Stories From The Old Attic | Page 8

apart, and their children and themselves half starved and wholly naked.
Another odd effect of the mental distraction was an unnatural craving for firewood. Unlike the other natives in the area, the members of this tribe collected--and stole, and cheated and betrayed for--log upon stick to pile next to their huts, even though in twenty very cold years they couldn't use half as much as they already possessed. A few natives had been crushed to death by collapsing woodpiles; many more had died from fighting over decidedly unimpressive old branches.
One day a doctor came from the East to the village, and he immediately recognized the symptoms of the disease (a common one) for which he carried the cure. He went gladly and confidently to the chief of the tribe and announced his ability to remedy the ills of the people, expecting to be praised and welcomed for his offer of help. To his surprise, however, the chief rebuffed him with contempt and asserted boldly that there was nothing at all wrong with his people, that they had always acted that way since he could remember, that it was the human condition, and that they were all perfectly happy. Then, after ordering the doctor to leave immediately, the chief jumped out of a tree into the tribal latrine and was unavailable for any further discussion.
Substantially taken aback but firm in his resolution, the doctor decided to take his offer directly to the natives. Most received him with laughter, contempt, or violence; many ignored him; a few beat him up; some said he just wanted to get at their firewood; most said they, like the chief, felt fine. But a dozen or so natives came to him privately where he had been tossed into the bushes after his most recent beating, and asked him for the medicine.
"We are somehow not really happy living like this," they said, "even though it is the way of the world." The doctor gladly gave them the medicine, and in a few days they began to show remarkable signs of recovery. No longer desiring to eat dirt or jump out of trees, these natives corrected their diet, improved in health, and began to apply themselves to such activities as making baskets, repairing their huts, caring for their children, and gathering food. Some even began to question the wisdom of collecting stacks of wood more than twenty feet high.
Such wild, unusual, and anti-social behavior did not go unnoticed by the other natives, who quickly ostracized the cured natives from the tribal camp, calling them enemies of the current system. And even though many of the delirious natives began to suspect that the cured natives were somehow better off than they, and that there might be more to living than sleeping on dunghills and finding new trees to jump out of, resistance to the cure was strong. First, almost all the educated and respectable people--the chief and his council--spoke against it, and the example of their sophistication and wealth (the chief's woodpile was ninety feet high) was very strong. Many others, from the gossips to the wise man, said that the old way was right, and that the tribe had always behaved that way. There were few real individuals in the tribe, so that even though scores would have been glad to try the cure, they were afraid to stand against the rest and did what everyone else was doing, which was nothing.
The witch doctor had a stronger argument against the new regimen. He pointed out that the cure was harder to take than the cures he dispensed. The Eastern doctor's cure was painful, and though many of the witch doctor's cures caused vomiting, hives, convulsions, and hallucinations, the natives were all familiar with these effects and attributed them to swallowing the medicine wrong, rather than to the medicine itself. But who knew what the fate of the cured natives would eventually be?
The cured natives said they felt fine, but they might have been lying. And who was fool enough to trust an outsider, a stranger, rather than the familiar witch doctor, who cursed those who took the cure because they rejected his medicines as false and pernicious? The cured natives said that a commitment must be made to trust the Eastern doctor; this was too difficult or uncertain a step for many, especially in the face of the social pressure around them. A decision accompanied by fear, decried by the important, and rejected by society could not be made by everyone.
After the time of his stay was over, the Eastern doctor showed the cured natives how to compound the medicine and then left. As generations passed, most of the natives remained loyal to the dunghill, but a few took the cure.

Love
Otto and his girlfriend Brissa were driving merrily down