Doctor Glas

by Hjalmar Söderberg

  She rides, too; I’ve seen her several times lately on my morning excursions, most recently yesterday. With a cheerful “Good morning” she passed me at a gallop; then, at a far-off curve in the road, I saw her slow down. She let the horse fall into a trot and rode for quite some distance with slack reins, as if she were dreaming . . . But I kept a steady pace, and so it came about that we rode past each other a couple of times within a short while.

  *

  She’s not really beautiful, but something about her is intimately connected to the image that for many years, until very recently, was my dream of woman. Matters like this can’t be explained. Once—it must be about two or three years ago—I went to considerable lengths to get myself invited to a home where I knew she often went, solely to meet her. And indeed, she came, but on that occasion she barely noticed me, and we didn’t say much to each other.

  And now: I recognize her—she’s the same as she was then. It’s myself I no longer recognize.

  JULY 17

  NO, SOMETIMES LIFE reveals an aspect that is truly abominable.

  I just came home from a nocturnal sick call. The telephone awakened me; I was given a name and a nearby address and an indication of the problem: a child suddenly taken ill, presumably the croup, the home of merchant So-and-So. I hurried through the streets past throngs of late-night revelers and whores who tugged at my coat. The family lived four flights up in a building on a side street. The name I’d heard over the phone and now saw on the door seemed familiar, though I wasn’t sure in what context. I was met at the door by the wife in her night robe and chemise—it was the woman from Djurgårdsbrunn Inn, the one I’d recognized from that incident many years before. So, it must be the handsome little boy, I thought. Through a narrow dining room and an idiotic parlor, currently lit by a greasy kitchen lamp in the corner of a whatnot, I was led into a bedroom, clearly shared by the entire family. I didn’t see the husband, however; he wasn’t home. “It’s our oldest boy who’s ill,” explained the wife. She took me to a small bed. In it lay, not the handsome little boy, but another child, a monster. Enormous apelike jaws, compressed cranium, tiny, nasty, dull eyes. An idiot, it was apparent at a glance.

  So—this was the firstborn, then. This was what she was carrying in her womb that time. This was the germ of life she begged me on her knees to free her from, and I responded with duty. Life, I don’t understand you!

  And now death finally wants to take pity on him, and on them, and end the life that should never have begun. But death won’t get his way. There is nothing they want more than to be rid of the boy—any other reaction is inconceivable—but in their deep-seated cowardice they nevertheless send for me, the physician, to ward off kind, compassionate death and keep the monster alive. And in my cowardice, just as deep-seated as theirs, I do my “duty”—do it now as I did then.

  All these thoughts didn’t occur to me right away as I was standing there, still groggy, in a strange room at a sickbed. I merely performed my professional responsibilities without thinking—stayed as long as I was needed, did what needed to be done, and left. In the entry I meet the husband and father, a bit tipsy, just as he came home.

  *

  And the ape boy will live, perhaps for many more years.

  The hideous, animal-like face with its tiny, nasty, dull eyes has pursued me back to my room, and as I sit here I can read the entire story in them.

  He has the eyes with which the whole world looked at his mother while she was pregnant with him. And the world convinced her to see herself and what she’d done with the same eyes.

  Here is the fruit, and a lovely one it is.

  The brutish father who beat her, the mother with her thoughts full of what relatives and acquaintances would say, the servants who stole glances at her and snickered, secretly pleased at this incontestable proof that their “betters” weren’t better after all, aunts and uncles whose faces stiffened in righteous moral indignation, the minister who gave a terse, dry sermon at the hasty wedding, perhaps rightfully embarrassed at exhorting the couple to set about doing what they quite obviously already had done—they all made their contribution, they’re all partly responsible for what happened. Not even a doctor was missing, and I was the doctor.

  I could have helped her that time in her deepest misery and despair when, in this very room, she begged me on her knees. Instead I responded with duty, in which I didn’t believe.

  But of course I had no way of knowing or imagining . . .

  Still, her case was one of those I was sure about. Even though I didn’t believe in duty, didn’t believe it was the overriding law, above all others, that it claimed to be, it was still completely clear to me that the correct and wise course in this case was to do what others called my duty. And I did it without hesitation.

  Life, I don’t understand you.

  *

  “If a child is born misshapen, it is drowned.” (Seneca.)

  *

  Every idiot at the Eugenia Home costs more each year than the annual income of a healthy young manual laborer.

  JULY 24

  THE TROPICAL HEAT is back. All afternoon it hovers over the city like a heavy gilded cloud in the still air, and only twilight brings refreshment and relief.

  Nearly every evening I sit for a while at the sidewalk tables outside the Grand Hotel, drinking lemonade through a straw. I’m fond of the moment when the street lamps begin to shimmer along the bend by the edge of the Stream; for me it’s the best hour of the day. Mostly I sit by myself, but yesterday I was there with Birck and Markel.

  “The Lord be praised,” said Markel. “They’ve finally started lighting the street lamps again. I’ve barely been able to see my own hand all this time, groping around in these dark, unlit summer nights. Even though I know the policy was only to save money—an entirely admirable motive, in other words—I still have a nasty suspicion it’s being arranged to suit the tourists. ‘Land of the Midnight Sun.’ Spare me.”

  “Yes,” said Birck, “if only they were content to leave the lamps off for a few nights around Midsummer, when it really is nearly light. In the country the summer twilight has a special charm, but it doesn’t belong here. Artificial light is part of the city. I’ve never felt more proud and happy to live in a city than I did as a child when I came in from the country on an autumn evening and saw the lights shining along the quays. Now, I thought, now those poor souls out in the country have to stay in their cottages or stumble around in darkness and filth.

  “But it’s true,” he added, “in the country you can see the stars in a completely different way. Here they lose out in the competition with the gas lights, and that’s a pity.”

  “The stars,” said Markel, “can no longer manage to light our way in the night. The degree to which they’ve lost all practical importance is lamentable. Once they ruled our lives, and if you look in an ordinary Farmer’s Almanac you might think they still do. It would be difficult to find a more striking example of the persistence of tradition than this—that the most widely circulated popular publication in existence is full of detailed information about matters no human being pays attention to any longer. All these astronomical signs that two hundred years ago any poor farmer more or less understood and studied tirelessly and with zeal, since he believed his well-being depended on them—today they’re unknown and incomprehensible to most educated people. If the Academy of Science had a sense of humor it could amuse itself by randomly mixing up Cancer, Leo, and Virgo in the almanac—the public wouldn’t notice a thing. The constellations have been degraded to a purely decorative role.”

  He took a swallow of his toddy and continued:

  “No, the stars can’t pride themselves on the same popularity they once had. As long as people believed their fate depended on them they were feared, but also loved and worshipped. And as children we all liked them because we believed they were little candles God lit in the evenings for our own personal pleasure, and we thought they were twinkling for us. Now that we know
a little more about them they’re merely a constant, painful, impertinent reminder of our own insignificance. Here you are, for instance, walking down a city street thinking magnificent, wonderful, even epoch-making thoughts, thoughts you’re certain no other human being in the world could or would dare to have. Let’s leave aside the fact that deep down in your subconscious, a voice based on many years of experience whispers that tomorrow morning, without the slightest doubt, you’ll have forgotten these thoughts or no longer see their magnificent and epoch-making qualities—that doesn’t matter, it doesn’t diminish the exhilaration and euphoria while it lasts. But all you have to do is look up and catch sight of a tiny star shining there all alone between a couple of metal chimneys, and you realize you might as well forget these thoughts right away. Or you look down into the gutter and wonder if it’s really such a good idea to drink yourself to death or whether you might be able to find some better way of passing the time. Then you suddenly stop—as I did the other night—and stare at a tiny, shining point in the gutter. After a moment’s consideration you realize it’s the reflection of a star—as a matter of fact it was Deneb in Cygnus, the Swan. And all of a sudden it’s clear to you just how absurdly trivial everything is.”

  “Well,” I permitted myself to interject, “I suppose we might see that as regarding drunkenness from the perspective of eternity. But when we’re sober, it’s hardly a very natural perspective and certainly not suited for daily use. If Deneb were to come up with the idea of regarding itself sub specie aeternis, it might find itself too insignificant to make it worth the trouble to keep on shining. But instead it has stayed faithfully at its post for quite some time, shining very nicely, reflected in the oceans of the unknown planets whose sun it is as well as occasionally in a gutter on this small, dark earth. Follow this example, my dear friend! Well, I mean in general and more or less, not just with regard to the gutter.”

  “Markel,” Birck put in, “greatly exaggerates the reach of his thoughts if he thinks he can regard even the smallest and weakest of his toddies from the perspective of eternity. It’s not within his power, and he wouldn’t survive the attempt. I seem to remember having read somewhere that this perspective is the exclusive prerogative of Our Lord. And perhaps that’s why he has ceased to exist—the formula was too strong even for him.”

  Markel was silent. He looked somber and dejected. At least that’s how he seemed to me, judging by what I could see of his face in the shadow under the red striped awning, and when he struck a match to relight his cigar before it went out I realized he had grown old. He’ll die between forty and fifty, I thought to myself. And he must already be well past forty.

  Suddenly Birck, who sat facing the sidewalk and could see the city beyond, said, “There’s Mrs. Gregorius, who’s married to that hideous minister. God knows what could ever have made her attach herself to him. When I see the two of them together I have to turn away; the simplest human decency requires it.”

  “Is the pastor with her?” I asked.

  “No, she’s alone.”

  That’s right, the pastor was still in Porla.

  “I think she looks like a blonde Delilah,” Birck said.

  Markel: “Let’s hope she understands her purpose in life correctly and places enormous horns on the servant of the Lord.”

  Birck: “I doubt it. She’s religious, of course—otherwise that marriage would be unfathomable.”

  Markel: “According to my unsophisticated understanding, it would, quite the contrary, be unfathomable if she had the slightest hint of religious sentiment left after a suitable period of marriage to Pastor Gregorius—and for that matter she couldn’t possibly be more religious than Madame de Maintenon. The true faith is of immeasurable help in all circumstances of life and has never slowed down the traffic.”

  Our conversation died down when she walked by, headed toward the museum and Ship’s Isle. She was wearing a simple black dress. She walked neither slowly nor fast, and she looked neither to the left nor the right.

  Yes, her walk . . . I had to close my eyes as she passed. She was walking like someone going to meet her fate. Her head was slightly lowered, so part of her white neck showed beneath her fair hair. Was she smiling? I don’t know. But I suddenly remembered my dream from the other night. The kind of smile she had in that horrible dream I’ve never seen in reality, and I don’t ever want to see it.

  When I looked up again I saw Klas Recke walking by in the same direction. He nodded in passing toward Birck and Markel, perhaps toward me, too—it was somewhat vague. Markel gestured to him to sit down with us, but he pretended not to notice and walked on. He was following in her footsteps. And I thought I could see a strong hand guiding both of them by the same invisible thread, pulling them in the same direction. And I asked myself: where are the two of them headed? —Oh, what difference is it to me? The way she is headed she would have gone even without my help. I’ve merely removed some of the more repellent obstacles in her path. But her way is difficult anyway, it must be. The world isn’t kind to those who love. And into the darkness they’ll go in the end, they and the rest of us.

  “Recke’s been hard to find recently,” said Markel. “I’m sure the rascal has something up his sleeve. I’ve heard he’s after a young woman with money. Well, well, that’s the way it had to end—he has the debts of a crown prince. He’s at the mercy of moneylenders.”

  “How do you know?” I asked, perhaps a little too testily.

  “I don’t know at all,” he answered impertinently. “But that’s what I think. Base natures judge a man by his business dealings. I take the opposite tack and judge the business dealings by the man. It’s more logical, and I know Recke.”

  “That’s enough whisky, now, Markel,” said Birck.

  Markel poured himself another whisky as well as one for Birck, who sat staring out into space and didn’t react. My toddy was virtually untouched, and Markel looked at it with an expression of concern and alarm.

  Birck suddenly turned to me:

  “Tell me something,” he said, “are you looking for happiness?”

  “I suppose so,” I answered. “The only definition of happiness I know is that it’s the sum of what each individual believes is worth searching for. So I suppose it’s self-evident that we want to find happiness.”

  Birck: “Of course. In that sense it’s self-evident. And your answer reminds me for the hundredth time that all philosophy derives from and is sustained by verbal sophistry. Instead of some vulgar notion of happiness, one person cites religion, the other his ‘life’s work,’ and both of them deny that they are ever, in any way, looking for happiness. It’s an enviable talent to be able to delude yourself with words that way. We all have the desire to see ourselves and our aspirations in an idealistic light. And perhaps in the end the deepest happiness is the illusion that we’re not looking for happiness.”

  Markel: “People don’t seek happiness, but pleasure. ‘It’s possible,’ said the Cyranaics, ‘that people may exist who don’t seek pleasure, but the reason is that their understanding is twisted and their judgment beyond repair.’

  “When philosophers claim,” he went on, “that human beings aspire to happiness, or ‘salvation,’ or to fulfill their ‘life’s work,’ they’re only thinking of themselves, or in any case of adults with a certain amount of education. In one of his short stories, Per Hallström tells how, as a little boy, each night in his prayers he would recite, ‘Good duck may come, good duck may go.’ At that tender age he clearly didn’t understand the meaning of ‘good luck,’ so without thinking he substituted a straightforward, familiar word for one that was unknown and confusing. But the cells in our body know just as little about ‘good luck’ or ‘happiness’ or ‘salvation’ or ‘life’s work’ as a child does. And our cells are what determine our aspirations. All organic life on earth flees pain and seeks pleasure. Philosophers are thinking only of their own conscious effort, their willed effort—in other words, an effort that is illusory. But the unc
onscious part of our being is thousands of times greater and stronger than the conscious part, and that’s what makes the difference.”

  Birck: “Everything you say merely persuades me I was right just now and that language must be remade from the core for us to be able to discuss philosophy and get anywhere.”

  Markel: “Good heavens—keep your happiness, I’ll take pleasure. Skål! But even if I agree with you about use of language, that doesn’t make it true that everyone aspires to happiness. There are people who have no talent for happiness and who know this with painful, implacable clarity. Such people don’t seek happiness, merely to bring some sort of form and style to their unhappiness.”

  And he added suddenly, unexpectedly, “Glas is one of them.”

  His last comment was so startling that I was speechless. Until the moment I heard him say my name I thought he was talking about himself. I still do think that, and that it was to disguise this that he pounced on me. There was an oppressive silence. I looked at the lights reflected in the Stream. In the cloud banks above Rosenbad the moon broke through, and its pale silver light illuminated the colonnade of the Bonde family’s ancient palace. Out above Lake Mälaren a purple cloud sailed slowly by itself, separated from the others.

  JULY 25

  HELGA GREGORIUS: I see her continually before me, see her as she was in the dream: naked, handing me a bouquet of dark flowers. Perhaps red, but very dark. Well, red always seems dark in the twilight.

  Never do I go to bed at night without wishing she would come to me in my dreams.

  But my imagination has gradually erased the provocative smile, and I don’t see it any longer.

  *

  I wish the pastor were back. Then she’d be sure to return here. I want to see her and hear her voice. I want to have her with me.

  JULY 26