The Treatment and the Cure by Peter Kocan

move on to the next man. Later you change the “about murder” to “about crime”.
    Hartley will never get out. He doesn’t care. At least, he says he doesn’t. He says he’ll die happy, knowing that he’s killed several people. When his first batch of books comes he’s very pleased because one of them is about famous Australian murderers and he has a whole chapter in it, with photographs of himself handcuffed between policemen and pictures of the victims’ bodies and the places where the killings happened. Ray Hoad says the book is Hartley’s family album.
    Hartley is very musical. He used to be allowed to play an old dusty piano locked away in one of the storerooms. He played very well, Mozart and stuff like that, but the screws stopped him playing after a few months because of security. They always talk about “security” whenever they want to stop anyone doing anything. Then Hartley got a violin sent to him and was allowed to play it for a couple of weeks until someone realised he might use the strings to strangle people, so they took the violin away. You think maybe they were right about the violin, but the piano seemed harmless.
    “Who ever heard of anyone being strangled with a piano?” Bill Greene says.
    “He murdered Mozart with it, didn’t he?” suggests Ray Hoad.
    Dick Steele is making everyone edgy. His feuds with other men have got very savage and there’s an undercurrent of violence. Mario has already attacked Dick with a billiard cue, really trying to smash Dick’s head. Dick got away unhurt, but he’s still goading Mario. It’s bad in the television room, when you’re locked up with him for three and a half hours and he sits up at the back and weaves a web of hatred over the room. If one of his enemies is there he’ll niggle and goad all night in lots of little ways. He always brings his bottle of wine out and makes everyone share it, and you dare not refuse. He keeps pressing you as though he’s just being very friendly, but if you keep refusing he makes you one of his enemies. Even Ray Hoad doesn’t want to get on the bad side of him. You know Dick is mad, in an even worse way than Hartley, but he doesn’t show it, especially when screws are about. Dick is close to several of the screws and you have a feeling there’s some sort of arrangement between them, maybe for getting the wine. Dick has a kind of power which you feel, but can’t quite explain. You never talk ill of Dick with anyone, because he might overhear, or because you’re afraid the person you talk to might report your comments to Dick. He makes you feel he has ears everywhere, like the secret police or something.
    It’s making you very tense. You’re sure something bad will happen in the ward sooner or later. Maybe a stabbing.
    You’re in the billiard room. Dick is lolling in a chair. He wants a cushion from across the room.
    “Get me a cushion, Len,” he says.
    You know this is a tricky moment, a sort of test for you. If you go and get the cushion you’ll be showing that you’re weak and afraid of him, like Dave Lamming, and he’ll have you fetching and carrying for him all the time. If you refuse, he’ll start marking you down on his enemy list.
    You look over at him, as though you hadn’t heard properly.
    “Pardon?” you say, making your voice flat.
    “Get me that cushion, will you?”
    You look across at the cushion and then back at Dick as though you don’t quite understand. Dick knows that you do understand.
    “You want a cushion?”
    “Yeah.”
    You sit quite still. Dick knows that you’re going to be difficult.
    “I’ve got a crook back, mate,” he says. “I need the cushion for support.”
    He said that so you can obey him without seeming to lose face. As though you’re just helping a bloke with a crook back. He also said it so he’ll have a bigger grievance if you defy him, a bigger reason to make you an enemy. You are such a mongrel you wouldn’t even do a sick man a tiny