FATIGUE OF THE SYNAPSES
17
late the text of the speech into the ritual terminology, the rigid, Byzan–
tine, catechismal style required for home consumption. He had to
produce an entirely different text with an almost opposite message
which, however, did not show any direct, open contradiction to the
original, and which, moreover, preserved some of his original phrases
as connecting links. He started on this task for the sixth or seventh
time; and again at the first phrase he got stuck at a preposition,
crossed it out, replaced it, got involved with the syntax and had to
erase the whole sentence. This had now been going on since three
o'clock.
He knew the symptoms well. Professor Gruber had called them
"fatigue of the synapses." The synapses were the junctions between
brain cells, across which the nervous impulse had to pass. There were
millions of them in the brain. Sometimes something went wrong at
these junctions; the impulse could not pass and certain thoughts and
actions were blocked. The cause of this, according to Gruber, was
certain toxic substances produced by fatigue, which accumulated at
the synapses and paralysed their action. These toxic chemicals, then,
had the power to block thought, or certain kinds of thought. Other
toxic substances, of course, had the opposite effect, as Gruber had
patiently explained. They reduced the normal resistance at the junc–
tions, so that channels of thought were thrown wide open, which in
a well-regulated brain remained prudently and mercifully closed.
Liquor was a relatively harmless substance of this kind. But there were
others, less harmless, capable of rearranging the whole hierarchy of
brain junctions, so that channels normally open were closed, and those
normally closed were opened.
It
was amusing, Gruber had explained,
growing lyrical, what you could do with a man in that state. You
could make him believe the weirdest things if you only hammered it
in with sufficient intensity; you could make him believe that he was
Caesar or Brutus, a hero or a criminal-provided of course that he
had some potential inclination, within the normally blocked channels
of his mind, to become either of them. But then, who hadn't ? Who of
us hasn't killed his Mandarin?
"What's that?" Leontiev had asked absent-mindedly. And Gru–
ber, who on that evening had been curiously excited and talkative,
as if he himself were under the influence of a drug, had explained:
"It
is a psychological test invented by some French wit.
If
you
