by Alex Pheby
‘Now, sir,’ Rössler said, surprisingly deeply, ‘can we assume you are feeling a little better today?’
Schreber made no effort to answer.
‘This place has the atmosphere of a Turkish brothel,’ he snapped. ‘Would it be asking too much to have a window open and the blinds drawn? It’s a very clear day, yet one would never know it in this hole.’
On the table the Great Words sat.
Schreber looked back at the doctor.
Rössler smiled and almost nodded—it might even have been his breathing making him nod, very slightly, as he drew air in and out.
‘Like a Turkish brothel,’ Schreber repeated, this time louder.
He watched the doctor and the doctor watched him, smiling. Unpleasant little man.
When Schreber looked away, his focus failed to settle anywhere in the murk and he received the nauseating impression that the objects of his attention were either very close at hand or at a great distance, and that he couldn’t properly distinguish which.
‘It is good to hear you speak,’ Rössler said, at last.
His voice really was quite sonorous. Was there an accent?
‘I suppose,’ he went on, ‘if nothing else, it’s given me time to read your book. I know Dr. Flechsig, by the way. I should probably make that clear. And Weber. Very good doctors. You’ve been very lucky.’
None of this was relevant. Old words. Dead names. The population of a former era, long passed away.
‘Where is my wife?’ Schreber asked.
Rössler pursed his lips.
‘Yes… I suppose I should have qualified that earlier statement… It is good to hear you speak about something else.’ A touch of French? An Alsatian then? An Alsatian dwarf, wittering on and making faces. ‘It has been a quite a while since you expressed an interest in anything other than the disposition of your wife.’
Rössler returned to his chair and gathered in the piles of paper. Schreber’s notes?
The glasses were pulled down again, then up. Schreber swallowed. Did this man ever intend to answer him?
‘Well?’
‘Well what?’
‘Where is she, man?’
Rössler raised an eyebrow.
‘Do you feel well?’ he asked.
‘That is not an answer to my question, sir.’
‘I am aware of that, Herr Schreber, but the question stands.’
‘Answer mine first!’
Rössler removed his glasses altogether and placed them in front of him on the desk. Without them, he seemed to become smaller still, his eyes in particular. He compensated for this by exuding an air of intense concentration. Schreber shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
‘Are you aware,’ Rössler asked, ‘that it is a doctor’s privilege, in his own office, to expect an answer from his patients?’
‘I suppose…’
‘Then the question stands. Do you feel well today?’
Schreber stared at him for some time, but, despite his size, the man would not be intimidated.
‘I feel very well, thank you,’ Schreber said, when it was absolutely clear that there would be no progress until he did.
‘And the voices?’
Schreber stared blankly and did not reply, but Rössler stared back. The doctor drew the book towards him and opened it randomly. With a finger he followed the lines and read parts out.
‘“In my case… since my nervous illness took the above mentioned… my nerves have been set in motion from without incessantly…,” da…da…da…, “incessant voices…,” “nerve-speech…,” “the rays,” da…da…da…, “falsifying my thoughts…,” da…da…da… All this—you remember? You wrote this book in hospital last time… These symptoms, have they eased somewhat?’
‘That book is irrelevant. I was ill. There is nothing more to say on the matter.’
Rössler smiled.
‘Excellent, excellent…’ He flicked through the book again. ‘Chosen by God to bear a new race of men? Subject of miracles? Unmanning.’
Schreber shook his head. ‘That was years ago. I was mistaken in all of it. A nightmare, nothing more. Do not even speak of it. I am perfectly well. I must return home immediately.’
‘Your insides?’ Rössler enquired. ‘Have the miracles ceased?’
‘Please… There are no miracles. I am utterly fine. Those things were dreams, tedious dreams, and no one wants to hear about them.’
‘Wonderful… The sleep seems to have done you good.’
Schreber frowned and, seeing this, Rössler smiled.
‘You have been inaccessible for some time as we gave you a sleeping draught,’ Rössler added, by way of clarification, ‘and then, as you slept, Müller gave you more. For two weeks. It can be effective…’
‘I see.’
‘It is a little too early to tell, yet, but at last there does seem to have been some improvement.’
Rössler returned the book to the centre of the table and shuffled his papers until they were tidied.
‘May, then, I be allowed to return home?’
‘Well, perhaps, Herr Schreber, perhaps.’
Rössler picked up his silver letter opener, intending, it seemed, to use it as a paperweight. He held it above the arrangement of papers as if he was about to lay it down on top of them, but then, at the last moment, he took it between the finger and thumb of his right hand and let it swing back and forward.
‘Your wife,’ he said, ‘she is now well after her stroke. You will be pleased to hear this?’
Schreber came out of his chair and took the few steps over to Rössler’s desk.
‘A stroke? Good God! I must see her! Please! Is she well?’
‘I have told you that she is.’
‘Good Lord! And Fridoline? I must see them!’
‘All in good time, Herr Schreber! Please return to your chair. Do not make it necessary for me to call an orderly.’
‘I must see her!’ He leaned forward so that his belly rested on the doctor’s desk. Rössler reached for the bell.
‘Should we continue this conversation on another occasion, Herr Schreber? I cannot guarantee it will be soon…’
Schreber stepped away. A stroke? And now well? No longer grimacing and shaking down there on the floor… No longer flat and soulless? He took his seat and his hands were shaking.
‘Very good. She was here today,’ Rössler continued when Schreber was back in his chair, ‘until very recently—in fact, moments ago—asking after your health. This was immediately before your… awakening.’ Rössler slapped the hilt of the letter opener into the palm of the opposite hand. ‘How does that strike you?’
‘She was here? Where is she now?’
‘She is returning home to Dresden, Herr Schreber. She was very concerned for your physical health.’ Rössler remembered something—something written down—and he began to search for it. ‘She was very firm in this regard. She worries you will have lost weight. I need to examine you. Ah!’ He held a sheet of paper in his hand, sparsely decorated with an untidy hand. He read it for a while, and nodded as he did so. ‘I almost let it slip my mind. Would you open your shirt for me, please?’
Rössler came round to stand beside him. Though Schreber was sitting and Rössler standing, they were approximately at the same height. The silver disc of a stethoscope hovered between them.
‘And then can I see her?’ Schreber asked. ‘She will want to see me.’
‘I understand your desire to see her, but I’m sure that’s not possible. She has already left for home.’
‘But you said she was here moments ago. Send someone for her. She will not mind the inconvenience.’
‘Herr Schreber, there will be plenty of time for that. For now, let us proceed with the business in hand. Your shirt?’
Schreber move
d to leave the chair again, thinking perhaps to run to the door, or the window, and shout after her, but the doctor’s hand on his shoulder, brittle-seeming though it was, was enough to keep him in his place.
‘Might we open the blinds, at least?’
‘Why not?’
Rössler walked over and twisted the sash.
‘Now… the shirt?’
Schreber stared at the window hoping that by some accident he might catch sight of his wife, and she of him…
But, in her place, he saw something else.
The window was large, a single pane starting up quite high in the wall, but very wide. A man at the window was blocking the view through the middle. He was a Jewish gentleman of moderate size, with neatly cropped and greased black hair. He stared into the room intently, searching for something. Schreber watched him, and when the man caught sight of the judge, he smiled and spoke. His lips parted and moved together, sculpting words that Schreber could not read. Schreber made the same shapes with his own lips. Ball crusher?
Rössler, catching the direction of Schreber’s attention, marched to the window and twisted the blinds shut again so that the gentleman disappeared with the sunlight, and the only illumination was the greasy green-yellow wash of the single oil lamp.
‘She is not out there. That window opens onto the gardens. Open your shirt to the waist, please.’
‘There was a Jew…’
‘Your shirt!’
‘But there is nothing the matter with me.’
Rössler removed his glasses and sighed.
‘I am perfectly fine. Please call a carriage,’ Schreber went on, talking as much to himself as to the doctor. ‘I want to go home!’
‘If you’ll forgive me, I will work around you.’
Rössler slipped the cold metal of the stethoscope under Schreber’s shirt.
‘The confusion has gone. I am back to my usual self. Do you see?’
Rössler held up his hand for the quiet he needed, and moved the disc here and there over Schreber’s chest, listening. When he was finished and Schreber’s hands moved to button his shirt—to make himself decent—he was surprised to find every one of his buttons was gone, and broken threads twisted uselessly where the buttons should have been. He tried to put the fabric from one side through the hole in the other, using his little finger to poke it in, but it slipped back out when he breathed. He had no choice but to hold the two sides of the shirt shut with both his hands, one by his throat and the other by his waist. When he looked down he saw that he had no hands free to rearrange his trousers, which gaped open at the lap.
Rössler stood by the desk and said nothing. He appeared to be thinking.
‘On the scale, please.’
Sabine… how far would she be away? With one word from this little man…
Schreber returned to his chair, hands clutching his clothes closed, and watched the doctor thinking. His hand moved to rest on the back of his neck, only leaving it to push up his glasses periodically.
The room fell further into silence the longer Schreber waited for the doctor to speak. When his father retired to their private quarters with his head, and the other rooms of the Institute became heavy in the absence of his presence, the children slid here and there through the building in their stocking feet and played softly in corners, their wooden toys removed and replaced with stuffed cotton dolls that they were much too old for. If so much as a chair was scraped on the wooden floor, they froze like statues and stayed that way for thirty seconds or a minute, until it felt to them as if their thoughts must have been too loud, and their heartbeats too. When Paul thought something, he flinched, wondering if his father had been disturbed by the thinking, and if his heart beat faster, then he tried to stop it by squeezing his chest with his arms wrapped tight around him.
Schreber’s arms were around his chest now, and he was waiting, and there was that same cacophony of rushing blood.
Rössler turned to him.
Schreber tried to uncross his arms and grip the supports of his chair, but his chest was unwilling to become uncovered. As Paul had waited—to see if his father would thunder red-faced down the stairs with his mother a few steps behind, thin and white like a ghost, eyes red and crying aloud, begging for the days that were gone, the days they had all loved, before the accident, when things were good—so Schreber waited.
Silence.
‘Now, Herr Schreber,’ Rössler said, breaking the atmosphere as if he was cracking an egg, ‘first accept my apologies.’ He slid his glasses down his nose and rubbed his eyes through the gap behind them. ‘Accept my apologies for my unfortunate oversight in not coming to see whether you had regained consciousness before your wife left. I should have checked first, and I am sorry that I did not. I suppose I have grown used to the status quo, and that something might have changed did not occur to me.’
Schreber nodded mutely and blinked.
‘I have your notes here along with my own recent observations and, I am sorry to say, they are not encouraging. Quite the opposite. And with your history… The picture is that of an incurable case.’ Rössler paused. To see what effect his words were having? Schreber did not react. Where was the verdict?
‘That said, the primary resource of the doctor must always be the presentation of the patient himself, and, providing there are no obvious confusions, that patient’s opinion as to his own condition. Who would know better, after all, whether he was well or not?’
‘I feel well,’ Schreber offered.
‘This is very good, Herr Schreber. I had almost given up on you. You presented, until today, very much in the manner of many of our patients here—the other hopeless cases—fixed and unreachable. But this, your reaction to the sleep, is very promising. It had been my intention to send you home. I asked your wife to come here to discuss just that. I had given up on the idea that you might be cured and hoped that a return to a familiar environment might trigger some minor recuperation, or at least provide you a pleasant environment in which to live out…’
‘I utterly agree. It is home I need and the comforts and routines I have grown used to and which keep these matters under check.’
‘Please, let me finish my train of thought before I lose it. That had been my intention. I made this argument strenuously to your wife…’
‘Then let us do just as you suggest. Can someone be sent to bring her here?’
‘She is already returning home.’
‘Send someone to bring her back.’
‘She is already in transit. Please remain seated. If you will let me finish. When I thought that you might not respond to any treatment I had to offer, the only option was to return you home. But now, when there is hope of a full recovery, of eventually getting you well, I think we owe it to everyone to make our best attempt at a cure. Don’t you agree?’
‘I can come here for treatment, certainly. Can I see Sabine? I’m sure we can arrange a course of treatment. She is a wonderfully practical woman, more so than I… She will draw up a schedule and ensure I stick with it.’
‘It is felt that your treatment might be best carried out under close observation.’
‘Who feels it? I do not feel it.’
‘I feel it, Herr Schreber. A week. Ten days. And then, when you are sent home, you might never fear these problems again, and you can live a happy family life.’
‘We have our trials, but our family life is already happy, thank you.’
‘Two weeks, at most a month. Is that not the reasonable path to take?’
‘Might I at least speak to her?’
‘She will be away by now.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘Very well…’ Rössler sighed. ‘Müller!’
Schreber looked at his knees and, as time passed, stared at the window blinds.
‘Müller! Where is the man?’
<
br /> Schreber watched the light come in from the garden, illuminating remnants of pipe smoke. She might be near—just outside the precincts of this place. At arm’s length.
Rössler marched to the door, and for a little while he left the room. Schreber turned to look for him, but the door was closed. He might take her dancing. She had so often complained of the lack of it. This evening, if she wished.
Rössler came back, followed by Müller.
‘Your wife has already left, Herr Schreber. Don’t worry, you will be home soon, I’m certain of that.’
‘Send someone after her!’
Müller came behind him and Schreber’s Bath chair tipped back.
‘There is no need,’ Rössler assured him.
‘I say that there is!’
The chair turned until the open door was in front and the light from the corridor came in. Schreber turned away from it and back to the doctor.
‘I say that there is! I insist!’
Rössler inclined his head very slightly—a sign for Müller? Schreber was wheeled out of the room.
‘I insist! Send someone!’
Rössler faced out of his window, despite the fact that the blinds were shut, and polished the lenses of his glasses as if he could hear nothing.
‘Please!’
Passing through, Müller pulled the door shut with a snap.
Wheeled from Rössler’s room, Schreber is not deterred. He tries to leave the asylum on foot, but Müller bars his way. Climbing a tree, memories of his childhood come to the fore. All this is much to the displeasure of Müller, who is responsible for the safety of his charge.
IX
The hallway outside Rössler’s room led in two directions: left (to the entrance hall and the gardens) and right (away from them). Müller, lips pursed and white, wheeled the Bath chair off to the right.
In the window glass, Schreber caught his reflection and that of the orderly. The rattling of the wheels on the parquet floor echoed itself in Müller’s arms, which were held so tight that each movement was transmitted to his shoulders, and then to his neck, and his head juddered like a man receiving an electric shock.
