The Conservator

Book excerpt: Cigarettes are a strange commodity in an insane asylum. Not everybody has them; hence, they come to serve as a strange currency. Some ask for cigarettes; others hand them out. They can be symbols of friendship and sources of conversation. Most of all, however, they are the only material object that is not confiscated from the patient when he or she enters the asylum. Thus they become an element of identity and assume a much larger reality than they actually have.