in a way that struck Magdalena and her sinking heart as openly contemptuous. “You don’t know.” Once more, not a question but a sad declaration of the obvious. “An extortionist is someone who says, ‘You do what I say, or I will see to it that you suffer in a way you cannot stand.”… I vill zee to eet zat you zuffer in a vay… “Your logotherapist spends the first few sessions making you believe that only he can save you from your depression or your fear or overwhelming guilt or compulsions or self-destructive impulses or paralyzing catatonia or whatever. Once he convinces you of that, then you’re his. You’re one of his assets. He’ll keep you coming until the day you’re cured… a day that never comes, of course… or you run out of money… or one day you die. That’s the psychiatrist you worked for, isn’t it. I don’t know how old your employer was, but if he’s old enough to have two generations of these poor people on his hook, he’ll be a very rich man for life. Of course, he’ll have to sit still for a lot of whining and utterly pointless cerebration—the patients all love to go on about the meaning of their dreams and all that… but I’m sure your employer thought about other things while they driveled on—his investment portfolio, a new car, a girl with no clothes on, a delivery boy who petrifies him—anything’s better than actually listening to these idiots’ logorrhea. Just keeping them in his pen, that’s all he has to worry about, turning them into lifers, making sure they don’t start thinking for themselves and getting… ideas. That pretty well describes your employer, right? Maybe you were and maybe you weren’t aware you were working for a learn-ed, genteel extortionist. But you were—am I not right?”
That got under Magdalena’s skin! He could have been talking about Norman and his star patient, Maurice! For an instant she was tempted to mention it—but she was damned if she was going to give him the satisfaction, this horrible chess champion. ::::::What does he think he’s doing? Playing with my head? He’s so horribly vile! vile! vile! vile!:::::: She was on the verge of tears, but she fought them back. She mustn’t give him the satisfaction of her tears, either.
“Right?” he said once more, this time in a warm, sympathetic tone.
Magdalena compressed her lips to keep them, this bunch of horrible Russians at the table, who were now all eyes, from seeing that her lips were trembling. Feebly, feebly, she managed to say in a low, beaten-down, vanquished voice, “I never saw anything like that… I don’t know what you’re talking about…” Feebler and feebler… overcome by defeat… and she couldn’t figure out why he had attacked, why he could have wanted to subject her to something like this… or how he had done it… or if he had done it… since she knew she couldn’t possibly have described it to another person. The great chess player never had an angry look on his face. He never expressed hostility… there was nothing other than the small, smug smile on his face… and a commanding air of intellectual superiority… and condescension as he tried to explain the things she didn’t know in words of one syllable. How could she make somebody else understand what he was doing to her?
“Now, is it ‘don’t know’ or ‘just as soon not know’?” he was saying. “Which do you honestly think it is?” He said it with the kindliest tone imaginable… with the most sympathetic and understanding of looks on his face… with the softest little smile… with the slightest of avuncular tilts of the head—
—and Magdalena was paralyzed. She lacked the power to say a word. She could reply to this vile man only by breaking into tears… but she managed to hold it down to silent convulsions… her neck, her stooped shoulders, her chest, her abdomen… convulsing. She doesn’t dare try to speak. What are they thinking? Here is a ditzy, clueless little Cuban cutie-pie… and she calls herself a “psychiatric nurse”! All eight of them have their little smirks on. It isn’t as if they are laughing at her exactly… one doesn’t laugh at a helpless child… No, indeed, they wouldn’t do that. They’re just eager to see what her brainless response will be.
::::::I must not! I will not give them the satisfaction!::::::
She clenched her teeth; really clenched them. ::::::Not a single sob shall make