IN WHICH WE DECIDE TO BECOME MAD AND THE SPOOK GETS
US CERTIFICATES OF LUNACY
Our last hope was to go mad, and try for exchange. We came to the decision reluctantly, after a discussion that went on far into the night. Then a thing happened that went far to restore my ebbing human nature. Hill got up from his chair, and after pacing the room a little while, he stopped, facing me.
“I will stand down, old chap,” he said. “If two of us go mad together it will lessen the chances of each not by half, but a hundredfold, and one man, on his own, has a poor enough chance against the Constantinople specialists. So I will stand down, and good luck to you!”
“We have agreed that the mad stunt is now our best—our only chance,” I objected.
“Yes,” he admitted. “But think of it—two fellows from the same camp going mad at the same time. It is hopeless. I’d love to join you, but I’m not going to spoil your chance. Your only hope is to go alone.”
I like to think of the half hour that followed, and of the depths it revealed in Hill’s friendship for me. We were at the gloomiest period of the war—April 1918. The German successes lost nothing in the recounting in Turkish newspapers. To every appearance our imprisonment might last for years. Yet Hill tried hard to sacrifice his last faint hope of liberty for my sake. In the end I reminded him that we had pledged ourselves to stick together, and threatened that if he returned to camp I would fulfil my part of the contract by going back with him.
“Well, Bones,” he said. “I’ll come. I don’t know what special kind of miseries the Turks keep for malingering lunatics, but I promise you that without your permission they’ll never find out through me.”
I made him the same promise. Three months later I was to regret it most bitterly, for Hill then lay at death’s door in Gumush Suyu hospital, and forbade me to say the few words of confession that would have got him the humane treatment he required.
Our Spook had a delicate task regaining its full authority over Kiazim. It began by developing the Commandant’s own plan—a process to which he could hardly object—and laying stress on its desire to keep Kiazim in the background. It reminded us that in order to avoid OOO’s interference it was better for us not to know what method would be ultimately adopted. But there was no harm in preparing for a trip to Constantinople to read the thoughts of AAA. And if we failed, which was unlikely, we could try some other method when we returned to Yozgad. Meantime, Kiazim need do nothing but tell the truth, in which there was never any harm. It did not reprove Kiazim for lack of faith, or pretend to know anything about his temporary secession, but went on quietly as if nothing had occurred.