If symptoms

persist.. .

WHEN, after years of hard-won experi- ence allied to the profoundest study and reflection, one has finally achieved a crystalline and pure vision of the world, of marvellous consistency, it is a severe psychological blow to have it destroyed utterly by an event which it cannot accommodate.

In my case, of course, this shattering event would have to be something pleas- ant, since my Weltanschauung is one of nihilistic despair — that is to say, I am a realist. According to my vision of the world, Man is an unmitigated scoundrel who ruins everything upon which he lays his hands and who wilfully destroys his own happiness into the bargain.

Well, last week I was meeting some- one in town for lunch and took a taxi from the station to the restaurant. As I alighted, two young women got into the taxi, which drove off at once to a new destination, quite far away. To my cha- grin, I realised immediately afterwards that I had left my portable telephone in the taxi.

About an hour later the taxi driver appeared in the restaurant, which was full of publishers and journalists intent upon impressing one another. The driver was fat and jolly and smiling, and my telephone was in his hand. He had gone to considerable trouble to return it to me, and I don't think he would have made a fuss if I hadn't rewarded him for his efforts. He seemed genuinely pleased to have done someone a good turn.

I was pleased to have my property returned to me, of course, but this instance of human honesty and benevo- lence troubled me vaguely throughout the lunch. Could it be that my opinion of humanity was altogether too low, too dismal? I hurried back to the prison in the afternoon to restore my faith in human badness.

Thank heavens for my prisoners! Where would my philosophy be without them? I knew they'd come up with the goods. The first two, for example, had recent lacerations of their limbs which required extensive stitching, the first of the wrist and the second of the ankle. I asked them how they had come by these lacer- ations, and of course they answered in a single word: 'Windows.' Such injuries are, in fact, the occupational disease of burglars, in the way that chimney sweeps in the 18th century contracted cancer of the scrotum because of the soot.

And then came the third. I glimpsed a spider tattooed on his scalp through the bristles which were growing back after a close shave. His upper front teeth were missing.

`What are you in for?' I asked.

`Just cars, doctor,' he replied. And then he told me that he was depressed. `Why's that?' I asked.

`There's a lot of confliction in my fam- ily. And I'm getting post-traumatic stress.' He bent his head forward over my desk. 'There's a hole in my head, doctor, and it's giving me sleeping prob- lems.'

`Yes,' I said, 'there is a depression in your skull.'

`That's because I'm a scapegoat. I need my sleeping pills, doctor.'

`What are they?'

`I'm on temazzies, nitrazzies and diazz- ies.'

Temazepam, nitrazepam and diazepam — tranquillisers and sleeping pills.

`What!' I exclaimed. 'No lorazzies, bromazzies or flurazzies?'

His eyes lit up: I had opened a whole new and unsuspected world to him.

Theodore Dalrymple