THE MADNESS OF DR. CALIGARI

by Dennis Weiler

  But the doctor seems displeased. “Come.”

  Conrad realizes his harnesses have been unfastened as he spoke. His mind is clearer, the concentration of medicine in his bloodstream diminished enough that he can keep his eyes open. He sits up.

  When he stands, Conrad sees he isn’t naked, as he believed himself to be, but wearing a skin-tight black bodysuit. He feels neither warm nor cold, merely relaxed and comfortable. Everything is changed. “I’m not fully rested,” he says. “But almost. A bit more sleep is all I need. You did it. You fixed my broken machine. There’s hope for me.”

  “Come, we must talk. Not here. This is for sleeping only.”

  The doctor leads Conrad away from the sleep machinery, the interview chairs. They pass beyond a barrier wall of black panels into a rectangular room. The ceiling is so high and so dark, it can’t be seen. One wall is an enormous aquarium, ten feet deep and twice as wide, yet front to back no more than six inches. Conrad sees a black fish swimming alone, seeking somewhere to hide from the penetrating scrutiny of these new arrivals.

  “We must revisit your earlier dream,” the doctor begins.

  “A dream of mine?” Conrad asks. “Which?”

  “About the girl. A young girl, you said. In a black shirt, too long.”

  Conrad tries to remember. “How long ago has that been?”

  “That was your first dream here,” the doctor insists, urgent. “Do you remember anything?”

  “Remember more?” In the process of searching, Conrad realizes this involves not only memory, but invention. “I was a small boy, wearing my mother’s black silk blouse. It was long on me, like a dress. I kept tripping over the bottom.”

  “Yourself?” the doctor asks. “You said before, a girl.”

  “In my dream, I bled on the sidewalk.” Conrad wonders what this signifies, the changing of a dream.

  “A girl was murdered,” the doctor sputters. “In reality, just as you dreamed. How did you know?”

  Conrad shrugs, uncertain what he actually dreamed, and what changed since then.

  “A young girl,” Doctor Zyz continues. “She was discovered wearing a long black silk, and her mother’s shoes, much too large, as you said.” The doctor is not merely curious at the coincidence. He’s upset, angry, afraid. “Found stabbed to death, on a sidewalk. Not in front of your house, not exactly. But very near.”

  “Did my dream murder the child? Or did I foresee a murder that was inevitable?” Conrad pauses. “Do you think, if you or I had reported my dream to the police, they could have done anything to prevent it?”

  The doctor rubs his eyes, as if very tired. “No. But don’t you feel culpability, that your dream became actual?”

  “Can you imagine, if we had called the police, their all-points bulletin? All officers, be on the lookout for nine year old female wearing her mother’s black shirt and too-large shoes. The young girl may be real, or only merely the psychic projection of an insane thirty-nine year old white male.”

  The room is supernaturally quiet. Conrad wonders why Doctor Zyz selected this place for these questions. In the gap between the illuminated back wall and thick glass front of the aquarium, water seems to churn and swirl, though the water’s motion itself can’t be seen. Sometimes the fish swims straight, and other times its trajectory is disturbed by currents. It fights against invisible motion. Only by the perturbation in the line of the black fish can this be observed. Aether affects Conrad the same way. The room’s air appears to present a neutral environment in which to move, yet Conrad feels himself pulled, affected by subtle drafts. No sound. Dead atmosphere full of dead thoughts. The universe’s inherent matrix seethes, working against him.

  “I’m concerned,” the doctor says. “This may be a step back.”

  “I feel we’re on a path to success,” Conrad says. “I came to you, Doctor Zyz, for magic. For dangerous, illegal drugs. For insane props that resemble torture mechanisms. I needed your willingness to break me down, burn me to ash, then plant me in the ground to grow again. That’s why I came. I lack the nerve to do this for myself.”

  As he speaks, Conrad is trying to find where the fish has gone. Maybe the water has always been empty.

  ***

  Relive:

  What if my house were located somewhere else? If I lived farther away, she might have driven, not walked. I might have chosen some other city, or safer neighborhood.

  Do I deserve blame for these decisions?

  There’s so much in this world I might have changed. Any time before that night, I might have shared my home with her, not made her walk to it. Then she would never have been seen by the wrong eyes, on the wrong night, on that sidewalk.

  The doctor is giving me a chance to relive that night, not only to see again, but to encode into myself forever Hanna’s process of dying. I’ll suffer, but unlike before. I’ll break through. End the cycle.

  What could I have done, from my kitchen, failing to look out in time? Any change in timing, or shift in luck. So many things might have gone differently.

  Too late.

  I want to die as Hanna died, not as I saw firsthand, or imagined later. To wade into her trauma, reach a culmination of suffering adequate to supersede my own. If I’m ever to have any chance of coming through this, of walking open-eyed in the world, I have to accept what happened. Face the reality, and move past.

  As I come to her side, is she still present? Does she feel my fingers grasping her arm, slick with blood? I tell myself I know her eyes well enough, ought to see the difference, to discern presence within them. What if I miss the moment she vanishes? I know my fiancée like I know myself, believe I recognize what’s behind her eyes. I take measure of her fears. But now I live this nightmare of self-blame and endless wondering.

  Only a week until we finally would have married. After all our directionless time, just before that threshold, that was when I lost her. My Hanna, already gone. A vacant body cooling in a pool of relinquished blood by the time I arrive.

  Darkness narrows, an iris closing on a scene.

  ***

  Conrad comes awake in the blackness.

  “What more have you recovered?” the doctor asks, invisible.

  “Three times before,” Conrad gasps, bound so tight he can barely breathe, “I stopped death from taking her.”

  “Please describe.”

  Eyes closed, Conrad sees clearly as a dream. “One, at a rooftop party, when she was still Onyx, tightrope walking a ledge under moonlight. I tried to hold her hand from below, but she wanted to walk alone, so I let go, and followed along. She made it to the corner, then stepped on a loose brick. She wobbled, started to fall, not inward toward the roof, but away. Her arms pinwheeled. I grabbed her hand, almost missed it, and pulled her back from falling. She climbed down and we held each other. Her sudden sweat, mixed with tears, and relief, heart pounding at what was avoided. Fear for what almost was. She still looked invulnerable, perfect, but the rest of the night, her hands trembled. Trembled.”

  “Yes. And the next?

  The scene changes. “Two, below ground, at an illegal rave, an abandoned subway, before we moved to Portland. We drifted away from the heat, the sweaty crowd. Wandered down black tunnels, seeking cool air, and a quiet place. Privacy to have sex, I remember. Her idea. We found a heavy door stopped open, stumbled through. Into a room. There was light, and someone screamed. Four men surrounded one on his knees. Blood sprayed from his throat, just cut. Onyx laughed, must not have understood what this was. When they turned, then she saw. They started for us.”

  Only as Conrad recounts this freshly recovered memory does he recall another presence at the scene: Doctor Zyz. This can’t be possible, yet there he is. Insane white hair, gloves, monocle. Even the gray jacket.

  “I pull Hanna back,” Conrad recalls. “We rush out, the door latches behind. Up the tunnel, everythin
g passing in a blur. Then we’re back among the crowd. We push through, leave the rave. Out into the night. Drive, and drive.”

  How is Conrad to know for certain whether Doctor Zyz was actually present in that room? He couldn’t have recognized the doctor at that time. They wouldn’t meet for another decade.

  “And number three?”

  Conrad is confused. “Three?” Then he recalls having said, three times before. Were there really? He can’t imagine why he would’ve said so, would have felt prepared to describe three instances supporting his theory, only now fail to recall.

  The doctor inhales noisily through nostrils. “Why do you suppose your mind made this error? What it signifies?”

  Conrad is less concerned with his mistake, occupied instead with the image of Doctor Zyz superimposed upon his past. “What do you think might explain it?”

  “Perhaps Hanna was meant for death.”

  Conrad feels relief. Someone finally said it. “Maybe I helped her cheat mortality.” For a while, at least.

  “If so, what do you believe was pursuing her?”

  “I don’t know.” Pursuing her, because death remained inevitable for her. It was always following.

  “Please speculate. What entity tracks such debts? Who follows one in Hanna’s situation?”

  Conrad doesn’t know. He’s tired of saying he doesn’t know.

  ***

  Relive:

  I step outside, lock the door behind. Execute a mental checklist of superstitious routines, OCD efforts at differentiating this present day from that day. It’s the only way I can force myself down the stairs, to the sidewalk. My armpits drip sweat, hands tremble, but less than before. I think it’s less. Everything feels strained and desperate, until I reach the sidewalk and turn left. Then for a while, all that is left behind.

  The store is only three blocks away. In that interval, I plan the groceries I’ll buy. It’s never much. I make the trip every day, but only this far.

  When I approach, the automatic door slides open. The light inside is garish, yellow.

  He stands there, waiting like a greeter. Doctor Zyz.

  I almost walk past, so accustomed to seeing him everywhere. I remember how much worse things were for me, before I drove up the hill, to that place among the trees.

  This time, I stop.

  “My dreams are changing,” I tell him.

  The doctor seems unsure how to respond.

  “Everywhere I go, I see you,” I say. “I know you’re beside me while I sleep. Helping me.”

  “I tried,” the doctor says.

  “But when will we know...” I begin, tentative, afraid to seem ungrateful.

  The doctor tilts his head, as if trying to puzzle me out.

  I need to make sure he understands I’m grateful, and I won’t presume to decide for him when my treatment should be over. But I can’t help wondering. It feels like years I’ve been sleeping underground, motionless in the dark, with Doctor Zyz standing by. It’s better than the way I lived before. I just want to know there will be an end. “I’m sleeping. Dreaming.”

  Doctor Zyz nods, seems about to speak.

  “I wonder when you can unbind me. When I can stand up. Leave therapy.” It’s frustrating, getting no response. “When will I be able to stop sleeping in your lab, and go home?”

  The doctor’s face slackens. “You’re no longer in therapy.”

  “I...”

  “You left my facility, years ago. You drove home, resumed your life, only filtered through this interpretive layer.”

  What he’s saying terrifies me. I’m not dreaming from the safety of a quiet, dark sanctuary, deep below ground. Not monitored and protected by Doctor Zyz. I’m out in the world, walking around, but not seeing.

  “Why would you release me?” I demand, furious and afraid. “Let me go home, like this?”

  “You sought release from pain,” he says. “And you sought dreams.”

  He’s right, I found these things. I have everything I asked for. If there’s anything more worth wanting, I don’t recall.

  He is taller than the tent pole and dressed in black and his hair is black and his eyes are black, those giant holes in his head with no end; that is to say that we cannot see the bottoms of those holes that are his eyes. And those holes that are his eyes see us even from where we are standing. That his eyes see through the crowd and choose us is the promise of the Somnambulist. We are promised the Somnambulist will answer our questions and that he knows every secret and he knows the past and sees the future. A small man approaches the stage before we are ready. We cannot hear what is asked or what is answered for we are too far away. We rush the stage after the terrified little man leaves. We are not afraid nor are we intimidated when standing in the shadow of the Somnambulist, even as his shadow settles over us in the outline of a giant. We will ask our questions and we will have our answers no matter the answers.

  I was a stereotypical reporter with “cool sunglasses” a swing tie a high waist and a press card in the band of my conical felt hat. That afternoon I was sitting in the middle of the morning. That’s how it seemed to me. My office was inside a cross section of white tubing downtown, where I was sitting that afternoon staring at the enormous digital clock which is the only thing I have on my desk, without the first inkling of anything that I might do.

  A noise at my back, in the narrow white corridor.

  “Doctor,” she said, and “Doctor,” I answered, swiveling in my swivel chair at the first letter.

  The city editor had called for me and I had to go. His corner office was nested inside a series of walnut wood enclosures. Through the smoked-glass windows, he was dimly visible inside shell after shell, which made it seem as if he were telescoping out of the building. Dr. Frank, the city editor, sat at his desk in the center of his office, beneath a stone canopy supported by four translucent crystal pillars. There were no exterior windows or paintings; the walls instead had immense spools of magnetic tape turning slowly on them. The tape, wide as a bath towel, glided through the tape heads with a somnolent, droning hum that reminded me of church. The city editor’s trembling hands slopped coffee all over the saucer and papers he had spread before him. His voice was resonant and commanding. Somehow the waver of his head did not affect the steadiness of his gaze, which draped itself heavily on me through his “cool sunglasses,” like a lead apron.

  “Dr. Wilson,” he said, “I need your magic.”

  Movie lines delivered as flatly as if they’d been learned by rote, while that probing, therapeutic gaze studied you. A bell rang, and a battered white envelope with a cellophane window appeared in a bronze dish. The city editor fumbled it open and extracted at last a folded note on yellow stationery. This he flicked open, glanced at, and set aside, into a pool of spilled coffee. Watching the coffee osmose the paper I felt as if the room had started to sink into the earth.

  “The case of Councillor Hensig is to be reopened,” he said. “The city has chosen you to conduct the inquiry. Will you accept the job?”

  “I will,” I answered immediately.

  The city editor sighed and leaned back in his chair. He let his chin rest on his stiff collar. His job was to edit the city, which he did in accordance with editorial guidelines laid down by the city itself. It was a crushing task and no one volunteered for it, although it was highly prestigious. It was a prestige that no one could enjoy, since the city editor was practically never unshackled from that desk.

  “Do you have a cigarette?” he asked.

  I handed him my pack. The brand name, TROUBLE, bright orange on matte black. The logo was a smiling orange blob with a butt in its mouth. The city editor’s fingers scrambled among my cigarettes for a long time. The cellophane crinkled and crinkled. Finally my pack came back to me, nearly dented in half. The flame from his lighter was so long he managed to ignite a few of the ha
irs of his eyebrows with it, and as he tilted back again for the long first draw, I could see the tiny embers travelling down the hairs unheeded.

  “You have a well-established reputation for deviousness, doctor,” he said, exhaling smoke. “And for cold and inhuman detachment. I will need them for this job.”

  “Both will I put at your disposal,” I said, trying to sound sinister.

  Councillor Hensig had died two years and two months ago. He’d succumbed to a coronary while undergoing a therapeutic procedure in which several burly doctors chased him through back alleys and along rooftops. Two years and four months ago he had been marked for an alteration in therapy; up until that time he had sailed through his annual evaluations without a hitch. He had come to the attention of the city authorities when several of his patients disappeared or ran amok. An inquiry was made, involving planted patients who would be immediately re-hypnotized and debriefed after sessions with the Councillor. It turned out he was rewriting their characters just to see what would happen, or perhaps just because he could. Not that the bureaus objected to tampering with citizens on principle; they just didn’t like to see it done freelance. Nothing not in keeping with the city action plan is permitted. There was a psychotherapeutic trial; Hensig’s psychological profile was tried and convicted, and the prescription hearing set down the new therapy. That plus a heart attack was all, so far as I knew.

  I knew why I’d been asked to do this, even though I was still only an assistant Councillor—I’d been one of those planted patients. I’d had my encounter with Councillor Hensig; he was a compact, animated man with a nervous, toothy grin. When he hypnotized someone, his voice would dwindle down into an anonymous, piping whisper and his whole body seemed to strain toward you within its own stationary outlines.