His mother?, he repeats, lost in thought. She lives in a home, not all that different from his clinic—they share the same controlling spirit!—but at least they treat her well because she never gives them problems. When he goes to visit her, they hold hands and look each other in the eye, silently, very directly. In the past, his mother could never look at him like that, she always averted her eyes toward something else. Now, though, she stares at him anxiously, as though trying to recover all the time they lost. She seems to be searching for something with that look, some kind of answer! But it’s not easy, you know?, says Old Man: it’s not easy to meet such a direct gaze—so inquisitive! Try it, he challenges her, and he looks at Soon very seriously, his eyes open wide behind his newly cleaned glasses that have a little piece of tissue stuck to one arm, so solemn and so ridiculous, now holding back a smile to keep the game going, so willing to forget the drama, to change the subject, to lighten the situation, that finally they both burst out laughing.

The clinic was like her school, but on a larger scale. Just imagine, Old Man tells her, if you had to spend all day in there, within those walls!, with normal teachers, normal students, and normal classes. After a few days no one would be normal anymore, they’d all go crazy, don’t you think? You only have to look at the desperation of birds in cages. Some of them bang against the bars, break their beaks trying to escape. Though those are the minority: most of them end up accepting their prisons and fall into a kind of perpetual listlessness. Domestic birds turn stupid and they sing, sure, but they sing half-heartedly—like automatons! In the clinic, instead of singing, the patients played Parcheesi or cards or they watched TV—documentaries, sedate movies, ones that wouldn’t upset them. They were treated like children or elderly people, when many of them—many of us, he says—were young or middle-aged men and women. Soon would like to ask for more details about life in the mental hospital—she no longer has any doubt that it was a mental hospital—but the only thing she manages to ask is how long he was in there. Old Man shrugs his shoulders; he can’t calculate it clearly. Time is different in there, he says. Longer?, asks Soon. No, not longer: different!, it’s measured in another way!

The early days were the worst. They locked him in his room when he got nervous, which made him even more nervous. They forced him to take medicines even though he hadn’t given his consent. I do not consent!, he’d protested, but as soon as he opened his mouth to object they stuffed a pill in it, and sometimes several people held him down and injected him with tranquilizers. They did that kind of thing to everyone to keep them good and calm, and they still had to be grateful there was no more electroshock! These days they call it electro-convulsive therapy! But they fry your brain the same!