Doctor Glas

by Hjalmar Söderberg

  “I admit I posed the question mostly pro forma. I think we understand each other when it comes to morality. But I won’t let you off the hook so easily. When we began, the essential question wasn’t how you would dare commit this deed even though it repudiated custom and morality, but why you wanted to. You responded with the analogy of a rapist attacking a woman in the woods. What a comparison! On the one hand a brutal criminal, on the other a harmless, respected old pastor!”

  “Yes, the comparison does limp a bit. It concerns a man and a woman who are strangers to me and whose exact relationship is unclear. It’s not certain the unknown woman is worth killing a man for, nor is it certain that the unknown man who meets a young woman in the woods and suddenly is possessed and overpowered by Pan should die for it. Furthermore, it’s not certain the danger is so imminent that intervention is necessary! The girl cries out because she’s afraid and in pain, but it’s not clear that the injury should be measured by the scream. It may be that the two of them will come to an agreement before they go their separate ways. In the countryside many a marriage began as rape, and kidnapping a woman was once the usual form of engagement and wedding. If, in the example I chose, I kill the man to free the woman—an action that I think most moral, discerning people, lawyers excepted, would approve, and which would win me a splendid acquittal from an American or French jury, not to mention public applause—I’m acting impulsively, without reflection, and possibly very stupidly. But this matter is entirely different. This isn’t a question of a single instance of rape, but of a life-threatening relationship that in essence consists of ongoing, repeated rape. Here it doesn’t concern an unknown man of unknown worth, but one you know well: Pastor Gregorius. And here it’s a question of helping, not an unknown woman, but the one you secretly love . . .”

  “No, quiet, that’s enough, be quiet!”

  “Can a man allow the woman he loves to be violated, sullied, and trampled before his very eyes?”

  “Be quiet! She loves another. That’s his affair, not mine.”

  “You know you love her, so it is your affair.”

  “Be quiet! I’m a doctor! And you want me to surreptitiously do in an old man who comes to me seeking my help!”

  “You’re a doctor. How often haven’t you spoken that phrase: ‘my duty as a doctor’! Here, now, is your duty—I think it’s quite clear. Your duty as a doctor is to help the one who can and should be helped by cutting away the rotten flesh that infects the healthy tissue. Admittedly there’s no honor to be won: you can’t let anyone find out, or otherwise you’d end up in Långholmen Prison or the asylum at Konradsberg.”

  I recall now, after the fact, that a gust of wind suddenly seized the curtain and blew it into the lamp so the hem caught fire, but I put out the small blue flame with my hand and shut the window. I did these things automatically, almost without noticing. The rain beat against the windowpane. The lamps burned, unwavering and silent. On one of them a little gray-speckled moth was resting.

  I sat staring at the unwavering flame of the lamp, mesmerized. I think I fell into some sort of trance. Perhaps I nodded off for a moment. But suddenly I came to with a jolt, as if I’d been prodded, and remembered everything: the question that had to be resolved, the decision that must be made before I could rest.

  So, then, you who do not will it: why not?

  “I’m afraid. First and foremost afraid of discovery and ‘punishment’ I don’t underestimate your discretion and foresight, and I believe you’ll manage to arrange matters so everything goes as planned. I think it likely. But nevertheless there’s a risk . . . Chance plays in . . . The outcome is never certain.”

  “Risk-taking is part of life. You sought an action. Have you forgotten what you wrote here in your diary not so many weeks ago, before we could have any sense of what was in store: position, reputation, the future, all that you were willing to stow aboard the first ship to come loaded with action . . . Have you forgotten that? Shall I show you the page?”

  “No, I haven’t forgotten. But it wasn’t true. I was boasting. I feel different now that I see the ship coming. Surely you must realize I hadn’t imagined this sort of satanic, ghostly ship! I was boasting! I was lying! No one can hear us now; I can be honest. My life is empty and miserable and I find no meaning in it, but I cling to it anyway. I like to walk around in the sunshine and observe people, and I don’t want to have anything to hide, to be afraid of. Leave me in peace!”

  “Peace, no—that won’t bring peace. Do you want me to witness the one I love drowning in a cesspool when I can help her up with a single bold, quick act? Would there be peace, could I ever find peace if I turned my back on her and went out into the sunshine to observe people? What kind of peace would that be?”

  “I’m afraid. Not so much of discovery—I always have my pills and can withdraw from the fray if the going gets rough. But I’m afraid of myself. What do I know about myself? I’m afraid to get caught up in something that will trap me and bind me and never let me go. What you ask of me doesn’t contradict my beliefs; it’s an action I would endorse for someone else, assuming I knew what I do, but it doesn’t suit me. I goes against my inclinations, habits, instincts, against my very essence. I’m not made for things like this. There are thousands of stalwart, bold men who could kill a human being as easily as a fly—why can’t one of them do it? I’m afraid of a bad conscience; you get one if you try to crawl out of your own skin. To ‘keep a lid on’ means to know your own limitations; I want to keep a lid on. People act against their deepest and most fervently held beliefs with the greatest of ease on a daily basis, and their consciences are clear as can be, but if you try to act against your innermost nature, then you’ll hear the voice of your conscience! Then there’ll be a hue and cry! You say I’ve begged and pleaded for an action—that’s impossible, that’s not true! There must be some misunderstanding! It’s inconceivable that I could have had such an insane desire—I’m a born observer, I want to sit comfortably in a theater box and watch people murder each other on stage, but I myself have no business there. I want to keep out of it—leave me in peace!”

  “Coward! You’re a coward!”

  “I’m afraid. This is a nightmare! What do I have to do with these people and their filthy affairs? I find the pastor so repulsive that I’m afraid of him . . . I don’t want my fate mixed up with his. And what do I know about him? What I find repulsive isn’t the man himself, but the impression he makes on me. The image he has imprinted on my soul won’t be erased if he vanishes, especially not if he vanishes because of me. He’s already possessed me more than I like while he’s alive—who knows what he might come up with when he’s dead? I know about all that, I’ve read Crime and Punishment and Thérèse Raquin. I don’t believe in ghosts, but I don’t want to put myself in a position where I might start believing in them. What do I have to do with all this? I want to travel far away, to see forests and mountains and rivers. I want to walk under enormous green trees with a lovely little leather volume in my pocket, thinking beautiful, elevated, kind, calm thoughts, thoughts one can speak aloud and be praised for. Let me go, let me leave tomorrow!”

  “Coward!”

  The lamps burned with dirty red flames in the gray dawn light. The moth was lying on the desk with singed wings.

  I threw myself on the bed.

  AUGUST 8

  I’VE BEEN RIDING and taken a bath, I’ve held my office hours and made my sick calls as usual. And once again evening comes. I’m tired.

  The brick steeple of the church is very red in the evening light. The crowns of the trees are a dense, dark green right now, and the blue behind them is deep. It’s Saturday night; ragged little children are playing hopscotch on the gravel path. In an open window a man is sitting in his shirtsleeves, playing the flute. It’s strange how certain melodies can catch on. Barely ten years ago, this melody arose from the chaos and sneaked up on an impoverished Italian musician, perhaps one evening in the twilight, perhaps on an evening like this. It
bore fruit in his soul, giving birth to other melodies and other rhythms, and all of a sudden, with their help, he became world famous, bringing him a new life with new joys and new sorrows and a fortune to gamble away in Monte Carlo. And the melody, like an epidemic, catches on throughout the world and has its fateful effect, both good and bad—makes cheeks blush and eyes shine, is admired and loved by countless people and arouses boredom and disgust in others, often the same people who initially loved it; rings insistently and mercilessly in the ears of the insomniac at night, annoys the businessman who lies fretting because the stocks he sold last week have risen, disturbs and pains the thinker trying to gather his thoughts to formulate a new law, or dances around in the vacuum of an idiot’s brain. And while the man who “created” it may be more pained and tired of it than anyone else, audiences in places of entertainment all over the world continue to applaud it wildly, and the man over there plays it with feeling on his flute.

  AUGUST 9

  TO WILL SOMETHING is to make a choice. Oh, that it should be so difficult to choose!

  To make a choice is to give something up. Oh, that it should be so difficult to give something up!

  A little prince was going on an excursion, and he was asked whether he wanted to go by land or by sea. And he answered that he wanted to go by land and by sea.

  We want everything, we want to be everything. We want to experience all the joys of good fortune and the full depths of suffering. We want the excitement of action and the calm of observation. We want the silence of the desert as well as the noise of the forum. Simultaneously we want to be the hermit’s thought and the voice of the people; we want to be both melody and harmony. Simultaneously! How could this be possible?

  “I want to go by land and by sea.”

  AUGUST 10

  A WATCH WITHOUT HANDS has something rubbed out and empty that’s reminiscent of a dead person’s features. Right now I’m sitting here looking at such a watch. Actually it’s not a watch at all, just an empty case with a beautiful exterior. I saw it in the window of the hunchbacked old watchmaker’s shop in the alley as I was walking home in the hot yellow twilight—an odd twilight, the way I imagine the end of a day in the desert . . . I went in and asked the watchmaker, who once repaired my watch, what sort of watch it was that had no hands. He smiled his coy hunchback smile and showed me the beautiful old silver case, a fine piece of workmanship; he’d purchased the watch at an auction, but the works were worn out and beyond repair, and he intended to put in a new mechanism. I bought the case as is.

  I plan to put a few of my pills in it and carry it in my right vest pocket along with my watch. It’s just a variant of Demosthenes’ idea of poison in the pen. There’s nothing new under the sun!

  *

  Now night is falling; a star is already twinkling through the branches of the large chestnut tree. I can sense that I’ll sleep well tonight; inside my head it’s cool and calm. Still, it’s hard to tear myself away from the tree and the star.

  Night. Such a lovely word. The night is older than the day, according to the ancient Gauls. They believed the short, transient day was born of the endless night.

  The enormous, endless night.

  Well, of course it’s just a manner of speaking . . . What is the night, that which we call the night? It’s the narrow, conical shadow of our little planet. A small sliver of darkness in the midst of an ocean of light.

  And this ocean of light, what is that? A spark in space. The small circle of light around a small star: the sun.

  Oh, what sort of pestilence has seized human beings to make them ask what everything is? What sort of scourge has whipped them out of the circle of fellow creatures on earth—everything crawling and walking and running and climbing and flying—to regard their world and their lives from above, from outside, with cold, distant eyes, and find it petty and without value? Where is this headed, how will it end? I’m forced to think of the moaning female voice I heard in my dream—I can hear it still—the voice of an old, weeping woman: the world’s on fire, the world’s on fire!

  You should regard your world from your own point of view and not from some imagined point out in space; you should modestly gauge it according to your own measure, according to your rank and condition, that of a human being living on earth. Then the earth is big enough, and the night endless and deep.

  AUGUST 12

  How brightly the sun shines on the weathercock this evening!

  I’m fond of this beautiful, sensible bird that always blows as the wind blows. It’s a constant reminder of the cock that on a certain occasion crowed three times, and an ingenious symbol of the holy church that lives by denying its master.

  In the churchyard the shepherd of the congregation is walking back and forth in the lovely summer evening, leaning on the arm of a younger colleague. My window is open, and it’s so quiet that fragments of their conversation carry all the way up here. They’re discussing the upcoming election for Pastor Primarius, and I heard the minister mention Gregorius’s name. He uttered it without enthusiasm and not very wholeheartedly. Gregorius is one of those preachers who always wins over the congregation and consequently is opposed by colleagues. I could tell by the tone of voice that the minister mentioned his name more or less in passing and didn’t believe his prospects were serious.

  That’s my opinion, too. I don’t think he has any prospects. I’d be greatly surprised if he became Pastor Primarius . . .

  *

  It’s August 12 today; he left for Porla on July 4th or 5th and was planning to stay six weeks. In other words it won’t be many more days before he’s back again, in the peak of health after his stay at the baths.

  AUGUST 13

  HOW WILL IT HAPPEN? I’ve known for a long time. By coincidence, the solution to the problem is plain as can be: my potassium cyanide pills, which I originally prepared without a thought of anyone other than myself, will naturally come to use now.

  One matter is quite obvious: I can’t let him take them at home. It must happen here. This won’t be pleasant, but I see no other way out, and I want to have an end to all this. If he takes a pill at home, following my instructions, and keels over on the spot, there’s a possibility the police will construe a connection. Furthermore, the person I want to save could easily be suspected, entangled, covered with filth for life, perhaps found guilty of murder . . .

  Of course nothing must happen that might arouse the suspicions of the police. No one must know that the pastor has any pills; he must die a completely natural death from a heart attack. Nor may she suspect anything. That he dies here, in my office, is naturally quite a blow to my professional reputation and will give my friends material for bad jokes, but there’s nothing to be done about it.

  He’ll come up one day to talk about his heart or some other nonsense, hoping I’ll tell him he’s better after the cure. No one can hear what we talk about; a large, empty parlor is situated between the waiting room and my examination room. I’ll listen and tap, commenting that he’s remarkably restored, but there’s still something that bothers me a bit . . . I’ll bring out my pills, explain that this is a new medication for certain heart ailments (I’ll have to make up a name, too), and advise him to take one right away. I’ll offer him a glass of port to wash it down. Does he drink wine? Of course, I’ve heard him justify it with the wedding at Canaan . . . He shall have a fine little wine. Grönstedt’s Gray Label. I can see him before me: first he takes a small sip of the wine, then he places the pill on his tongue, empties the glass and washes it down. His spectacles reflect the window and the potted plant and hide his gaze . . . I turn away, walk over to the window and look out at the churchyard, stand there drumming on the pane . . . He says something, for instance that it’s a good wine, but gets only half the sentence out . . . I hear a thud . . . He’s lying on the floor . . .

  But what if he won’t take the pill? No, he’ll take it like candy—he loves medicine . . . But what if? Well, then there’s nothing I can do, I’ll have
to drop the matter; I can’t go after him with an ax.

  . . . He’s lying on the floor. I put away the box of pills and the bottle of wine and the glass. I ring for Kristin: the pastor is ill, a fainting spell, it will soon pass . . . I take his pulse, feel his heart: