Fortunately the doctor, like most Turkish medical men, was both ignorant and lazy. His day's work was to sit in an office for two hours, always smoking a cigarette through an absurdly long holder, and having listened to the translated statements of would-be patients, either to send them away with a pill or to write out a form whereby they could be examined at a hospital.
A wound or an injury he might have treated by pill; but it was plain that the very suggestion of mental trouble stumped him. He could not withstand the word vertige, and after a second repetition of it I had no difficulty in procuring a chit ordering me to be dealt with by a hospital doctor.
That same afternoon I was led to Gumuch Souyou Hospital, in Péra. There my claims to admission as a mentally afflicted person were granted without question, so that I began to wonder whether or not I really was in my right mind. Having heard the list of pretended symptoms, not forgetting the vertige, an Armenian doctor sent me to bed for a fortnight's rest.
W., whose wounded arm was badly inflamed, already occupied a bed in the same room, as did Ms., who years before had ricked his right knee and, by reason of its weakness, managed to stay in hospital, with one eye on the possibilities of an exchange of prisoners. R., who had the same object in view, turned up from Psamatia later in the day. He had shown two perfectly healed bullet-wounds in the leg, received three years earlier in Gallipoli, and bluffed the Turkish doctor into believing that they were giving him renewed trouble.
Now clearly, if I wished to maintain a reputation for melancholia, nervous fits, and vertige, I should have to prove abnormality; and just as clearly it would be difficult to give convincing performances before fellow-prisoners who knew me to be normal. The only solution was to demand removal to a single-bedded room, for the sake of quiet.
"Pulse and heart normal," commented the ward doctor next morning. Pulses, hearts, and doctors are often unaccommodating.
"Yes, Monsieur le docteur. For the moment nothing worries me, except that I have forgotten all that has happened since the aeroplane smash. Sometimes my mind is a black blank, sometimes I am unconscious of what I do, sometimes the vertige is so bad that I cannot stand on my feet. Above all, I hate being near anybody. I desire complete rest. Will you be so kind as to let me go to a small room where I can remain alone?"
The doctor was only half convinced; but he gave instructions for the change, while W. turned over suddenly to hide his face, and covered his head with a blanket so as not to laugh out loud.
Once again, as I lay in bed and racked my common-sense for ideas on the subject of nervous fits and vertige, I deplored the lack of any kind of medical text-book; for never before had I suffered from mental derangement.
"Pulse and heart normal," the doctor said inexorably on the following morning.