, wearing aprons and banging dixies and fooling about. You don’t know them or what routines they are following. In MAX you’d know everything. Knowing everything kept you safe.

A very small bandy-legged bloke is circling the yard. He has a thin sharp face. On one of his rounds he veers across to you.

“Gettin’ out Tuesday!” he declares.

“That’s good,” you say.

“Yep, Tuesday’s the day!”

“Terrific.”

He stands grinning at you and rubbing his hands with glee. He does another round of the yard. As he passes you again you give him a friendly look.

“What are you giggin’ at, ya fuckin’ mongrel-eyed hoon?” he yells, shoving his sharp face at you.

“Nothing,” you say quickly.

“Ya slimy cunt!” he screams. “I’ll fuckinwell knock ya rotten!”

“Sorry mate,” you say. He’s too small to be afraid of, but you don’t want any trouble. And you don’t know what game this bloke’s playing, if he is playing. He glares savagely for another moment and stalks off. When he comes by you again you stare in the opposite direction. He stops in a friendly way and tells you about Tuesday. His mind is gone.

You think you’ve got this little dill measured. There are sixty men in REFRACT. Fifty-nine measures to get.

The afternoon is turning colder and the shadow of the ward is beginning to go across the dirt road. Some men come up from the vegetable garden and stand at the gate in the fence. A couple more come from Occupational Therapy, and a few more from other directions. A screw unlocks and they troop in. You see Fred Henderson. He was in MAX and got his transfer a year ago. He’s about fifty, red-faced, and wheezes a lot. You were never real friends with him because he was out of your age group. Besides, Fred Henderson was always a bit chummy with the screws, playing cards with them and helping them take the mickey out of patients. You and Bill Greene and Ray Hoad made fun of patients too, but only amongst yourselves.

“I heard you was comin’ over,” says Fred Henderson.

It’s just like him to have “heard”.

He wants to hear the latest from MAX, mainly about blokes he made fun of. You tell him how so-and-so was caught sucking-off in the shower and he has a good wheeze at that. You laugh with him. Fred Henderson lowers his voice.

“Some of the screws aren’t too happy with your transfer,” he says.

“Why not?” you ask. You never know with Fred Henderson whether he’s giving you a helpful tip or taking a rise out of you or fishing for something to tell his pals.

“They reckon you’re still psychotic,” he says.

“Yeah?” you say. You mustn’t make the mistake of denying it. By the time the story got back to the screws it may sound as though you are denying there’s anything wrong with you at all, and that’s the mark of a troublemaker.

You start changing the subject, asking about the routine here.

You see Dennis Lane come to the gate and then inside. Dennis Lane was the best ping-pong player in MAX. Ping-pong was the only thing you ever associated him with. He was very quiet, with a brooding self-control. He hadn’t many brilliant shots, just a perfect defensive game. You wave to Dennis Lane and he glances back and walks up inside the ward. If it was anyone else you’d think something was wrong, but this is just Dennis Lane’s manner.

Suddenly there’s a commotion and a black man bounds down the yard, blubbering around Fred Henderson, pawing him like a big silly dog.

“Bimbo, you black bastard!” Fred Henderson shouts, and slaps the man’s head. “Shake hands with Len,” he orders. Bimbo stares wide-eyed at you. He seems to have a fixed idea.

“Willee root me?” he keeps asking. “Willee root me, eh? Willee, eh? Willee root me?”

“Bloody oath he will!” Fred Henderson tells him, winking at you. You put your hand out to Bimbo and Fred Henderson punches him in the ribs to make him shake.

“Show Len the war dance!” Fred Henderson orders. Bimbo capers for you and does a chant with his big lips spitting and flapping until another punch stops him. Bimbo squats at Fred Henderson’s feet. He points to other men in the yard and babbles.

“Dat one root me? Willee, eh? Wot ’bout dat one? Willee root me, eh?” Fred Henderson kicks him to shut him up.

“I’m the black bugger’s best friend,” says Fred Henderson.

The Charge shouts from the verandah for us to come inside. Screws are locking the outer doors of the ward. Some of the grey figures on the grass have to be prodded. The little bandy-legged man is hurling abuse at a screw trying to shepherd him.

“I’ll knock you into the middle of next week!” the screw threatens.

Make it Tuesday, you mutter.

The dining room is long and shabby and lit by bare lights that give a lurid effect. Ten large tables are set in two rows. A screw motions you to a place near Dennis Lane. The tables are graded. The end ones in the other row are for the worst dills. Bimbo is there with a monstrous hunchback and a whole bunch of others who are gibbering, or twisting about, or lolling vacantly. A servery rolls open at the end of the room and plates are pushed through. The men rise from the tables by turns, bumping and stumbling, to collect the food. Those at the worst tables are snuffling the meal down, or mashing it on the table, or treading it into the floor. The scene is unsettling after the orderliness of MAX. You glance at the screws but they don’t seem bothered. Then seconds are called. This too is strange. They almost never allowed seconds in MAX. They kept you hungry on principle. Bimbo goes for seconds and a screw piles the plate high and when that’s finished insists on giving him another lot. A dessert of jelly is next and seconds are called again. Bimbo is plied with three helpings, then four. After the sixth he’s had enough, but the screw swears to skin his hide unless he eats more. Bimbo’s half-laughing and half-choking. Finally he vomits on the table and a cheer goes up.

“He’s finished,” says the screw and heaves the rest into a bin.

After tea some of the men go upstairs to bed. The others crowd into the dayroom to watch TV or play cards or snooker or just sprawl in chairs. The dayroom quickly fills with smoke and the smells of so many men. You walk out on the wired-in side section of the verandah where the Charge’s office is. The screws are gathered in there, waiting to go home. They notice you and say something among themselves. You wish you hadn’t wandered out here. You’d rather not attract attention. Past the office is a row of rooms for a few of the better patients, the silvertails. Fred Henderson has one. They’re really cells, with the heavy doors that cells have, but these are called rooms and aren’t locked. You stroll along near the rooms and stand in shadow. It’s quieter here, and cool. The moon is coming up over the tiled roof opposite, making the tiles gleam silver.

The day-screws begin to go and the night-screws arrive. You get tense when you see the senior night-screw is Smiler, an old enemy. You think you should go back and lose yourself a bit among the other men, but it wouldn’t help. Smiler knows you’re here. That’s the first thing they’d tell him.

Smiler comes from the office. He’s smiling of course. He always smiles. He says how glad he is that you got this transfer. He says he always would’ve bet money on you getting it sooner or later. He starts telling you that the essence of this ward is trust, and he even spells it for you: T-R-U-S-T. The security here is a sham, he says, and any bloke can piss off if he wants to. Smiler describes a few methods of escape and how a bloke could hitch a lift on the highway and be in the city in two hours.

“I’m a sportsman,” he says. “I’ll give anyone a head start. I’ll even unlock the door.”

All the while you are giving him a steady man-to-man look, as though you’re full of quiet respect for a straight-talking fellow. Smiler strolls off and you return to the smoke and smell of the dayroom. You’d rather stay in the cool shadows and watch the moon, but it seems spoiled.

At ten o’clock we are herded upstairs. You enter a huge dormitory that looks like a flophouse, with rickety iron beds packed close together. The junior screw consults a bed plan and tells you 43 is yours, then he and Smiler go out and you hear keys in the lock. The big room is draughty and cold. You sit on your bed and examine an old pair of pyjamas that are there. They’ve been washed but the pants have the remains of a shit stain and a faint smell of it. The dormitory lights are switched off from somewhere outside. Your bed is against the wall near a window. You are very pleased about that. Half the knack of survival is getting near windows.

You undress to your singlet and roll the clothes into a tight bundle, then put your valuables inside the bundle. There’s your comb, your toothbrush, your two-dollar note which you can’t spend but which is nice to have, your pad with scribbled bits of poems, your biro, and your transistor radio. The radio is your prized possession. It’s so small it can go in your shirt pocket and it has given you some wonderful times. You learned to like classical music from this little radio. Some of the best times in MAX were when you were working in the vegetable garden or taking care of the swimming pool and the sun and wind and birdsong all around made you feel really happy; then you could tune your shirt pocket to some classical music and the happiness was complete. You got fresh batteries on the weekly buy-up when they let you order a dollar’s worth of stuff from the canteen. Most blokes ordered tobacco, but you spent your buy-up on biros and note-pads and Sao biscuits and batteries. You wonder how you’ll get those things now. You suppose they have weekly buy-ups here too.