Playthings

by Alex Pheby

  He is a soul murderer, like his father.

  ‘You know nothing of my father!’

  The ringing of bells.

  Fancy a person who was a Senatspräsident allowing himself to be f——d.

  Just another.

  The ringing of bells.

  The leading idea is missing.

  Bells rang loud and urgent and there was a rattling below them, like that which announced the arrival of coffee at the club, but deeper. It was as if the trolley was enormous and the cups and saucers and spoons were made for a giant, and if he had put down the paper, and sat up straight he would have been puzzled to see the great thing, trundling across the library floor, even as his mouth watered at the thought of his morning biscuits.

  ‘You must move, sir!’

  It was a woman’s voice.

  Schreber turned and there on the pavement in front of Wertheim’s were two women. The older had her hand over her mouth so that her lace handkerchief covered her lips and chin. Her eyes were wide. Her companion was younger, a very pretty girl in yellow, who clutched at the first’s arm with both hands so that her fringed parasol fell at her feet. She seemed a modest child, but her lips were very red, as if she had painted them. Her mouth was also open.

  ‘For pity’s sake!’

  The bells were terribly loud now and the rattling such that something must surely break. Schreber followed the direction of the women’s attention—which he realised now was not quite on him—and there was a tram car.

  The numerals for “sixteen” were written on a card placed in the slot in front of where the driver sat, and next to that it said: “Fürsten Platz—Streissener Platz—Sacshen Platz—Albert Brücke—Albert Platz,” two to a line with the last alone and in larger script and bold.

  ‘Good Lord preserve us!’

  The tram was moving at great speed. The driver turned a handle above his head furiously, bobbing up and down with every revolution, and the bells rang out. The wheels sparked and there was a keening, grinding sound.

  He was applying the brake.

  If Schreber had put his hand out directly in front of him he could have touched the window. Behind it the driver was frozen in anger and, similarly still, the passengers: men and women, faces appalled at the spectacle of what must soon be a man crushed by a tram.

  Schreber looked down and saw that he was standing directly in the centre of the metal tracks which had been laid into the stones of the road. When he looked back at the tram he traced the contours of the writing on the card with his finger. Sixteen, in Arabic numerals: one straight line and one fat spiral in heavy black script.

  The noise was awful: grinding, clattering, ringing, and there was an iron tang in the air as the metal wheels slid on their metal rails.

  Sabine. Sabchen.

  The tram hit Schreber in the chest.

  ‘Oh, mercy!’

  He was knocked to the ground and his head snapped back so that he felt as if his skull was cracked open. The tram passed him, sparks like Catherine wheels everywhere, faces at the window, dumbstruck.

  Schreber meets the Gerhardt mother and daughter, and they take him to the law courts. Matters come to a head.

  V

  ‘He is done for, surely. I cannot look!’

  The girl was all in yellow, her hair gathered up under a simple cotton cap decorated with a butterfly pin. Her eyes were wide and blue and she licked her lips until they glistened like cherries washed and piled in a bowl.

  ‘I’m going to faint! Hold me, girl, for goodness’ sake!’

  Her mother: clearly of the same species of woman, but thinner, dried out—like a hanging rose—her voice crackling in her throat, swamped by the black widow’s ruff at her neck and confused by her nervous fingers fluttering the handkerchief over her mouth.

  ‘He is moving. His eyes are open,’ the girl said.

  ‘Impossible! Don’t you dare let me go! I will die on the spot!’

  ‘But Mother!’

  ‘Not another word!’

  ‘But Mother, he is alive.’

  ‘Stupid girl…’

  But she looked anyway, first one eye and then both, and he looked back at them.

  They were framed by the window of Wertheim’s and to either side of them were dresses on headless mannequins. The back of his head throbbed, and when he moved to sit up the women appeared very vivid, glistening like the fan of peacock feathers that Sabine put in the fireplace of her parlour in the summer months, and there was a shooting pain that made him freeze.

  Schreber tried to sit again, more carefully this time, and when he did not fall straight back to the ground, he nodded gently to the women in turn, the widow first. They appeared unable to understand what they were seeing, any more than the mannequins behind them could, so he reached to tip the brim of his hat, a little reassurance, such as he was used to performing to put a certain type of person at their ease. The hat was lost, however, and Schreber passed his hand through his hair and nodded to them again.

  ‘My apologies. I appear to have given you both something of a fright.’

  The widow took a step back and pulled on the girl’s arm.

  ‘Impossible!’ she shrieked, turning so that her face was more or less concealed by the girl’s yellow puffed sleeve. The girl, less easily disconcerted it seemed, came forward and reached out her hand.

  Schreber thought about taking it, but instead he put his palms flat on the floor and pushed himself up. He lurched forward, at the last, but soon regained his balance, despite the widow’s theatrical horror at his sudden approach. He stepped back, brushed down his coat, smoothed his waistcoat and, when all that was done to his satisfaction, attended to his moustaches.

  The tram driver, who had stopped some way ahead and come to the footplate fully expecting to attend to another ruined corpse, spat a curse and returned to the tiller, and the tram continued along the track, the rear window half-filled with faces in expressions of more or less anxious bemusement.

  When it was gone, the three of them were nothing more extraordinary than any other three people on the street and for a while there was an uneasy silence.

  ‘Are you in pain?’ the girl asked. ‘That was a very forceful collision.’

  The widow snorted from behind her handkerchief and stared, but said nothing.

  Schreber considered the question.

  ‘A little. But otherwise I feel very well. Much better than I have felt all day.’

  He filled his lungs and held the air within him so that his chest puffed out, and occupied himself with the dust and grit that stubbornly adhered to his clothes.

  ‘I have had something of a difficult morning,’ he said, picking and wiping and patting. ‘I think I shall return home. Perhaps you could direct me? Where am I exactly?’

  ‘We are near Pirnaischer Platz. We are shopping for new gloves…’

  Schreber nodded.

  ‘In Dresden?’

  ‘Of course in Dresden,’ the widow said, ‘where else would we be?’

  ‘Mother! Where, sir, do you live? Should I find someone to arrange a carriage?’

  ‘I need only get my bearings,’ Schreber said. ‘I must find my wife.’

  ‘She is with you? She is inside?’ the girl gestured back to the department store. Its canopies rippled in the wind, but the stripes were oddly enervated. Were they becoming transparent?

  ‘No… she is not inside,’ Schreber said. She was not inside. ‘My wife… Sabine, she is… gone.’

  There was itching at the back of Schreber’s head. He scratched at it.

  ‘Come away, child,’ the widow whispered. ‘This man is no concern of yours. It is not your place to tend to unfortunates in the street. Why he is not dead is an absolute mystery…Why you are not dead, sir, is an absolute mystery!’

  The widow looked around at th
e passersby, as if seeking confirmation of her opinion. No one met her gaze, so she addressed herself to Schreber again, hissing.

  ‘My daughter and I do not appreciate mysteries, sir!’

  ‘Mother!’

  ‘Come away, child!’

  ‘Do you know my wife? Frau Sabine Schreber? She is very well known in society. She has many friends. Many parties. She is a wonderful woman. We all say so.’ Schreber came closer, reaching for the widow’s hand, as if to reassure her. It had the opposite effect, and she jumped back, which made Schreber do the same. There was a sudden and very bad pain in Schreber’s head and something strange happened.

  Once, Sabine had taken him to a séance—this fad was short-lived, thankfully, it not having the same innate ability to dominate his wife’s interest as had the theatre, of which it was a poor cousin in both their opinions—and at this display an image, supposedly provoked by the medium from the afterlife, appeared onto a veil of smoke pumped from a bellows. Now the widow appeared in just this mode, the extent of her existence dictated by the random fluctuations of the air onto which she was projected.

  Playthings.

  Schreber sniffed and coughed. He blinked and blinked and his hand balled into a fist, which knocked against his hip. The back of his head itched.

  ‘She is a marvellous woman. Marvellous voice,’ Schreber said.

  The widow’s face represented a series of expressions, beginning with derision and ending at annoyance, very convincingly.

  ‘I’m sure she must be,’ she said, although it sounded as if the opposite was the case.

  ‘No children, sadly,’ Schreber went on, picking at the back of his head. ‘They wouldn’t move, even when I grabbed them by the wrists.’

  In the window the mannequins stood firm, but the woman in front of him was as thin as tissue paper. Her daughter was only a little better. They both regarded him as if he was the anomaly: the girl with a kindly eye, but nonetheless critical.

  The leading idea is missing.

  ‘The leading idea is missing.’

  The widow tutted and turned, pulling her daughter by the arm.

  ‘The man is a fool. He is babbling. Come, child! We have our own affairs to attend to.’

  ‘Mother!’

  ‘Don’t “Mother!” me, girl! He is a vagrant. There are the gloves and after that we must consider lunch and after that we have the Dutch émigrée and her family, and it is already too much. Leave him where he is! The authorities will attend to him in due course.’

  The girl flickered briefly like a candle in the breeze, but she stood her ground.

  ‘Forgive me, sir. You say you are well, but you have difficulty standing up straight. You sway a little, and I see that your eyes trouble you. Won’t you allow us to see you to your wife? Or to a doctor?’

  Schreber looked at himself up in the window of Wertheim’s. He moved from foot to foot, sometimes forward and backward, and sometimes from side to side. It was very peculiar. It reminded him of the movements made by those men who consider taking their wives onto the floor for a waltz, but for one reason or other lack the will to do so and remain on the periphery, allowing themselves to be touched only a little by the music.

  ‘My apologies. I fear the accident has rattled me. I am not, perhaps, my usual self.’

  ‘And who are you, sir,’ the girl said.

  He bowed.

  ‘I am Daniel Paul Schreber, presiding judge of the Third Civil Court of the Supreme Court of Appeals of the Kingdom of Saxony. Retired.’

  This announcement, as it often did, seemed to impress. At least it impressed the girl, who even curtseyed. It may have had the opposite effect on her mother, who acted as if his position was insufficient to overturn the opinion she had already formed of him.

  ‘Then you will want the courthouse,’ she snapped. ‘It is no great distance.’

  She turned and began to walk away as if the matter was settled. Her daughter grabbed her elbow and now both were so flimsy that Schreber was surprised there was enough of them to grab, or be grabbed.

  ‘He will want a doctor! Mightn’t we walk with him, please? And if, by the mercy of God, he finds himself well, then we will have satisfied ourselves that we have done our duty.’

  ‘I am already perfectly satisfied, thank you.’

  Schreber coughed and sniffed.

  ‘You are so thin. The moment I turn away, you will dissolve into nothing…’

  ‘We most certainly will not. Hester, come away! That is an order!’

  ‘Nonsense, Mother. Where is your charity? Would you leave him when he is clearly unwell?’

  ‘I would. I do not care to be insulted.’

  ‘I do not mean to insult you, madam. It is no fault of yours.’

  ‘Let us at least make some progress toward the courts,’ the girl said.

  ‘Why do you concern yourself with him? Ignore him!’

  ‘Mother! Pay her no attention. We will go to the courthouse. She will follow.’

  ‘It is of no importance. She is a puppet. She moves at the will of another.’

  ‘I see,’ the girl replied.

  She took his arm and gently applied pressure to his elbow.

  ‘Am I a puppet, too?’

  Schreber observed her carefully.

  ‘I worry, Fräulein, that you are.’

  ‘And you?’

  Schreber frowned, but said nothing.

  ‘Might I see…?’ she motioned toward the back of his neck. ‘There is quite a lump there… and some blood.’

  ‘It is nothing…’ Schreber twisted away from her.

  ‘Quite. Then, will you escort me to the courthouse? I have business there that I have just remembered.’

  ‘What are you babbling about, girl?’

  Now the widow seemed determined to separate the two. She came and stood so that she was between them, and every time the girl tried to catch Schreber’s eye, the widow moved to block her.

  ‘A little matter,’ she continued, bobbing around, ‘something that a judge might be able to help me with.’

  ‘Perhaps. I am well respected. What is your business there?’

  ‘Matters I would prefer not to speak of in the street. Mother! Stop! Herr Schreber will take us to the courts, and then we will attend to our business.’

  Her mother sighed and gritted her teeth, but the girl was so stubborn!

  ‘I am still a man of high standing there. I am allowed to dine in the private restaurant. The clerks will give you whatever help you require.’ Schreber drew himself up.

  ‘The clerks, at least, are not puppets?’ the widow sneered.

  ‘Well…’ Schreber began. Were they?

  ‘The courts are on Pirnaische Strasse, are they not?’ the girl said.

  ‘They are on Pillnitzer Strasse.’

  ‘Of course. Will you take us across the road?’

  ‘It would be my pleasure, Fräulein.’

  Her mother frowned, but she followed when Schreber stepped out, having first checked in both directions.

  The girl put her hand on Schreber’s back, patting him gently—a friendly gesture with which a granddaughter might express affection for her grandfather—two taps between the shoulder blades, but when she brought her hand away she rubbed her fingers together and then wiped her gloves into her handkerchief. When Schreber began to walk, the girl showed the contents of the handkerchief, now stained red, to her mother. She considered it for a while, sighed, and, eventually, nodded.

  The three walked on, and it was not long before they reached Pillnitzer Strasse. On their right they passed a school. Rows of schoolboys waited with their hands by their sides for a signal. When one or other of them moved an arm, or scratched at their bare knees, a prefect would race along the line and correct them with his cane until order was restored.


  ‘They, too, are puppets, I suppose,’ the widow said from the corner of her mouth.

  Schreber watched the boys in silence for a while, and it appeared as if he was listening to something that the other two could not hear.

  ‘I fear they are temporary things made up from the dirt,’ he said after a long time. ‘Like you, they are soulless. God makes them and unmakes them for the purpose of deceiving me. Like Sabine, like Fridoline, like the little ones—you are playthings of Ariman, the Lower God.’

  This was too much.

  ‘The Lower God now is it? If a Gerhardt is the plaything of any god, sir, it is of the highest possible God, and I’ll ask you not to forget it!’

  ‘Mother!’

  Someone blew a whistle and half of the boys marched off into the school buildings.

  ‘I can see the steps of the courthouse,’ Schreber said.

  There was blood now on the flagstones beneath where he was standing. As he swayed, feet planted wide apart like a man on board a ship in a storm, drops of blood hit the stones in an irregular pattern. Over the school the sun appeared through the clouds. The sunlight streamed down onto the remaining boys, making them blink and raise their hands to their eyes. The prefects corrected them.

  ‘Do you see the sun? Do you see how the rays join with the nerves of those boys? Like puppet strings? I had thought it was all nothing… But first Sabine, and then Fridoline, and now…’

  ‘Let us make our way to the courts.’

  ‘Do you hear them calling to each other?’

  ‘I hear nothing.’

  Schreber nodded as if his suspicions were confirmed.

  The girl tried to lead him forward but he stumbled, leaning hard on her so that her mother, despite her disgust, came and took his other arm. Schreber looked up close at her, so that his breath moved her hair.

  ‘They come to me, drawn by the excitability of my nerves. I had thought it was all a dream.’

  ‘We must get you to a doctor right away,’ she said, and she linked her arm with her daughter’s behind his back and the two walked forward, slowly but steadily, toward the courts.

  ‘He is incapable of understanding how he has wronged me. I can hear him now. He insists that I am at fault. He demands things. He calls me vile names. Directly. Through the nerve-speech.’