John Harding - The Girl Who Couldn’t Read

This was all true and very noble indeed – if it had been everything, but the bottom line, I knew, lay in myself, in my own make-up. I had always wanted to challenge authority, ever since that day with my first tender chicken neck, to wrest back the power from those who told me what to do, even though doing so inevitably drew attention to me. It is not what a man with my little foibles should seek to do.

‘Well, come on, man! If you can’t make your mind up then perhaps I should decide for you? I will pick one at random, yes?’

‘No, give me another minute, sir, please.’

I paced slowly along the room looking at all the women along one wall and made the turn around the potbelly stove at the end and started back along the women on the opposite side. The more I strained to find one face that stood out from all the rest, the more one face seemed to merge into another. At one and the same time I felt sorry for them all, as a forlorn mass of humanity and yet also strangely detached because I could not find a single one I could imagine having any normal intercourse with. I decided I might as well give up and let Morgan choose, feeling suddenly hopeless about the whole thing. When regarded practically, in the flotsam and jetsam of society washed up before me, the very concept of Moral Treatment began to seem more and more fanciful. My eyes flicked from one woman to another and my confidence shrivelled and then, just as I was thinking this, I was stopped dead in my tracks.

It was the girl who had given away her bread. The one who had communed silently with me a couple of days earlier. Our eyes locked again and, as before, I saw an indefinable quality in them; madness, certainly, there was no doubt of that, for there was a primitive wildness about the way they stared, but there was intelligence too. Excitement pulsed through me like electricity. Not just my old, dangerous pulse, though that was there, to be sure, because the girl was attractive in her untamed way, but more than that. I could make something of this girl; she had the necessary clay to mould; she was crazy but also bright. Only one thing held me back: the familiar stirring deep within me, the quickening of the heart, the beat of blood in my temples. What if I succumbed to my ancient troubles here? It would end up costing me everything, that much I knew.

‘Well?’ Morgan was suddenly beside me, tapping his foot. ‘That one? Is it to be her?’

The question alarmed me. It was the very one I had always asked myself. All those other times. That way madness lay, and worse, I knew. Hold back, you fool, I told myself; don’t ruin things now when you are safe. Don’t do it, man, turn away now before it is too late.

I looked at the girl. She looked back at me. She tossed back her long dark hair as though to let me see her better. Her eyes were black and defiant.

‘Yes,’ I said slowly. ‘Yes, let it be her.’

He beckoned to one of the attendants and spoke quietly to her, indicating the girl with a nod, which I took to be him asking for the patient’s name and history. After a short conference with the attendant he came back to me and said, ‘Very well, let’s go to my office and look at her records. See what you’ve got for yourself.’

Morgan turned the pages of the file. ‘Hah! Yes! I remember now. I fear you’ve given yourself a hard task. The poor girl cannot even communicate properly. Besides being mad, she’s probably mentally retarded.’

He looked up at me and smiled, pleased as punch. The smile gradually faded as he saw he’d drawn no reaction from me. He’d expected me to be crestfallen at the news, whereas I did not believe a word of it. The girl’s brain might be damaged, true, but even if he couldn’t see it, the light of a sharp intelligence positively blazed from her eyes.

Disappointed, he once more studied the file. ‘Hmm, let’s see, not much to go on. Found in a state of distress wandering near the railroad depot three months ago. Refuses or is unable to tell anyone her name. We gave her the name of Jane Dove. We always call the unknowns after birds, for some reason, don’t ask me why, and “Dove” seemed to suit her. No relatives have come for her. The police took her to the city asylum and she was judged mentally impaired and sent here. Origins and age unknown. She could be anything from, say, thirteen to around eighteen. Her height may make her appear older than she is, of course. She has no menses, which may be because she’s young and hasn’t started them yet or may not signify at all, because it’s common for mentally ill women to have delayed menses or for them to cease altogether.’

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