Second opinion
A VISITOR to our grey and ghastly land might easily conclude that it had just emerged from a prolonged period of severe drought and famine, for the English seem incapable these days of progressing further than a few yards, or of waiting for longer than a few minutes, without solid or liquid refreshment, or both. Evidently, we live in hungry and thirsty times.
One day last week my first patient sat outside my room accompanied by her 14year-old daughter, who was quite pretty in an incipient slut kind of way. She had a ring through her nose (they start bodypiercing early these days), and also one through her navel, which was showing despite the sub-zero temperature outside. If only such heroic self-sacrifice could be attached to a better cause!
But what I most noted about her was the packet of potato crisps which she held in one hand, and upon which she grazed with all the self-consciousness of an obligate herbivore. She ate without thinking and chewed without tasting. No doubt the empty packet would soon appear somewhere on the ground, for the English now leave litter behind them as rabbits leave pellets — though, on the whole, of course, rabbit pellets are neater and less aesthetically offensive.
My second patient arrived: a young man of high intelligence but brutal background. His slouch in the seat while waiting to see me was so exaggerated that it indicated not so much a desire to make himself comfortable as to express an attitude to life. In his hand was a bottle of mineral water from which he swigged regularly: it's thirsty work waiting in a hospital corridor for five minutes.
He brought his bottle with him into my room; no baby was ever more attached to its milk or its dummy than was this young man to his mineral water. He drank from it while he spoke to me, and while I spoke to him.
He was not a completely hopeless case. He was deeply troubled by his own propensity to violence, especially when he had been drinking — his father had been in prison for murder. He was jealous and possessive of his girlfriend and accused her of infidelities on the slightest pretext, the absurdity of which he recognised immediately afterwards, but which seemed compelling to him at the time.
'Trifles light as air are to the jealous confirmations strong as proofs of holy writ,' I said.
'That's Othello,' he said. 'I really love that play.'
I cannot describe how moving it is to meet someone brought up in his environment who has discovered, through the force of his own intelligence, completely unaided by what passes for the education system and handicapped by the prevailing 'culture' surrounding him, the consolations and joys of real literature.
'My problem, doctor,' he said, 'is that my Iago is deep inside me.'
Here was a young man who was attempting genuine self-examination (a rare thing indeed in these days of easy psychobabble and exhibitionism masquerading as confession), and we discussed the origins and meaning of insensate jealousy.
'I suppose I can't really think much of myself,' he said. 'Perhaps I need more self-esteem.'
'No one needs self-esteem,' I said. 'Even to consider it is to be lost beyond redemption. What everyone needs, however, is self-respect.'
And self-respect is precisely what the English, en masse, lack so entirely.
Theodore Dalrymple
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