The Cult in my Grandmother's House - стр. 11

would confer among themselves, concede to the authoritative opinion of the Chief, and then what ususally followed was a huge dose of therapy: speeches, mechanotherapy, and layering (explained below).

To sum up, it was with the help of this tapping that they measured a person’s level of aggression.

Besides this test there were others. They were all intended to measure the current condition and potential of the brain. There were auditory tests (where you had to remember and repeat combinations of words at speed), visual (remember combinations of cards, and then reproduce them, also under time pressure), and tactile (they would bend each of your fingers, and you had to remember and repeat the order, with eyes closed). These tests were all known as evidence, that’s what people would call it, “making evidence”.

Chloroethane

After that first test, the tapping one, Natalya Yevgenyevna asked me to take my pants off and lie down on my side. She started to pour liquid chloroethane over my buttocks, first on one side then the other, and on special points on my toes. It was sore and I felt an unpleasant burning sensation on my skin. After the procedure you weren’t allowed to raise your head so the best thing was to make yourself fall asleep or at least lie with eyes closed.

Later the skin would itch like crazy where the chloroethane had touched it, and would come out in small crusty burns. But with the years I got used to it. After that first time I got this treatment almost every day for six years. I never noticed any change. Everyone there got this same treatment all the time, adults as well as children. It was known as layering; “to layer a person”.

I should say that at least there was never any sexual subtext to any of this treatment. No one ever touched my genitals.

Much later I read that chloroethane is a strong drug and that even small doses can have a strong intoxicating effect. People can even become addicted to it. But we never knew that and never noticed any special effect from it. At least I never did.

THE POINT OF ALL THIS

Soon I found out there was a Chief orchestrating all this confusion: Viktor Davydovich Stolbun. He was an elderly man (at least he seemed so to me, although in reality he wasn’t more than 50), short, with a big meaty nose, dishevelled grey hair and small eyes, and everyone respected and feared him. To be on the safe side I also started to respect and fear him.

We referred to our commune as the collective. It was made up of people who wanted to build true communism, to save a world perishing from widespread schizophrenia.