4 FAR SIDE

Cook County Insane Asylum, or Dunning as Chicagoans called it, after the farmer who had owned the land on which it was built after the Civil War, lay across the prairie eleven miles north-west of the city centre.
It was a vast, forbidding establishment newly rebuilt in gothic style, complete with a nicely turreted gatehouse, to make it look solid and respectable.
Close to, it was anything but. Not that it mattered if you were an inmate; once in you didn't need to come out again because Dunning was entirely self sufficient and had everything, from its own bakery to a separate burial ground.
It was originally built in the spirit of public philanthropy to house the poor on one side and the mad on the other. Over the years they got all mixed up. The poor got to look after the mad and when the poor fell sick it sometimes went the other way about.
No wonder that kids in Chicago who didn't do what their parents told them were warned, 'Be careful, or you're going to Dunning.'
It gave them nightmares; nightmares that reminded them of the virtues of obedience and the fact that those who do wrong on this earth may find themselves in hell sooner than they think.

'Jane Doe' - as they had named the woman from Bubbly Creek on arrival, not knowing her real name - realized she was in hell the moment she arrived at Dunnning. Hell in the shape of Maureen Riley was there to greet her.
Riley was in charge of what they called 'Far Side', the grimmest, oldest and most run-down part of Dunning. Stone-built, damp, broken-windowed and freezing cold most of the time, Far Side was the part visitors, even governors, never got to see. In her own way Riley was as skilled as any alienist and as clever as any surgeon. Certainly the results she got were cheaper and far more dependable. This was because she ruled Far Side by fear.
It had big wards and small wards, iron doors and wooden ones, nicely studded with metal rivets. It had a first floor reception that conveyed a congenial enough atmosphere, but for the rest - upstairs and down - it was medieval in feel, condition and appearance and in the basement there were cells so far back, so thick-walled, so secluded and lost in a maze of corridors and walkways that the most agonised groan or loudest scream would never have been heard.
As for the pitiable cries of the abandoned mad and the pauper sick, upstairs or down, they were lost in the drip drip drip of the fetid drains and the creaking of hinges and boards and spy-holes that few knew were even there.
This was Riley's domain as it had been her father's before her, and his father's before that.
Far Side was imbued with the vile odor of an evil family whose pleasure was control and whose middle name was callousness.
Maureen Riley was tall, like her father, a shade under six feet. Her arms were a man's, her hands too. And her face was a granite block with pig eyes.
Her upper lip was stubbly with hair.
Her teeth were stained with tobacco.
Her breath stank of liquor.
She knew how to put fear into the most difficult of inmates, and to control them physically and mentally.
When the woman from Bubbly Creek (as Riley thought of her) had arrived two days before she grabbed her by the hair and arm by way of welcome and on the principle that all new inmates were potential trouble-makers, crashed her into the stone upright of the door into the building and then dragged her up some steps, two at a time, before hauling her bodily through a ward of eighty women, who stared and laughed and dribbled and spat.
They watched the woman's humiliation with the smug looks of those who know that they are not about to be punished but who know what lies in store for the one who is. Riley reached an isolation room, opened the door and threw the woman in. She left her there a few hours.
It was a procedure that had a marvellous subduing effect on everybody, lunatic, pauper, hysteric and wanton alike. They all emerged from the experience quieter than when they began it.
Two days had passed and the woman was subdued.
She was already scheming to get out.
But she knew it would help if she could remember what had happened and stop feeling sick from the poisoned water of the Creek and remember her own name.
Nothing was designed to make her feel good.
The wake-up call was the rap of a night-stick on the metal bars of the window and the women got up fast for fear of being beaten.
Breakfast was no more than grits, stale bread and bad coffee. Now....
'Jane!' yelled Riley, grabbing the arm of the woman from Bubbly Creek, 'Jane, you're goin' to the doctor. Put this shift on and come with me.'
For some reason Riley had taken against 'Jane'. There was a look in her eyes that came close, she declared, to insubordination. So she had hit her every time she passed her and that morning made her do jobs like cleaning up the vomit and emptying the slops and de-lousing the bolsters just to show her who was boss.
Jane didn't complain. Her memory was beginning to come back to her, even if the events leading up to her falling in the Creek were still a blank.
As Riley led her out of Far Side, she grasped the opportunity of trying to work out the hospital's layout, not easy in such a huge establishment. But she had caught a glimpse of the prairie from the windows and from that and what the women on her ward had said she had an idea of where she was relative to the outside world and the direction in which Chicago lay. She made a mental note too of the fact that somewhere near, though out of sight, she heard the chuff-chuff and whistle of a locomotive and the shouts of men.
Then Riley slammed open a door right in front of her and she was inside again, this time in what they called 'Main Building'. She was told to climb a flight of stairs. She did so obediently, aware of Riley's wheezing, aware of the smell of antiseptic, polish and urine all at one go. Better than the malodorous air of Far Side.
After a ten-minute wait in a freezing corridor Riley shoved her into the doctor's examination room. Anna stumbled, then righted herself. The moment she looked up and saw the doctor standing there in the middle of the room a shiver went through her.
He was of medium height and thin, with eyes so dark and expressionless behind his spectacles that it was hard to tell where the pupils ended and the rest began. They had a nasty glitter to them.
His mouth was a scissor-snip in pinched pale skin, his face clean-shaven, his nose pointed. His thin, dark, neatly trimmed hair was lightly greased with a lotion that gave out the scent of lemons.
He wore a jacket, waistcoat and pants in the style of an East Coast medical consultant. His shoes were all polished and squeaky. He wasn't more than twenty-nine or thirty but he looked like a man for whom the financial rewards of a successful medical career were already coming his way.
'I am Dr Morgan Eels,' he said, 'and I'm going to make you better. This is my assistant Mr Mould.'
Eels's voice had the edge of oiled steel to it, his brief smile was like a momentary break in bleak midwinter.
Dr Eels, who had only recently been appointed as the Insane Asylum's Deputy Medical Superintendent, stood silently, observing his latest patient. From her physiognomy, on which subject he had made himself a diagnostic expert, he was certain she was of low immigrant stock. Probably Bohemian or something like it.
'What is her name?'
Eels addressed this to Riley and his voice was sharp and unpleasant, its affected accent more English than American.
Riley explained that no-one knew her name including even the patient.
'Forgot 'erself,' said Riley, 'or won't say. The Court sent her over without one. Hoped you'd find it out I expect.'
Still not moving Eels examined the woman for a full minute more from where he stood.
'Where did they find her?'
'She was the one they fished out of Bubbly Creek two days ago.'
Eels eyed his patient some more.
'Turn round,' he commanded her.
'Jane' seemed slow to move so Riley gave her a shove.
'By herself, if you please,' said Eels sternly.
His examinations had method and purpose. He liked to see how patients responded to his instructions.
'Turn round again,' he said finally.
The woman did so, aware of the doctor and the orderly staring and of Riley looming behind her. She had been uneasy from the first but she felt even more so now. She tried to pull the ill-fitting shift closer to her.
'Remove it,' said Eels.
His examination was thorough but she stayed quiet.
Only when he pulled back a curtain to reveal a camera on a tripod did she react.
'Please, no,' she said, covering her modesty with her hands.
'Don't be silly,' he snapped.
His camera was Dr Eels's pride and joy, a valuable tool in furthering his study of the physiognomy of the mentally ill. Convinced that the cause of madness was physical, what better way of finding a cure than by understanding the mad through a study of their physical shape?
Ignoring the woman's further protests he and Mr Mould took photographs from all angles, especially of her head.
'Good,' said Eels finally. 'Now put your shift back on. Take her back to her ward Riley. I will not need her again today.
As he said this he was watching the woman closely.
He saw her relax, he saw her breathe more easily.
He watched as she headed with Riley for the door.
'Stop!' he called out at the last moment.
'Do you remember your name?' he said, as the woman turned, his voice sharp and commanding once more. He took up his clipboard and silver propelling pencil. 'Eh?'
He looked hard as if he could read her thoughts.
'I ...'
Even had she been able to remember it, she knew she must not say it. 'I . . .'
But she did not know why.
'Well?' he said softly, the silver pencil glinting in his hand, the lens of his spectacles flashing too.
'I ... can't remember.'
'Oh, but I think you do,' said Dr Eels coming closer.
I don't know it, mustn't say it, I mustn't, I....
'Well?' he purred.
His eyes were silvery pits behind the lenses of his spectacles.
It was then she finally remembered her name.
Anna Zemeckis the baker's daughter screamed inside herself in relief and terror, but I mustn't say it.
'I can't remember my name,' she said, flushing at the lie.
'I think you can and that you will,' said Eels, studying her. He was frowning. 'Eh?'
'I don't know my name,' said Anna Zemeckis stubbornly.
'Take her away, Riley,' said Eels with a look of distaste. 'We will continue tomorrow.' He would get her name out of her if he had to cut it out with a scalpel.
Eels smiled thinly at the thought. Pre-eminence as a brain surgeon was his ultimate aspiration. Dr Gottleib Burckhardt had already shown in Berlin how effective surgical intervention in the lobes of the brain could be. Not in all cases it was true, but pioneers must take risks.
Eels did not like it when a patient refused to yield to his demands but he felt himself to be too much of an objective scientist to let personal feelings get in the way, especially in challenging cases like that of the woman from Bubbly Creek.
The simple fact was that the unreasonable obduracy exhibited by some patients was, in his view, a certain sign of wilfull madness. This made the search for a cure at once so difficult and so urgent, given the rising numbers of patients in insane asylums across America, especially in cities such as Chicago with a high intake of immigrants.
For this reason it was Dr Eels's intention in the coming days to operate on twenty or so patients using Burckhardt's Procedure. He could wish for a better, more sophisticated approach, but needs must
. . .
He took out his propelling pencil and twisted it slightly to get a fresh bit of lead. Then he surveyed the clipboard of forms and lists on his desk, pulling out one from the bottom and clipped it to the top.
Trouble was, he still did not have the name of the woman from Bubbly Creek, and Eels was meticulous about keeping records, especially for important experiments of the kind he had now decided she should be part of. He did not like gaps and he did not take kindly to being bested.
'I will have her name,' he whispered as he put the clipboard back in place on his desk.
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© William Horwood & Helen Rappaport