Galerie Lilja Zakirova · Engstraat 6 · 5256 BD Heusden

To my Friend by Rauf Mamedov

This is what once happened to me.

I had been working for a long time in one of the mental hospitals. In deaprtment No. 1. It was for the most hopeless cases, for raving psychos who were put there away from the rest of the world.

He emerged quietly, like a silent ghost. He sat down beside me. It took me some time to realize that he had emerged from that remote ward which had not been visited by any doctors for a long time. It was difficult to guess how many patients were still there, what kind of life they led and even what they ate. Everyone in the hospital was already used to seeing rats as big as rabbits occasionally sneak into the corridor from that ward.

So, he sat down beside me on the narrow bench and said, "You should not shake hand with Chicken. He is a faggot, and he writes poetry."

It was not easy to understand right away what he was saying for he spluttered and his pale face twitched. And only after he had said all that he wanted, he would smile, showing gaps among his white teeth. How old was he? Thirty, forty? Who could tell.

"I have been watching you." He grabbed my elbow. "We must escape from here. You and I."

"That's it. We must escape." A bunch of heavy keys to the exit doors could easily be spotted in the pocket of my white uniform. "But let's get some decent clothes first. Wait for me here and I will get you something to put on."

He was dressed only in frayed and shabby hospital pants which clung to his thin body by some miracle.

"I do not need any clothes. Otherwise, they'll all know we want to escape."

"No, we can't escape today. It's already late, it's been snowing and they will easily track us down."

That was the first excuse that came to mind, and it seemed to have convinced him. The smile disappeared from his face, he sat brooding over something for a minute and then he disappeared as quietly as always.

I immediately forgot about him because a colleague rushed past me on his way to one of the wards, screaming "Sheeeeeeets!" as he went. The problem was that there were not enough strait jackets for all the patients and we had become good at using sheets to bind thrashing patients to their beds.

A day passed. I was on duty again that night. He appeared at once.

"There is no snow. I am ready. We can escape now."

"No snow and the ground is black. You are right. Or was the snow white?... It's our head doctor's birthday today," was what occurred to me. "We cannot escape today because there will be guests coming for the celebration. When is your birthday?"

His face fell and he gave a vague nod. Of course, it was not my absurd question that upset him. In a second, a gentle, broad smile was back on his face.

"Alright. I will wait until tomorrow night."

I realized I was becoming involved in some sort of game, and by my next shift, on the way to the hospital, I had thought up a Theory of Twelve Requirements. It followed from my Theory that we could break out of the mental hospital, but only if all the requirements - all twelve of them - occurred at the same time. We could escape from the hospital, if:

- the one-legged paramedic beat up at least two dozen lunatics with his heavy-booted artificial leg and collapsed in a drunken stupor;

- the homeless doctor, who virtually lived in the hospital because he was always on one shift or another, made his round of the hospital and went to screw some young psychos in the girls' department and fell asleep there;

- the obligophrenic nark from our department got screwed by some of our free schizophrenics;

- there were no national or other holidays during which institutions like ours were especially watched;

- our head physician's giant mutt, whom he usually let out of his office during the night, ran around the hospital premises like a slaphappy puppy until the dish washer gave it a full bucket of kitchen slops.

I remember that among those requirements there was such romantic nonsense as:

- the night rain, in which it would be easy to vanish into thin air;
- a new moon and, on the whole, a favorable line-up of the constellations (like Aquarius enwombed in Mars), that was when half of our psychos would be punished for some transgression and by lying about the wards like sleep-walkers. Twenty cubic centimeters of cloudy, oily fluid, called sulfazine, could work wonders when injected under the shoulder blade.

Thus, the Theory of Twelve Requirements guaranteed that our game would never end and that nothing would ever change in our lives. He and I became friends. I took my new friend's messages into the free world, various errand letters which were not addressed to anyone.
I myself wrote ciphered replies for him. And every time he asked me, "When?" I appealed to the inconsistency of one of the twelve requirements from our Theory, which had become by this time our common theory.

This is how the spring and summer months passed. Automn was drawing on. Of course, it was absurd to even mention the seasons in our tightly locked hospital. What was YESTERDAY and TOMORROW in the world of free people outside often did not make much sense to those locked inside. Time seemed to have lost all meaning. Inevitably, any common sense would be corrupted. And once, when I came to work, still wet from the rain outside, and was pulling on my whites, my friend, in agitation, dragged me aside. I knew something was wrong.

"We'll do it. Today. Everything coincides. Let's get out of here," he was clutching at the sleeve of my whites, hurting me.

"Wait. What about...", but there was no stopping him. He was carrying out, and the Theory of Twelve Requirements was tumbling down like a ramshackle house, turning into rot and dust.

Finally he fell silent. He was looking me devotedly straight in the eye, and it seemed he even winked at me. He was waiting. He was standing beside me, impatiently rocking back en forth on his bare feet, waiting. He felt triumphant, and his feeble frame looked all the more piteous for that.

What was I to do? What? He was waiting. While one of the keys stuck out of my pocked, a witness to my disloyalty.

Of course, I dit not let him go. And in the morning, when the head physician came to work, I submitted my resignation.

Many years have passed since then. I do not know whether my friend is alive or dead. And it is not that important. Today I finally set him free. I let him go NOWHERE, into the VOID of which I was so afraid many years ago.

Moscow, January 26, 1998