THE MADNESS OF DR. CALIGARI

by Dennis Weiler

  “What is it?”

  “Oh,” Diaz said, wiping his eyes, “oh, you have no idea. This is a piece of a movie that was made a long time ago. We’re talking black and white, silent. Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Ring a bell?”

  “No.”

  “No,” Diaz said. “No. It’s one of the greats. It’s about—there’s this guy in it, Dr. Caligari. He’s a traveling entertainer, a hypnotist. He has this guy, Cesare, he’s kept in a trance forever. Cesare lies in a box—in this box. When Caligari does his shows, he props up the box so the audience can get an eyeful of Cesare—who’s dressed all in black, with this creepy-ass white face with big black circles around his eyes. Because he’s in a trance, Cesare’s supposed to have access to hidden knowledge. The audience can ask him questions about whatever they want. Which isn’t to say they like his answers.

  “Anyway, after the film was done shooting, most of the props were taken apart, repurposed for other productions. No one knew they’d made a masterpiece, that stuff connected to it would be valuable. This was a movie, cheap entertainment for the masses. Cesare’s box, though,” Diaz wagged his right index finger at it, “somehow, this survived. Crazy. You would think, if there’s one thing you’re gonna find a use for, it’s a box. Nope. It’s a woman who saves it, some Austrian countess who sends her lawyer to make inquiries about the prop and offer a ridiculous sum of money for it. The rich are not like you and me, that’s for damn sure. Or maybe not: you ever collect anything? Comic books? Trading cards?”

  “Star Wars figures,” Carpentier said, “when I was a kid.”

  “There must have been some you really wanted, ones you couldn’t find anywhere, no matter where you looked, which if you could’ve, you would’ve paid more than what they were worth for.”

  “I guess, yeah.”

  “The countess was into mystical shit, had a castle full of all kinds of weird objects: crystal balls, magic mirrors, cursed statues. Half of it sounds like it came from a fairy tale, the other half from a horror movie. Somehow, this lady had gotten it into her head that Cesare’s box was one of these items, that the process of shooting the film had changed what was a wooden crate into something else, charged it with supernatural power. It’s how magic works, through association, you know? Just to be on the safe side, she carved mystical symbols into the interior. Come here.”

  Carpentier did. Inside, the crate’s plain, unvarnished wood had been incised with hundreds of figures. They ranged in size from a dime to a half-dollar. Some he recognized: a sun wearing a collar of triangular rays, a crescent moon, a ringed planet, a comet whose tail arced behind it. These were interrupted by more elaborate characters, pentagrams ringed by concentric circles, squares containing circles, flocks of circles connected and arranged by sets of parallel lines into strange geometries. Scattered throughout these symbols, Carpentier saw combinations of letters he thought were Greek, as well as a couple of designs he could not place: a circle broken at about the eight o’clock point, a square whose bottom line turned up inside it then continued to turn at ninety-degree angles within it, forming a kind of stylized maze. Although he hadn’t set foot in a church since his father’s funeral five years ago, Carpentier had the urge to cross himself. He resisted it, opting instead for, “What the fuck?”

  “You a Friend of Borges?” Diaz asked.

  “Who? Borges? I don’t think so. Should I be?”

  “It’s a group,” Diaz said. “They’re into puzzles and shit—weird puzzles, I mean. They’re named after a guy who wrote stories about that kind of stuff.”

  “Oh. No, man, I’m not much good at those games.”

  “It’s cool. It’s just, if you were, this would be, like, the mother lode.”

  “Yeah,” Carpentier said, “I can see that. So what about the lady who wrote all this? The countess? What happened to her?”

  “World War II,” Diaz said. “She was a Nazi; didn’t work out too well for her. After the war, Cesare’s box moved around a lot. Orson Welles had it for a little while. You know who he was?”

  “Yeah,” Carpentier said. “The Touch of Evil guy, right?”

  “Nice,” Diaz said, nodding. “He was thinking about shooting his own version of Dr. Caligari, maybe playing the doctor, himself—which would have been sick. He liked the idea of using the prop from the original movie. When his version didn’t happen, he sold the box. Eventually, it came to the US. Went from collector to collector, until it wound up here.”

  “Huh,” Carpentier said. “That’s pretty wild. You have to wonder why the guy didn’t sell it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He was obviously in trouble. What’d you say, bad home equity loan? This thing,” Carpentier gestured at the crate, “must be worth a lot. Could’ve paid off what he owed, maybe. At least got him back on his feet.”

  “Pretty hard to let go of something like this.”

  “What about letting go of your house? Not to mention, the box is still here. Wherever the guy went, he didn’t take it with him.”

  “Maybe he was experimenting with it.”

  “What?”

  “Like the countess, trying to tap into its mystical power.”

  The suggestion was ridiculous, but rather than making him laugh, it made Carpentier’s mouth dry. “Sure,” he said. “He was talking to the spirits here, in Wiltwyck.”

  “Why not?” Diaz said. “You think your location would matter to a bunch of ghosts?”

  “I guess they don’t have bodies, do they?”

  “Exactly. You know, this whole area—the Hudson Valley—used to have a reputation for weird shit.”

  “Like the Headless Horseman?”

  “No, I’m talking about legitimately strange goings-on. What my old grandma would have called some serious brujería. This was before the Civil War, middle of the nineteenth century. Everyone was into Spiritualism, which was their version of New Age stuff. The mediums who came here said they had visions of supernatural creatures, of passages to the spirit world.”

  “I thought it didn’t matter where you contacted the spirits.”

  “It doesn’t, but that doesn’t mean some places won’t make it easier.”

  “Whatever,” Carpentier said.

  “Hey!” Ocampo shouted from the foot of the attic stairs. “You two find anything up there?”

  Had Diaz answered in the negative, Carpentier would not have been surprised. The crate was the single most valuable item they’d come across during any of their jobs; not to mention, Diaz’s knowledge of it was even more extensive than usual. Carpentier half-expected his coworker to try to talk him into leaving the prop where it was and returning for it later, with a promise of a generous percentage of the price Diaz received for it. Instead, Diaz called, “Yeah, we got a big-ass crate that’s probably worth a lot of money.”

  “Seriously?”

  “It’s true,” Carpentier called.

  “Goddamnit,” Ocampo said.

  As it turned out, Cesare’s box was less difficult to bring down to the truck than Carpentier feared. It was the excess of papers on the first floor that proved to be the job’s biggest challenge. Every last sheet had to be collected in reinforced garbage bags, which were to be delivered together with the furniture and film memorabilia. What should have taken three or four hours stretched to six and a half, by the end of which, Carpentier’s legs were screaming from he’d-lost-count-of-how-many trips up and down stairs. On Diaz’s recommendation, they waited until the truck was almost full to slide Cesare’s box, safely blanketed, on top of the bed of filled garbage bags they had prepared for it. By the time Ocampo lowered the rear door and secured it, Carpentier had lost any desire he might have had for his usual last-minute walkthrough. “You sure?” Ocampo said when Carpentier told him just to drive.

  “Yeah,” Carpentier said. Not only was he exhauste
d, he was reluctant to feel whatever remained in this house.

  III

  Later that week, at the end of a long afternoon spent removing heavy wooden furniture from the fifth floor walk-up it was crammed into, Carpentier joined Diaz for a beer at the sports bar. Someone had switched the TV above the bar to one of the cable news channels. The stock market had not reached the end of its decline, while the major banks were teetering like so many shacks in an earthquake. Unemployment was swelling; although the economist the news anchor interviewed insisted that the economy was fundamentally sound and the country was definitely not heading into another depression. One of the other patrons seated at the bear, an overweight woman in a burgundy pantsuit, called to the bartender, “Hey, can you change this shit? I didn’t come here to listen to more bad news.” The bartender reached for the remote, and a baseball game replaced a story about a family who had lost their health insurance together with the mother’s job, and were struggling to cope with the costs of the father’s worsening MS.

  Carpentier drained his Heineken. “Fuck,” he said when he was done. “We are so fucked.”

  Diaz lifted an eyebrow. “What are you saying?”

  “That.” Carpentier waved his empty bottle at the TV. “Not the game, what was on before, the news. Fundamentally sound my ass. We’re already in a depression, man. They’re just playing with the numbers ‘cause they don’t wanna freak out everyone.”

  “Sure,” Diaz said. “So?”

  “‘So?’ Dude, did you hear a word I said? The economy’s a fucking disaster.”

  “Yeah. It is. And who’s got a job?”

  “Well—”

  “Who’s got a job?” Diaz said. “You do. I do.”

  “But that’s only because all these other people got fucked over.”

  “Maybe,” Diaz said. “Nothing I can do about it, is there? Doesn’t change the bills I got to pay.”

  “Man…” Carpentier searched for words, couldn’t find any. The bartender noticed his empty bottle, pointed at it, but Carpentier shook his head.

  “Never mind this shit,” Diaz said. “You up for a drive? There’s something I want to show you.”

  “What?”

  “You have to come with me.”

  “I don’t know,” Carpentier said. “It’s getting late, and I’m pretty exhausted.”

  “Come on,” Diaz said. “It’s like five o’clock. This shouldn’t take that long. Honest.”

  “Can’t you tell me what it is?”

  “Uh-uh. You have to see it.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Five minutes away. Ten, tops.”

  The trip took closer to twenty-five minutes. Since Diaz knew their destination, they took his dinged Accord. He drove them east, out of Poughkeepsie, past strip malls full of vacant storefronts, houses signposted with the placards of realtors, larger buildings whose parking lots were cracked, full of weeds, all the way to the Taconic, where he steered onto the south bound side. There was a Prince album in the CD player, 1999. When the title track came on, Carpentier said, “You know what this song is about, right?”

  “Nineteen ninety-nine?”

  “No. That’s a common misperception. It’s actually about nuclear war.”

  “What?”

  “It’s in the lyrics.”

  “If you say so.”

  Diaz signaled, slowed, and turned left onto a crossroad that climbed a short, steep slope. As the road leveled, Carpentier saw houses lining both sides of it. They were large, boxy, their lawns overgrown, their driveways empty, their windows dark. Diaz drove past half a dozen of the dwellings and swung left onto a side street. It was lined with more houses of the same style, the second storeys overhanging the first, as if a child had stacked a larger block on a smaller one. Their roofs slanted to sharp peaks. None of the places on this street appeared inhabited, either, nor did those on the cul-de-sac Diaz made a right onto. The evening light made the houses look curiously flat, as if each had been painted on a huge piece of wood and propped up. Diaz drove to the end of the dead-end, straight into the driveway of the house there. Carpentier couldn’t see anything especially noteworthy about this residence; although he noticed that it shared its minimal backyard with a house facing the opposite direction, toward the end of another cul-de-sac bordered by more vacant houses. Diaz parked the car and climbed out of it.

  “You know what these were priced at?” Diaz said to Carpentier when he shut his door.

  “I don’t know,” Carpentier said. “Three hundred thousand?”

  “Not bad,” Diaz said. “Four. Too much for most of the locals, but for someone living in Westchester, say, and willing to travel a little bit to get to their job in the City, that’s about two hundred less than they might spend. That’s pretty good.”

  “Until it wasn’t.”

  “Until it wasn’t. You might have sold a few of them, but all this…”

  After a moment, Carpentier said, “So this is what you wanted to show me?”

  “Inside.”

  “In there?” Carpentier nodded at the house, but Diaz was already striding up its front walk. By the time Carpentier reached the door, Diaz had removed and opened the keybox hung from the doorknob and was slotting the key into the lock. “What are you doing?”

  Diaz glanced at him. “Seems pretty obvious to me.”

  Dim, the house’s bare rooms echoed with their footsteps. Carpentier accompanied Diaz as he completed a slow circuit of the first floor. Had his coworker brought him along to strip the house of its valuable materials, copper wire and the like? Carpentier couldn’t imagine the place held enough copper to be worth the risk of discovery by the cops; although, what was the likelihood of the police devoting much attention to a neighborhood of empty houses? The most they were likely to do was drive up and down the main street and move on. Which meant that, provided Diaz had access to other houses, he could have the run of the development until at least sunrise. Carpentier was brainstorming excuses for why he had to return to his car when Diaz stopped, turned to him, and said, “Well? What do you feel?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A few weeks ago, at the bar, you were telling me about the sensation you get walking through these houses after we’ve cleared them out.”

  “Yeah?”

  “So I’m asking you what you’re getting here, now.”

  “I don’t know,” Carpentier said. “I haven’t been paying attention to it.”

  “You were worried I drove you to this place to rob it, weren’t you?”

  “No, that wasn’t—”

  “It’s cool,” Diaz said. “I played it pretty mysterious; I don’t blame you.”

  “We drove all the way out here because you wanted to know how it made me feel?”

  “Come on, man. What you described was more than that.”

  “Maybe. But why did we need to come to this spot? I mean, we could’ve gone to any empty house. Isn’t as if there’s a shortage of them.”

  True,” Diaz said. “But this location… if you were to look at a map of this neighborhood, you would see that the house we’re in sits at the perihelion of the dead-end. It’s back-to-back with the house that occupies the same position the next dead-end over. Imagine a pair of horseshoes placed with the closed sides touching, the legs facing away from one another. It’s a spot where certain kinds of energy might converge.”

  “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

  “That group I mentioned? The Friends of Borges? We study stuff like this. We know about these kinds of things. Look,” Diaz said, “don’t worry about it. Just tell me what you’re picking up on here.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  The thing was, Carpentier was aware of something, an intensification of his previous sensation. It was as if the walls were great s
heets of paper, surrounded by a space from which a sound was audible, a low droning that caused the walls to vibrate—that Carpentier felt in his teeth, his bones, a kind of deep-seated ache. Something about the drone, a peculiarity of the way its single note went on and on, gave an impression of its source, an enormous throat, its gelid sides quivering. “Yeah,” Carpentier said, “I’m definitely getting a… vibe off this place. Like the other houses, but more, you know?”

  “Okay,” Diaz said, “good. Come this way.”

  “Is this gonna take much longer?” Carpentier said. “‘Cause the sun’s going down, and I don’t want to be stumbling around here in the dark.”

  “Not much longer at all,” Diaz said. “Come on.”

  Carpentier followed him up the stairs to the second floor. A short hall on the left off the main hallway led to an open doorway, which admitted them to a large, L-shaped space: the master bedroom, Carpentier guessed. In the corner to their left, an oblong shape stood propped against the walls. Except for the change of location, Cesare’s box appeared unchanged from the attic in Wiltwyck. “Dude,” he said to Diaz. “Dude. What the fuck is this?”

  “It’s all right,” Diaz said. “I know what you’re thinking, but it’s all right.”

  “Oh really? And exactly what am I thinking?”

  “That I stole the box, and I’m trying to make you a part of it. Which,” he added, “is not what’s going on.”

  “You just found this here.”

  “Don’t be an asshole. Of course I brought it here. One of the guys I know at the Friends of Borges, he’s got some money. Scratch that: he’s got a lot of money. After we dropped off the box at the warehouse, I called this guy, told him about it, how much it had to be worth. He made some calls, some bills changed hands, and it was his. All perfectly legal.”