One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest / Пролетая над гнездом кукушки. Книга для чтения на английском языке

Taber, if you don’t wish to take your medication orally.”

“All I wanted to know, for the – ”

“You can go.”

He goes off, grumbling, when she frees his arm, and spends the morning moping around the latrine, wondering about those capsules. I got away once holding one of those same red capsules under my tongue, played like I’d swallowed it, and crushed it open later in the broom closet. For a tick of time, before it all turned into white dust, I saw it was a miniature electronic element like the ones I helped the Radar Corps work with in the Army, microscopic wires and grids and transistors, this one designed to dissolve on contact with air…

Eight-twenty the cards and puzzles go out…

Eight-twenty-five some Acute mentions he used to watch his sister taking her bath; the three guys at the table with him fall all over each other to see who gets to write it in the log book…

Eight-thirty the ward door opens and two technicians trot in, smelling like grape wine; technicians always move at a fast walk or a trot because they’re always leaning so far forward they have to move fast to keep standing.

They always lean forward and they always smell like they sterilized their instruments in wine. They pull the lab door to behind them, and I sweep up close and can snake out voices over the vicious zzzth-zzzth-zzzth of steel on whetstone.

“What we got already at this ungodly hour of the morning?”

“We got to install an Indwelling Curiosity Cutout in some nosy booger.

Hurry-up job, she says, and I’m not even sure we got one of the gizmos in stock.”

“We might have to call IBM to rush one out for us; let me check back in Supply – ”

“Hey; bring out a bottle of that pure grain while you’re back there: it’s getting so I can’t install the simplest frigging component but what I need a bracer. Well, what the hell, it’s better’n garage work…”

Their voices are forced and too quick on the comeback to be real talk – more like cartoon comedy speech.

I sweep away before I’m caught eavesdropping.

The two big black boys catch Taber in the latrine and drag him to the mattress room. He gets one a good kick in the shins. He’s yelling bloody murder. I’m surprised how helpless he looks when they hold him, like he was wrapped with bands of black iron.

They push him face down on the mattress.