One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest / Пролетая над гнездом кукушки. Кен КизиЧитать онлайн книгу.
them puts a mop in my hand and points to the spot where I must clean today, and I go.
They start talking behind me, heads close together. Hospital secrets, hate and death. They think I’m deaf and dumb, so they’re not afraid to talk about their hate secrets when I’m nearby. Everybody thinks I’m deaf and dumb. I’m cagey enough to fool them that much. I’m half Indian, and if this fact ever helped me in this dirty life, it helped me to be cagey, helped me all these years.
I’m mopping near the ward door when the Big Nurse opens it with a key. She comes in and locks the door behind her.
She’s carrying her wicker bag in the shape of a tool box. She’s had it during all the years I’ve been here. It’s of loose-weave and I can see inside it; there’s no compactor lipstick or woman things, that bag is full of the things she’s going to use in her duties today – wheels and cogs, tiny pills that gleam like porcelain, needles, forceps, watchmakers’ pliers, rolls of copperwire…
She nods at me as she goes past me. I push the mop back to the wall and smile and try not to let her see my eyes – they can’t tell so much about you if your eyes are closed.
In my dark I hear how the things in her wicker bag clash as she passes me in the hall. When I open my eyes she’s near the glass Nurses’ Station where she’ll spend the day sitting at her desk and looking out of her window and making notes on what goes on in front of her in the day room during the next eight hours. Her face looks pleased and peaceful with the thought.
Then… she sees those black boys. They’re still talking in the hall. They didn’t hear how she came into the ward. They sense that she’s glaring down at them now, but it’s too late. It was a mistake to group up and whisper together when she was expected on the ward. She bends and advances on where they’re trapped at the end of the corridor. She knows what they’ve been saying, and I can see that she’s furious. She’s going to tear the black bastards limb from limb, she’s so furious. She looks around her. Nobody up to see, just old Broom Bromden the half-breed Indian back there who is hiding behind his mop and can’t call for help because he can’t talk. So she really lets herself go and her painted mouth twists, stretches to an open snarl. I hold my breath. My God, this time they’re gonna do it! This time they let the hate build up too high and they’re gonna tear one another to pieces before they realize what they’re doing!
But right at that moment all the patients start coming out of the dorms to check on what’s the hullabaloo about and she has to change back before she’s caught in the shape of her hideous real self. The patients are still half asleep. They see the head nurse. She is smiling and calm and cold as usual. She is telling the black boys that they shouldn’t stand in a group and gossip when it is Monday morning and there is such a lot to get done on the first morning of the week…
“…old Monday morning, you know, boys…”
“Yeah, Miz Ratched…
“…and we have a number of appointments this morning, so perhaps, if your group talking isn’t too urgent…”
“Yeah, Miz Ratched…”
She stops and nods at some of the patients who stand around and stare out of eyes all red and puffy with sleep. She nods once to each. Her face is smooth, like an expensive baby doll, and baby-blue eyes, small nose, pink little nostrils – everything works perfectly together except the orange color on her lips and fingernails, and the size of her bosom. A mistake was made somehow in manufacturing when those big, womanly breasts were put on that otherwise perfect work, and you can see how bitter she is about it.
The men are still standing and waiting. They want to know what appointments she was telling the black boys about, so she remembers me and says, “And since it is Monday, boys, it will be a good start on the week if we shave poor Mr. Bromden first this morning, before breakfast, and see if we can’t avoid some of the noise he usually makes.”
Before anybody can turn to look for me I hide in the mop closet, shut the door after me, hold my breath. Shaving before you get breakfast is the worst time. When you got something under your belt you’re stronger and more wide awake, and the bastards who work for the Combine can’t use one of their machines on you in place of an electric shaver. But when you shave before breakfast – six-thirty in the morning – then what chance you got against one of their machines?
I hide in the mop closet and listen, my heart is beating in the dark, and I try not to be afraid, try to think of something else – try to think back and remember things about the village and the big Columbia River, think about one time when Papa and me were hunting birds near The Dalles… But as always when I try to place my thoughts in the past and hide there, the fear of the present moment breaks the memory. I can feel that one black boy is coming up the hall. He is smelling out for my fear. He opens out his nostrils and he sniffs in fear from all over the ward. He’s smelling me now. He doesn’t know where I’m hiding, but he’s smelling and he’s hunting around. I try to keep still…
(Papa tells me to keep still, tells me that the dog senses a bird somewhere right close. We borrowed a pointer dog from a man in The Dalles. All the village dogs are mongrels, Papa says, no class at all; this here dog, he got instinct. I don’t say anything, but I already see the bird up in a tree, a gray knot of feathers. The dog is running in circles underneath. There is too much smell around, and he can’t point for sure. The bird is safe as long as he keeps still, but the dog is sniffing and circling, louder and closer. Then the bird breaks, spreads feathers, jumps out of the tree into the birdshot from Papa’s gun.)
The black boys catch me before I get ten steps out of the mop closet, and drag me back to the shaving room. I don’t fight or make any noise. If you yell it’s just tougher on you. I hold back the yelling till they get to my temples. I’m not sure it’s one of those substitute machines and not a shaver till it gets to my temples; then I can’t hold back. I yell so loudly that everybody puts their hands over their ears though they are behind a glass wall. Everybody yells at me, but no sound comes from the mouths. My sound soaks up all other sound. They start the fog machine again and it’s snowing down cold and white all over me like skim milk, so thick I might even be able to hide in it if they didn’t hold me. I can’t see six inches in front of me through the fog but I can hear over the noise I’m making that the Big Nurse is storming up the hall while she crashes patients out of her way with that wicker bag. I hear but I still can’t hush my yelling. I yell till she gets there. They hold me down while she jams wicker bag into my mouth and pushes it down with a mop handle.
When the fog clears and I can see, I’m sitting in the day room. They didn’t take me to the Shock Shop this time. I remember they took me out of the shaving room and locked me in Seclusion. I don’t remember if I got breakfast or not. Probably not. I can remember some mornings when I was locked in Seclusion, the black boys brought breakfast things there, but they didn’t give anything to me, they ate it themselves.
This morning I don’t remember. They got so many pills down me that I don’t know a thing till I hear that the ward door opens. The ward door opening means that it’s at least eight o’clock.
Since eight o’clock the ward door opens and closes a thousand times a day. Every morning we sit in the day room, mix jigsaw puzzles after breakfast. When a key hits the lock, we wait to see what’s coming in. There’s nothing else to do. Sometimes a young resident comes in early to watch what we’re like Before Medication. BM, they call it. Sometimes it’s a visiting wife on high heels, who holds her purse tight over her belly. Sometimes it’s a group of grade-school teachers on a tour with that fool Public Relation man who’s always clapping his wet hands together and saying how overjoyed he is that mental hospitals had put an end to all the old-fashioned cruelty. “What a cheerful atmosphere, don’t you agree?” He’ll bustle around the schoolteachers, who stay in a close group for safety, and clap his hands together. “Oh, when I think back on the old days, on the filth, the bad food, even, yes, brutality, oh, I realize, ladies, that we have come a long way in our campaign!” Whoever comes in the door is usually somebody disappointing, but there’s always a chance otherwise, and when a key hits the lock, all the heads come up at once.
This morning the sound of the key in the lock is strange; it’s not a regular visitor at the door. An Escort Man’s voice calls down impatiently, “Admission, come sign for him,” and the black boys go.
Admission. Everybody stops playing cards and Monopoly,