English drama -- 20th century; English fiction -- 20th century; Short stories, English
"I won't eat and I won't be made to eat!" Dick cried. "Let me go!" he
shouted at the fat warder, who had laid a hand on his shoulder. His
temper was beginning to rise.
"Now, do behave yourself," said the fat warder. "It ain't a bit of use
kicking up a row. Now, do take a little of this lovely soup," he added
wheedlingly.
"Let me go!" Dick screamed again, all his self-control gone. "I will
not let myself be bullied."
He began to struggle violently. The fat warder put an arm round his
shoulders, as though he were an immense mother comforting an irritable
child. Dick felt himself helpless; the struggle had quite exhausted
him; he was weaker than he had any idea of. He began kicking the fat
man's shins; it was the only way he could still show fight.
"Temper, temper," remonstrated the warder, more motherly than ever.
The thin warder stooped down, slipped a strap round the kicking legs,
and drew it tight. Dick could move no more. His fury found vent in
words--vain, abusive, filthy words, such as he had not used since he
was a schoolboy.
"Let me go," he screamed--"let me go, you devils! You beasts, you
swine! beasts and swine!" he howled again and again.
They soon had him securely strapped in a chair, his head held back
ready for the doctor and his horrible-looking tubes. They were pushing
the horrors up his nostrils. He coughed and choked, spat, shouted
inarticulately, retched. It was like having a spoon put on your tongue
and being told to say A-a-h, but worse; it was like jumping into the
river and getting water up your nose--how he had always hated
that!--only much worse. It was like almost everything unpleasant, only
much, much worse than all. He exhausted himself struggling against his
utterly immovable bonds. They had to carry him to his bed, he was so
weak.
He lay there, unmoving--for he was unable to move--staring at the
ceiling. He felt as though he were floating on air, unsupported, solid
no longer; the sensation was not unpleasant. For that reason he
refused to let his mind dwell upon it; he would think of nothing that
was not painful, odious, horrible. He thought about the torture which
had just been inflicted on him and of the monstrous injustice of which
he was a victim. He thought of the millions who had been and were
still being slaughtered in the war; he thought of their pain, all the
countless separate pains of them; pain incommunicable, individual,
beyond the reach of sympathy; infinities of pain pent within frail
finite bodies; pain without sense or object, bringing with it no hope
and no redemption, futile, unnecessary, stupid. In one supreme
apocalyptic moment he saw, he felt the universe in all its horror.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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