Asylum Piece

he sun was shining, it was a lovely, calm day, one of those premature spring days which sometimes come to encourage us towards the end of a long, hard winter.

In the hall, which is dimly lit, someone moves out of the shadows and approaches the group. It is Miss Swanson who has waited a long time patiently for this moment. Dressed now in a blue knitted dress of exactly the same style as the mauve one which she wore earlier in the day, she comes up to the girl and, ignoring the nurses entirely, enfolds her in a compassionate and triumphant embrace.

There is dead silence inside the car. Even he, unimaginative and withdrawn as he is, feels the burden of silence. ‘Why doesn’t she say something?’ he wonders, peering at the averted whiteness that is her face. The car takes the final bend sharply and her body is thrown against his.
Suddenly she grasps his shoulders with both hands; he is surprised at the strength of her fingers, he feels her pointed fingers nipping into his flesh through the jacket and shirt.
‘You can’t leave me here ... You must take me back with you!’ she cries shrilly, against his chest.
‘Now, Freda, do try and be reasonable. You know perfectly well that I can’t take you – that the doctors say you must stay here for the present.’
He tries to disengage her fingers; but he cannot capture her hands which, like desperate sparrows, are beating all about him, clawing at his sleeve, his lapels, his tie, even his face. He can do nothing except dumbly defend himself against those clawing, beating hands, his ears deafened and appalled by the broken treble that fills the interior of the closed car with ceaseless, inarticulate lamentation.
They have come now to the entrance of the clinic.

For Freda, on the contrary, the hours fly like happy birds. Like a child just back from boarding-school for the holidays she wants to see everything, to do everything at once. The small lakeside town is a heaven to her; she darts in and out of shops, eating pastries and chocolates, buying absurd trifles, chattering all the while to her husband, whose attitude is more like that of a father, at the same time indulgent, distrait, and somewhat impatient. At lunch on the terrace of the hotel he can no longer restrain his impatience but sharply reproves the girl for her indecorous behaviour which, he fancies, is attracting the attention of the people around. Freda is cast-down and subdued for a few moments, but she soon forgets the rebuke and laughs and talks as irrepressibly as before.

Between us there was understanding without reservations and indestructible peace. I, who had been lonely and incomplete, was now fulfilled. Our thoughts ran together like greyhounds of equal swiftness. Perfection like music was in our united thoughts.

How hard it is to sit at home with nothing to do but wait. To wait – the most difficult thing in the whole world. To wait – with no living soul in whom to confide one’s doubts, one’s fears, one’s relentless hopes. To wait – not knowing whether D’s words are to be construed into an official edict depriving me of all assistance, or whether he intends to take up my case again in the distant future, or whether the case is already concluded. To wait – only to wait – without even the final merciful deprivation of hope.
Sometimes I think that some secret court must have tried and condemned me, unheard, to this heavy sentence.

For several days I waited anxiously for an answer, only to receive at the end of that time a bundle of complicated forms to be filled up in uplicate. These I completed, sent off, and then waited again. How much of my life lately has consisted of this helpless, soul-destroying suspense! The waiting goes on and on, day after day, week after week, and yet one never gets used to it. Well, at last the reply came back on the usual stiff, pale blue paper, the very sight of which I have learned to dread. My request was refused. No explanation was given as to why a favour which had been granted to hundreds of people should be denied to me. But of course one can’t expect explanations from these officials; their conduct is always completely autocratic and incalculable. All they condescended to add to the categorical negative was the statement that I was at liberty to dispense altogether with the services of an advisor should I prefer to do so.

If some fortune teller had predicted all the reverses I was to suffer this winter I should have laughed outright at such an exaggerated catalogue of evil. And yet, in point of fact, it would be almost impossible to exaggerate the number of misfortunes which have overtaken me during the last few months. And all due to the subterranean activities of a secret enemy whose very name is unknown to me! Could anything be more heart-breaking – more cruelly unfair? I am ready to burst into tears at the mere thought of such senseless injustice. But, of course, it’s no good lamenting or making complaints or protestations to which nobody pays any attention and which may even, for all I know, be used against one in the ultimate issue.

At first I could see nothing, it might have been a black cellar into which I was gazing. But soon my eyes penetrated the darkness and I could make out some sort of a pallet under the grating with a shrouded form lying upon it

One summer I was travelling in a foreign country, and, owing to an alteration in the railway timetable, I found myself obliged to change trains at a small lake-side town. As I had three hours to wait, I left the station and went out into the streets. It was an August afternoon, very hot and sultry, ominous thunder clouds were boiling up over the high mountains. At first I thought I would go down to the lake in search of coolness, but something ill-omened in the aspect of that stagnant sheet of lava-coloured water repelled me, and I decided instead to visit the castle which was the principal feature of the place.