One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest / Пролетая над гнездом кукушки

The Big Nurse watches all this through her window. The day-room floor gets cleared of tables, and at one o’clock the doctor comes out of his office down the hall, nods once at the nurse as he goes past her window, and sits in his chair just to the left of the door. The patients sit down when he does; then the little nurses and the residents come in. When everybody’s down, the Big Nurse comes out into the day room, carrying the logbook and a basket full of notes. She sits just to the right of the door.

Soon after she’s sat down, Old Pete Bancini turns his face to McMurphy and starts complaining. “I’m tired. Whew. O Lord. Oh, I’m awfully tired…” he always does so whenever there’s a new man on the ward who might listen to him.

The Big Nurse doesn’t look at Pete. She’s going through the papers in her basket. “Somebody, go and sit beside Mr. Bancini,” she says. “Quiet him down so we can start the meeting.”

Billy Bibbit goes, sits down beside Pete and pats his knee. Pete realizes that nobody is going to listen to his complaint today. The nurse takes off her wrist watch and looks at the ward clock and puts the watch face toward her in the basket. She takes a folder from the basket.

“Now. Shall we get into the meeting?”

She looks around, smiling. The guys don’t look at her; they’re all looking at their nails. Except McMurphy. He’s sitting in an armchair in the corner, and he’s watching her every move. He’s still wearing his cap. A deck of cards in his lap opens and shuts with a loud sound. The nurse’s eyes stay on him for a second. She’s been watching his playing poker all morning and though no money has passed hands she suspects that he’s not exactly the type that is going to be happy with the ward rule of gambling for matches only. The deck opens and shuts again and then disappears somewhere in one of those big palms.

The nurse looks at her watch again and pulls a piece of paper out of the folder she’s holding, looks at it, and returns it to the folder. She puts the folder down and picks up the logbook.

“Now. At the end of Friday’s meeting… we were discussing Mr. Harding’s problem… concerning his young wife. He had stated that his wife’s bosom attracted stares from men on the street and that this made him uneasy.” She opens a place in the logbook. “According to the notes in the logbook, Mr. Harding says that she ’damn well gives the bastards reason to stare’. He also says that he knows her reason to look for sexual attention. He says, ’My dear sweet but illiterate wife thinks that any word or gesture that isn’t brutal is a word or gesture of weak dandyism’.”

She continues reading silently from the book for a while, then closes it.

“He has also stated that his wife’s big bosom at times gives him a feeling of inferiority. So. Does anyone care to touch upon this subject further?”

Harding shuts his eyes, and nobody else says anything. McMurphy looks around at the other guys to see if anybody is going to answer the nurse, then holds his hand up like a school kid in class; the nurse nods at him.

“Mr. – ah – McMurry?”

“Touch upon what?”

“What? Touch–”

“You ask, I believe, ’Does anyone care to touch upon’–”

“Touch upon the – subject, Mr. McMurry, the subject of Mr. Harding’s problem with his wife.”

“Oh. I thought you mean touch upon her – something else.”

“Now what could you —”

But she stops. Some of the Acutes hide grins, and McMurphy stretches himself, yawns, winks at Harding. Then the nurse, calm as anything, puts the logbook back in the basket and takes out another folder and opens it and starts reading.

“McMurry, Randle Patrick. Sent by the state from the Pendleton Farm for Correction.For diagnosis and possible treatment. Thirty-five years old. Never married. Distinguished Service Cross in Korea, for leading an escape from a Communist prison camp. A dishonorable discharge, afterward, for insubordination. Followed by a history of street brawls and barroom fights and a series of arrests for Drunkenness, Assault and Battery, Disturbing the Peace, repeated gambling, and one arrest – for Rape.”

“Rape?” The doctor looks up.

“Statutory, with a girl of —”

“Whoa. Couldn’t stick that,” McMurphy says to the doctor. “Girl wouldn’t testify.”

“With a child of fifteen.”

“Said she was seventeen, Doc, and she was plenty willin’.”

“A court doctor’s examination of the child proved entry, repeated entry, the record states —”

“So willin’, in fact, I began to sew my pants shut.”

“The child refused to testify in spite of the doctor’s findings. It seems, there was intimidation. Defendant left town shortly after the trial.”

“Hoo boy, I had to leave. Doc, let me tell you” – he leans forward to the doctor across the room, lowering his voice – “that little hustler would have actually frazzled me by the time she reached legal sixteen.”

The nurse closes up the folder and passes it across the doorway to the doctor.

The doctor puts his glasses on. He’s smiling a little as he turns through the folder, but he doesn’t let himself laugh. The doctor closes the folder when he gets to the end, and puts his glasses back in his pocket. He looks at McMurphy.

“You’ve no other psychiatric history, Mr. McMurry?”

“McMurphy, Doc.”

“Oh? But I thought – the nurse was saying —”

He opens the folder again, looks through the record for another minute before he closes it, and puts his glasses back in his pocket. “Yes. McMurphy. That is correct. I beg your pardon.”

“It’s okay, Doc. That lady there made the mistake. I’ve known some people who did that. I had this uncle whose name was Hallahan, and he went with a woman once who acted as if she couldn’t remember his name right and called him Hooligan just to get his goat. It went on for months before he stopped her. Stopped her well, too.”

“Oh? How did he stop her?” the doctor asks.

McMurphy grins and rubs his nose with his thumb. “Ah-ah, now, I can’t tell that. I keep Uncle Hallahan’s method a strict secret, you see, in case I need to use it myself someday.”

He says it and looks right at the nurse. She smiles right back at him, and he looks over at the doctor. “Now; what were you asking about my record, Doc?”

“Yes. I asked if you’ve any previous psychiatric history. Any analysis, any time spent in any other institution?”

“Well, speaking of state and county coolers —”

“Mental institutions.”

“Ah. No, this is my first trip. But I am crazy, Doc. I really am. Well here – let me show you here. I believe that other doctor at the work farm…”

He gets up and comes across the room, leans over the doctor’s shoulder and thumbs through the folder in his lap. “Believe he wrote something, back at the back here somewhere…”

“Yes? I missed that. Just a moment.” The doctor takes his glasses out again and puts them on and looks to where McMurphy is pointing.

“Right here, Doc. The nurse didn’t read it while she was summarizing my record. Where it says, ’Mr. McMurphy has evidenced repeated – I just want to make sure I’m understood completely, Doc – ’repeated outbreaks of passion that suggest the possible diagnosis of psychopath.’ He told me that ’psychopath’ means I fight and fuh – pardon me, ladies – means that I am, as he put it, overzealous in my sexual relations. Doctor, is that very serious?”

He asks it with such a little-boy look of worry all over his broad, tough face that the doctor bends his head to hide another little smile in his collar, and his glasses fall from his nose back in his pocket. All of the Acutes are smiling too, now, and even some of the Chronics.

“I mean that overzealousness, Doc, have you ever been troubled by it?”

The doctor wipes his eyes. “No, Mr. McMurphy, I’ll admit I haven’t. I am interested, however, that the doctor at the work farm added this statement: ’But there’s the possibility that this man might be feigning psychosis to escape the hard work of the work farm’.” He looks up at McMurphy. “And what about that, Mr. McMurphy?”

“Doctor” – he stands up to his full height, wrinkles his forehead, and holds out both arms, open and honest to all the wide world – “do I look like a saneman?”

The doctor can’t answer because he tries not to snigger again. McMurphy turns away from the doctor and asks the same thing of the Big Nurse: “Do I?” She doesn’t answer. She stands up and takes the folder away from the doctor and puts it back in the basket under her watch. She sits back down.

“Perhaps, Doctor, you should advise Mr. McMurry on the rules of these Group Meetings.”

“Ma’am,” McMurphy says, “have I told you about my uncle Hallahan and the woman who didn’t pronounce his name properly?”

She looks at him for a long time without her smile. Finally she says, “I beg your pardon, Mack-Murph-y.” She turns back to the doctor. “Now, Doctor, if you would explain…”

The doctor folds his hands and leans back. “Yes. I think I’ll explain the complete theory of our Therapeutic Community, while we’re at it. Though I usually speak about it later. Yes. A good idea, Miss Ratched, a fine idea.”

“Certainly the theory too, doctor, but what I had in mind was the rule that the patients stay seated during the meeting”.

“Yes. Of course. Then I will explain the theory. Mr. McMurphy, one of the first things is that the patients stay seated during the meeting.”

“Sure, Doctor. I just got up to show you that thing in my record book.”

He goes back to his chair, stretches himself again and yawns, sits down, and moves around for a while like a dog coming to rest. When he’s comfortable, he looks over at the doctor, waiting.

“As to the theory…” The doctor takes a deep, happy breath.

McMurphy doesn’t say anything all the rest of the meeting. Just sits and watches and doesn’t miss a thing that happens or a word that’s said. The doctor talks about his theory until the Big Nurse finally decides he’s used up time enough and asks him to stop so they can talk about Harding, and they talk the rest of the meeting about that.

McMurphy sits forward in his chair a couple of times during the meeting as if he might have something to say, but he decides better and leans back. There’s a puzzled expression on his face. He thinks that something strange is going on here. He can’t quite put his finger on it. There’s something strange about a place where the men don’t laugh, something strange about the way they all knuckle under to that smiling flour-faced old mother there with the too-red lipstick and the too-big boobs. And he thinks that he’ll just wait awhile and see what the story is in this new place before he makes any kind of play. That’s a good rule for a clever gambler: watch the game awhile before you draw yourself a hand.

I’ve heard that theory of the Therapeutic Community enough times to repeat it forwards and backwards – how a guy has to learn to get along in a group before he’ll be able to function in a normal society; how the group can help the guy by showing him where he’s out of place; that society decides who’s sane and who isn’t. The doctor goes into the theory every time we get a new patient on the ward. He says that the goal of the Therapeutic Community is a democratic ward; the patients themselves run this ward and work toward becoming normal citizens, who will go back Outside onto the street. He says that the chief method of therapy is the discussing of all personal, emotional problems in the group,in front of patients and staff. Talk, he says, discuss, confess. And if a friend says something during the course of your everyday conversation, write it down in the logbook, where the staff can see it. It’s not, as the movies call it, “squealing,” it’s helping your fellow. Bring these old sins into the open, participate in Group Discussion, help yourself and your friends probe into the secrets of the subconscious. There should be no need for secrets among friends.

Our goal, he usually ends by saying, is to make this as much like your own democratic, free neighborhoods as possible – a little world Inside that is a small prototype of the big world Outside in which you will one day take your place again.

At this point the Big Nurse usually stops him, and in the pause old Pete stands up and tells everybody how tired he is, and the nurse tells somebody to calm him, so the meeting can continue, and Pete is usually calmed and the meeting goes on.

Only once, four or five years ago, it was different. The doctor had finished his speech, and the nurse had asked, “Who will start? Tell us about those old secrets.” And she’d put all the Acutes in a trance by sitting there in silence for twenty minutes after the question. When twenty minutes had passed, she looked at her watch and said, “So, there’s not a man among you that has done something that he has never confessed?” She reached in the basket for the logbook. “Must we go over past history?”

At the sound of those words coming from her mouth, some acoustic device in the walls turned on. The Acutes stiffened. Their mouths opened in unison. Her eyes stopped on the first man along the wall.

His mouth worked. “I robbed a cash register in a service station.”

She moved to the next man.

“I tried to take my little sister to bed.”

Her eyes clicked to the next man.

“I – one time – wanted to take my brother to bed.”

“I killed my cat when I was six. Oh, God forgive me, I stoned her to death and said my neighbor did it.”

“I lied about trying. I did take my sister!”

“So did I! So did I!”

“And me! And me!”

It was better than she’d dreamed. They were all shouting, telling things that wouldn’t ever let them look one another in the eye again. The nurse was nodding at each confession and saying ’Yes, yes, yes’.

Then old Pete was on his feet. “I’m tired!” he shouted, a strong, angry tone to his voice that no one had ever heard before.

Everyone stopped shouting. They were somehow ashamed. It was as if he had suddenly said something that was real and true and important and it had put all their childish shouting to shame. The Big Nurse was furious. She turned and glared at him, the smile left her face.

“Somebody, calm poor Mr. Bancini,” she said.

Two or three got up. They tried to calm, pat him on his shoulder. But Pete didn’t stop. “Tired! Tired!” he kept on.

Finally the nurse sent one of the black boys to take him out of the day room by force. She forgot that the black boys didn’t hold any control over people like Pete.

Pete’s been a Chronic all his life. Even though he didn’t come into the hospital till he was over fifty, he’d always been a Chronic. His head had been traumatized at the time of his birth by the tongs with which the doctor had jerked him out. And this made him forever as simple as a kid of six.

But one good thing – being simple like that put him out of the influence of the Combine. They weren’t able to adjust him. So they let him get a simple job on the railroad, where he waved a red, green or yellow lantern at the trains according to the position of the switch. And his head wagged according to the position of that switch. And he never had any controls installed in him.

That’s why the black boy didn’t have any influence over him. But the black boy didn’t think of that any more than the nurse did when she ordered to take Pete from the day room. The black boy walked right up and gave Pete’s arm a jerk toward the door.

“Tha’s right, Pete. Let’s go to the dorm.”

Pete shook his arm free. “I’m tired,” he warned.

“C’mon, old man. Let’s go to bed and be still like a good boy.”

“Tired…”

“I said you goin’ to the dorm, old man!”

The black boy jerked at his arm again, Pete stopped wagging his head. He stood up straight and steady, and his eyes came clear as blue neon. And the hand on that arm that the black boy was holding became a strong fist. Nobody was paying any attention to this old guy and his old song about being tired. Everybody thought that he would be calmed down as usual and the meeting would go on. They didn’t see the hand that had turned into a strong fist. Only I saw it. I stared at it and waited, while the black boy gave Pete’s arm another jerk toward the dorm.

“Ol’ man, I say you got —”

He saw the fist, but he was a bit too late. Pete’s fist pressed the black boy into the wall, the plaster cracked and he then slid down to the floor.

The nurse ordered the other two black boys to take Pete. They almost reached Pete when they remembered that Pete wasn’t wired under control like the rest of us.

Pete stood there in the middle of the floor, swinging that fist back and forth at his side. Everybody was watching him now. He looked from the big black boy to the little one, and when he saw that they weren’t going to come any closer he turned to the patients.

“You see – it’s a lot of boloney,” he told them, “it’s all a lot of boloney.”

The Big Nurse began to move toward her wicker bag. “Yes, yes, Mr. Bancini,” she was saying, “now if you’ll just be calm —”

“That’s all it is, a lot of boloney, nothing else.” His voice lost its strength, became urgent as if he didn’t have much time to finish what he had to say. “You see, I can’t help it, I can’t – don’t you see. I was born dead. Not you. You weren’t born dead. Ahhhh, it’s been hard…”

He started to cry. He couldn’t make the words come out right anymore; he opened and closed his mouth to talk but he couldn’t sort the words into sentences any more. He shook his head to clear it and blinked at the Acutes:

“Ahhhh, I… tell… you… I tell you.”

His fist became an open hand again. He held it cupped out in front of him as if he was offering something to the patients.

“I can’t help it. I was born a failure. I had so many injuries that I died. I was born dead. I can’t help it. I’m tired. I’m giving up trying. You got chances. You got it easy. I was born dead an’ life was hard. I’m tired. I’m tired out talking and standing up. I’ve been dead fifty-five years.”

The Big Nurse gave him a shot. There wasn’t really any need for the shot; his head had already begun to wag back and forth and his eyes were dull. The effort of the last couple of minutes had worn him out finally and completely, once and for all – you could just look at him and tell he was finished.

He had come to life for maybe a minute to try to tell us something, something none of us tried to understand, and the effort had drained him dry.

“I’m… tired…”

“Now. I think if you two boys are brave enough, Mr. Bancini will go to bed like a good fellow.”

“…aw-fully tired.”

Pete never tried anything like that again, and he never will. Now, when he starts acting up during a meeting and they try to calm him, he always calms. He’ll still get up from time to time and wag his head and let us know how tired he is, but it’s not a complaint or excuse or warning any more – he’s finished with that; it’s like an old useless clock that just keeps ticking and cuckooing without meaning nothing.

At two o’clock the group meeting is over.The nurse looks at her watch and tells us to bring the tables back into the room and we’ll resume this discussion again at one tomorrow. The Acutes click out of their trance, look for an instant in Harding’s direction. Their faces burn with shame; they feel that they have woken up to the fact that they have been played for fools again. They all are avoiding Harding. They’ve been maneuvered again into grilling one of their friends as if he was a criminal and they were all prosecutors and judge and jury. For forty-five minutes they have been cutting a man to pieces, almost as if they enjoyed it, asking him: What’s he think is the matter with him that he can’t please the little lady; why’s he insist that she has never had anything to do with another man; how’s he expect to get well if he doesn’t answer honestly? – questions and insinuations till now they feel bad about it.

McMurphy’s eyes follow all of this. He doesn’t get out of his chair. He looks puzzled again. He sits in his chair for a while, watching the Acutes.Then finally he stands up from his arm chair, yawns and stretches, and walks over to where Harding is off by himself.

McMurphy looks down at Harding a minute.Then he takes a nearby chair and straddle sit like a tiny horsein front of Harding. Harding is staring straight ahead, humming to himself, trying to look calm. But he isn’t calm at all.

McMurphy lights a cigarette, puts his cigarette between his teeth and looks at Harding for a while, then starts talking with that cigarette wagging up and down in his lips.

“Well say, buddy, is this the usual procedure for these Group Ther’py meetings?”

“Usual procedure?” Harding’s humming stops. He still stares ahead, past McMurphy’s shoulder.

“Flock of chickens at a peckin’ party?”

Harding’s head turns with a jerk and his eyes find McMurphy. He sits back in his chair and tries to look relaxed.

“A ’pecking’ party?” I fear I have not the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

“Why then, I’ll just explain it to you.” McMurphy raises his voice. He doesn’t look at the other Acutes behind him, but he’s talking specially to them. “The flock gets sight of a spot of blood on some chicken and they all go to peck at it, see, till they tear the chicken to shreds, blood and bones and feathers. But usually a couple of the flock gets spots in the process, then it’s their turn. And a few more get spots and get pecked to death, and more and more. Oh, a peckin’ party can wipe out the whole flock in a matter of a few hours, buddy, I’ve seen it. A mighty awesome sight. The only way to prevent it – with chickens – is to put blinders on them. So’s they can’t see.”

Harding leans back in the chair. “A pecking party. That certainly is a pleasant analogy, my friend.”

“And that meeting, buddy, if you want to know the dirty truth, reminded me of a flock of dirty chickens.”

“So that makes me the chicken with the spot of blood, friend?”

“That’s right, buddy.”

“And you want to know somethin’ else, buddy? You want to know who pecks that first peck?”

Harding doesn’t answer and waits.

“It’s that old nurse, that’s who.”

Harding is trying to act calm.

“So,” he says, “it’s as simple as that, as stupidly simple as that. You’re on our ward six hours and have already simplified all the work of Freud, Jung, and Maxwell Jones and summed it up in one analogy: it’s a ’peckin party’.”

“I’m not talking about Fred Yoong and Maxwell Jones, buddy, I’m just talking about that meeting and what that nurse and those other bastards did to you.”

“Did to me?”

“That’s right. It seems that you have done something to make some enemies here in this place, buddy.”

“It seems that you don’t understand that any question or discussion raised by Miss Ratched is done solely for therapeutic reasons? I see that you haven’t understood a word of Doctor Spivey’s theory of the Therapeutic Community. I’m disappointed in you, my friend, oh, very disappointed. This morning I thought that you were more intelligent. But I was mistaken.”

“The hell with you, buddy.”

“Oh, yes; I forgot to add that I noticed your primitive brutality also this morning. Psychopath with definite sadistic tendencies, probably motivated by an egomania. Yes. As you see, all these natural talents certainly make you a competent therapist quite capable of criticizing Miss Ratched’s meeting procedure, in spite of the fact that she is an experienced psychiatric nurse with twenty years in the field. Yes, with your talent, my friend, you could work subconscious miracles, soothe the aching identity and heal the wounded superego. You could probably cure the whole ward, Vegetables and all, in six short months.”

McMurphy asks him calmly, “And you really think that these meetings are to cure you?”

“The staff desires our cure as much as we do. They aren’t monsters. Miss Ratched may be a strict middle-aged lady, but she’s not some kind of giant monster of the poultry clan, sadistically pecking out our eyes.”

“No, buddy, not that. She isn’t peckin’ at your eyes. She’s peckin’ at your balls, buddy, at your everlovin’ balls.”

Harding tries to grin, but his face and lips are so white that the grin is lost. He stares at McMurphy. McMurphy takes the cigarette out of his mouth and repeats what he said.

“Right at your balls. No, that nurse isn’t some kind of monster chicken, buddy, she is a ball-cutter. I’ve seen a thousand of ’em, old and young, men and women. Seen ’em all over the country and in the homes – people who try to make you weak so that they can make you follow their rules, live according to their rules. And the best way to do this, to make you knuckle under, is to weaken you by gettin you where it hurts the worst. If you’re in a fight against a guy who wants to win by making you weaker, then watch for his knee, he’s gonna go for your balls. There’s nothing worse. It makes you sick, it takes every bit of strength you got. And that’s what that old buzzard is doing, going for your balls, your vitals.”