Memoir From Antproof Case by Mark Helprin Page A

literate enough to read the
Police Gazette
without assistance and, after hundreds of inquiries—"Does L-I-V-E-R spell Lady Gaudoyva?"—I became his private secretary and amanuensis. In a process that confirmed the genius of Isaac Newton, my every effort was repaid as he recounted to me in equal measure his years, begun in "Eteen-hundert ant soventy-soven," as a cop.
    He was near retirement and full of regrets. "Murther is entoyerly uninthirestin," he said. "The raysult is alwess the sim—a did boody. If Oy ware you, a tinder farteen-yar-olt buy, Oy'd be inthirested in the bonks."
    "The bonks?"
    "The bonks. Killin is amurl, but ayven assa paylease afficer, Oy don't see anythin amurl about robin bonks. Ya know, we hod a fellah who wint boy the name of 'Robin Bonks,' ant he would git himself al dresst oop ant walk into a bonk. 'Gut marnin,' he'd say, 'Oy'm inthirested in oopinin an accoont.' 'Whot's yir nim?' they'd osk. 'Robin Bonks,' he't reploy, ant see how lang he coot tayke it befar he hot to tayke oot his gon."
    Spinney leaned over the top bunk rail as if to confide in me the secret of the universe. "The bonks," he said, "iss whar payple kip thir minny. Ya dawn't haf ta goo lookin far it. It's al in one playce. If Oy ware you, gooin oover ta lam Frinch ant Chairman ant al thot, Oy'd figger oot how ta git meself inta Harberd or Yell, and thin grotchulee warm me woy inta sum infistmint bonk or sumthin. Ya folia?"
    I did, but I tabled it.
    I cannot remember anything worse than being confined within a straitjacket—even going down into the sea, my windshield covered with oil and blood, the engines dying and the wind whistling death—except perhaps for shock "therapy," something to which I was subjected before I was sent abroad, a thing more terrible than I can describe, inflicted upon me by that coffee-drinking bastard who called himself a judge.
    With great economy of means, a straitjacket inflicts semiperfect paralysis upon someone whose most pressing need is to thrash. Without exit through despairing limbs, the pain of the interior is the greatest torturer. Of the two types of straitjacket, the worse is the kind that pins your arms in front of you. Supposedly this is more humane, and better for the circulation, but it leads to a feeling of suffocation and powerlessness that is hard to convey.
    Electroshock is somewhat more apprehensible to the general public, for most people have learned to dread the electric chair merely through its description. Can you imagine an instrument that, while offering every pain and terror of death by electrocution, denies the holy rest that one earns in suffering through the experience, so that one is preserved to be electrocuted again and again? I believe "electrotherapy" is still debated. Those who, quite insanely, advocate it, claim that the patient benefits. I'll tell you how you benefit. When you finish you're half dead (something that could be accomplished with a severe beating or by a simple toss off a low cliff) and therefore quite tranquil. One is grateful to be alive, that the torture has passed, that the pain is gone. Lesser details appear almost insignificant. After my electrocutions I was even able to sit next to a coffee pot.
    For a fourteen-year-old boy who grew up within the shadow of Sing Sing, straitjackets and, particularly, electroshock were difficult to bear. Picture going to the top of the Eiffel Tower, visiting the Louvre, and strolling down the Champs Élysées—in a straitjacket. I did this. I sat with Spinney at the Café de l'Opéra, he with his mustache and watch-chain and nickel-plated pistol, and I in my white encumbrance. He was charitable enough to place me as far from the expresso machine as possible, and when the wind was right I was relatively untortured. With winks, glances, and devil-may-care expressions, I tried to meet women. And when they all looked away, I assumed that it was because my skin was bad or they thought I was