The Road to En-dor

by E. H. Jones

  ‘Well,’ Ihsan went on, ‘do you ever smell smells that are not there?’

  ‘There are plenty of real smells in Turkey,’ I said, ‘without worrying about the ones that are not there. Why on earth are you wasting my time with these asinine questions? Let’s get to the War Office without any more of this foolery.’

  Ihsan laughed, and asked why I wanted to go to the War Office. I leant forward confidentially and told him I had a plan for finishing the war in a week, and once I got to Enver Pasha I’d blow England sky high. I was working at the scheme now, Hill was my engineer and designer – and very soon everything would be completed. I talked on and on about my new aeroplane that would carry 10,000 men, and the coming invasion of England by air.

  ‘Why do you hate the English?’ Ihsan asked.

  I went into an involved and excited account of my ‘persecution’ – of how Baylay had tried to poison me, and of how my father, mother and wife sent me poisoned food in parcels from England. Ihsan had to interrupt me again.

  ‘Why did you try to commit suicide?’ he asked.

  ‘I didn’t,’ I said.

  ‘You hanged yourself at Mardeen.’

  ‘That’s a lie!’ I roared. ‘A dirty lie! And I know who told you!’

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘It was that little swine Moïse,’ I said, pointing at the unhappy Interpreter. ‘He’s been telling everybody. I expect he’s been bribed by the English. Yes! That’s it! Baylay must have paid him money to get me into trouble! He’ll do anything for money. Don’t you believe him! He’s not a Turk – he’s a dirty Jew, and the biggest liar in Asia. I never hanged myself!’

  Ihsan laughed and Moïse looked uncomfortable. (I must admit it was unpleasant for him to have to translate these things about himself.)

  Figure 31: ‘You are mad my friend,’ said Ihsan. ‘That’s what’s the matter with you.’

  ‘Look at him!’ I said. ‘He knows what I am going to say next, and he is afraid. He stole all our money on the way to Angora. Arrest him for it! I tell you he is in league with the English. Arrest him and hang him!’

  ‘You are mad, my friend,’ said Ihsan. ‘You are mad. That’s what’s the matter with you!’

  I stared at him, open-mouthed.

  ‘I’m a specialist,’ he went on, ‘and I know. You’re mad!’

  ‘I don’t know whether you are a specialist or not,’ I said angrily, ‘but I do know you are a most phenomenal liar. I am no more mad than you are. This is a plot, that’s what it is, and you are all in league against me. You are jealous of me – that’s what’s the matter – jealous of me. You know my brain is better a tenfold, a hundredfold, a thousand million millionfold, than yours, and you are jealous! You know I am rich and great and powerful and you are jealous. So you say I am mad. How dare you say I am mad without even examining me?’

  ‘I’ve been examining you all along,’ said Ihsan, laughing.

  ‘Go back to bed.’

  ‘I won’t!’ I said. ‘I must put this right’ – an orderly took me by the arm but I shook him off. ‘Look here! I expostulated, ‘let me explain! I’m sorry I said you were jealous – I see it all now. Let me explain. I see it all now. Let me explain, will you?’

  Ihsan Bey signed to the orderly to leave me alone, and I continued.

  ‘I’m not mad. You are puzzled in the same way that M–was puzzled. You are making this mistake because you’re a specialist, that’s what it is. You specialists are all the same. I’m a strong man, strong enough to fight any six men in this room. I’ve got a heart like a sledgehammer. I’m sound all through. But if I went to a heart specialist he would find something wrong with my heart, and if I went to a stomach specialist he’d find something wrong with my stomach, and if I went to a liver specialist he’d find something wrong with my liver. You are all the same, you doctors. Because you happen to be a brain specialist you say there’s something wrong with my brain. That’s what it is, and you’re a liar! I’m not, NOT mad!’

  I began to rave again and was taken off to bed by the orderlies. Ihsan Bey came and stood beside me. He had a tiny silver-plated hammer, capped with rubber, in his hand. With this he went over my reflexes, hastily at first and then more and more carefully. He took a needle and tried the soles of my feet, the inside of my thighs, and my stomach reflexes. He paid special attention to my pupils. Then he stood up, scratched his head, and after gazing at me for a moment rushed out into the corridor and brought in a second doctor – Talha Bey. Together they read over my ‘deposition’ and together they went over my reflexes, again. Both men were obviously well up in their work, and I made no effort to hold back my knee jerks or other reflexes for I had been warned by O’Farrell that concealment against a competent doctor was hopeless. So all the responses had been normal, and Ihsan and Talha, who were both convinced from my ‘history’ and my answers that I must have had syphilis, were hopelessly puzzled by the absence of the physical symptoms they expected to find. They consulted together for some time and then Talha came and sat down by me.

  He was a clever youth, and should get on in the world. He began by talking about India. A little later he said I appeared to have suffered much from the climate – dysentery and malaria and so on. I admitted that was so, and chatted away quite frankly and pleasantly. Then he talked about microbes and asked if the doctors in India were as clever as the Constantinople doctors, and knew about combating diseases by injections. I said they did. He pretended surprise and disbelief – how did I know? – had they ever given me injections?

  I saw what the sly fellow was after, and pretended to walk straight into his trap. O’Farrell had coached me very thoroughly.

  ‘Oh yes!’ I said. ‘I’ve had plenty of injections! You’ve come to the right man if you want to know about injections. I had a regular course of them once.’

  ‘How interesting,’ said Talha. ‘Where did they inject you?’

  ‘In the thigh,’ I said. ‘First one thigh and then the other. A sort of grey stuff it was.’

  ‘Not more than once, surely!’ he said, with pretended surprise.

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘Every week for about six weeks, and then a spell off, and then every week for another six weeks, and so on, and then I had to take pills for two years. I know all about injections, you bet.’

  ‘Dear me!’ said Talha, ‘what a curious treatment! What was that for, I wonder?’

  I managed to look confused, stammered a little, plucked nervously at the hem of my nightgown, and then brightened up suddenly and said, ‘Malaria! – yes, that was it! Malaria!’ Talha smiled and left me. He thought he had got the admission he wanted, for I had described the treatment for syphilis.

  Chapter XXVIII

  Of The Wassermann Tests and How We Deceived the Medical Board

  Hill’s examination followed. It was much shorter, for Hill’s conduct was in every way the antithesis of mine. He answered each question with a gloomy brevity, and never spoke unless spoken to. The questions asked were much the same as those put later to him by Mazhar Osman Bey in the interview which I quote below, but at this preliminary examination Hill denied the hanging. I could not hear what was said, for they spoke in low tones; in the middle of it I saw Ihsan grab Hill’s wrist, but the phenacetin was doing its work and his pulse revealed nothing. Once Hill wept a little, and several times while Ihsan and Moïse were talking together in Turkish he opened his Bible in a detached sort of way and went on with his eternal reading. His face throughout was puckered and lined with woe. How he kept up that awful expression through all the months that followed I do not know. But he did it, and from first to last I never saw him look anything like his natural happy self. At the close of his examination he was taken back to bed and Ihsan ran over his reflexes in the ordinary way. Then the doctors left the room.

  Figure 32: Autograph photograph of Mazhar Osman Bey and five other Haider Pasha doctors (presented to the author by Talha Bey).

  An hour later the orderly on duty called out, ‘Docto
r Bey geldi!’ (the Doctor has come) and every patient in the ward, except Hill, sat up in an attitude of respect. A little procession entered. At its head was the chief doctor, Mazhar Osman Bey. Behind him followed his two juniors, Ihsan and Talha, in their white overalls, and behind them a motley crowd of students and orderlies, the latter carrying trays of instruments which the great man might need on his rounds.

  Mazhar Osman was a stout, well-dressed, well-set-up man of about forty years of age, with a jovial and most confoundedly intelligent face. He spoke French and German as easily as Turkish, and was in every way a highly educated and accomplished man. In his profession he had the reputation of being the greatest authority on mental diseases in Eastern Europe. As we discovered later, he was Berlin trained, had studied in Paris and Vienna, and was the author of several books on his subject,74 some of which we were told had been translated into German, and were regarded as standard works. It is of course impossible for a layman to judge the real professional merit of a doctor, but this Hill and I can say: during our stay in Constantinople we were examined at various times by some two score medical men – Turks, Germans, Austrians, Dutch, Greek, Armenian, and British. We were subjected to all sorts of traps and tests and questions. There is no doubt we were often suspected, especially by those who were ignorant of our full ‘medical history,’ but nobody inspired us with such a fear of detection, or with such a feeling that he knew all about his business, as Mazhar Osman Bey.

  He seemed hardly to glance at Hill as he made his round. I found out afterwards that it was a favourite trick of his to leave his patients alone for several days after their arrival – but when he got to my bed he stopped, and stood looking at me in silence for some time. Then he put his hand on my heart. It was quite steady.

  ‘I suppose,’ I said gloomily, ‘you are a heart specialist.’ Moïse translated, and Mazhar Osman laughed, showing he knew of my tirade against specialists, and asked me why I looked so cross. I complained bitterly that Ihsan Bey had said I was mad and was keeping me there against my will.

  ‘Ihsan Bey does not understand you,’ said Mazhar Osman; ‘you must learn to speak Turkish.’

  ‘I will,’ I said enthusiastically, ‘I’ll learn it in a month.’ (And I did!) ‘I’ll also learn every other language in the world.’75

  Mazhar Osman smiled again, and said something in Turkish to the gaping crowd of students. Then he examined my reflexes, gave an order to his subordinates, and left the room.

  Soon after, I learned what the order had been. Ihsan and Talha came back and announced they were going to take my blood and draw off some of my spinal fluid. I had hoped these tests might be omitted, for they would show beyond doubt that I had no syphilitic infection, and I feared that this might prove the first step in the detection of my simulation. But these men were leaving nothing to chance. They were convinced I had syphilis, and were going to prove it, and they said so. If I wouldn’t admit to having suffered from the disease I must submit to the test.

  It was too dangerous to make such an admission, for they might – probably would – carry on with the tests in spite of me, and so prove me a liar. My object was to tell the truth in such a way that they would think it a lie.

  ‘I protest,’ I said. ‘I have never had syphilis.’

  ‘Your blood and your spinal fluid will prove who is right,’ Ihsan grinned.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with either,’ I said indignantly. So far I had told the truth. Now was the time to add a lie which they couldn’t possibly detect, and which would puzzle them later on. ‘Both were tested in England by M–, so I know. I’ll tell you what, though, if you are so certain about it, will you bet?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Talha – I think he hoped to make a little money! – ‘how much would you like to bet?’

  ‘Oh, say a hundred thousand pounds,’ said I.

  Talha cut it down to a hundred. I submitted gleefully to the test, and while they drew blood from my arm I babbled away about how sorry they would be when they had to pay up, and how I had won money from M– in the same way. Then they tackled my spine. I saw an orderly blow down the hollow needle and wipe it on the back of his breeches before handing it over to the doctors, and it nearly gave me a fit. If it had not been for Hill I think I would have given in and confessed, for I dreaded infection. I knew enough about needles to be in mortal terror of a dirty one. I believe I gave a start, or looked frightened, for orderlies pounced upon me and held me down in the required position. The student who was practising his prentice hand on me made two boss shots before he hit the bull. It was altogether beastly.

  The report of the bacteriologist, of course, stated everything was healthy and normal. I danced with simulated joy, jeered at Ihsan and Talha, called loudly, day after day, for my hundred pounds and demanded to be sent forthwith to Enver Pasha. Ihsan and Talha went through another head-scratching competition. I have never seen two men more interested or more fogged. Meantime Hill was being left sedulously alone – a treatment quite as trying to the nerves of the malingerer as what I had been through. He knew quite well that though no one went near him he was under observation every minute of the twenty-four hours.

  On the 13th May, five days after our admission into hospital, they held a Board on our cases. I was examined on much the same lines as on the first occasion, except that they pestered me a good deal more about the hanging, which I continued to deny. They also questioned me about Hill. There was in our kit (it was put there purposely for them to find) the following cutting from the Constantinople paper Hilal of 1st June, 1916:

  Un aviateur Anglais à Damas.

  Le journal ‘El Chark’ de Damas écrit: L’aviateur Australien Hol faisant son service dans l’armée anglais, a pris son vol de Kantara près du Canal, et a survolé le désert pour faire des reconnaissances. Une panne survenue en cours de route l’obligea à atterir.

  Quelques habitants du désert ont accouru sur les lieux pour le capturer, mais il opposa une résistance acharnée qui a duré six heures. Finalement il a dȗ se rendre. Cet aviateur a été amené à Damas.

  From the fact that Mazhar Osman Bey began to question me about Hill’s capture I gathered they had found the cutting, and that their interest had been roused, as we hoped would be the case. I replied that all I knew about it was that the Arabs had knocked him on the head so that he became unconscious. (This was quite untrue, as the Arabs did Hill no injury, but O’Farrell had said that a bump on the head would be a good ‘point’ in Hill’s medical history. It certainly created an impression on the doctors, for there was a good deal of whispering after I mentioned it.) Mazhar Osman Bey then asked what I thought of Hill – and I think he hoped I would say he was mad. I replied he was my engineer and was designing me an aeroplane to carry 10,000 men, and I would make 3,000 such aeroplanes and would invade England with 30,000,000 men, etc., etc., etc. I was interrupted and told to go, and after another appeal to be sent to Enver Pasha and to be made a Turkish officer on the grounds that my blood test, etc., had proved me sane, I went.

  Hill was then called in. The following is his description of what occurred:

  ‘After about ten minutes Jones came out and I was led in. It was a small room, and choc-a-bloc with doctors of all sizes. There was a stool in front of the head doctor (Mazhar Osman Bey) on which I was invited to sit down. He spoke to me through the Interpreter, who stood beside me.

  ‘I had thorough “wind up”, my nerves being already upset from the first strenuous five days, but pretended to be frightened at finding myself amongst so many strangers. I fingered the Bible nervously, opening it every now and then. The conversation ran something as follows:

  DOCTOR: ‘What is the book you are always reading?’

  HILL: ‘The Bible.’

  DOCTOR: ‘Why do you read it so much?’

  HILL: ‘It is the only hope in this wicked world. Don’t you read the Bible?’

  DOCTOR: ‘Who are you that you should call the whole world wicked – are you a priest?’
/>   HILL: ‘No.’

  DOCTOR: ‘What religion do you believe in?’

  HILL: ‘I believe in all religions. There is only one God.’

  DOCTOR: ‘Have any of your people suffered from insanity?’

  HILL: ‘No.’ (To Moïse) ‘Why does he ask me that?’

  MOÏSE: ‘It is for your own good.’

  DOCTOR: ‘What illnesses have you had?’

  HILL: ‘I have had typhoid.’

  DOCTOR: ‘Anything else?’

  HILL: ‘I had fits when I was young. At least my people said they were fits, but I don’t think they were fits.’ (This of course was a lie – O’Farrell’s instructions again.)

  DOCTOR: ‘What were they like?’

  HILL: ‘I used to fall down. I don’t remember what happened after that.’

  DOCTOR: ‘Why did you try to hang yourself?’

  HILL: ‘I didn’t!’

  DOCTOR: ‘But Moïse saw you!’

  HILL: ‘No, I didn’t!’

  DOCTOR: ‘Did you do this drawing of a machine76 for Jones?’

  Figure 33: The mad machine for uprooting England.

  HILL: ‘Yes, but there is no sense in it and it is wicked.’

  DOCTOR: ‘Why did you do it?’

  HILL: ‘Because Jones told me to.’

  DOCTOR: ‘Why do you do what Jones tells you?’

  HILL: ‘Because he is very wicked, and I want to convert him. He has promised to be converted if I do what he wants.’77

  DOCTOR: ‘Did you know Jones before the war, or what he did?’

  HILL: ‘No. I think he was a Judge in Burma.’

  DOCTOR: ‘Do you know what this place is?’

  HILL: ‘I think it is a hospital.’

  DOCTOR: ‘Do you know what all these people are?’

  HILL: ‘I think they are doctors.’

  DOCTOR: ‘Do you know what disease you have?’

  HILL: ‘I have no disease. There is nothing the matter with me.’ (A murmur went through the crowd of doctors.)