The Treatment and the Cure by Peter Kocan Page B

me,” he says.
    “Who?”
    “I didn’t know exactly. Spies, or something.”
    “Why were they after you, did you think?”
    “Because of my feet.”
    “Your feet?”
    “Yes, I believed that my feet gave off a terrible stink, and that everyone could smell them, and that the spies or whatever they were could follow the smell of my feet.”
    “Did you wash your feet?”
    “Yes, ten times a day, but it made no difference. I still thought they stank in a peculiar way. Different from normal smelly feet. Foul. Horrible.”
    “Did you ever try to get help?”
    “I went to psychiatrists. Tons of them. They just gave me expensive pills that I couldn’t afford. In my mind I knew that the thing about the feet was caused by mental illness, but I couldn’t snap myself out of it.”
    “The expensive pills didn’t do any good?”
    “I couldn’t afford them. The psychiatrists would give me a prescription for pills but I didn’t have the money to get them all the time. I could hardly afford to pay the psychiatrists’ fees.”
    “But there were free clinics and stuff like that.”
    “I didn’t know about them. I didn’t have anyone to advise me, and my English wasn’t so good then. I just didn’t know anything, except to spend all my money going to private psychiatrists who fobbed me off with pills.”
    “Weren’t there Polish groups that could have helped or advised you?”
    “Bah! My own countrymen didn’t want to know me. They are bastards! Bastards!”
    “And what actually happened, on the train?”
    “I started carrying a butcher’s chopper to protect myself. That day I was on the train and I thought the spies were getting close. I thought they were coming along the train, through the carriages to get me, maybe throw me off. Then I saw that the other passengers were staring at me in a funny way, as if they knew what was going to happen. I suddenly thought that they were the spies and that they had false faces on. Plastic faces or something to disguise themselves and that underneath the false faces they were really the spies and that they were grinning and laughing, knowing they finally had me cornered. I knew I only had a minute left before they pulled off their faces and killed me.”
    “So you decided to defend yourself?”
    “I pulled out the chopper and went at them. I think I was screaming with terror, but I thought I’d get some of them before they got me. I was trying to chop through their plastic faces.”
    “It must have been very horrible.”
    “It was very horrible. The blood and the faces coming open and everyone screaming. I don’t know how it ended. I fainted or something, after I’d chopped a few people.”
    Zurka is obviously very sorry and sad when he’s telling about the last bit, about the train. You are quite sure he’d never do anything like that again. You’d bet your bones on it. If it was up to you, you’d let Zurka go to the open section. Yet when he’s talking about the psychiatrists who took all his money for pills and fees, or about his Polish countrymen who wouldn’t help him, you get a faint cold feeling of worry. There’s an edge in his voice that makes you think he’s spent the years here remembering the wrong they did him. It’s probably nothing. You’d still let him go to the open section if the decision was up to you. Yet you’re glad, somehow, that it’s someone else’s decision.
    Everyone is confident for Zurka. While you’re sitting with him, Eddie comes up the verandah. He’s got a brown parcel.
    “Won’t be faaarkin long now, Zurka,” he says. “The transfer’ll be through any day.”
    Zurka nods and smiles.
    “You’ll be in faaarkin clover in the faaarkin open section. Puttin’ all the faaarkin sheilas up the faaarkin duff.”
    Zurka smiles again, but shakes his head a little to show he has no intention of doing anything so irresponsible. You understand his position. The screws are watching him all the time now, gauging his mental