Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

And another time I met a man carrying a litter of newborn kittens in a sack. He was on his way to the river and intended to drown them, not out of cruelty but because he thought it was the most humane way to dispose of kittens he could not provide a home for. I explained to him that it was cruel to the mother cat to take her kittens away before she’d weaned them, and that when the time came he could simply take the unwanted kittens to the animal shelter; if they failed to find homes for them, at least their deaths would be easy and painless. More to the point, I told him where he could get the mother cat spayed inexpensively, so that he would not have to deal with this sad business again.

He was grateful. You see, he wasn’t a cruel man, not by any means. He just didn’t know any better.

Other people just don’t want to learn.

Just yesterday, for example, I was in the hardware store over on Second Avenue. A well-dressed young woman was selecting rolls of flypaper and those awful Roach Motel devices.

“Excuse me,” I said, “but are you certain you want to purchase those items? They aren’t even very efficient, and you wind up spending a lot of money to kill very few insects.”

She was looking at me oddly, the way you look at a crank, and I should have known I was just wasting my breath. But something made me go on.

“With the Roach Motels,” I said, “they don’t really kill the creatures at all, you know. They just immobilize them. Their feet are stuck, and they stand in place wiggling their antennae until I suppose they starve to death. I mean, how would you like it?”

“You’re kidding,” she said. “Right?”

“I’m just pointing out that the product you’ve selected is neither efficient nor humane,” I said.

“So?” she said. “I mean, they’re cockroaches. If they don’t like it let them stay the hell out of my apartment.” She shook her head, impatient. “I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. My place is swarming with roaches and I run into a nut who’s worried about hurting their feelings.”

I wasn’t worried about any such thing. And I didn’t care if she killed roaches. I understand the necessity of that sort of thing. I just don’t see the need for cruelty. But I knew better than to say anything more to her. It’s useful to talk to some people. With others, it’s like trying to blow out a lightbulb.

So I picked up a half-dozen tubes of Super Glue and followed her home.

St. Anthony’s wasn’ta bad place at all. There were bars on the windows, of course, and one couldn’t come and go as one pleased, but it might have been a lot worse. I had always thought of insane asylums as something rather grim. The fictional treatment of such institutions leaves a good deal to be desired. Sadistic orderlies, medieval outlook, all of that. It wasn’t like that, though.

I had a room to myself, with a window facing out on the main grounds. There were a great many elms on the property, plus some lovely shrubs which I would be hard-pressed to name. When I was alone I would watch the groundskeeper go back and forth across the wide lawn behind a big power mower. But of course I didn’t spend all of my time in the room — or cell, if you prefer it. There was a certain amount of social intercourse — gab sessions with the other patients, interminable Ping-Pong matches, all of that. And the occupational therapy which was a major concern at St. Anthony’s. I made these foolish little ceramic tile plates, and I wove baskets, and I made potholders. I suppose this was of some value. The simple idea of concentrating very intently on something which is essentially trivial must have some therapeutic value in cases of this nature — perhaps the same value that hobbies have for sane men.

Perhaps you’re wondering why I was in St. Anthony’s. A simple explanation. One cloudless day in September I left my office a few minutes after noon and went to my bank, where I cashed a check for two thousand dollars. I asked for — and received — two hundred crisp new ten-dollar bills. Then I walked aimlessly for two blocks until I came to a moderately busy street corner. Euclid and Paine, as I remember, but it’s really immaterial.

There I sold the bills. I stopped passers-by and offered the bills at fifty cents apiece, or traded them for cigarettes, or gave them away in return for a kind word. I recall paying one man fifteen dollars for his necktie, and it was spotted at that. Not surprisingly, a great many persons refused to have anything to do with me. I suspect they thought the bills were counterfeit.

In less than a half hour I was arrested. The police, too, thought the bills were counterfeit. They were not. When the police led me off to the patrol car I laughed uproariously and hurled the ten-dollar bills into the air. The sight of the officers of the law chasing after these fresh new bills was quite comic, and I laughed long and loud.

In jail, I stared around blindly and refused to speak to people. Mary appeared in short order with a doctor and a lawyer in tow. She cried a great deal into a lovely linen handkerchief, but I could tell easily how much she was enjoying her new role. It was a marvelous experiment in martyrdom for her — loving wife of a man who has just managed to flip his lid. She played it to the hilt.

When I saw her, I emerged at once from my lethargy. I banged hysterically on the bars of the cell and called her the foulest names imaginable. She burst into tears and they led her away. Someone gave me a shot of something — a tranquilizer, I suspect. Then I slept.

I did not go to St. Anthony’s then. I remained in jail for three days — under observation, as it were — and then I began to return to my senses. Reality returned. I was quite baffled about the entire experience. I asked guards where I was, and why. My memory was very hazy. I could recall bits and pieces of what had happened but it made no sense to me.

There were several conferences with the prison psychiatrist. I told him how I had been working very hard, how I had been under quite a strain. This made considerable sense to him. My “sale” of the ten-dollar bills was an obvious reaction of the strain of work, a symbolic rejection of the fruits of my labors. I was fighting against overwork by ridding myself of the profits of that work. We talked it all out, and he took elaborate notes, and that was that. Since I had done nothing specifically illegal, there were no charges to worry about. I was released.

Two months thereafter, I picked up my typewriter and hurled it through my office window. It plummeted to the street below, narrowly missing the bald head of a Salvation Army trumpet player. I heaved an ashtray after the typewriter, tossed my pen out the window, pulled off my necktie and hurled it out. I went to the window and was about to leap out after my typewriter and necktie and ashtray and pen when three of my employees took hold of me and restrained me, at which point I went joyously berserk.

I struck my secretary — a fine woman, loyal and efficient to the core — in the teeth, chipping one incisor rather badly. I kicked the office boy in the shin and belted my partner in the belly. I was wild, and quite difficult to subdue.

Shortly thereafter, I was in a room at St. Anthony’s.

As I have said, it was not an unpleasant place at all. At times I quite enjoyed it. There was the utter freedom from responsibility, and a person who has not spent time in a sanitarium of one sort or another could not possibly appreciate the enormity of this freedom. It was not merely that there was nothing that I had to do . It goes considerably deeper than that.

Perhaps I can explain. I could be whomever I wished to be. There was no need to put up any sort of front whatsoever. There was no necessity for common courtesy or civility. If one wished to tell a nurse to go to the devil, one went ahead and did so. If one wished for any reason at all to urinate upon the floor, one went ahead and did so. One needed to make no discernible effort to appear sane. If I had been sane, after all, I would not have been there in the first place.