Nightmare in Berlin

by Hans Fallada

  ‘But they did notify you’, grunted Doll. It wasn’t strictly true, but …

  ‘Of course they did!’ cried the sister, becoming more and more animated and high-pitched. ‘It’s no disgrace to be put in the cell if you’re as good and well-behaved as Dr. Doll, is it, Mr. Bachmann?’ The night nurse grunted in agreement. ‘But now it’s time to get back into bed. It’s much too early to be running around like this — it’s only half-past two … You’ll catch cold otherwise!’

  ‘Never get colds—’

  ‘Of course you do; of course you catch cold! And if you can’t sleep, I’ll give you a little something to help you. What would you like to help you sleep?’

  If he hadn’t already been thinking it, this question was all it took to transport him back immediately to the old game they used to play there, namely to inveigle as many sleeping tablets out of the staff as they possibly could. He said dismissively: ‘Look, just let me walk around for a bit! You’re not going to give me anything that does any good — you’re all out to cheat a poor, wretched, sick man!’

  Night nurse Trudchen uttered a horrified shriek. ‘Doctor, how can you say such a thing, an educated man like yourself! When have I ever cheated you? But of course’, the night nurse went on, ‘if someone constantly misbehaves and is always kicking up a racket, then I sometimes give him scopolamine instead of Luminal. But that’s not cheating by any stretch — that’s a medical procedure!’

  ‘Aha!’

  ‘But such a thing has never been necessary in your case, Doctor! I tell you what, I’ll give you some paraldehyde. You always called that your tipple — you always liked taking that!’

  ‘Well, yes, but how much are you going to give me?’ asked Doll, now suddenly very interested. Paraldehyde was not a bad suggestion from Trudchen; she’d got the measure of her patients, having done night duty in the sanatorium for over thirty years now. She took the place of a fully qualified night-duty doctor, so the privy councillor gave her a free hand when it came to prescribing and dispensing drugs.

  ‘How much am I going to let you have?’ asked the night nurse, and gave Doll a quick, searching look to appraise how much he needed. ‘Well, I’ll give you a three-line dose of paral …’

  Doll yanked the bed cover around his shoulders again and made as if to carry on pacing up and down. ‘You can keep your three lines, Sister Trudchen!’ he replied contemptuously. ‘I’d rather carry on walking all night than be fobbed off with kiddy portions.’ And as he turned away, he said insistently: ‘I want eight lines, at least!’

  Squeals of protest, much babble, and earnest entreaties: ‘You know very well, Dr. Doll, that five is the maximum dose!’ But Mr. Doll was not a bit interested in such absurd made-up notions as a ‘maximum dose’: he was immune to poison! He’d had sixteen once (a complete fabrication). The negotiations began, with Sister Trudchen imploring and pleading, Doll acting like some stiff-backed Spaniard spurning beggarly gifts, ready to walk away at any moment, but inwardly pumped up with the excitement of the chase. He thought to himself: You lot are pretty dumb! I’d sleep just fine without a sleeping draught — I’m still full of the stuff from before. But I’m not letting on! In the end, they settled on a six-line dose. Doll promised to go straight to bed, and the sister agreed not to dilute the paraldehyde with water. ‘And if it burns your throat, Doctor, it won’t be me who’s hurting!’

  Doll lay in his bed again, in the little room. This hospital was all right; in its way, it was a terrific hospital. He lay in bed at his ease, hands clasped behind his head, waiting for his bitter-tasting sleeping draught. He thought briefly about Alma, but now without any sense of yearning, without feeling an urgent need to rush off and see her. That wasn’t necessary. Alma was also lying in a hospital bed, her wound was being treated and dressed every day, so she too was in good hands, just like himself — no need to worry!

  As always in this place, the sleeping draught was a long time coming. This was a ploy by the staff to make the drug seem like a really precious commodity — either that, or they were just slow and disorganised. The patients weren’t going anywhere, after all: they could wait. Doll heard Sister Trudchen talking to the male night nurse in the nurses’ room, making no attempt to keep her voice down. In the past, he had sometimes kicked up a fuss about this lack of consideration, which showed no regard for the patients’ need of a good night’s sleep. But now he just smiled. It was just part of life in this place. And kicking up a fuss only created problems for the management: it just meant that even more sleeping draughts had to be administered.

  For a moment, Doll saw clearly that this had been a stupid conclusion to draw: it wasn’t bad for the doctors if the patients were given too many drugs to make them sleep; it was only bad for the patients, who then went around all next day in a semi-stupor. In terms of Doll’s case, Sister Trudchen couldn’t care less whether Doll received three, eight, or sixteen lines of paraldehyde. In actual fact, he didn’t need any more at all, and he felt very relaxed in bed. His limbs, which had been icy cold, were gradually warming up again; he only needed to turn over in bed and fall asleep.

  But no, it was better to be knocked out all at once, to not be there any more.

  There was a poem that was printed at the front of a collection of short stories by Irene Forbes-Mosse. It was called ‘The little death’, and began something like this: ‘The little death, how gladly would I die, the little death as stars light up the sky …’

  The poet was undoubtedly talking about a very different kind of death, but Doll called this sensation of being knocked out quickly by drugs his ‘Little Death’. He loved him. Recently he had thought so much about his big brother, ‘Big Death’: he had lived with him, cheek by jowl, so to speak; he had grown used to seeing him as the last remaining hope, which would surely not disappoint him. He just needed a little more resolve than he could summon up at the moment, and then it was done. And until he could muster that little bit more resolve, he had ‘Little Death’. Right now, he was waiting for his six grams of paral, and as soon as they were inside him, he was done with all this reflection and analysis. He didn’t have to torment himself any more, he didn’t have to justify anything to himself any more, why Dr. Doll did this and didn’t do that, because there was no Doll any more …

  All the same, it was high time they showed up with their sleeping draughts. Doll leapt out of bed and went across to the nurses’ room. The door was open, and the night nurse had already seen him. ‘Here’s Dr. Doll again! Come on, Sister, give him his stuff now!’

  The sister had already picked up the brown bottle, and said (still smarting from Mr. Doll’s unwarranted suspicion): ‘The Doctor can see for himself that I’m not cheating him! As if I ever would! I’m more likely to give you too much than too little!’

  And she poured it out. The characteristic smell of paral wafted through the room — and a vile smell it is, if truth be told. But to Doll it smelt good, wonderful! He watched closely as she poured it out, and even nodded in agreement when the sister exclaimed: ‘You see that, you’ve nearly got seven there! Now, aren’t I good to you, Doctor?’

  But he was no longer in the mood for talk. He had the little medicine glass in his hand; at last, at long last, he had deep sleep, Little Death, in his hand, and was completely enveloped by the scent. He was done with talking now. His face had taken on an earnest, almost sombre, expression: he was by himself now, just him and his sleep. He tipped the entire contents of the glass into his mouth at once. It burned his throat more fiercely than the strongest schnaps, it felt like it was eating into the lining of his mouth, and made it impossible to breathe. Much as he didn’t want to, he had to take two little gulps of water to dilute this — wonderful — taste of death. Then he looked at his two companions again, murmured a brief ‘Night!’ and went back to his cell, into his bed. He lay there for a moment, hands clasped behind his head, gazing up at the light.

  His head seemed to
fill with moving clouds, he tried to focus his thoughts on this and that, but already he was gone from this world, into the arms of his beloved Little Death …

  At some point he would wake up again, and each time his mood was different. Sometimes he would lie sullenly in his cell for hours, hardly speaking at all, and when the doctor came on his ward round he refused to volunteer any information. Or else he would cry quietly to himself for hours on end; at such times, he felt full of pity for himself and his wasted life, and felt as if he was going to die. On days like these, he wouldn’t eat or drink anything: let them watch him croak in his stinking cell … And then on other days he was in a sunny mood, and with his bed cover wrapped around his shoulders he would scoot around all over the place, talking to the other patients.

  The young ward doctor was friendly with him, tried to help him, and wanted to understand where this mixture of apathy and despair in Doll came from. But Doll didn’t want to talk about it; maybe he would never be able to talk about it, not even to his wife, to Alma. Maybe he would be able to write himself free of it one day — but only when it was all behind them. Sometimes he believed he would get well again, that there would be something there again to fill up the emptiness inside him. But those times were the exception.

  Mostly he tried to throw the young doctor off the scent; he would tell him something about his life, talk about books, encourage the young doctor to talk about himself — about the bad pay, the even worse food, the long hours he had to work, the arrogant way the privy councillor treated his staff. Or else he tried to winkle information out of the young doctor about the different ways of committing suicide. He was very clever at doing this: he found out about cyanide, morphine, scopolamine, about dosages that were guaranteed to be fatal; about how to inject air into the veins to cause an embolism; about insulin, which enabled someone to commit suicide in a way that was virtually undetectable later. He was gathering information: he wanted to be ready when the time came and he felt strong enough to do ‘it’, to take the only way out that was still left to a German today.

  PART TWO

  Recovery

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Voluntary discharge

  While Doll was leading a life of idleness up on ‘Men’s Ward III’, albeit forced to be a little more wide-awake each day as the dosage of sleeping drugs was progressively reduced, it could not escape his attention as the ward’s resident patient that the other patients on the ward were now a very different bunch from before. The paralytics and schizophrenics had given way completely to a relatively transitory clientele, which appeared to be neither mentally ill nor emotionally disturbed.

  These patients generally arrived in the evening, and were rarely accompanied by relatives. There was often a kind of strange, unreal hilarity about them, and they were very ready to engage in conversation and to dispense the most expensive English and American cigarettes with a generous hand. Later on, they would be taken off to the bathroom, with some gentle persuasion, by two male nurses, and while they were sitting in the bathtub the ward sister and the female nurse would go through their belongings very thoroughly. Doll sometimes watched them, and saw how they checked every corner of the pockets and every envelope with meticulous care, whereas earlier they had been content just to remove anything with a blade or point, and perhaps the dressing-gown cord as well, which some depressives used to commit suicide.

  When the new arrivals emerged from the bath they were put to bed immediately, despite all their protests. There was no more chatting with the other patients. A nurse stood guard by their bed, the young doctor appeared, usually an intravenous injection was given, and the patient fell asleep. He was usually kept in this comatose state for a week. But sometimes there would be a lot of noise coming from the room — shouting and screaming, and the sound of feet dragging across the floor — and through the window in the door, Doll would catch a glimpse of a figure in pyjamas, wrestling with the sister and a male nurse, and hear him saying: ‘You’re driving me crazy! I want to …’ And the soothing voice of reason: ‘If you could just hold on for a moment, Doctor!’ (Nearly all these patients were addressed as ‘Doctor’.) ‘The doctor is on his way …’

  And sure enough, the doctor summoned by telephone quickly arrived on the scene — quite often it was the privy councillor himself — fresh injections were given, different sleeping drugs administered, and everything quietened down again.

  Once this first week was past, the patient appeared from time to time, leaning on the arm of the nurse. Puffy-faced and drugged up to the eyeballs, he would make his way to or from the toilet, and it was not uncommon for him to stop part-way, lean his head against the wall, and groan: ‘I can’t go on, I just can’t go on! What an idiot I was to come here!’

  Idiots or not, it was obvious even to a layman that these patients made rapid progress. By the third week, most of them were wandering up and down the corridor fully dressed, leaning against the window, gazing outside and declaring impatiently: ‘It’s high time I got out of this place!’ And for the most part they did disappear again quite quickly, especially the ones who were actually entitled to be addressed as ‘Doctor’, and new patients of a similar sort moved into their rooms.

  Even someone less familiar with such places than Doll would have worked out after three days what was going on with these patients. So when one of these ‘Doctors’ spoke quite openly to Doll one day, he wasn’t telling him anything he did not already know: ‘It’s all right for you, my dear fellow, you can stay here as long as you like. But I’ve got to get out again as soon as possible. I don’t want anyone outside to know that I’m here, or why I’m here.’

  Of course they didn’t want anyone to know. They were medical doctors, after all, doctors who’d become addicted to morphine, who came here to be cured of their addiction in complete secrecy, and in particular without the knowledge of the feared public health authority. The fact that most of them were doctors was due to the circumstance that they had ready access to morphine at a time when it was in very short supply. If the drug had been more widely available and easy to buy, then doubtless three-quarters of the German population would have used it to anaesthetise themselves against the malady of the age — a mixture of bottomless despair and apathy.

  So it was mainly doctors or other people with plenty of money who could afford the black-market prices for morphine. They began with one or two injections. These were enough to take away their cares, so that cold, hunger, the pain of loss — whether of people or of things — no longer troubled them. But gradually they had to increase the dose. What had worked a week earlier no longer worked now. So it was a case of step up the dose, and then step it up some more. In the beginning, they had only injected themselves at night, before going to bed, and then the afternoons began to drag, and another shot was just the thing to help them get through that, and eventually they could no longer get up in the mornings to face an endless grey day. In the end, they had used so much morphine that either the chemists had become suspicious or they had completely lost their zest for work. Or else their wives, relatives, or friends began to distrust them, and their marriage, their whole social standing, and their livelihood were put at risk: a man addicted to morphine was no longer a doctor who brought healing, but a sick man who was a danger to others. So they quickly disappeared inside a sanatorium. To the outside world, they were suffering from angina, and a friendly colleague stepped in as a locum — just as long as the public health authority, the body to which they were answerable, didn’t find out about it.

  Doll looked upon this endless succession of addicts as companions in suffering, people just like himself, who despaired of themselves and of Germany, who had broken down under the weight of all the humiliations and obscenities, and sought refuge in some artificial paradise. Just like himself, they were all seeking their own ‘Little Death’. Maybe they all still cherished a tiny hope that kept them from taking the ultimate step; maybe they all still neede
d — just like Doll — that last, final push. Everywhere people were escaping from the present, refusing to shoulder the burden that a shameful war had laid upon all Germans.

  But behind his own person, behind all these transient visitors up on Men’s Ward III, loomed a dark and menacing multitude: the entire German nation. There had been a time, a time of illusion it had been, but during this time Doll had known that he was not lying all alone in that huge bomb crater: the entire German nation was in there with him. As the morphine-addicted doctors had cut themselves off from this nation, so too had Doll. Walking up and down the rust-red linoleum of the corridor at night for hours on end, lying in bed in his cell for hours on end, staring up at the ceiling light, he reflected and pondered, looked back over the road he had travelled to get here, deeper and deeper into selfish isolation — running away like a coward from the job they were all called upon to do …

  But the German nation was out there. It could not be denied or argued away; it was there, and he belonged to it. While he was sitting idly in here, featherbedding himself, living off the charity extended to him by this place, in consideration of the times he had stayed here before, the German people were hard at work. They had cleared away the tank traps and the rubble from the streets, and were now repairing roofs and winter-proofing people’s homes. They retrieved burnt-out machinery and got it working again. They were hungry, they were cold, but they repaired the railway tracks, dug for potatoes in the icy October rain, and hiked along the highways in endless columns, making do with next to nothing.