GEORGE KONRAD
547
But since you happen to be listening, I will say it: In here, it's
us madmen against you idiots. You locked us up and try to refit us,
to
make us resemble you-with your drugs you befoul our brains.
Your psychiatric know-how is but a symptom of your idiocy. Go
ahead and be scared of us; defend your disgusting, tidy little com–
monplaces. There can be no peace between us; it's not only you who
pick our brains, we pick yours, too-we reform you, we corrupt
you. Look at the catatonic philosopher. He could stand for years
behind that door; he knows so much, he doesn't even have
to
move-his mere presence is a pronouncement. But the best among
us can be found wandering in your midst; on the sly they conquer
your culture. The notoriously unreliable ones have so much fun out
there , we jump for joy in here.
The conventional idiot is always serious; he is forever distin–
guishing between right and wrong. He can only laugh at others, and
hates the havoc wreaked by understanding. Strike from your calen–
dar the red-letter day marking the loss of your virginity, the death of
your mother, the date of your arrests. Forget every truly meaningful
experience of your life: when you ate a whole roast duck, when your
house burned down, when, during a hospital visit, you put yourself
in the sick man's place.
If
you forbid us to greet one another in the
prison corridor without prior permission, why do you let us get away
with it on the street? Don't mind my telling you that you never
really saw the seamy side of things. You know only what you are
after, and what you are afraid of. For instance, the man next to me
must give in to his anxiety attack. He has been destined to compre–
hend more of the world in one hour than others can in a year. Truth,
like a bullet, burns through his consciousness. Mysticism is an acci–
dent, a revolution in the mind; God is a beam of light, as is death .
This man has been scarred by a seizure of truth.
My dear, a very convenient semiblindness has kept you from
taking note of your most significant experiences.
It
is as though you
walked into a well-stocked bakery and did not notice the bread. I am
afraid you cannot recognize retribution in every human deed , or the
deed in every retribution. We are all illustrations of quirks and
twists; what you consider an aberration may simply be the
Wander–
jahr
of the mind. Maybe it wasn ' t even you who locked us in here;
perhaps we imprisoned ourselves through you. On the benches we
keep touching one another's elbows, and while we don't seem to pay
much attention to our neighbor, we know what is happening to him.
