Conversation · Composure

What strikes you about this gaunt man is not the stomach pain, or the cough, or the malnutrition. It's precisely what you could not see before. For a man who's spent 44 years hidden in the urban wild...

He is surprisingly okay.

Indeed. He speaks fluidly, his movements are rapid, if erratic. His voice, despite the cough, is there. It is capable of expressing complicated ideas. Above all, he seems animated.

Animated? By what?

It's a mystery. This animation comes at a cost too: erratic hand gestures, thought processes cut off like threads, as he just stares at the logs or the reeds. He also suffers mood swings, bubbling to the surface, unconstrained by his nervous system.

Great leaps of emotion: from anger to grief, despair...

And also flashes of lust, simmering in there. Not too common in people his age.

"Are you on amphetamines?"

"Like some kind of decadent rock star?" He doesn't dignify it with more of an answer.

"Mr. Dros, are you on some kind of a psychoactive substance?"

"No!" he snaps out of staring through you. "I won't be stuffed full of shit like the rest of this city."

"You said you take painkillers..." The lieutenant follows your lead.

"I take them to cope with pain. The people of this city use painkillers, because they have pain. Untreated illnesses, not enough money for a greedy doctor."

Are you sure about him being lucid? Maybe he's just affected by an extreme case of socialism.

It's not a downer. Rather an upper, judging by his snaps.

He is indeed very lucid at times..

Didn't he say...

"You said you take painkillers..."

No matter.

Wouldn't a foul temper be a by-product of his life?

Perhaps. But his seems more than that. The inner turmoil takes unexpected turns, as if forced on him in a way...

In summary, you sense some underlying neurological disorder.

The lust. Wouldn't his glands have... stopped by now?

There is definitely something hormonal there. Whatever the condition he's suffering, there is a sexual element to it.

"Mr. Dros, are you okay? How is your memory?" (Finish the examination.)

"No I'm not okay..." He waves his hand, chasing something that's not there. "I shit blood and I'm surrounded by insane people..."

There it is again -- erratic hand motions. Bouts of rage. And the stomach thing too of course...

Could it be a symptom of overdosing on something? Something even you have not tried? Keep your eyes peeled.

"How about pyrholidon?"

"I don't know what that is..." He shakes his head.

Dementia?

You've seen demented people before. This feels similar, yet different. When his thoughts move they are lucid, keen even -- not senile.

Is it some kind of substance damage? Like he's addicted to something -- not only the painkillers he's clearly on.

What strikes you about this gaunt man is not the stomach pain, or the cough, or the malnutrition. For a man who's spent 44 years hidden in the urban wild...

Aside from the rare erratic hand gesture, smacking his lips and despondently staring into the fire, you can only see that he is old.

For a sixty-year-old man with stomach trouble -- who's spent his entire life alone on an uninhabited island -- he seems surprisingly fit.

That's it? (Squint at him.)

He's clearly a drug user of the painkillers sort, prone to erratic hand gestures -- and malnourished. But that's it. The moment passes and you say...

He's prone to erratic hand gestures -- and clearly malnourished. But that's it. You can see no more by looking at his slouched frame. The moment passes and you say...

"A tragicomedy..." He shakes to life. "Druggies, prostitutes and rentiers."

A strange little engine seems to fire up in him again. It straightens his back.

The familiar put put put of hatred.

Detest pushes the cobwebs out of his eyes, pushes the melancholy aside. He relishes it.

"Yeah, wait. We have more serious things to discuss."

"Imbeciles..." The old man in the dirty tracksuit trousers stares at you, panting from hatred. A gust of wind blows in from the sea, bending the reeds behind him...

"More specifically?"

"Specifically, the whole city is a charnel house, stripped clean and draped in neon. But Martinaise..." he shakes his head in grave disgust, "Martinaise is the worst."

"How come?"

"Because of the racists. Everyone is a racist in Martinaise, it's their favourite thing to do in the whole world -- listening to race-themed radio shows. In the ruins, in their lorries." He points inland.

"Pumped full of steroids and Radio Revachol '92. Race this, race that... It's all sanctioned by that social democratic Union and the farce of a social democrat who runs it..."

"Mr. Claire?"

"Yes, the fly larva in his container. He let some nihilistic advertising yuppies erect a statue of Filippe III -- a syphilitic murderer -- on the town square. To spit on the working class."

Let him finish, do not interrupt.

"Not since the serfs of ancient Perikarnassis has History produced a more inert social class than the Martinaise proletariat. The rest of Revachol at least pretends to rebuild, these people still live in ruins..."

"In tents, like animals..." He points to the church. "Like those boom-boom-morons on the ice. A pity they didn't drown in that tent of theirs." He keeps shaking his head with sorrow for the sight he missed.

"That all?"

"The worst of them is the blood-drenched soucriant on her yacht, licking her lips. The old whore's gone now, her gun toting porcelain men are dead -- so, actually, no..."

"The worst is that old cock parading around in his uniform, throwing balls all day. It's not enough that the racists and liberals are dancing on our graves! The old loyalist ghouls still parade the ruins too."

"Every morning he's there. While the parasites he fought to protect are off in Ozonne, or Croyant-Morain, or some other island they've built their palaces on. Feeding on drugs and having sex with their own children."

Say nothing.