Second opinion

OUR residence on earth being so com- paratively short, I try to improve each shining hour. It was for this reason that I picked up and leafed through a magazine called Know Your Destiny that was lying on my desk in my room in the prison hos- pital as I waited for my first patient to arrive.

It was a glossy magazine devoted to clairvoyance and Tarot cards and the various fortune-tellers — mainly subur- ban women whose costume and jewellery hinted at the gypsy — seemed to inhabit a world in which everything turns out well in the end. Needless to say, this is not a world that I inhabit.

The first body's here, doctor,' said an officer, interrupting my reading.

Body is prison parlance for prisoner. He was a young man on remand, who had those startlingly clear eyes that are not so much windows of the soul as warnings of its complete absence. `What are you in for?' I asked. `Murder,' he replied.

`Of whom?'

`Some bloke.'

`How?'

`I smashed him with a crowbar and then I slashed him.' He described with his forefinger a line on his own body, from his left shoulder to his right hip.

`What with?'

`A pruning hook.'

`Why?' `He was pissing me off.'

A real hard case, I thought. But I was wrong — he all but burst into tears.

`Doctor, I can't go back to E Wing.'

`Why not?' I asked.

`There's people I don't want to meet there.'

`Who in particular?'

`Darren S—.'

'Why?'

`I owe him a lot of money.'

`How much?'

`Eight thousand.'

`What for? Drugs?'

`No. My baby's clothes.'

`You must have a very well-dressed baby.'

`No, • I borrowed £170 and the rest is interest.'

`When did you borrow it?'

`In February.'

`That's a fairly high rate of interest, if you ask my opinion.'

`It doubles after the first week, then it triples, and it goes on like that.'

`And if you don't pay?'

'Darren's called Animal.'

Unfortunately, Animal was currently incarcerated on E Wing. `Why's he in prison?' I asked.

`He chopped someone's fingers off.' `Nice. How did you meet him?'

`He lives near mine. Everyone knows Animal.'

I phoned E Wing and asked whether Darren S—, aka Animal, was still there: he had been released from prison earlier that day, having paid his debt to society.

`Good news,' I said. 'At least, good for some though perhaps not for others. Animal's been released. He's not on E Wing any more.'

`But he's got lots of mates still there.' Kicking and slashing can always be sub- contracted.

My next patient was in a bad way. Shortly before he was imprisoned, he had been beaten up and shot. His nose was broken, three teeth were missing, his ankle was deformed, and his ribs were still bruised. He also had an infected bul- let wound.

`Who did all that to you?' I asked.

`A bloke called Darren S—,' he said. `You mean Animal?' I asked.

`Yeah. Do you know him?'

`Only by reputation,' I replied. 'Why did he do it?'

`He wanted my girlfriend and I wouldn't let him have her.'

He shouldn't have been called Animal: he should have been called Human.

Theodore Dalrymple