One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest / Пролетая над гнездом кукушки. Книга для чтения на английском языке. Кен КизиЧитать онлайн книгу.
looks at it, and returns it to the folder. She puts the folder down and picks up the log book. Ellis coughs from his place on the wall; she waits until he stops.
“Now. At the close of Friday’s meeting… we were discussing Mr. Harding’s problem… concerning his young wife. He had stated that his wife was extremely well endowed in the bosom and that this made him uneasy because she drew stares from men on the street.” She starts opening to places in the log book; little slips of paper stick out of the top of the book to mark the pages. “According to the notes listed by various patients in the log, Mr. Harding has been heard to say that she ‘damn well gives the bastards reason to stare.’ He has also been heard to say that he may give her reason to seek further sexual attention. He has been heard to say, ‘My dear sweet but illiterate wife thinks any word or gesture that does not smack of brickyard brawn and brutality is a word or gesture of weak dandyism.’ ”
She continues reading silently from the book for a while, then closes it.
“He has also stated that his wife’s ample bosom at times gives him a feeling of inferiority. So. Does anyone care to touch upon this subject further?”
Harding shuts his eyes, and nobody else says anything. McMurphy looks around at the other guys, waiting to see if anybody is going to answer the nurse, then holds his hand up and snaps his fingers, like a school kid in class; the nurse nods at him.
“Mr. – ah – McMurry?”
“Touch upon what?”
“What? Touch – ”
“You ask, I believe, ‘Does anyone care to touch upon – ’ ”
“Touch upon the – subject, Mr. McMurry, the subject of Mr. Harding’s problem with his wife.”
“Oh. I thought you mean touch upon her – something else.”
“Now what could you – ”
But she stops. She was almost flustered for a second there. Some of the Acutes hide grins, and McMurphy takes a huge stretch, yawns, winks at Harding. Then the nurse, calm as anything, puts the log book back in the basket and takes out another folder and opens it and starts reading.
“McMurry, Randle Patrick. Committed by the state from the Pendleton Farm for Correction. For diagnosis and possible treatment. Thirty-five years old. Never married. Distinguished Service Cross in Korea, for leading an escape from a Communist prison camp. A dishonorable discharge, afterward, for insubordination. Followed by a history of street brawls and barroom fights and a series of arrests for Drunkenness, Assault and Battery, Disturbing the Peace, repeated gambling, and one arrest – for Rape.”
“Rape?” The doctor perks up.
“Statutory, with a girl of – ”
“Whoa. Couldn’t make that stick,” McMurphy says to the doctor. “Girl wouldn’t testify.”
“With a child of fifteen.”
“Said she was seventeen, Doc, and she was plenty willin’.” “A court doctor’s examination of the child proved entry, repeated entry, the record states – ”
“So willin’, in fact, I took to sewing my pants shut.”
“The child refused to testify in spite of the doctor’s findings. There seemed to be intimidation. Defendant left town shortly after the trial.”
“Hoo boy, I had to leave. Doc, let me tell you” – he leans forward with an elbow on a knee, lowering his voice to the doctor across the room – “that little hustler would of actually burnt me to a frazzle by the time she reached legal sixteen. She got to where she was tripping me and beating me to the floor.”
The nurse closes up the folder and passes it across the doorway to the doctor. “Our new Admission, Doctor Spivey,” just like she’s got a man folded up inside that yellow paper and can pass him on to be looked over. “I thought I might brief you on his record later today, but as he seems to insist on asserting himself in the Group Meeting, we might as well dispense with him now.”
The doctor fishes his glasses from his coat pocket by pulling on the string, works them on his nose in front of his eyes. They’re tipped a little to the right, but he leans his head to the left and brings them level. He’s smiling a little as he turns through the folder, just as tickled by this new man’s brassy way of talking right up as the rest of us, but, just like the rest of us, he’s careful not to let himself come right out and laugh. The doctor closes the folder when he gets to the end, and puts his glasses back in his pocket. He looks to where McMurphy is still leaned out at him from across the day room.
“You’ve – it seems – no other psychiatric history, Mr. McMurry?”
“McMurphy, Doc.”
“Oh? But I thought – the nurse was saying – ”
He opens the folder again, fishes out those glasses, looks the record over for another minute before he closes it, and puts his glasses back in his pocket. “Yes. McMurphy. That is correct. I beg your pardon.”
“It’s okay, Doc. It was the lady there that started it, made the mistake. I’ve known some people inclined to do that. I had this uncle whose name was Hallahan, and he went with a woman once who kept acting like she couldn’t remember his name right and calling him Hooligan just to get his goat. It went on for months before he stopped her. Stopped her good, too.”
“Oh? How did he stop her?” the doctor asks.
McMurphy grins and rubs his nose with his thumb. “Ah-ah, now, I can’t be tellin’ that. I keep Unk Hallahan’s method a strict secret, you see, in case I need to use it myself someday.”
He says it right at the nurse. She smiles right back at him, and he looks over at the doctor. “Now, what was you asking about my record, Doc?”
“Yes. I was wondering if you’ve any previous psychiatric history. Any analysis, any time spent in any other institution?”
“Well, counting state and county coolers – ”
“Mental institutions.”
“Ah. No, if that’s the case. This is my first trip. But I am crazy, Doc. I swear I am. Well here – let me show you here. I believe that other doctor at the work farm…”
He gets up, slips the deck of cards in the pocket of his jacket, and comes across the room to lean over the doctor’s shoulder and thumb through the folder in his lap. “Believe he wrote something, back at the back here somewhere…”
“Yes? I missed that. Just a moment.” The doctor fishes his glasses out again and puts them on and looks to where McMurphy is pointing.
“Right here, Doc. The nurse left this part out while she was summarizing my record. Where it says, ‘Mr. McMurphy has evidenced repeated’ – I just want to make sure I’m understood completely, Doc – ‘repeated outbreaks of passion that suggest the possible diagnosis of psychopath.’ He told me that ‘psychopath’ means I fight and fuh – pardon me, ladies – means I am he put it overzealous in my sexual relations. Doctor, is that real serious?”
He asks it with such a little-boy look of worry and concern all over his broad, tough face that the doctor can’t help bending his head to hide another little snicker in his collar, and his glasses fall from his nose dead center back in his pocket. All of the Acutes are smiling too, now, and even some of the Chronics.
“I mean that overzealousness, Doc, have you ever been troubled by it?”
The doctor wipes his eyes. “No, Mr. McMurphy, I’ll admit I haven’t. I am interested, however, that the doctor at the work farm added this statement: ‘Don’t overlook the possibility that this man might be feigning psychosis to escape the drudgery of the work farm.’ ” He looks up at McMurphy. “And what about that, Mr. McMurphy?”
“Doctor” – he stands up to his full height, wrinkles his forehead, and holds out both arms, open and honest to all the wide world – “do I