The Truth

The Truth is a short story by Stanisław Lem. You can read it online at this link or listen to it read to you at the bottom of this post.. It begins,

Here I sit writing in a locked room, where the door has no handle and the windows can’t be opened. They’re made of unbreakable glass. I tried. Not out of a wish to escape or out of rabid fury, I just wanted to be sure. I’m writing at a walnut table. I have plenty of paper. I’m allowed to write. Except no one will ever read it. But I’m writing anyway. I don’t want to be alone, and I can’t read. Everything they give me to read is a lie, the letters start to jump before my eyes and I lose patience. None of what’s in them has been of the least concern to me ever since I realized how things really are. They take great care of me. In the morning there’s a bath, warm or tepid, subtly scented. I’ve learned how to tell the days of the week apart: on Tuesdays and Saturdays the water smells of lavender, and on the other days of pine forest. Then there’s breakfast and the doctor’s visit. One of the junior doctors (I can’t remember his name, not that there’s anything wrong with my memory, it’s just that these days I try not to memorize unimportant things) was interested in my story. I told it to him twice, the whole thing, and he tape-recorded it. I guess he wanted me to repeat it so that he could compare the two accounts, to find out what stayed the same. I told him what I thought, and also that the details weren’t essential.

I also asked if he was planning to work up my story as a so-called clinical case study, to attract the attention of the medical world. He was rather embarrassed. Perhaps I just imagined it, but at any rate, since then he has stopped showing interest in me.

But none of that is of any consequence. ...

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