Playthings

by Alex Pheby

  The orderly took Schreber back to his rooms—wary as a pickpocket returning to his den.

  ‘Let me tell you something,’ Müller said, as he wheeled the chair so close to the wall that Schreber could feel the brickwork catching on his cotton shirt ‘If you ever want to get out of this place you’re going to have to be a good little boy. There’s nothing they don’t like more than trouble, and while you can cut up in front of me and I’ve got no choice but to take it, you let a doctor catch you and that is it. You can forget about your wife. You can forget about your home. You can forget about all of it. Do you understand?’

  Schreber’s eyes were shut and his jaw was set against the pain in his head, but he did hear it.

  ‘That was too close. I’ve got my job to lose, and that’s bad enough, but you’ve got your life to throw away. And there’s worse places to be than up here, let me tell you. There’s downstairs. Do you want to go downstairs? Is that what you want, Judge?’

  The chair hit smooth stone beneath its wheels, and the pain eased a little.

  Fridoline comes to visit. Schreber is initially delighted, but the girl acts strangely and becomes willful when challenged on certain details which do not accord with her father’s experience of his time spent in the asylum.

  XI

  The rooms were not at all unpleasant, being like those one might be given in a rather genteel hotel whilst visiting Lake Garda for the summer, and the medicine—a tincture given thrice daily in a little sherry glass—blurred the edges of the place, and though Schreber strained always against the longing to run, it was, at least, not uncomfortable to take Müller’s advice.

  There was a heaviness in the world that came after taking his medicine, a sensation of compression, and while his anxieties did not disappear, they too were subject to this effect, so that they seemed lessened.

  One day—it did not seem so long after—when the pain was gone in his head and neck, Müller came in and announced that there was to be a visitor.

  The orderly was used to him, and he washed Schreber, and dressed him, and put him in his chair without any fuss, and went away. Soon there was a light rapping on the door, so light that at first Schreber assumed it must be from a room down the hallway, but it persisted, and with each tap the door shook, very lightly, in its frame. He shifted in his chair, and arranged the checked blanket so that it was straight across his knees. He put the heels of his shoes together. He smoothed his moustaches.

  ‘Come in, please!’

  The door opened.

  Schreber leant forward smiling, but when it was open only a few inches the door stopped. He froze where he was, halfway out of his chair and, as he waited, the smile wavered on his lips and his arms trembled.

  There was the sound of whispered reassurances, of Müller’s voice. The licking of his teeth.

  The door swung in again and there was Fridoline, boxed in its frame.

  Almost…

  She was taller than he remembered her, her face a little changed: Thinner. Longer.

  ‘Now don’t you worry, Fräulein,’ Müller said from off. ‘Just remember what we talked about, and I’ll be waiting if…’ Müller, with his hand on the doorknob, glanced past the girl and toward Schreber. ‘Well, if there’s anything you should need,’ he said, and nodded to her. She nodded back and swallowed. She turned and, looking down at the ground, inched into the space the opening of the door had made.

  ‘Come, come, my girl! There’s no need to dawdle!’

  ‘Yes, Papa.’

  ‘Close the door, child.’

  ‘Yes, Papa.’

  When she was in the room her pace improved, but she looked back often, toward the closed door.

  ‘Well, it’s wonderful to see you! You look terrifically healthy. And so tall!’ Schreber said.

  ‘I am well.’

  ‘Perhaps it is because I am seated…’ Schreber thought he might stand, but his arms were weak and the world was so heavy. Was this really her? How could she have changed so much?

  ‘And how is Dresden? Did the party go well? I’m sorry I couldn’t be there…’

  She stared at him blankly. There was no insolence on her face, but she said nothing. Almost a woman now!

  Schreber coughed and pulled the blanket straight on his knees.

  ‘And Mother? How is your mother? When is she coming?’

  Fridoline looked back again to the shut door.

  ‘Is she well?’

  ‘Yes, Papa.’

  Still a girl… Still little Fridoline. It was because he was seated. Perspective. All of that. A trick of the light.

  ‘And you are being a good girl?’

  She looked at her shoes and nodded.

  ‘Excellent! It is a girl’s duty to help her mother. Never has that duty been more important than now, even if only for a short while. Still, I’m sure I needn’t tell you that. You’ve always been such a help. Haven’t you, dear?’

  She was very quiet. Not at all herself. Schreber sniffed and blinked. Not herself at all. So tall!

  ‘In any case,’ he went on, perhaps a little quieter than before, ‘I shall be home in a few days. My doctor tells me that I am doing well. He made me sleep, for quite some time, and then there was a little accident, and now I am on the verge of complete recovery. He gives me medicine.’ Schreber reached for the sherry glass, but Müller had taken it away. ‘My nerves, you know.’

  Fridoline nodded, but she didn’t look up.

  ‘Are you pleased to see your old Papa, then? You are very quiet. It has been quite a shock for you, all this, I suppose?’

  Fridoline nodded.

  ‘I’m sorry, girl. Truly. It is a father’s place to provide order for his child, and you more than others, coming late, are in need of it. At least you do not want for anything else. Do you want for anything else?’

  Fridoline shook her head.

  ‘Good. Good. Very good. And, all in all, this whole affair, when it reaches its conclusion, as my doctor assures me it will, in two weeks, possibly a month, it won’t have taken much more time than some fathers take on a business trip. Eh?’

  The child was biting her lip. She nodded and smiled a tight smile, stitched at the point where her teeth pinched the skin.

  She said nothing.

  ‘Is there something wrong? Some problem with the skivvy? Or Cook? If there is, you need only tell me and I will write you a letter here and now. They listen to me. Let me get my pen.’ He turned to reach for it. ‘There must be paper here, in one of these drawers… Where’s that blasted pen…’

  ‘Papa…’

  ‘It must be here. There is ink… I see the ink… But where is the pen? Ah!’

  Schreber turned back smiling, with the pen in one hand and a sheet of letter paper in the other, but she was weeping. Silently, she was weeping and she was no longer biting her lip—it was turned out.

  ‘Papa, please come home! Tell them to let you go! Mother says you must stay, but I want you to come home. She says you are too ill, that after such a long time it’s all no good, but I say you should come home. She said I shouldn’t come here anymore, that it makes you worse, but I say you should come home with me. Now! Won’t you come home with me now? Dr. Dannenberg says it’s no good keeping you here if you aren’t getting any better.’

  Schreber put out his arms and beckoned her forward as he always did when her lip curled over in that way, as it had on the first day he had seen her, and she had cried at the sight of him. Sabine had stood behind her, unsure how to reconcile these two: her husband returned and the adopted child, her eyes flicking between them and, just as often, up to the heavens. She needn’t have been concerned. He saw the ghosts of all the other girls and boys he had held in his arms, tiny and still, and his arms went out naturally, as they did for Klara and for all those nameless little things, and Frida came forward on that day, and
on this, and buried her face in his chest.

  He stroked her hair. His girl.

  ‘Frida, my sweet girl, you mustn’t upset yourself! Silly thing! It’s all perfectly fine and normal. A course of treatment in a sanatorium. Like at Baden? You remember? Powders, and baths, and early nights, and all the meals served in your room? It’s no different at all! The doctors and orderlies are just like the hotel staff. Nothing to cry about! The only difference is that we must do what our doctors tell us. And they charge a good deal more for their services! They aren’t satisfied with a few pfennigs! But if they tell us we must stay, then we must stay. This Rössler—my doctor—he is a good man. He thinks I will be cured in no more than two weeks, perhaps a month… A little holiday, nothing more!’

  ‘That is what you said last time… That is what you say every time… It hasn’t been a month…’

  ‘You’re getting upset. This is adult business and I know it can be difficult to understand.’

  ‘But I do understand. I understand very well. Dr. Dannenberg says I’m quite the young lady. Even Mother says I’ve changed since… She says I’ve changed. I ran the house when you and Mother went away and even since she’s come back I’ve helped with everything, and I’m not a little girl anymore. Cook says so, and so does Sarah, and if there’s someone needed to sort out a problem it’s me they might come to now, because Mother… Sometimes they’d rather come to me than risk Mother, because she is much worse-tempered since she was taken ill… so it falls to me. So I’m not just a little girl!’

  ‘I know, dear. Really. You’ve always been a great help and comfort to us all. I couldn’t have wished for a better daughter. From the first day I came home, I said to your mother that God couldn’t have blessed us with a better and brighter child. Ask her. She will confirm it. But there are some things that only your elders can properly understand. Anyway, what is a week or two, here or there? Or a month.’

  ‘It has been more than a year, Papa! And they say terrible things about this place. There is a place below,’ she whispered, ‘from which people never return.’

  Schreber smiled and shook his head indulgently.

  ‘You are confused… There is no below…’

  Fridoline stamped her foot and shook her head.

  ‘It has been more than a year! You arrived last November and were very ill until the spring. Then you seemed to get well, for a little while—Mother came to see you, do you remember?—and then you went worse again. And now… won’t you come home with me? For Christmas? It’s almost Christmas again, and last time you promised…’

  ‘Fridoline, I have no idea what you are talking about. My doctor assures me that I will be well and one must, where possible, follow doctor’s orders. We may not like it, it may be inconvenient and tiresome, but we must follow doctor’s orders! You will come to understand this. There really is no alternative. It is only a few days. A month at most. He is quite assured of it. You are so like your mother.’ Schreber smiled. ‘Such a fondness for the dramatic!’

  Fridoline pulled away from him. Her face was the picture of concern!

  ‘Come now. It will be fine in the end. There is no need to cry.’

  ‘Please come home with me…’

  ‘Here! I will call a meeting with the doctor. I will discuss with him whether I mightn’t make it home by Christmas, and if he agrees, that is precisely what I will do. There, does that satisfy you? Then you and Mother and I will decorate the house and invite some of your friends to dine with us. What do you say?’ Schreber expected the child to smile, but she did not.

  ‘You will not come home with me today, then?’

  ‘Child, I do not like your tone.’

  ‘You will not come?’

  ‘They will not… No, I will not.’

  ‘Then you must stay.’

  Schreber smiled.

  ‘The older you become, Fridoline, the more you will understand the way of things. You consider yourself quite grown up, but you do not know or understand everything. Be patient. I will be home in good time, but it will be when my doctor and I are satisfied. I do not arrange my affairs by your diktat. Let that be an end to the matter. Now, when might I expect your mother? If she is better, I do not see why she shouldn’t come immediately.’

  Fridoline looked at her shoes.

  ‘I will tell her you wish to see her.’

  ‘Good girl. Now, let me see you smile before you leave.’

  Schreber pushed her hair back from her face and held her by the shoulders. She fixed his gaze and did not smile, but her eyes grew large, and it seemed as if she would never blink. Then she looked away, down at the floor.

  ‘Make sure you wear your scarf in the cab back to town. I know you! Any excuse.’

  ‘Yes, Papa.’

  Seemingly without being prompted, the door opened, and Müller stepped into the room. He and Fridoline exchanged a glance, and the girl left.

  So tall!

  Fridoline leaves. On closing the door, Schreber finds an object has been placed where it does not belong. He watches it, and, later, somewhere between the world of things and that of dreams, he finds a little warmth by which to sleep.

  XII

  Schreber stood by the door and listened to the girl’s steps, and after that sound was gone it was some time before he remembered to light the lamp.

  There was clicking. Müller in the hall? Müller’s metal tips on the polished wood… Something forgotten? A fourth dose, ordered by Rössler?

  Schreber waited for the door to open.

  It did not.

  The door did not open and the noise stayed at a constant volume. There was no end to it! Was the fool marching on the spot? Click, click, click, click!

  ‘Müller!’

  Nothing.

  He moved his head backward and forward, like a pigeon, listening first with his left ear and then with his right, his eyes almost, but not quite, shut, and his mouth almost, but not quite, open.

  The sound was coming from the other room. The bedroom.

  The sky outside darkened, clouds covering the sun.

  The clicking… Where was it?

  He walked slowly, head first, all the time listening, trying to ignore the dull slap of his leather slippers on the floorboards.

  As he crossed into the bedroom he saw the clock.

  It was the one he had known since he was a child, a circle of white with roman numerals and spindly hands, with wood around, shiny dark wood that curved down to meet the surface of his bedside table. Around the clock face was a thin band of metal, like gold, but flaked back to the nickel in spots because of its great age. It was the clock his father had owned, and then his mother, after his father had died, and then Anna, after Mother.

  What was it doing here?

  It was the one the children had watched, in silence, to ensure that it was not too early. It was the one that Gustav had wound every morning, testing the key against the spring, aware always of the tension that separated the clock from being fully wound—able to function, able to be relied on, able to be accurate—and from being over-wound, where the spring might snap, and time stop, and no one know whether it was too early or too late.

  What was it doing here?

  Schreber walked over to it. He peered all around it.

  Someone must have brought it here. Someone must have put it here while he was asleep. Who? Not Anna? It couldn’t have been Anna. She was too frightened to go near it since she dropped a glass in the larder, looking for milk, and it had smashed and gone in amongst the things on the floor and ruined the week’s food, glass fragments too small for the eye to see being a grave detriment to health, and now it’s not even fit for pigs. Anything glass—the little hinged door on the clock face that Gustav bravely opened to put in the key, the little dog with the pointy tail and white globs for eyes—anything made of glass, or clear, or tran
sparent—anything like that—she was afraid to touch. But now it was here. The clock. How?

  Schreber sat down on his bed next to it.

  The day was becoming increasingly dark. Outside, the clouds were so thick that it seemed night was coming early. Yet the clock showed that it was only four. Five after. He opened the clock’s glass door and ran his finger over the hands—two fingers: one for the minute hand, and one for the hour, and he pushed the tip of another into the square hole where the key went.

  His window was open and the breeze from the garden flapped the curtains against the wall, quietly. Schreber went over to the window and pulled hard against the counterweighted sash until the frame and the window met, and then he slid across the catch. The curtains stilled, but the clock still clicked, and its hands still turned. Four and six. Schreber stood by the window and watched the clock. He watched it and gradually the room around him filled with blackness, the corners first, then the objects, and then the air, everything except the clock’s white face.

  The clock stopped and Schreber found that he was only inches from it: his nose was almost pressed against the glass.

  He reached for the key, only understanding after his hand was already moving that he had no idea where it would be. He tried the drawer in the bedside table, but there was only an old Leipziger Tageblatt. In the moonlight he searched the room, squinting and bending to see onto every surface and looking into every corner, watching for the shape of the key—a little tube with a flattened end that the fingers held.

  Schreber got onto his hands and knees, lifted the blankets that overhung the bed, and peered beneath. He edged forward until his head was under and the covers fell back over his shoulders, and then he lay down and swept his arm here and there across the floor. It was as if he was reaching for a toy—a white wooden train with red wheels—and he crawled until he was under the bed, up to the waist, but it didn’t matter how far he went, he couldn’t find anything. There was no key and no train.