One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest / Пролетая над гнездом кукушки. Кен КизиЧитать онлайн книгу.
who is afraid of its own shadow. That, my friend, may be done to us.”
McMurphy looks at me a while, then turns back to Harding.
“Look at you here: you say the Chief is afraid of his own shadow, but I never saw a more afraid-looking bunch in my life than you guys.”
“Not me!” Cheswick says.
“Maybe not you, buddy, but the rest are even afraid to open up and laugh. I haven’t heard a real laugh since I came through that door, do you know that? Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing. A man lets a woman beat him down till he can’t laugh any more, and he loses one of the biggest edges he’s got on his side. He’ll begin to think she’s tougher than he is and —”
“Tell me, Mr. McMurphy, how does a man show a woman who’s boss, I mean other than laughing at her? How does he show her who’s king of the mountain? A man like you should be able to tell us that. You don’t beat her, do you? No, then she calls the law. You don’t lose your temper and shout at her; she’ll win by using soothing sounds. Have you ever tried to keep up an angry front in the face of such consolation? So you see, my friend, it is somewhat as you stated: man has only one truly effective weapon against the crushing force of modern matriarchy, but it certainly is not laughter. One weapon, and with every passing year in this hip society, more and more people are discovering how to make that weapon useless and conquer those who have been the conquerors till the present moment —”
“Lord, Harding, but you do come on,” McMurphy says.
“– and do you think, McMurphy, that you could effectively use your weapon against our champion? Do you think you could use it against Miss Ratched? Ever?”
And he points toward the glass case. Everybody’s head turns to look. She’s in there, looking out through her window, got a tape recorder hidden somewhere, getting all this down – already planning how to work it into the schedule.
The nurse sees that everybody is looking at her and she nods and they all turn away. McMurphy takes off his cap and runs his hands into that red hair. Now everybody is looking at him; they’re waiting for his answer and he knows it. He feels that he’s been trapped some way. He puts the cap back on and rubs the stitch marks on his nose.
“Why, if you mean do I think I could get a bone up over that old buzzard, no, I don’t think I could…”
“Ah, McMurphy. Her face is quite handsome and well preserved. And she has some rather extraordinary breasts. Still – for the sake of argument, could you get it up over her even if she wasn’t old, even if she was young and had the beauty of Helen?”
“I don’t know Helen, but I understand what you’re drivin’ at. And you’re by God right. I couldn’t get it up over old frozen face there even if she had the beauty of Marilyn Monroe.”
“There you are. She’s won.”
That’s it. Harding leans back and everybody waits for what McMurphy’s going to say next. McMurphy can see he’s backed up against the wall. He looks at the faces a minute, then shrugs and stands up from his chair.
“Well, I damn well don’t want to have some old fiend of a nurse after me with three thousand volts. Not when it’s just an adventure for me.”
“No. You’re right.”
Harding’s won the argument, but nobody looks too happy. I’m glad that McMurphy is going to be cagey after all and isn’t going to agree to a game where he can’t win, but I know how the guys feel; I’m not so happy myself. McMurphy lights another cigarette. Nobody’s moved yet. They’re all still standing there, grinning and uncomfortable. McMurphy rubs his nose again and looks away from the bunch of faces around him, looks back at the nurse and chews his lip.
“But you say… she doesn’t send you up to that other ward unless she makes you crack in some way and you end up cursing her out or breaking a window or something like that?”
“Unless you do something like that.”
“You’re sure of that, now? Because I have an interesting idea how to pick up a good purse off you birds in here. But I had a hell of a time getting out of that other hole; I don’t want to be jumping out of the fryin’ pan into the fire.”
“Absolutely certain. She’s powerless unless you do something to honestly deserve EST. If you’re tough enough and don’t let her get to you, she can’t do a thing.”
“So if I behave myself, she can’t do nothing to me? Am I safe to try to beat her at her own game? If I come on nice as pie to her, whatever else I insinuate, she isn’t going to get furious and have me electrocuted?”
“Those are the rules we play by. Of course, she always wins, my friend, always, she gets inside everyone in the end. But you’re safe as long as you keep control. As long as you don’t lose your temper and give her reason to request the therapeutic benefits of Electro Shock, you are safe. To keep one’s temper is the most important thing. And you? With your red hair and black record?”
“Okay. All right.” McMurphy rubs his palms together. “Here’s what I’m thinkin’. You birds think that you got quite the champion in there, don’t you? The woman who always wins. How many of you are willing to take my five bucks if I cannot get the best of that woman – before the end of the week – without her getting the best of me? One week, and if she doesn’t lose her power, the bet is yours.”
“You’re betting on this?” Cheswick is hopping from foot to foot and rubbing his hands together like McMurphy rubs his. “You’re damned right.”
Harding and some of the others say that they don’t understand it.
“It’s simple enough. I like to gamble. And I like to win. And I think I can win this gamble, okay? I’ll tell you something: I found out a few things about this place before I came out here. Damn near half of you guys in here get compensation, three, four hundred a month and not a thing in the world to do with it. I thought I might take advantage of this and maybe make both our lives a little more rich. I’m a gambler and I’m not in the habit of losing. And I don’t think a woman can be more man than me, I don’t care whether I can get it up for her or not. She may have the element of time, but I got a pretty long winning history myself.”
He pulls off his cap, spins it on his finger, and catches it behind his back in his other band.
“Another thing: I’m in this place because that’s the way I planned it, because it’s a better place than a work farm. I’m no loony. Your nurse doesn’t know this. These things give me an edge I like. So I’m saying: five bucks to each of you if I can’t get her goat within a week. And she’ll show, just one time, that she isn’t so unbeatable as you think.”
Harding and other Acutes agree to bet.
The Big Nurse likes to play with the time. She is able to set the wall clock at whatever speed she wants by just turning one of those dials in the steel door; she decides to hurry things up, she turns the speed up, and those hands run around that disk like spokes in a wheel. The scene in the picture-screen windows goes through changes of light at a furious speed: morning, noon, and night – light on, light off – day and dark, and everybody must move according to that fake time; awful speed of shaves and breakfasts and appointments and lunches and medications and ten minutes of night. And so you go through the full schedule of a day maybe twenty times an hour, till the Big Nurse sees that everybody is right up to the breaking point, and she changes the speed back to normal.
She likes to turn up the speed on days when you got somebody to visit you or when some video show is brought from Portland. That’s when she speeds things up.
But generally it’s the other way, the slow way. She’ll turn that dial to a stop and freeze the sun there on the screen. The clock hands hang at two minutes to three. You sit solid and you can’t move, you can’t walk, you can’t swallow and you can’t breathe. You can only move your eyes and see petrified Acutes across the room, with cards in their hands. And instead of fog sometimes she’ll let a clear chemical gas in through the vents, and the whole ward is set solid when the gas changes