The Treatment and the Cure by Peter Kocan Read Free Book Online

scenes. Your stepfather drunk and violent, your mother crouched against the wall shielding her head with her hands and screaming for you to run for the police. You can’t even calculate the number of times you ran in your pyjamas to the police station, only to be left loitering in the lobby while the policemen drank another cup of tea before setting out to deal with another “domestic”. You remember the times you were brought home from the police station, trotting to keep pace with some tall silent constable who held your hand.
    “What if mum’s dead?” you used to ask yourself, plucking the question out of a whirl of half formed terrors. You wondered if the policeman would take you back to the station, to remain in the lobby in pyjamas, an orphan, until you grew up. There was always the same scene when you got back to the house; the policeman standing calm and disinterested in the hallway, while angry man and distraught woman made long and involved accusations against each other. Then the policeman would say that he wasn’t going to take sides, but that there’d better not be any more disturbance.
    Sometimes, when the policeman had gone, Stanislav gave your mother a few more hits around the face, but mostly he just called her some names that you didn’t exactly understand and then he stormed out of the house. It was then, when the house was quiet again and you were tucked up in bed, that you began sobbing and trembling and sometimes vomiting. Then your mother would come in and clutch you to her bruised face and tell you about the “fresh start” that the two of you would make someday.
    There’s somebody swearing loudly outside on the verandah.
    “Hey, cut the language,” you hear Bill Greene’s voice saying. “There’s a visitor inside.”
    “Yeah, watch the faaarkin language,” you hear Eddie add.
    Your mother pretends she hasn’t heard.
    “What are the other … er, men, like?” She was going to say “patients” or “inmates”. but remembered about the madness thing.
    “Most of them are all right,” you say. Just then, Zurka comes in to say something to the screw. You call him to meet your mother.
    “Er, mum, this is Zurka. He’s one of the chaps I work with.”
    “How are you?” she says to Zurka. She’s putting on a bright voice.
    “Very well, thanks,” he says. “How are you?” Zurka’s Polish accent isn’t very noticeable. You invite him to sit down, hoping he’ll help keep the talk going and take some of the pressure off you. He sits down and talks to your mother about the weather and the gardening work and about her train trip. His manner is calm and easy, but you feel a faint worry when the talk is about the train trip. Zurka chopped those people up on a train and you’re afraid the subject of trains might be risky. You’re also feeling a vague sense of satisfaction to think that you can introduce your visitor to someone who’s chopped people up.
    Zurka is pleased to be able to talk polite small talk with an outsider. It’s good practice for the future. He’s been a model patient here for eleven years and the rumour is that he’ll soon be transferred to the other section of the hospital where he’ll be in an unconfined ward. If you get sent to an unconfined ward, it means the authorities are planning to set you free after another four or five years maybe.
    Your mother’s telling him about her work as a barmaid, and about how it’s hard on the feet, standing pulling beers all day.
    “I worked as a cellar man once,” Zurka says.
    “Oh, which hotel?” your mother asks.
    “The White Crown.”
    “I’ve worked there!” your mother says. “John Lewis is the publican.”
    “I remember him!” cries Zurka.
    So they talk about John Lewis, the publican of The White Crown. Your mother seems more relaxed now. You sit listening to them, feeling remorse that a Polish stranger who has chopped people up makes your mother feel more relaxed than her own son.
    After a while,