Level 7

MARCH 26

My closer contact with X-107 is a help to me. We talk to each other about various things and this, sometimes, makes me forget my situation. Another thing that helps is the lounge which has been opened for everybody on Level 7.

The announcement came over the loudspeaker—this is the only way announcements and orders are made known—yesterday at noon. As the lounge is very small, like most rooms here, and the demand is expected to be considerable, each person has been allotted certain hours when he may use it. I say ‘certain hours’, but that is misleading. Half an hour each day. That is my ration, anyway.

The room is small for a lounge—about fifteen feet by twenty. It asserts its identity, though, by having its name painted bold and clear on the door, one of the many doors in the long wall of the dining-room. When I walked in, there were already some ten or fifteen people there, none of whom I remembered seeing before.

Some of them were women. They all seemed quite nice and looked young, strong and healthy, though I found none of them specially attractive. I went up to one who was standing by herself at the time, and introduced myself. She was a nurse, N-527.

What I liked about her was her calmness. I do not know how she managed it, but she seemed even more calm and relaxed than X-107. Perhaps women are more self-sufficient than men (provided they have men) and less affected by environment. If so I envy them—for the first time in my life.

After a while another man approached us, introducing himself as E-647, ‘E’ standing for Electrical Engineer. He was behaving rather nervously, and soon had me on edge too. I decided to look for other company and leave him to the nurse. I had the impression he was grateful for that.

For a moment I stood alone. Then another woman came up to me, possibly a little older than the nurse, though not older twenty-five. I learnt that she was a psychologist, P-867. She was another calm person, but her calmness seemed of a different kind—a bit artificial, as if she were proud of the achievement—rather than the calmness of a naturally serene disposition. As we talked this got on my nerves.

The first thing she said was, how did I feel? I did not feel inclined to confide in a person I had only just met. I evaded the question: said I was very busy and had had no time to analyse my feelings. She brushed this aside and promptly suggested that I was either deliberately lying or else trying to escape from reality. In either case, she maintained, my attitude was not healthy: “Face reality and talk to other people about your feelings. That’s the best way to get adjusted.”

Trying to escape her professional zeal, which made me feel like a laboratory guinea-pig, I asked her about her own feelings. “Oh,” she said, “I feel fine.” And she went on to explain why she felt so well. The experience of living on Level 7 was most interesting from the psychological point of view. She would have loved to undertake a piece of psychological research into the response of Level 7’s crew to their new surroundings. (So I was a guinea-pig!) It would make a fascinating article if only she could publish the results of her research, which she obviously could not do on Level 7.

At that point I interrupted her: “So you too think in terms of ‘if’?” She did not understand. I explained that I had been thinking in terms of ‘if’: if I had not been chosen for Level 7, if it were possible to go back up on leave, if I had the disposition of a woman….

“You mustn’t think in those terms,” she protested. “That’s escapism. You must find here and now what you can find here and now.” It sounded like some kind of slogan. “Don’t look backwards and don’t think hypothetically. There’s a lot of meaning in our life here. You have a job to do, a country to defend. You have human company here—even female company.” And she suddenly giggled. “What more can a man want, tell me that?”

I answered, almost inaudibly: “Sunshine.”

She remained quiet for a long while and then vigorously shook her head: “No. Sunshine can’t in itself be a real need. I’ve studied quite a few psychological systems, and not one of them ever regarded the quest for sunshine as a basic motivation of human beings, or as a possible foundation for neurosis. Definitely not. There must be some other reason for your state of mind. Sunshine is just a symbol. What lies behind that is the real cause.”

At that moment the loudspeaker announced that our time in the lounge was up. As we parted outside the door she remarked: “You never know—one day you may need psychological treatment. I’ll be happy to help you.” At this she giggled again.