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He had a shiny red face and great spreading smooth nose, little red eyes that lit up when he looked at a chick and went out when he looked at anything else. His shoulders were very broad and suggested deformity. He acted as if other men did not exist, con- veying his restaurant and store orders to male personnel through a female intermediary. And no Man ever in- vaded his blighted, secret place. So he is putting down junk and coming on with tea. I take three drags, Jane looked at him and her flesh crystallized. I leaped up screaming "I got the fear" and ran out of the house. Drank a beer in a little restaurant -- mosaic bar and soccer scores and bullfight posters -- and waited for the bus to town. A year later in Tangier I heard she was dead. B E N W A Y So I am assigned to engage the services of Doctor Benway for Islam Inc. Dr. Benway had been called in as advisor to the Freeland Republic, a place given over to free love and continual bathing. The citizens are well adjusted, co- operatives, honest, tolerant and above all clean. But the invoking of Benway indicates all is not well behind that hygienic facade: Benway is a manipulator and coordinator of symbol systems, an expert on all phases of interrogation, brainwashing and control. I have not seen Benway since his precipitate departure from An- nexia, where his assignment had been T.D.-- Total Demoralization. Benway's first act was to abolish con- centration camps, mass arrest and, except under certain limited and special circumstances, the use of torture. "I deplore brutality," he said. "It's not efficient. On the other hand, prolonged mistreatment, short of physi- cal violence, gives rise, when skillfully applied, to anxiety and a feeling of special guilt. A few rules or rather guiding principles are to be borne in mind. The subject must not realize that the mistreatment is a de- liberate attack of an anti-human enemy on his personal identity. He must be made to feel that he deserves any treatment he receives because there is something (never specified) horribly wrong with him. The naked need of the control addicts must be decently covered by an arbitrary and intricate bureaucracy so that the subject cannot contact his enemy direct." Every citizen of Annexia was required to apply for and carry on his person at all times a whole portfolio of documents. Citizens were subject to be stopped in the street at any time; and the Examiner, who might be in plain clothes, in various uniforms, often in a bathing suit or pyjamas, sometimes stark naked except for a badge pinned to his left nipple, after checking each paper, would stamp it. |
