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

Zurka stands up and says he’d better not make a nuisance of himself and he says goodbye to your mother and goes out. You’re left, just the two of you together again, except for the screw reading his newspaper. The screw is relieved that Zurka has gone out. The men aren’t supposed to get involved with each other’s visitors.
    “He seems quite nice,” your mother says of Zurka.
    “Yes, a nice chap,” you say.
    “A foreigner, isn’t he?”
    “Polish.”
    “Has he been here long?”
    “Eleven years.”
    You and your mother have an understanding that hardly anyone is kept in this place very long because, of course, you yourself will only be kept a short while, just until your “nerves” improve. So she doesn’t ask why Zurka is here, though she’s curious. Anyway, she’s clearly glad to have found there are men here as nice as Zurka seems to be.
    It’s time for her to go.
    “My train’s at four-fifty,” she says.
    “Right-o,” you say, then you ask about something that’s been on your mind for the last few weeks, ever since the night in the television room when you heard the wind in the trees and the clank of the chain on the main gate.
    “Er, mum, could you send me a book of poetry?” You feel awkward about using the word “poetry”. You don’t want her to think you’re becoming a poofter or anything like that.
    “Poetry?” she says, looking at you.
    “Yes, what they call an anthology.”
    “All right dear, if you want me to.”
    “Thanks.”
    You’re still feeling awkward about it when you give her a kiss on the cheek and she goes up the corridor with a screw to unlock the door for her. You wave to each other and she goes out the door. You’re very glad she came, now, though, and glad that Zurka helped so much. You go round to the window of the television room to see if you can watch her at the main gate. You try to wave to her from there, but she can’t see you inside the window with the bars in the way. Then you go back to the dining room and wait while the screw cuts your cake into eight portions to make sure there’s nothing concealed in it.
    Arthur has a special project and has chosen you for it. He wants a brick-walled compost heap built at the bottom of the vegetable garden, hard against the main wall where the drainage is best.
    “Done any bricklaying?” he wants to know.
    “None,” you say.
    “Doesn’t matter. You’ll pick it up as you go.”
    So you’re given a trowel and a spirit-level and a few tips about mixing mortar and how to make use of string to keep the bricks in line. A load of sand and lime and cement is ordered and, after a week or so, is delivered and dumped near the site.
    You’re even given a labourer. A bald, bony man of about fifty, named Bob Fleet. Bob Fleet is a homosexual and loves boys’ bums. At least, that’s what he keeps saying.
    “Oh, God, I love a tender young bum!” he says as he mixes a wheelbarrow load of mortar. “Ever fucked a nice little boy?” he asks you.
    “Not lately,” you say.
    The hole for the compost heap has already been dug and you’re supposed to wall it on three sides to a height of about four feet. It’s good being down in the hole. The earth is damp and smells cold and fresh and there are big pink earthworms sticking out of it. It’s also private down there. Sometimes a screw comes to see how you’re doing, but mostly they don’t bother you. Your head and shoulders just come above the hole and there is long grass and the piles of bricks in front to screen you right off from the ward and from the high spots where the screws sit when they’re watching the other men in the garden.
    You’re still part of the garden gang, but semi-independent because of being out of sight a bit and because Arthur has shown he trusts you with this special work. You’re feeling a lot more relaxed now. Arthur can’t be thinking of giving you shock or medication, not if he’s picked you out for this. He must have talked to