The Broom of the System Read Online Free PDF

are swelling and getting gnarled, which condition he tries to hide by buying a novelty cast and putting it on his leg and telling his girlfriend his leg’s mysteriously broken, but the condition is meanwhile spreading to his other leg, and up his stomach and back, and also by implication I think we’re to assume his genitals; and so he takes to his bed and keeps himself covered with blankets and tells his girlfriend he’s mysteriously sick, and he also by the way starts making an effort to be really cold and aloof to the girlfriend, to keep her at a distance, even though he really loves her to distraction. And he only gets out of bed when she’s off at work, she sells women’s clothes, and only when she’s gone will he get out of bed and stand in front of the full-length mirror in their bathroom, for hours, gazing at himself in horror, and gently sponging the gray flakes off his increasingly twisted body.”
    “Lordy.”
    “Yes and days go by and the disease continues to progress, spreading to the man’s upper body and arms and hands, which he tries to hide by claiming he’s mysteriously horribly cold, and wearing heavy sweaters and ski mittens, and he’s also being increasingly cruel and nasty and bitter toward his lovely roommate, and won’t let her come near him, and gives her to understand that she’s done something terrible, and made him angry, but won’t tell her what it is, and the girlfriend begins to sit up at night in the bathroom crying, and the man can hear her, and his heart is breaking because he loves her so, but he’s got this obsession about not being ugly, and of course now if he tells her the truth and shows her everything, not only will she see that he’s all of a sudden ugly, but it will also become clear to her that he has the original obsession about not being ugly, see for instance the cast, sweaters and mittens, and of course he’s doubly obsessed about not revealing that original obsession. So he gets meaner and meaner to this sweet beautiful girl who loves him, and eventually, even though she’s a wonderful girl and deeply in love with him, she’s also only human and eventually becomes pissed off, little by little, simply in self-defense, and starts being cold and distant back, and relations between the two get strained, which is breaking the man’s heart, deep down. And meanwhile of course the disease is still spreading, it’s on his neck, and almost to the height of his highest turtleneck sweater, and also one or two gray flaky gnarls are appearing on the man’s nose, previews of coming attractions, the man sees. And so one morning, on about the last day the man figures he can keep it all hidden from the girlfriend, and also the morning after a really major and disastrous fight that clearly almost broke the girl’s heart, the girl is sitting in the bathroom, crying, and the man quietly gets out of bed and bundles up and goes and takes a cab to see his doctor.”
    “....”
    “Well, and the doctor’s quite upset, understandably, at the man’s not having called him in so long, what was he to think? And the doctor’s also of course more than a little concerned about the spread of the disease, and he looks the man over and clucks his tongue and says that this is just about the latest the expensive Switzerland-treatment can start and still be effective, and that if they delay any longer the disease will swallow the man completely and become irreversible and he’ll be alive but gray and flaky and gnarled all over for all time. The doctor looks at the man and says he’s going to go out of the office and let him think it over. The doctor clearly thinks the guy’s out of his mind for not being in Switzerland already. And so the man sits in the office, alone, all bundled up, with his mittens on, and has a real crisis, and his heart is breaking, and he’s incredibly horrified, because of the obsession-obsession, but finally he has a breakthrough, which is not too subtly