The Treatment and the Cure by Peter Kocan Page B

billiard room. It’s snug in there. It has a big old wood-burning heater and some of the men sit around it like Alaskans, yarning and joking, while others are playing or watching the billiards. You can see the rain on the windows and hear the wind and rain whooshing along the verandah or making a low moaning sound in the barbed wire. Sometimes if you want to go out on to the verandah you can hardly push the door open because the wind is blowing so strongly against it, and when you step out you get soaked in a few seconds. But it’s good to stand out in the cold and wet for a while on the deserted verandah, looking out across the wall at the mist covering the lake. The best thing about it is that it’s so good for thinking about poetry out there, with nobody near, and your mind alert from the cold. The sound of the barbed wire and the wildness of rain makes you think of Flanders, and you can recite some of Wilfred Owen’s or Siegfried Sassoon’s poems to yourself and they seem even more real and true than ever, as though the trenches were just the other side of the mist. You can feel the sorrow and tragedy running down inside your mind like the rain down the window, then a kind of sombre, piercing happiness at the way the poetry turns all that suffering against itself and rises above it. But you don’t stay out there too long or the screws might think you’re acting oddly. They wouldn’t understand why anyone would enjoy being out in the rain and cold. You’re careful not to let your lips move too much either, when you’re reciting to yourself. You’ve already had trouble about them seeing your lips move.
    You were in the garden, digging, and during your breathers you were reciting some verses softly to yourself. A screw reported you to Arthur and you were called to the office.
    “How d’you feel within yourself, Len?” he wanted to know.
    “Good,” you said, suddenly feeling very nervous. You know that when a screw asks you how you’re feeling within yourself it means they suspect you’re disturbed.
    “No worries?”
    “None in particular. Why?”
    “Oh, we just wondered.”
    They’re always like that. They don’t come straight out and ask “Why were you talking to yourself?” They just beat around it and make you very nervous, so that unless you’re careful, the nervousness will make you say something silly that will confirm their idea that you’re disturbed. Anyway, they figure that if you’re mentally ill you won’t know you’re mentally ill and so there’s no point asking you about it straight out.
    So you just waited while Arthur looked at you thoughtfully and hoped he’d say something to give you a clue.
    “We noticed how you seemed a bit agitated this morning, while you were digging.”
    “Oh,” you said, suddenly understanding. “I was just reciting some verse to myself.”
    “I see,” said Arthur. He was still looking closely at you. You could tell he was a little reassured. You didn’t deny talking to yourself.
    “It’s hard to recite verse to yourself without moving your lips,” you explained.
    “Mmmm, I can see it would be,” he agreed. He was probably wondering whether reciting verse to yourself is abnormal or not. “Well then,” he said, “we’ll say no more about it, eh?”
    You went out of the office, still very uneasy, but feeling you’d probably satisfied Arthur.
    “What did Arthur want you for?” asked Zurka.
    “To ask ‘The Question’.”
    “Did you tell him?” Zurka grinned.
    “Sort of,” you grinned back.
    Everyone knows “The Question”: “How do you feel within yourself?”. and the answer: “Through the most convenient orifice.”
    Since then you’ve trained yourself to recite with a minimum of lip movement, like a ventriloquist.
    We’re playing soccer at weekends, if the weather isn’t too bad. This is a strong soccer district and many of the screws are good players and take part in our games. This is a golden opportunity for Ray Hoad to