I need treatment for I am the illness, and I am so without a reason. It all seems like a sudden predicament, or an indifferent agony which has come to form. My reason then, is only the lack of it–a misunderstanding, and for that reason, I should know nothing.
My pursuit has ended in a long journey–one of remedies–and it was over a great distance that I had to walk. I was brought in under their cheerful expense and seated upon a chair when several people–assistants I presumed–greeted me with genuine care. An inquiry was then swiftly imposed on me, which appears as their present condemnatory. At once, they put a vigorous light before my eyes and sat me down: “For medical purposes,” they claimed.
I remained seated in the chair. They examined me as they moved around in great strides. I was filled with disgust. Then, they suddenly raised their voice. This, however, I thought, will soon turn into comfort, and their discourse thus yielded my forbearance. When settled on such content, I saw nothing but the treatment that will inevitably tend me. Yet with further thought, this judgement taunts me; with all its definiteness, it presumes a greater influence; I am full of skepticism; my pursuit will find nothing but its obscurity in the stringent ties between my treatment and assistants, or rather the contrary; they hold a perpetual incompatibility on me. Their indefinite cause of treatment, a false attendance, rejects it fully and compels its necessity to arise, whose doubtful coming hints at my imminent death. I’ll find nothing in them who, having seen my conscience, propels my fathoms to succumb to everything, in which my ailment has complied with its own deteriorating relationship: my remedy is my illness–both amounting to nothing–and these people are also my illness. My basis of this is no longer suppressed, or rather, my feeling of which is no longer lost; I can feel my illness, like it is there with me; it could have been so there along–a despair in secrecy, or it could have been a matter of time, of when I would plead for these people’s assistance.
Nonetheless, my confrontation came as such a penitent decision that it revealed their deceitful play. I had in fact, lured myself here without realizing my own predilection, that in the face of an ailment, my favoring of any aid is only desirable, and that these people are also helpless with an immediate cure. But what contrivances they have put up! They keep questioning my presence. It is self-evident. They are asking for something else…
Their interrogation is almost comical, for amid all seriousness, their foul intention remains in my mind and at length, their quarrel of reaching a judgement has swindled them; their assertion has long faded in their cries, to which my failure to comprehend puts me in punishment: I am stripped feverishly naked and beaten.
“Speak!” one of them demanded. The tension was almost unbearable. Then they suddenly burst into joy. The pretense of ignorance, and at the same time, a conviction of judgement, is seen in the most absurd form of all: foolish dancing. People rushed over me, holding my chin up to the ceiling as they cried outrageously. I began to speak:
“My previous remarks, if any, never intended your dismissal. I had after all, come to you and trusted you. In fact, I had come before my friend’s request. But my trust still lies with you and not him, for I simply took his word for it in my predicament. Nevertheless, it has not occurred to me that you would perform such strange practices. But as I feel my death now, I shall stop talking and speak of my last judgement. I have been utterly blinded by this light and cast before you in nakedness. Darkness swells my vision and I cannot see my bruises; however, I know they burn with fury. Now, I can feel the anguish of all this. I am after all, hopeless. My despair has lurked with vehemence, of which I feel but most importantly, I now reconcile. I am, then, content as I think I have answered all of your questions, as however they were intended to be. No one has tended my illness with such clarity as you have, and for this, I am thankful. Though not for you, but my friend whose intention has been good. But for all that I have experienced, I shall never speak to him again.”