The narco-analysis king is very obliging. He gives me a tour of one of his cubicles. He tiptoes in and motions for me to follow, no matter that one of the women is halfway through her analysis. She is lying on her back and appears to be dozing. Nothnagel ignores her and points to the 500cc of saline slowly running into a neatly prepped vein. He draws my attention to the three empty 10mgm vials of Valium and motions that he has added them to the saline. He stealthily fiddles with the drip rate, silently mouthing ‘Forty-five minutes’ to me. ‘And that’s that,’ he lets me know, ‘nothing to it really.’ Time for another Camel.
My training with Nothnagel is now complete and we are ready for Jacques. By ‘we’, I mean Colonel de Jager and Jacques’ CO, Colonel Willem Vermeulen, with a couple aides-de-camp who have been invited along to witness the revelations that are confidently expected to flow once I have injected the Valium.
The room chosen for the procedure is small so it is pretty tight by the time Jacques is led in by one of our nurses. A look of alarm crosses his face – he had not anticipated meeting his CO under these circumstances. Neither had I and I cannot help wondering about the wisdom of such an invitation. If, as anticipated, a troubled young man is going to spill his emotional guts and allow access to his innermost psyche, we should surely allow him to do it away from the voyeuristic stares of others. But such is our colonel’s faith in the magic worked weekly by Dr. Nothnagel on his legion of female admirers that Jacques’ colonel, a tough-looking critter shoehorned into immaculate ‘browns’, is an invitee. And so we confront another of those unique military situations. Jacques has no say in what is to unfold. Out on Civvy Street he could tell his shrink and the assembled spectators to take a hike at what is really a blurring of the professional boundaries. But not here. No, sir.
If Jacques has up until now shown nothing but a casual indifference to his plight, this has quickly changed. As I get him comfortable on the examining couch he keeps shooting his colonel worried glances, his trepidation manifest. I too am feeling a tad anxious, but for completely different reasons. I am quietly praying that Jacques has good veins. I don’t want to botch the IV insertion in a tiny room filled with two colonels and assorted brass. I ask Jacques to roll up his sleeve. Instant relief. He has hosepipes for veins.
The fluid begins to flow and with it the ampoules of Valium. Colonel de Jager reaches over and flips on the tape recorder borrowed from the world’s most experienced narco-analyser. I adjust the flow rate of the IV and glance at the Colonel. He puts his finger to his lips. An expectant silence settles over the room. I am suddenly aware of how warm it is in the windowless chamber. Fifteen minutes or so pass and Jacques appears to be dozing. Suddenly, the Colonel jerks forward. He taps Jacques lightly on the arm.
‘Don’t fall sleep, hey,’ he gently admonishes. ‘We need to talk.’
Jacques does not respond. The Colonel seems quite unperturbed. He taps Jacques again, this time more forcefully. Jacques dozes on.
‘Perhaps you squirted in too much of the stuff,’ the Colonel whispers, looking accusingly at me.
I don’t really know what to say. I am sure I have followed Dr. Nothnagel’s lady-slaying formula, but then again, Jacques is no lady and for the briefest of moments I have the absurd thought that our resident World Expert has passed on the incorrect gender-specific information to me.
My fears are allayed when Jacques suddenly comes to life. He opens one eye. It takes him a moment or two to focus it and then his monocular gaze settles on his colonel. The most idiotic grin spreads over his face.
‘Hello, Willie, good to see you,’ Jacques says as he gives Colonel Vermeulen the thumbs up.
Colonel Willem Vermeulen does not look amused. Such familiarity is absolutely taboo, but if the infantry colonel is upset, our psychiatry colonel seems encouraged by this unexpected turn.
‘The medication is working nicely,’ he whispers to no one in particular, but before he can share any more insights he is interrupted by Jacques. The foolish grin has not budged.
‘Hey,’ he chortles, ‘I have a problem for you to solve.’ He waves cheerfully at his CO as if to signal the onus is on him to come up with the solution. Colonel Vermeulen glares back. Jacques, blind to the daggers directed at him, blunders right in.
‘Hey, Willie,’ he calls out, ‘what is the difference between the army and a circus?’
There is a stunned silence. Even Colonel de Jager is aware, medical exigencies notwithstanding, that a line is dangerously close to being crossed. The only one in the room oblivious to the shambles unfolding is the patient himself, who with a great guffaw gives us the answer.
‘The army has more tents!’
I want to laugh, but have the good sense not too. Jacques, on the other hand, nicely topped up with thirty-plus milligrams of relaxing Valium finds his joke uproariously funny.
‘Do you get it, do you get it?’ he wheezes, slapping his thigh so hard he threatens to dislodge my carefully placed IV line. ‘The fuckin’ army has more tents!!’
No one is sure what to do next. Jacques is rolling around laughing. We look at Colonel de Jager for guidance. He appears panic-stricken.
‘Give him some more of the stuff,’ he commands.
I break open another vial but it only makes things worse. Jacques is completely disinhibited and I cannot quieten him down. He has moved on from his army-circus joke to a list of the women he has slept with and their various charms and drawbacks. It makes for interesting listening and one cannot help but be impressed by his success and the wide range of his appetite.
Jacques is in full voice now. His other eye has opened and he is ticking off his exploits one by one, including an early conquest when barely out of puberty. I have heard many stories, a few no doubt apocryphal, about the sexual successes of sporting jocks. Thanks to Nothnagel’s formula the truth is being revealed.
‘Turn it off!’ hisses Colonel Vermeulen. ‘Turn off that fucking tape machine.’
The sexual shenanigans are the final straw. Vermeulen reaches over to me. ‘Give me the cassette,’ he orders. Pocketing the salacious material, he rises and without so much as a ‘goodbye’ or a ‘thank you’ storms out, followed by his minions. Colonel de Jager hurries after him, leaving me and a deliriously happy Jacques.
I shut off the IV line and sit back, waiting for his reminiscences to run their course. They soon do. All that Valium cannot be indefinitely resisted. Soon Jacques sleeps, his daft grin giving way to a gentle, contented smile. Thank goodness he will not know what has just passed. Among Valium’s many attributes is the tendency to induce amnesia for events that take place while under the influence.
Yet again, a fairly routine medical procedure – commonplace by Dr. Nothnagel’s experience – had been transformed into high farce by the unique circumstances of a military setting. I dined out on that circus joke for years. But what of Jacques? He surfaced from analysis and within a day was sent back to his unit to work out of site in the stores, packing boxes. The glory days on the rugger field were over. It had been a very quick fall from grace.
We never did work out what his problem was.
3
A distant war
How goes the war? As I toil away at the bottom of the hill in a ramshackle collection of old brick buildings, prefab huts and trailers, out of sight of the gleaming new edifice perched on the heights above,
