Freedom Island (5 page)

              ‘People are empty, hollow, because they have no culture, no community, no history. There is nothing to belong to but unreachable dreams of luxury and fame; their failure makes them weak and that they do not belong to something real makes them easy to control. People who chase money will always chase money—it keeps them from thinking! But inside they die,’ and he sighed.
              ‘Who did this?’
              ‘Nobody . . . the system. In the decades following the creation of the Union, they tried to make nations more similar—it was driven by the fear of war. Well, you know from Morality and Culture how you protect people, but in so doing you steal their freedom, don’t you? Identities were frowned upon . . . . Their harmonisation process left us compliant, but alone, because deep in our hearts we are not the same, but we no longer know how to express it. But the system had gained a momentum of its own, mixing us up a terrible social cocktail where everybody does precisely what they are expected to do. But it was not always this way . . .’
              ‘How do you know I work at Morality and Culture?’
              ‘Your blue suit. And your name tag.’
              I was afraid—afraid that this was exactly the kind of thing to get me sent into Rehab, but I couldn’t resist. ‘Go on.’
              ‘After the Great War, the principle of freedom was established—the right to self-rule. But the Second World War proved that the bigger boys will always bully the smaller ones. Nations, it seemed, were not mature enough to be trusted with freedom, to be left alone. So the Union intended to remove the ability of nations to be aggressive, by pooling them together, whilst also making the combined group stronger and more effective. The irony is that this was precisely what the fascists had wanted, though through fearless courage danger audacity and revolt: they had dreamed of a European Nation cleansed of piecemeal history by war, a “European patriotism”, one culture stretching from the Greeks and Romans, a self-sufficient Europe independent of America. The democrats had won those bloody battles of the war, but then gave away the future for free! The point is that the Union was created specifically within the ideology of stability and strength and progress, over freedom and identity. But you are British.’
              ‘I am.’
              ‘Yes, and the good news is that an agglomeration such as the Union can never work for long—it can only survive so long as they dampen down national identity and create diversions like home entertainment systems, fear, restrictions and regulations . . . Where the fascists failed with their violence the bureaucrats now destroy us quietly day by day, law by law, draining us as we sit at the TV unaware until nothing is left and we do as they instruct us. Meanwhile the Union lives off us all, a parasite on the land and people both within and beyond its borders, through its contracts and loans, eavesdropping and drones, treaties and wars: it strains and strikes out for what it needs to survive, turning into slaves those on the outside just as those on the inside. Because its greatest defence is its wealth and excess and growth, its impression of invulnerability; its biggest threat is economic collapse.
              ‘Yes, the moment it becomes weak, it will crumble to nothing! The illusion will be broken. When resources become scarce stagnation will precipitate collapse, identities will re-assert and the sun will rise again for our people. The only question is, how to make it weak, or at least to appear weak. To add a little extra noise . . .’ and he paused. ‘It’s your life, nobody else’s. It’s your choice,’ and he began to write on a scrap of paper, shielded by a shaking hand.

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’Room for one more, Deputy? She won’t last long out there.’
              ‘We are full, Sergeant, as you well know. But I suppose we will find a place for her. Send the Waifs and Strays documents by the end of the week. What’s her name?’
              ‘Couldn’t find out. Wouldn’t say a word. The gypsies call her “Drabani”—but that’s gypsy. She’s no gypsy.’ With that, the Deputy turned to her:
              ‘What’s your name, girl?’ But Lucy didn’t answer. She just stared.
              He looked coldly down to the paper in front of him, printing ‘MARY’ on the form, as it was a tradition use biblical names in such cases, then returned his glance to the Police Sergeant:
              ‘You can leave her here now.’
              As the Deputy led her into the asylum everyone fell silent, the muffled conversations screams and coughing stopped. Her hair was long, curly, bright orange; her skin as white as death; about twenty—although she later claimed to be over fifty—she acknowledged no one.
              Odd Johansen, a Prefect, was stuck to the spot. All eyes followed her: Orderlies frozen in time up on the gangway; Patients analysing, tracking her regal progress in her translucent rags across the squeaky-clean floor toward the washrooms for de-lousing—a place that doubled as a laundry where the grey overalls of the Lunatics and the grey slacks polos and cardigans of the Patients hung in the chill of permanently opened windows.
              Some immediately decided she was a witch, on instinct alone, and others that she had rabies or a genuine mental disorder, but they stared wanting: mouths open eyes absorbing like eager children they forgot their submission; she drew every one of them in with her hypnotic wind-like movements, and Frank Sloth who stood motionless beside Odd was no exception: only their heads turned. He saw freshness, excitement—an energy donor—and it was a few moments before he, and Odd, remembered what they’d been doing. They continued on their way to the canteen, that sounded like a brass band limbering-up.
              ‘It seems wrong to make something as beautiful as that a Patient,’ Frank managed, as they put their trays down. They began to eat, both silently aware of the thin wall separating them from the washrooms, where she would by now be naked.
              Everyone entered Bedlam Hospital as a Patient. Patents shared cells and had the privilege of working. Those misbehaving were reduced to ‘Lunatic’ and transferred to the Dormitories on the ground floor, where besides food and cleaning—and Radio—they were left to rule themselves.
              Because sleep deprivation was the easiest—cheapest—way of sedation, Radio would be wide awake at five every morning, the presenter the supreme object of hate for one thousand Lunatics shrunk beneath their acrylic blankets to muffle his witticisms and jingles, waiting for the news on-the-hour which, being blocked, delivered five minutes of peace. One of them, Rick Roulette, an American misfiled by his embassy and mourned by his family as gone for good, was the inappropriately short texan with high principles who had led the most recent of the Lunatic uprisings—in the name of ‘Liberty and Respect against Radio’—but who already sat before the Head Prefect, Olimpio Galasso, offering to exchange all of his beloved principles for total obedience
. . 
. and Mary in a south-facing third-floor cell.
              ‘But it’s not that bad in here, is it?’ Odd replied to Frank.
              ‘Well I’d rather get out, have a real life, a normal one!’
              ‘And where would you go, Frank? And you say get out, but whom is on the outside and whom is on the in?’ Frank winced at Odd’s didactic tone. ‘I’ll grant you, our side of the wall is smaller than theirs,’ Odd continued, ‘but outside in the Union there is no freedom at all—they monitor everything; in here nobody cares. They can tell us we are insane, and we can tell them they are insane! Life is better inside, and there are many in here who feel the same way, even with a clear head.’
              Odd, Frank’s cellmate, was a Prefect. Prefects were selected by the Orderlies to help run the place—collaborating—in return for special benefits: woollen jackets and leather shoes (in grey), a TV and a woollen blanket. But unlike the others, Odd was universally popular, and he concluded with an intellectual flurry: ‘You live in a bottomless nostalgia for a place that doesn’t exist.’
              Frank didn’t respond. To him, Odd had surrendered to the very system that had destroyed him. To Odd, Frank was self-indulgent.
              No sooner had they left the canteen than the intermittent bell called them to the Great Hall for the French election: Regional Harmonisation gave citizens of neighbouring states the vote too, to curtail extremism, and the insane were apparently considered as able as anyone else of making a sufficiently neutralising choice. Odd and Frank ambled up to a grey line.
‘The doctor will check you over now.’
              Mary scowled. Doctor Saif Zadir stood in front of her like a statue, recognising her immediately, then mumbling something uselessly. Despite his unshakeable faith in science and organised religion, pearls of cold sweat appeared on his forehead. He grabbed her by the throat and slammed the door shut.
              After leaving Mary with the doctor, the unaffected Deputy stepped up to the Governor’s office to get the admission form stamped. The Governor buzzed the door:
              ‘Deputy.’
              The Governor’s sleepless face stared back at him, hair sprung all over the place, his beard ungroomed, his eyes wide and staring: he released the occasional grunt from behind a colonial antique desk as big as a tomb, an orb on either side—one an astral globe, the other terrestrial—and his Lodge’s ceremonial knocker at his feet. He wore his white Masonic gloves grown grey and black through continual use: for bacterial protection and spiritual support, and was fiddling with an ornamental paperknife.
              He grunted.
              Just how could the Worshipful Master of the local Masonic Lodge, home of one ambassador, two magistrates and a notary, have fallen so low? Terror! Each of the three previous Governors had met untimely and dramatic deaths: one at the nib of his very own Mont Blanc pen, embedded in his neck; another crushed beneath the ballroom chandelier mid-way through the Christmas Day appetiser; whilst the most recent incumbent had been tipped up and over the wall of his beloved private terrace to his sacrificial impalement on the basalt below, whilst watering the roses—by a Prefect who had even babysat his daughter.
              The portly Governor managed a petrified smile, then lost it again. ‘Close the door. Quickly.’
              He’d been landed the custodianship of Bedlam courtesy of his unfortunate connections and sworn obedience to his Lodge Brethren—and that was indeed the only occasion he ventured beyond his quarters, once a month, when summoned to preside over their meetings.
              ‘What are they saying? What’s going on?’
              The only person he could trust was the Deputy, since the Deputy would be the one obliged step into his shoes were he to die, thereby inheriting not just a promotion but a death sentence too.
              The Deputy delivered his unabridged report from the inside: of the Lunatics who would excitedly discuss inventive ways of disposing of their Governor; of the Orderlies who were enthusiastically taking sweepstakes on when it would happen; and of the more reasonable Patients who regretfully understood that their only remaining chance in life of becoming a legend of any kind, was to trade their own for his.
              Some, two floors beneath, had attempted to give the poor man a heart attack: they had banged on pipes and howled up vents in the dark of the night, until the poor Governor in his delirium of lack of sleep and justified paranoia became convinced he was being haunted by his predecessors. Others, as yet unidentified, had poisoned his food, guessing correctly that the Deputy whom the Governor had tasked with testing it (in boarding school fashion) was merely pretending to—but then the tiny morsels the Governor did gingerly nibble had been enough only for a few days of violent vomiting, not death. Most ambitiously, a stack of paper had appeared on the Deputy’s desk, signed (in triplicate) by the most notorious Patients and Lunatics and even a couple of renegade Orderlies, stating that were the Deputy to do away with the Governor himself they would surrender their tradition both collectively and individually and assure him of a long and healthy tenure as the new Governor, ‘which as everyone knows is a juicy number, were it not for the dying bit.’ Should he refuse, they explained, they would deliver the same offer in reverse to the Governor himself, reducing themselves to ‘accept the blood of a Governor-in-Waiting rather than no blood at all.’
              The Deputy kept his distance.
              ‘I see, I see,’ the Governor said, meditatively.
              ‘Also,’ the Deputy continued cooly, ‘we brought in a new Patient,’ and he handed over the form, methodically filled-out, intent on doing the very best job he could—defined in terms of financial performance—in the slim hope of being promoted out of the place before his boss perished: He would tabulate and evaluate, project and record—managing performance on the inside and impression on the out—but nobody cared. The man, in reality, could have got away with anything—steal, fabricate, omit—nobody would ever remove him since it would necessitate finding someone else to take his place. But he simply couldn’t think of a better plan.
              The Governor paused, looking questioningly at the form with a suffering sweaty face: ‘First floor?’
              ‘She’s a lost cause,’ explained the Deputy.
              ‘For a gentleman, lost causes should be attractive.’ The Governor saw his able Deputy as officious; stone-dead and soulless—not problematic, but not Brother either. He was simply too rigid, lacked affability: Bugger! I could have initiated him into the Lodge, and had him take my place!
              ‘What’s the point? We’re in a mental asylum.’
              There he goes again, thought the Governor with a mental sigh, this man would never find a Seconder.
That evening, the Deputy clung to a medicinal drink at the Orderlies Bar as an argument broke out. He’d paid no attention to their trifling complaints until fists flew over which of them—the Orderlies—would have Mary as his ‘regular’, whereupon they all spun around to face him as a natural mediator—not merely as their superior but as the one person they did not consider a sexual rival:
              ‘Deputy, what do we do with this Mary? Everyone wants her!’
              In a split second the canny Deputy reasoned that none could have her, for fear of alienating everyone else.
              ‘Take her down to the Lunatic Dormitory, but first give her the welcome meal’ —an order carried out enthusiastically by the hormone-fuelled Orderlies, as willing to punish Mary for their frustration as one another.
              ‘Dog’ she replied without hesitation. It was traditional for new Patients to have the dinner of their choice on their first night, and she ate enthusiastically, then on down to the Women’s Dormitory she went for an unwelcome initiation, led by an infamous Lunatic with silicon implants, as less extrovert roommates stood quietly by.
              The Governor’s sun-soaked suite sprawled along the uppermost floor of the south side looking out to the sea: his office lined with hardwood panelling broken by magnificent French windows opening onto a terrace which ran around three sides of the building and which was—even now—filled with the blooming yellow roses nurtured by the previous Governor: a magnificent mocking bouquet of life which the Deputy had to water and prune—as no-one else had access and since the Governor himself was in no condition to do anything, and to feed the budgies too: whose tweets drove the Governor wild with rage in the early mornings of his sleepless nights.
              Four floors below in the Lunatic Dormitories, the sun shone through their windows too, between rusting bars, and were it not for the certain knowledge of the bleak winter to come they could even have enjoyed it. For from October without fail the rain wind hail and dark satanic waves would bash beat and rattle their ill-fitting windows like Lucifer and his friends aiming to get in—clawing and crashing at the feet of the place as it clung to the land that had never wanted it, breathing in and out a rancid dragon breath fed with daily regularity by the rumbling discharge of two thousand mental patients at high tide to an open sea—leaving those sorry Lunatics limp with exhaustion throughout the days and rigid with desperation through the growling nights. Above them, on the first floor, were the lower Patient cells with no glazing at all and a bucket for excretions—reserved for those neither useful nor problematic—and during the winter their bed sheets froze to the wall, their piss and shit recorded in glacial layers, whilst in summer they’d be eaten alive by insects: but still the cold, the crawling damp, the bugs flies spiders and infections, were preferable to the buggery and bullying below. Collectively, the Patients and Lunatics were the ‘Residents’.
              Most of the doctors lived on the outside, visiting daily with their white coats and superior manners, while the Orderlies, many of whom had accommodation on the fourth, were free men in the very worst of ways: they abused their power, beating and raping on a whim, a dare or a joke, retaining their unfortunate ‘regulars’—their selected sexual partners who were as likely to be men as women—tortured souls with no choice but to comply. The Orderlies were unrestrained semi-educated ruffians with just a four-eyed bean-counter of a Deputy and a mentally broken Governor to restrain them.