"Thompson, Jim - Alcoholics, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Thompson Jim)

"But, I don't-- Are you trying to tell me that--"
"Only one thing. People work in places like these for only two reasons: Out of altruism, because, like you, they are genuinely interested in helping the alcoholic--"
"Me? Now, get this," said Doctor Murphy. "If every goddam alcoholic in the world dropped dead tomorrow, it would tickle me pink. I mean it, by God! I hate every damned one of 'em!"
Judson laughed softly. Doctor Murphy glowered at him. "That's one reason," the Negro continued. "And not, I'm afraid, a very common one. The other? Well, that might be broken down into two reasons. Because they cannot hold jobs elsewhere. Or because the alcoholic sanitarium, with a clientele which shuns publicity, gives them a better than even chance to satisfy abnormal appetites."
"But you surely don't think--"
"Only this, Doctor. Mainly this. That the world being as it is, it is a rather terrible thing to condemn a man like Van Twyne to live in it a helpless idiot."
"Who's condemning him? How do you know he wouldn't be an idiot anyway? The pre-frontal is a hell of a long way from being perfected. It's a last-ditch operation--something you have when there's nothing left to lose. Where do you get that stuff, I'm condemning him?"
Judson shrugged. He picked up the doctor's cup with a polite, "May I?"
Doc swung his hand, palm open, slapping the cup far out into the water.
"How about it?" he raged, kicking back his campstool. "Do you think I like this, any damned stinking part of it? Haven't I sunk a fortune in this place without having a dime left to show for it? Haven't I worked my ass off, with nothing but a high-paid bunch of whiners and incompetents to help me?"
Judson shook his head sympathetically. He was very fond of Doctor Murphy.
"Now, get this," said the doctor, his voice hoarse. "I didn't have Humphrey Van Twyne III flown across country. His family did. I didn't solicit him as a patient. His family had him brought here. I didn't want to treat him here. They--their own family doctor insisted on it. What the hell? Who am I to tell them what to do? What if I did tell them? They'd just dump him in another place."
"I don't think so," said Judson. "I don't think they could."
"You don't think period," said Doctor Murphy. "You don't know what I'm up against. If I don't get--" He broke off the sentence abruptly. Something would turn up. Something had to turn up. He couldn't admit to the cold facts:
That he would have to raise fifteen thousand dollars today or go out of business, and that the Van Twynes were the only possible means of raising it.
"I'm the guy who has to do the thinking," he continued. "I have to do the doing. Suppose I'm wrong. Suppose I weigh all the factors in the case and make my decision, and it turns out to be wrong. So what? I'm not infallible. I'm a doctor, not God. Goddammit, I'm not God!"
Judson turned his head and looked up the cliff. He looked back at the doctor, and nodded gravely.
"You are," he said, "so far as he's concerned."

2
While Judson and the doctor debated--the one calm and implacable, the other stubborn and angry--still another person wrestled with the problem represented by Humphrey Van Twyne III. This was Rufus; Rufus, also Negro, the day attendant at El Healtho. Rufus was considerably afraid of Humphrey Van Twyne III--"the man with no brains," as he thought of him.
Being an occupant of Room Four (or simply, Four, as the old-timers called it), the politely anonymous term for the sanitarium's padded cell, the man required a great deal of waiting on. And much of that waiting-on was required of Rufus. And while the man appeared docile enough, Rufus was quite sure that he wasn't. He knew something of the man's history. Even without brains, a person who pursued such whims as biting folks' noses off was, in Rufus' opinion, a decided menace.
He did not show this fear, of course; at least, he hoped he didn't. For a medical man to show fear of a patient would be unseemly, and Rufus definitely was--in his own mind-- a fully qualified practitioner. He held doctors' degrees from the West Coast College of Astro-Cosmicology and the Arkansas Institute of Metaphysical Science. He had also done post-graduate work in Swedish massage. In view of these honors and the fact that he _did_ "practice medicine"-- at every opportunity and despite the most dogged and profane protests--his lack of medical education seemed of no moment whatsoever.
Seated in the kitchen of El Healtho, with two plates of ham and eggs in him and his fourth cup of breakfast coffee before him, Rufus thought about the man in Room Four, unconsciously flexing the muscles in his large chocolatecolored hands. He could, he decided, "take care" of the man if he had to. But he sure hoped he wouldn't have to.
Physical contests with the patients were frowned upon, and Rufus, a devotee of the sciences, opposed them on principle. It was just plumb too bad, he thought ruefully, that Doctor Murphy would not let him "treat" the case.
He had almost got to the day before. All his equipment had been readied; and he had had the man's winding sheets unwrapped to the waist. And then Doctor Murphy had stalked in and asked what in the hell he had thought he was doing.
Rufus had explained--given his diagnosis. He was convinced, he said, that segments of the man's perverted brain remained in his system and were making him restless. Obviously, a series of colonic irrigations was indicated.
Doctor Murphy had kicked over the pan of warm soapy water. He had told Rufus to stick his goddam shitgun (_now wasn't that a pretty name to call a scientific instrument!_) up his own butt. And he had declared that if Rufus didn't stop his silly goddam horsing around (_a pretty way for a doctor to talk!_) he, personally, would kick his, Rufus', goddam ass all the way into Beverly Hills.
Pretty--thought Rufus, gloomily, savoring his coffee. A pretty way for one professional man to address another. Oh, very pretty . . . Then he became aware that Josephine, the cook, was watching him, and he exchanged his downcast manner for one of frowning studiousness. He appealed to Josephine's ever-near hysteria.
Drawing a toy stethoscope from the pocket of his white jacket, he blew through first one end, then the other, then draped them around his neck. Propping his chin up with one hand he slid the other inside his jacket, thus assuming a pose at once Napoleonic and convenient for scratching. Josephine started to giggle.

3
Back in the era surrounding World War I, the General had been prominently mentioned as a vice-presidential candidate.
Back in the days of the roaring 'twenties, he had served as chairman of the board of a hundred-million dollar corporation.
Back in the early 'thirties, three press services and a nation-wide chain of newspapers had quoted his opinion-- yes, and his firm belief--that we have but to tighten our belts, my fellow citizens, and place our trust in Almighty God, and we shall emerge from this crisis more strong and triumphant than ever . . .
Back in the early 'forties, the early days of World War II, he had . . .
As a matter of fact, he had done nothing; nothing wrong. Nothing that might not have been excused, even rewarded, at a different time. It was not so much what he had done but when he had done it: The artist, Time, had painted him into a picture of chaos, distorting the nominally normal, concealing virtue and exaggerating defect.
He had been in the public eye for years. He remained in it now, the one figure in the picture that everyone recognized. Through the refracted light of familiarity, he became a symbol for Pearl Harbor, for Bataan, for the Philippines, for the accidental shooting-down of friendly planes. Perhaps the General had extended his lines too far. Perhaps his losses had been too high for the results achieved. Perhaps, and perhaps not. It did not matter. Time spun the wheel, and the arrow stopped at the General. He was not merely culpable of one doubtful action or several, but for the whole terrifying tragedy of war.
Just as he had done nothing, nothing wrong, so nothing-- nothing really wrong--had been done to him. He was not under arrest on the flight back to Washington. He was not court-martialed. There was no official demand for his resignation. True, there were official news releases to the effect that a detailed study of his conduct was being made and that "proper action would be taken at the proper time." The stories flowed into the newspapers for months--never actually accusatory; only reciting the statistics of lives lost, of men killed and wounded and captured, and stating that the General's responsibility was under study.
The tides of the war changed, and the flow of stories to the newspapers ceased. But the General's case remained "under study," and he remained under suspension, drawing no pay. He asked for a trial. He demanded one. That put him back in the newspapers for a day--in bold-face, front-page "boxes," ironic in tone; in editorial-page cartoons--a be-spurred and drooling idiot shaking a bloody fist beneath the nose of John Q. Public.
But he did not get a trial. Nothing, as has been noted, was ever done to the General.
The war ended. The powers that were turned fretful, annoyed eyes on the General's "case." Restore him to rank? Give him a clean bill of health? Impossible. The public would never accept it. The General himself had become impossible. A common drunk, my dear fellow. Actually! "And did you see the article he wrote for that shoddy magazine? Pure viciousness! Couldn't have got any real money from that outfit . . ."
Somewhere, somehow, in his almost fifty years of military service, a small error had been made in the General's papers. It was so small and so obviously an error, a matter of a _t_ struck over a _p_ to form the anomalous abbreviation _term._, that it had been dismissed by everyone, the General included. But, now, when something had to be done with him but nothing to him, the error provided a way out.
The error had occurred in the chronicling of his promotion from captain to major; thus, it affected the higher rank and all other ranks up to his present one. A little confusing? Well, it was a rather confused matter. Briefly, however, it boiled down to this. The _term_, in the papers was--by unanimous agreement--interpreted to mean _temp_. His rank was temporary in other words; all his ranks had been temporary down to the grade of captain.
Being by age subject to retirement, he was retired without prejudice and with utter propriety at his last permanent rank--upon three-quarters of a captain's monthly stipend. So the case was adjusted, honorably and even with kindness. For, as a person high in authority had pointed out, the beggar managed to stay stiff enough as it was. With more money, he would simply drink himself to death.
. . . This morning, the morning of the day annaled and mayhap analyzed here, he sat on the flagstoned patio of the sanitarium, his steamer chair drawn up close to the sea-side guard rail so that he might better watch Doc's progress up the cliff from the beach. To some, the fact that the doctor chose to scramble perilously and laboriously up the rocks instead of ascending the stairs might have seemed idiotic. But the General did not so regard it. There was very little if anything that Doctor Murphy could do which, in the General's varicosed, broken-celled mind, would be open to criticism.
"A very fine man," the General murmured. "Must remember to--to--to-- A very fine man."
Doctor Murphy swung over the guard rail, rested a moment, then moved across the patio, mopping his bony face with a thin wiry arm. He stooped down in front of the General, gently replacing the houseslippers on the chilled bare feet. Then, dragging up a hassock to sit on, he grinned shrewdly but respectfully into the old man's face.
"Short night, eh, General?"
"What?" The General blinked, uncertainly. "Oh, no. No, I slept very well, Doctor."