Kitabı oku: «One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest / Пролетая над гнездом кукушки», sayfa 3

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.

“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.”

“A bitch? But a moment ago she was a ball-cutter, then a buzzard – or was it a chicken? Your metaphors are bumping into each other, my friend.”

“The hell with that; she’s a bitch and a buzzard and a ball-cutter, and don’t kid me, you know what I’m talking about.”

Harding continues to argue.

“Why, look here, my friend Mr. McMurphy, our Miss Ratched is a real angel of mercy, and everyone knows it. She works hard for the good of all, day after day, five long days a week. That takes heart, my friend, heart. In fact, she even further serves mankind on her weekends by doing generous volunteer work about town. She prepares various canned goods, cheese, soap and presents it to some poor young couple having a difficult time financially.” His hands fly in the air, making the picture he is describing. “Ah, look: There she is, our nurse. Her gentle knock on the door. The ribboned basket. The young couple overjoyed to the point of speechlessness. The husband open-mouthed, the wife weeping openly. She places the basket in the center of the floor. And when our angel leaves – throwing kisses, smiling – she is so full of human kindness within her large bosom, that she is beside herself with generosity. Be-side herself, do you hear? Pausing at the door, she draws the young wife to one side and offers her twenty dollars of her own: ’Go, you poor unfortunate child, go, and buy yourself a decent dress. I realize that your husband can’t afford it, but here, take this, and go.’ And the couple is forever indebted to her generosity.”

When he stops talking, the ward is completely silent. I don’t hear anything except a weak reeling rhythm. It’s a tape recorder somewhere getting all of this.

Harding looks around, sees everybody’s watching him, and he tries to laugh. The squeaking sound of that laugh is awful. He can’t stop it. But finally, he stops and lets his face fall into his waiting hands.

“Oh the bitch, the bitch, the bitch,” he whispers through his teeth.

McMurphy lights another cigarette and offers it to him; Harding takes it without a word. McMurphy watches while Harding’s twitching and jerking slows down and the face comes up from the hands.

“You are right,” Harding says, “about all of it.” He looks up at the other patients who are watching him. “No one’s ever dared say it before, but there’s not a man among us that doesn’t think it, that doesn’t feel just as you do about her and the whole business – feel it somewhere down deep in his scared little soul.”

McMurphy frowns and asks, “What about that little doctor? He might be a little slow in the head, but not so much as not to be able to see how she’s taken over and what she’s doing.”

“Doctor Spivey… is exactly like the rest of us, McMurphy. He’s a frightened, ineffectual little rabbit, totally incapable of running this ward without our Miss Ratched’s help, and he knows it. And, worse, she knows that he knows it and reminds him every chance she gets.”

“Why doesn’t he fire her?”

“In this hospital,” Harding says, “it’s not in the doctor’s power to hire and fire. That power goes to the supervisor, and the supervisor is a woman, a dear old friend of Miss Ratched’s; they were Army nurses together in the thirties. We are victims of a matriarchy here, my friend, and the doctor is just as helpless against it as we are. He knows that Ratched can simply pick up the phone and call the supervisor and mention, for example, that the doctor, it seems, is making a great number of requisitions for Demerol —”

“What’s Demerol, Harding?”

“Demerol, my friend, is a synthetic opiate, twice as addictive as heroin. Doctors are often addicted to it.”

“That little fart? Is he a dope addict?”

“I’m certain I don’t know.”

“Then why does she accuse him of —”

“Oh, you’re not paying attention, my friend. No. She doesn’t need to accuse. She has a genius for insinuation. Did she, in the course of our discussion today, ever once accused me of anything? Yet it seems that I have been accused of a lot of things, of jealousy and paranoia, of not being man enough to satisfy my wife, of having relations with male friends of mine, of holding my cigarette in an affected manner, even – it seems to me – accused of having nothing between my legs but a patch of hair – and soft and downy and blond hair at that! Ball-cutter? Oh, you underestimate her!”

Harding takes McMurphy’s hand in both of his.

“This world… belongs to the strong, my friend! We must learn to accept it as a law of the natural world. The rabbits accept their role in the ritual and recognize the wolf as the strong. In defense, the rabbit becomes sly and frightened and elusive and he digs holes and hides when the wolfs about. And he goes on. He knows his place. He most certainly doesn’t fight the wolf. Now, would that be wise? Would it?”

He starts his awful laugh again.

“Mr. McMurphy… my friend… I’m not a chicken, I’m a rabbit. The doctor is a rabbit. Cheswick there is a rabbit. Billy Bibbit is a rabbit. All of us here are rabbits, hopping through our Walt Disney world. Oh, don’t misunderstand me, we’re not here because we are rabbits – we’d be rabbits wherever we were – we’re all here because we can’t adjust to our rabbithood. We need a good strong wolf like the nurse to teach us our place.”

“Man, you’re talkin’ like a fool. You mean to tell me that you’re gonna sit back and let some old blue-haired woman talk you into being a rabbit?”

“Not talk me into it, no. I was born a rabbit. Just look at me. I simply need the nurse to make me happy with my role.”

“You’re no damned rabbit!”

“See the ears? the little button tail?”

“You’re talking like a crazy ma —”

“Like a crazy man?”

“Damn it, Harding, I didn’t mean it like that. You aren’t crazy that way. I mean – hell, I’ve been surprised how sane you guys all are.”

Harding says, “Mr. Bibbit, hop around for Mr. McMurphy here. Mr. Cheswick, show him how furry you are.”

But Billy Bibbit and Cheswick are too ashamed to do any of the things Harding told them to do.

“Ah, McMurphy, perhaps, the fellows are feeling guilty for their behavior at the meeting. Cheer up, friends, you’ve no reason to feel ashamed. It is all as it should be. It’s not the rabbit’s place to stick up for his fellow. That would have been foolish. No, you were wise, cowardly but wise.”

McMurphy turns in his chair and looks the other Acutes up and down. “I’m not so sure that they shouldn’t be ashamed. Personally, I thought it was shameful the way they acted on her side against you. For a minute there I thought I was back in a Red Chinese prison camp…”

Harding points his cigarette at McMurphy. “In fact you too, Mr. McMurphy, though you behave like a cowboy, are probably just as soft and rabbit-souled as we are.”…

“Yeah, what makes me a rabbit, Harding? My psychopathic tendencies? Is it my fightin’ tendencies, or my fuckin’ tendencies? Must be the fuckin’, mustn’t it? Yeah, that probably makes me a rabbit —”

“Yes. Um. But that simply shows that you are a healthy, functioning and adequate rabbit, where as most of us are sexually weak. Failures, we are weak little rabbits, without any sexual ability.”

“Wait a minute; that’s not what I say —”

“No. You were right. When you said, that the nurse was concentrating her pecking at the balls, it was true. We’re all afraid that we’re losing or have already lost our sexuality. We’re weak rabbits of the rabbit world!”

“Harding! Shut your damned mouth!”

Harding looks at McMurphy and speaks so softly that I have to push my broom to his chair to hear what he says.

“Friend… you… may be a wolf.”

“Goddammit, I’m no wolf and you’re no rabbit.”

McMurphy turns from Harding to the rest of the Acutes. “Here; all you guys. What the hell is the matter with you? You aren’t as crazy as all this, thinking you’re some animal.”

“No,” Cheswick says and steps in beside McMurphy. “No, by God, not me. I’m not any rabbit.”

“That’s the boy, Cheswick. And the rest of you. Why are you afraid of some fifty-year-old woman? What can she do to you, anyway?”

“Yeah, what?” Cheswick says and glares around at the others.

“Well, when she asks one of those questions, why don’t you tell her to go to hell?”McMurphy says.

The Acutes are coming closer to them. Harding says, “My friend, if you continue to tell people to go to hell, you will go to the Shock Shop, perhaps even to an operation, an —”

“Damn it, Harding, what does that mean?”

“The Shock Shop, Mr. McMurphy, is jargon for the EST machine, the Electro Shock Therapy.”

“What does this thing do?”

“You are strapped to a table. You are touched on each side of the head with wires. Electricity through the brain and you have therapy and a punishment for your go-to-hell behavior. After these treatments and a man could become like Mr. Ellis there against the wall. An idiot at thirty-five. Or look at Chief Broom beside you.”

Harding points his cigarette at me. I go on with my sweeping.

“I’ve heard that the Chief, years ago, received more than two hundred shock treatments when they were really the vogue. Look at him: a giant janitor. There’s your Vanishing American, a six-foot-eight sweeping machine, who is afraid of its own shadow. That, my friend, may be done to us.”

McMurphy looks at me a while, then turns back to Harding.

“Look at you here: you say the Chief is afraid of his own shadow, but I never saw a more afraid-looking bunch in my life than you guys.”

“Not me!” Cheswick says.

“Maybe not you, buddy, but the rest are even afraid to open up and laugh. I haven’t heard a real laugh since I came through that door, do you know that? Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing. A man lets a woman beat him down till he can’t laugh any more, and he loses one of the biggest edges he’s got on his side. He’ll begin to think she’s tougher than he is and —”

“Tell me, Mr. McMurphy, how does a man show a woman who’s boss, I mean other than laughing at her? How does he show her who’s king of the mountain? A man like you should be able to tell us that. You don’t beat her, do you? No, then she calls the law. You don’t lose your temper and shout at her; she’ll win by using soothing sounds. Have you ever tried to keep up an angry front in the face of such consolation? So you see, my friend, it is somewhat as you stated: man has only one truly effective weapon against the crushing force of modern matriarchy, but it certainly is not laughter. One weapon, and with every passing year in this hip society, more and more people are discovering how to make that weapon useless and conquer those who have been the conquerors till the present moment —”

“Lord, Harding, but you do come on,” McMurphy says.

“– and do you think, McMurphy, that you could effectively use your weapon against our champion? Do you think you could use it against Miss Ratched? Ever?”

And he points toward the glass case. Everybody’s head turns to look. She’s in there, looking out through her window, got a tape recorder hidden somewhere, getting all this down – already planning how to work it into the schedule.

The nurse sees that everybody is looking at her and she nods and they all turn away. McMurphy takes off his cap and runs his hands into that red hair. Now everybody is looking at him; they’re waiting for his answer and he knows it. He feels that he’s been trapped some way. He puts the cap back on and rubs the stitch marks on his nose.

“Why, if you mean do I think I could get a bone up over that old buzzard, no, I don’t think I could…”

“Ah, McMurphy. Her face is quite handsome and well preserved. And she has some rather extraordinary breasts. Still – for the sake of argument, could you get it up over her even if she wasn’t old, even if she was young and had the beauty of Helen?”

“I don’t know Helen, but I understand what you’re drivin’ at. And you’re by God right. I couldn’t get it up over old frozen face there even if she had the beauty of Marilyn Monroe.”

“There you are. She’s won.”

That’s it. Harding leans back and everybody waits for what McMurphy’s going to say next. McMurphy can see he’s backed up against the wall. He looks at the faces a minute, then shrugs and stands up from his chair.

“Well, I damn well don’t want to have some old fiend of a nurse after me with three thousand volts. Not when it’s just an adventure for me.”

“No. You’re right.”

Harding’s won the argument, but nobody looks too happy. I’m glad that McMurphy is going to be cagey after all and isn’t going to agree to a game where he can’t win, but I know how the guys feel; I’m not so happy myself. McMurphy lights another cigarette. Nobody’s moved yet. They’re all still standing there, grinning and uncomfortable. McMurphy rubs his nose again and looks away from the bunch of faces around him, looks back at the nurse and chews his lip.

“But you say… she doesn’t send you up to that other ward unless she makes you crack in some way and you end up cursing her out or breaking a window or something like that?”

“Unless you do something like that.”

“You’re sure of that, now? Because I have an interesting idea how to pick up a good purse off you birds in here. But I had a hell of a time getting out of that other hole; I don’t want to be jumping out of the fryin’ pan into the fire.”

“Absolutely certain. She’s powerless unless you do something to honestly deserve EST. If you’re tough enough and don’t let her get to you, she can’t do a thing.”

“So if I behave myself, she can’t do nothing to me? Am I safe to try to beat her at her own game? If I come on nice as pie to her, whatever else I insinuate, she isn’t going to get furious and have me electrocuted?”

“Those are the rules we play by. Of course, she always wins, my friend, always, she gets inside everyone in the end. But you’re safe as long as you keep control. As long as you don’t lose your temper and give her reason to request the therapeutic benefits of Electro Shock, you are safe. To keep one’s temper is the most important thing. And you? With your red hair and black record?”

“Okay. All right.” McMurphy rubs his palms together. “Here’s what I’m thinkin’. You birds think that you got quite the champion in there, don’t you? The woman who always wins. How many of you are willing to take my five bucks if I cannot get the best of that woman – before the end of the week – without her getting the best of me? One week, and if she doesn’t lose her power, the bet is yours.”

“You’re betting on this?” Cheswick is hopping from foot to foot and rubbing his hands together like McMurphy rubs his. “You’re damned right.”

Harding and some of the others say that they don’t understand it.

“It’s simple enough. I like to gamble. And I like to win. And I think I can win this gamble, okay? I’ll tell you something: I found out a few things about this place before I came out here. Damn near half of you guys in here get compensation, three, four hundred a month and not a thing in the world to do with it. I thought I might take advantage of this and maybe make both our lives a little more rich. I’m a gambler and I’m not in the habit of losing. And I don’t think a woman can be more man than me, I don’t care whether I can get it up for her or not. She may have the element of time, but I got a pretty long winning history myself.”

He pulls off his cap, spins it on his finger, and catches it behind his back in his other band.

“Another thing: I’m in this place because that’s the way I planned it, because it’s a better place than a work farm. I’m no loony. Your nurse doesn’t know this. These things give me an edge I like. So I’m saying: five bucks to each of you if I can’t get her goat within a week. And she’ll show, just one time, that she isn’t so unbeatable as you think.”

Harding and other Acutes agree to bet.

The Big Nurse likes to play with the time. She is able to set the wall clock at whatever speed she wants by just turning one of those dials in the steel door; she decides to hurry things up, she turns the speed up, and those hands run around that disk like spokes in a wheel. The scene in the picture-screen windows goes through changes of light at a furious speed: morning, noon, and night – light on, light off – day and dark, and everybody must move according to that fake time; awful speed of shaves and breakfasts and appointments and lunches and medications and ten minutes of night. And so you go through the full schedule of a day maybe twenty times an hour, till the Big Nurse sees that everybody is right up to the breaking point, and she changes the speed back to normal.

She likes to turn up the speed on days when you got somebody to visit you or when some video show is brought from Portland. That’s when she speeds things up.