The Cult in my Grandmother's House - стр. 23

HOW SCARED WE WERE OF MEDICINE

It wasn’t just the Zionists who were our enemies, it was doctors too. The words “medical”, “pills” and so on were dirty words, almost curses. Nothing except our treatments of layering and psychotherapy (including mechanotherapy, in other words beatings) could help a person. In all the years I spent in the cult, I never once saw a normal doctor. I somehow also avoided the standard annual checkup at school. I know the Chief was terrified of dentists. Nobody to my knowledge ever visited the doctor, not for anything. All the adults had terrible teeth. In some sense it was good that I was a child and so couldn’t go totally to seed.

However, cases requiring medical attention were not all that rare in the commune.

For example, once while our children’s collective was living outside Moscow, I fell sprawling on my back from a swing; my back was so sore I could hardly move. I was taken away immediately on my own to the Chief’s apartment on Kotelnicheskaya embankment, in a prestigious part of Moscow. I stayed there alone for a while with several adults who (as normal) layered me. However, strangely, they did not scold me very harshly for having a sore back. I probably wasn’t up to it.

Once a boy managed to knock a boiling pot off the stove over himself, and he got immediately coated in panthenol as treatment. That medicine was only available nearby by chance, only thanks to the fact that we were living in the centre of Moscow at that time, in one of the parent’s apartments.

Another boy, when we were on the move somewhere, fell and scraped his whole naked torso on the hot metal grate we cooked on.

And once while working in the fields a girl was hit on the hands with a hoe.

One of our male teachers fell between the platform and a moving train, severely damaging his thigh and almost losing his leg.

One of our female teachers was attacked by a trucker who tried to rape her in the cab of his lorry.

And this is just what remains from my childhood memories.

However, to outsiders it must have seemed that we were all absolutely fine, never ill, that nothing ever happened to us and that we were always full of strength, despite our heavy labour and difficult circumstances. In fact, this was the whole point and message of our work: don’t spoil children, don’t raise them as little lords, let them work their arses off, suffer the slings and arrows, temper them in the fire!

But to an intelligent observer it was obvious that we fell sick no less frequently than other people, and maybe even more. It was just that the whole theme of illness was painstakingly hushed up around us. Whenever anyone fell ill they were rapidly quarantined, so rapidly that not even others in the cult noticed. If for some reason they couldn’t be quarantined, they were scolded for their wrong thoughts, bad attitude and behaviour.