Doctor Glas

by Hjalmar Söderberg

  It’s hard to say whether he’s more sheep than fox.

  I turned my back on him and let him keep on talking while I arranged something in my instrument cabinet. In passing I asked him to take off his coat and vest, and concerning the communion question I decided without further deliberation to lend my support to the capsule method.

  “I admit,” I said, “that at first glance this idea seems somewhat offensive even to me, despite the fact that I can’t boast of any particularly warm religious sentiments. But on further consideration, one’s reservations don’t hold. The essential aspect of communion, after all, isn’t the bread and the wine, but faith, and true faith surely won’t be influenced by such superficial things as silver chalices and gelatin capsules . . .”

  During these last words I put the stethoscope to his chest, asked him to be quiet for a moment, and listened. There was nothing especially remarkable about what I heard, just the slightly irregular heartbeat that’s so common in older men who’ve grown accustomed to eating a bit more for dinner than they need and then curling up on the sofa for a nap. Some day it may lead to a stroke, you never know—but not necessarily, nor is the threat even very likely.

  But I’d decided to turn this consultation into a real show. I listened much longer than I actually needed to, moved the stethoscope, tapped and listened some more. I noticed how it pained him to sit quietly and passively during all this—after all, he’s used to talking constantly, at church, in society, in his home; he has a definite talent for talking, and presumably it was precisely this minor talent that first drew him to his profession. The examination made him somewhat uneasy; he’d probably have preferred to go on for a while longer about communion germs and then suddenly glance at his watch and dash off. But now I had him there in the corner of the sofa, and I didn’t let him go. I listened and said nothing. The longer I listened, the worse his heart sounded.

  “Is it serious?” he finally asked.

  I didn’t answer right away. I paced the floor a bit. A plan was starting to bubble up inside me, a fairly simple little plan, actually, but I’m not used to pretense and so I hesitated. I also hesitated because the plan depended entirely on his stupidity and ignorance—and was he really that stupid? Did I dare? Or was it too obvious—wouldn’t he see right through me?

  I stopped pacing and for several seconds turned my sternest doctor look on him. The pasty, grayish, jowly face had settled into an expression of simple-minded piety, but I couldn’t catch his eye—only the way his glasses reflected my window with the curtains and potted plant. No matter whether he’s a sheep or a fox, I thought, even a fox is considerably more stupid than a human being. It was perfectly clear that I could put something over on him without difficulty—I could tell he liked it when I acted the great expert. My pacing, deep in thought, and my long silence had already impressed him and softened him up.

  “Strange,” I finally murmured, as if to myself.

  And I approached him again with the stethoscope.

  “Excuse me,” I added, “I need to listen just one more time to be sure I’m not mistaken.”

  “Well,” I said afterwards, “judging by what I can hear today, your heart is not in very good shape, Pastor. But I don’t think it’s ordinarily this bad. I think there’s a particular reason it’s causing you problems today.”

  He hastily tried to put on a puzzled expression but didn’t really succeed. I could tell immediately that his bad conscience picked up on my reference. He opened his mouth to say something, perhaps to ask what I meant, but he didn’t get it out, just coughed. He probably wanted to avoid a detailed explanation, but that was just what I had in mind.

  “Let’s be honest with each other, Pastor Gregorius,” I began. He gave a start, alarmed at these words. “I’m sure you haven’t forgotten the conversation we had a few weeks ago concerning your wife’s health. I don’t wish to ask any tactless questions about whether you’ve kept the agreement we reached then. But I would like to say that if I’d known about the condition of your heart, I’d have been able to offer an even more compelling argument for the advice I gave you. Your wife’s health is at stake, for a longer or shorter period of time; for you yourself, Pastor, what’s at stake is your life.”

  He looked dreadful while I was speaking. His face changed color, but he didn’t blush, just turned green and purple. He was so hideously ugly to look at that I had to turn away. I went to the open window to catch a breath of fresh air, but it was almost as oppressive outside as within.

  I went on: “My prescription is simple and straightforward: separate bedrooms. I recall that you don’t like that, but it can’t be helped. It’s not just the ultimate satisfaction that is a grave danger in this case; it’s also important to avoid everything that can stir up and excite desire. —Yes, yes, I know what you’re going to say—you’re an old man and a minister to boot—but I’m a physician and have the right to speak openly with a patient, and I don’t think I’m entirely out of order if I point out that the continual proximity of a young woman at night must have more or less the same effect on a minister as on any other man. I’ve studied at Uppsala; I knew many theologians there, and I didn’t get the impression that the study of theology provided any special insurance against that sort of fire. And with regard to age—yes, how old are you, Pastor? Fifty-seven? That’s a critical age: desire is the same as before, but satisfaction has its price. Well, it’s true there are many different ways of looking at life, many different ways of valuing it. If I were talking to an old roué, of course I’d be prepared for an answer that from his point of view would be quite logical: I don’t care—there’s no point in living if you have to give up what makes life meaningful. But naturally I know that this line of reasoning is utterly foreign to your philosophy of life. My duty as a physician in this case is to inform and to warn—that’s all I can do, and I’m certain, now that you know how serious the matter is, that nothing else is needed. I can’t imagine you would choose to drop dead in the same manner as the late King Frederik I, or more recently, Felix Fauré . . .”

  I avoided looking at him while I spoke. But when I was through, I could see that he was sitting with his hand over his eyes and that his lips were moving, and I surmised rather than heard, “Our father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name . . . Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil . . .”

  I sat down at the desk and wrote out a prescription for digitalis. As I handed it to him, I added, “It’s not a good idea to stay in town all summer in this heat. A six-week sojourn at Porla or Ronneby to take the waters would do you a world of good, Pastor. And naturally you should travel alone.”

  JULY 5

  SUMMER SUNDAY. Dust and grime everywhere, and only poor people out and about. And poor people, unfortunately, are quite unpleasant. Around four o’clock I boarded a small steamer and went out to Djurgården Park for dinner. My housekeeper was attending a funeral and afterward there would be coffee served outdoors. It wasn’t a close relative or friend who had died, but a funeral is, after all, a great pleasure for a woman of her class, and I didn’t have the heart to deny her. In other words I couldn’t eat dinner at home today. Actually I had also been invited out, to visit acquaintances who have a house in the archipelago, but I wasn’t in the mood. I’m not particularly fond of acquaintances or houses or the archipelago. Especially not the archipelago. A landscape chopped up into pieces. Little islands, little inlets, little rocky cliffs and little twisted trees. An impoverished landscape with chilly colors, mostly gray and blue, but not impoverished enough to have the desolate grandeur of the wilderness. When I hear people praise the natural beauty of the archipelago I always suspect they have something quite different in mind, and a closer investigation almost always confirms my suspicion. One person is thinking about fresh air and pleasant swimming places, another about a sailboat, and a third about perch fishing, and for them this all falls under the rubric “natural beauty.” The other day I was talking to a young girl who was enamored of th
e archipelago, but during the course of the conversation it came out that she actually was thinking of sunsets, and perhaps of a student. She forgot that the sun goes down everywhere and the student is mobile. I don’t think I’m completely indifferent to natural beauty, but then I have to travel farther away, to Lake Vättern or to Skåne, or to the sea. I rarely have time for that, and within a radius of twenty or twenty-five miles of Stockholm I’ve never encountered a landscape that can be compared with Stockholm itself—with Djurgården and Haga Park and the sidewalk by the Stream in front of the Grand Hotel. So I generally stay in town both summer and winter. I prefer this, since I have the solitary person’s constant need to see people around me—strangers, please note, people I don’t know and don’t have to speak to.

  I came to Djurgårdsbrunn Inn and found a table by the glass wall in the low pavilion. The waiter hurried over with the menu and discretely spread a clean tablecloth over the remains of veal gravy and Batty’s mustard that a previous dinner party had left behind. By immediately handing me the wine list and tossing out the quick, brief question, “Chablis?” he revealed that his memory contained a vast store of detailed knowledge to rival that of many a professor. I’m not a frequent restaurant guest, but it’s true that chablis is almost always the wine I drink when I do eat out. And he was an old pro who knew his clientele. He’d worn down his initial youthful enthusiasm balancing trays of liquor at Bern’s Lounge; at a more serious, mature age he’d fulfilled more complicated duties as a dining room waiter at Rydberg’s Restaurant and Hamburger Börs, and who knows what temporary ill turn of fate had brought him now, with thinning hair and stained jacket, to a somewhat simpler place. Over the years he’d acquired an aura of belonging anywhere that food is served and bottles are uncorked. I was pleased to see him, and we exchanged a glance of secret understanding.

  I looked around at the other dinner guests. At the next table the pleasant young man from whom I buy cigars sat gorging himself with his girlfriend, a pretty little shop girl with sharp, darting eyes. A little farther away was an actor with his wife and children, wiping his mouth, proper and dignified as a minister. And off in a corner was a solitary old eccentric I’ve seen in cafés and on the street for the past twenty years or so, sharing his meal with his old dog, whose coat, like his, was turning gray.

  I’d been served my chablis and was enjoying the play of the sunbeam in the pale, light liquid in my glass when, quite nearby, I heard a female voice I thought I recognized. I looked up. A party had just come in: husband, wife, and a little boy of four or five, a very handsome child, but dressed up in a silly, ridiculous-looking light-blue velvet blouse with a lace collar. It was the wife who was talking, and her voice seemed familiar: “That’s where we’ll sit—no, not there, the sun’s shining there—no, there’s no view there—where’s the maitre d’?”

  Suddenly I recognized her. It was the same young woman who once had writhed in tears on the floor of my room, begging and pleading me to help her—to free her of the child she was carrying. So she married the sales clerk she’d set her heart on and had the baby—a little too soon, but that doesn’t matter now—and here we have the corpus delecti in velvet blouse and lace collar. Well, my dear woman, what do you say now? Wasn’t I right? The scandal passed, but you have your little boy who brings you joy . . .

  But I wonder if it can be that child after all. No, it can’t be. The boy is four, at most five, and that little episode was at least seven or eight years ago, just as I was starting my practice. What can have happened to the first child, then? Perhaps it died somehow. Oh, well, it hardly matters—they seem to have made up for it later.

  I don’t like the couple very much, actually, once I’ve had a good look at them. The wife is young and still quite pretty, but she’s put on some weight and her color is a bit too high. I suspect she spends her mornings in pastry shops, drinking porter with her sweet roll and gossiping with her friends. And the husband is a small-time Don Juan. Judging by his appearance and behavior, I’m inclined to think he’s unfaithful as a rooster. Both of them, furthermore, have the habit of scolding the waiter because they expect him to be negligent, a habit that makes me ill. Cheap, in a word.

  I swallowed my mixed impressions with a big sip of the light, bracing wine and looked out through the large, open window. Outside the landscape was rich and calm and warm in the afternoon sunlight. The canal reflected the green shore and blue sky. A couple of canoes with paddlers in striped jerseys disappeared silently and effortlessly under the bridge, cyclists pedaled over the bridge and scattered onto the roads, and groups of people were sitting in the grass under the enormous trees, enjoying the shade and the lovely day. And above my table two yellow butterflies were fluttering.

  And while I was sitting like that, letting my gaze sink into repose in the verdant summer outside, my thoughts slipped into a fantasy I sometimes amuse myself with. I have some money saved up, ten thousand crowns or a little more, in secure stocks. In five or six years I may have saved enough to be able to build a house in the country. But where should I build it? It must be by the sea. It must be on an open coast, without islands and skerries. I want an open horizon, and I want to hear the sea. And I want the sea in the west so the sun will set into it.

  But there’s another thing, too, that’s just as important as the sea: I want rich vegetation and enormous, swaying trees. No pines or spruces. Well, pines are all right if they’re tall and straight and strong and have managed to become what they were intended to be, but the jagged contour of a spruce forest against the sky pains me in a way I can’t explain. Furthermore, it rains in the country as well as in town, and a spruce forest in the rain makes me miserable and ill. No, it should be an Arcadian meadow sloping gently down to the shore with stands of large, leafy trees that make green arches over my head.

  But unfortunately nature isn’t like that at the coast; it’s bleak and raw, and the wind from the sea make the trees gnarled and stunted and small. The coast where I want to build and dwell I shall never see.

  And then, building a house—that’s a chapter in itself. First it takes a couple of years before it’s finished, and you probably die in the meanwhile; then it takes another few years before everything is in order, and after that it’s at least fifty more years before the place really seems comfortable.

  I suppose a wife really ought to be part of the arrangement. But that creates problems, too. I have such a hard time enduring the thought of someone watching me sleep. The sleep of a child is lovely, a young woman’s as well, but hardly a man’s. It’s said that a hero’s slumber by the bonfire, his knapsack under his head, is lovely to see, and that may be, for he’s tired and sleeping well. But what can my face look like when my thoughts lie dormant? I’d scarcely want to see it myself if I could; still less should anyone else see it.

  No, there’s no dream of happiness that in the end doesn’t bite its own tail.

  I often wonder, too, what sort of nature I would prefer if I’d never read a book and never seen a work of art. Perhaps I’d never even think in terms of preference—perhaps the archipelago with its rocks would be good enough for me. All my thoughts and dreams about nature presumably derive from impressions from literature and art. From art I’ve acquired my longing to ramble across the flowery meadows of ancient Florence and sail on Homer’s sea and kneel in Böcklin’s holy glade. Dear me, how would my own poor eyes see the world if left to themselves without all these hundreds or thousands of teachers and friends among those who have written and thought and seen for the rest of us? When I was young I often thought: if only I were part of this, if only I could be part of this. If only I could give something for once, not continually receive. It’s so depressing to be alone with a barren soul, at a loss to find a sense of self, of purpose, to feel a little self-respect. It’s probably quite fortunate that most people have so few expectations along those lines. I did, and for a long time I suffered because of them, though I think the worst is over now. I couldn’t become a poet. I see noth
ing that others haven’t already seen and given shape and form. I know a number of writers and artists—strange creatures, in my opinion. They have no will of their own, or if they do, their actions contradict it. They’re merely eyes and ears and hands. But I envy them. Not that I would give up my will in exchange for their visions, but I might wish I had their eyes and ears in addition. Sometimes when I see one of them sitting quietly, absently, staring out into space, I think to myself: perhaps at this very moment he sees something no one has seen before, something he soon will compel a thousand others to see, among them me. I don’t understand what the youngest of them produce—not yet—but I know and predict that once they are acknowledged and famous, I, too, will understand and admire them. It’s the same with new, modern clothes, furniture, and everything else: it’s only those who are frozen and sterile, long since set in their ways, who can resist. And the poets themselves—do they really dictate the laws of time? Lord knows, though I hardly think they seem capable of it. Instead it seems more likely they are instruments that time plays on, eolean harps in which the wind sings. And what am I? Not even that. I have no eyes of my own. I can’t even look at the spread on the table over there with my own eyes, I see it with Strindberg’s and think about a party at Stallmästaregården Inn he attended in his youth. And when the canoers in their striped jerseys glided by just now on the canal, it seemed to me for a moment that Maupassant’s shadow glided ahead of them.