If symptoms
persist.. .
THE LAST TIME they tried to break into my car, a week ago, it was parked 60 yards from a police station. As it was not round a corner, you could get a clear view of it from the desk sergeant's win- dow. Luckily the thieves must have been interrupted in the cause of what burglars call their 'work', for they managed only to get as far as removing the lock from the front passenger door. Of course, it will cost me some money and much inconvenience to repair, but matters could have been worse. I might, for example, have caught them in the act, shouted abuse at them and been charged with threatening behaviour.
I was at the police station examining a man in the cells who had made an unprovoked machete attack on a lady who was waiting on the pavement for a taxi. He had never seen her before. He aimed for her neck (`You're innocent,' he shouted immediately before he struck, 'so I'm going to cut off your head') but fortunately he hit her only on the shoulder, and her injuries were not serious. Asked why he'd done it, he replied — rather like Caligula 'Because I wanted to see the blood run.' It didn't take long to establish that his thought processes were distinctly unusual.
When I returned to my car and discov- ered the attempt to break in, I didn't bother to report it to the police: what would have been the point? But the fol- lowing day, I happened to meet one of the officers who had been on duty, and I mentioned it to him.
`Ah,' he said, 'it must've been the Sneads at number 47 what did it.'
Number 47 is a hundred yards from the police station, and I suppose I must have been nonplussed by the policeman's matter-of-fact tone. At any rate, my jaw went slack.
`Yes,' he continued. 'It was probably them. Our cars are being broken into all the time.'
I laughed, but it was the laughter of desperation. I tried to put myself in the position of the lady who was attacked at random with a machete: will she ever resume her normal life? If it happened to me, I think I should be inclined to withdraw from the world entirely. On the same day, my excellent new secretary told me that her mother had just been attacked as she came out of a shop. She was set upon and beaten to the ground by a young man whom she had never seen before, who proceeded to kick her on the pavement of a busy street in broad daylight. One man came to her aid, but thought better of it when his wife said, 'Come away, it's none of our business.' When the assailant had exhausted himself, he walked — he did not run — away. He is still at liberty.
That same afternoon, I was consulted by a patient who had been set upon by five youths as he tried to withdraw money from a cash dispenser. The machine was out of order, but the assailants at least had the satisfaction of administering a good beating to him. Two weeks previously my patient, who lives in a council flat, had asked neigh- bours to turn down the volume of their music. They replied to his request by breaking four of his ribs.
This is the way that millions of us live now.
Theodore Dalrymple
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