If symptoms
persist.. .
EARLY one Sunday morning some years ago, I stood waiting at a bus stop on a nearly deserted Manhattan street. The only other person at the bus stop was a middle-aged woman in a shabby green overcoat who was only one rung up the social scale from a bag lady. Something that sounded like a shot rang out and a little puff of smoke appeared in the road about three yards from where we were standing. Without mov- ing, or taking avoiding action, the lady turned to me and drawled, 'I'm telling you, this city is a bad place.'
A bad place — my sentiments exactly about prison. Last week, for example, a prisoner was strolling in the exercise yard when someone crept up behind him and slashed his face with a razor. I had to put in a few stitches. The victim of the attack had been transferred to us from another prison for safety's sake. He had grassed on a gangland criminal with extensive connections, one of whose associates had awaited an opportunity such as this. Next time it would be the throat.
My patient was no angel. He told the usual depressing story: parental neglect, children's homes, approved school, borstal, detention centre, remand and prison, a progress as natural in some quarters as that through school, universi- ty and profession. My patient was heavily tattooed. The words 'Give a dog a bone' had been indelibly insinuated into the skin around his navel, while his arms were covered in multicoloured centipedes. This wasn't as bizarre as one prisoner I knew who had the word HATE tatooed on his forehead in mirror writing, no doubt to remind himself of his raison d'être every morn- ing when he looked in the mirror and decided not to wash (at least he could read). Somehow, I doubt that Freud had to attend to cases such as these, or he might have framed different theories altogether. I felt pity for my patient, angel or not. It can't be altogether comfortable to know that the razors are out for you, and that at any time in the next five years your throat might be cut. I admitted him to hospital for a time — not that hospital is the solution to his little problem.
My next patient was a reformed rapist, about to be released on home leave. He was intelligent and personable, and we had a long chat. It was time, as they say in Russian novels, to talk philosophy. When he admitted his crime without qualification, and said that he had paid the just price for it, I could have fallen off my chair. He said he had reflected long and hard on his life, and he did not like what he remembered: he had been selfish, drunken and uncouth, concerned only with his own pleasures, to the exclu- sion of all other considerations. The love of a woman (who married him while he was in jail) changed him. He had finally matured, though the hard way.
It was very impressive, and after he left my consulting room I felt uplifted. Perhaps prison wasn't so bad after all. Then I remembered the words of one of the prison hospital nurses: 'Don't believe a word they say, sir, they're all lying swine.'
The worm of doubt crept into my heart. Perhaps the reformed rapist was merely a liar of superior talents. Perhaps the victim of the razor attack had done it himself to get off work. The problem with working in prison for any length of time is that instead of thinking of cons as people, you start thinking of people as cons.
Theodore Dalrymple
Previous page
