‘You don’t walk in your sleep?’ asks Dr. Lohrman when they have finished talking about the weather and traffic jams on Tegelbacken.
‘I don’t think I have ever walked in my sleep, Doctor.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘I’ve never woken up walking on Upplandsgatan, if that’s what you mean.’
‘You never daydream?’
‘Doesn’t everyone?’
‘Do you feel that time passes at different speeds? As if you’d missed some hours? That you’re not sure whether you’ve really had lunch or not? That the day feels like you were reading a book and happened to skip a chapter?’
Elvira Wallin laughs that disarming sort of laugh that every eighteen-year-old girl has at hand. And shudders. ‘Yes, Doctor,’ she wants to say. ‘It’s like that all the time lately. I awaken in the morning and can’t remember the evening before. I go out for a stroll and the very moment I come home I can’t remember where I’ve been. I talk with mother but don’t remember what about. I’m tired all the time. I hurt everywhere. Everything is like a dream except for the dream.’ The dream about going down in the cellar.
But she keeps silent. Dr. Lohrman writes something. Scratch, scratch, says the pen. Elvira Wallin thinks about how it itches. On her thigh. She asked her mother if it’s really proper to lie on the doctor’s chaise longue in this way, but mother reassured her. Dr. Lohrman is a doctor. And just as you must show the doctor your leg if you twist your ankle, so must you lie down and relax if you’re twisted in the head. That doesn’t sound so nice. Although mother smiles when she says it.
Elvira Wallin thinks about how the dream at first smells like her bedroom. Stove. Lavender and soap. The warmth as she walks past the stove. Out in the hall. It’s colder there. She doesn’t have her nightgown on. Out on the staircase. Even colder. She gets goosebumps on her arms.
‘Is the door open?’ asks Dr. Lohrman.
‘The front door?’ Elvira Wallin has to think. Stretch her hand out in front of her. Pretend to touch the door. ‘It’s the kitchen door,’ she says. Astonished by her own dream. ‘To the backstairs.’
‘Shouldn’t that be locked?’
‘Yes.’
‘Didn’t you know you were going down the backstairs?’
‘I hadn’t really thought about it before.’
‘Did you think you were going down the main staircase?’
‘Yes. I assumed so. That’s where I go. When I’m awake.’
‘In just your undergarments?’
‘Yes.’ Elvira Wallin feels herself blushing.
‘And then underground?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not out into the courtyard?’
‘No. Down in the cellar.’
‘Through a cellar door?’
Elvira Wallin answers without thinking about it. ‘Yes. Mother gave me a key.’
Dr. Lohrman doesn’t ask about mother. He writes a little instead. Elvira Wallin wonders whether she really got the key from her mother. In the dream. She is unsure. The chaise longue feels uncomfortable. A horsehair tickles her neck. And what is mother doing on the backstairs? Something inside her left boot itches. Chafes.
‘And you are certain that you have never really done this?’
‘Done what?’
‘You never go out late at night?’
‘I’ve come home late before. From soirées or from the theater. But I’ve never gone out in the middle of the night like a ghost.’
‘And never in your underclothing?’
‘What do you think!’ Elvira Wallin doesn’t like that question.
‘And not on the backstairs?’
‘No.’
‘Not even when you were a child?’
‘We didn’t live on Upplandsgatan then. We lived in the country.’
‘The country? I thought your father had a flat on Stora Nygatan.’
‘Yes, but he was the only one who lived there. Mother and I lived in Stureby.’
Dr. Lohrman falls silent. Elvira Wallin closes her eyes. She can see the stairs before her. Smells the odor of damp and mold. Her back itches from her corset. It itches. She wants to scratch.
‘Do the backstairs in the dream look like the real stairs?’
‘I think so. Maybe. I don’t have any reason to go there.’
‘Do you have to open another door?’
‘Pardon?’
‘When you walk down the backstairs and go down to the courtyard. Do you have to open a door to go down into the cellar? Was that the one your mother gave you a key to?’
‘I don’t know.’ Behind her eyelids, Elvira Wallin looks around. Mother is standing there. She nods and gives her the key. And Elvira Wallin walks down the stairs. The long staircase down to the cellar under the house on Upplandsgatan. She dreams. Looks behind her eyelids. Feels a dream cold against her skin. Along her calves. The stone steps are cold. And she is barefoot. She thinks about how she knows the floor. The stone staircase. The dream is so real. There’s some small stuff on the stairs. Gravel. And it grows damper the further down she goes.
‘Is it the real cellar that you’re going down into?’
‘How should I know that? I’ve never been there.’ Elvira Wallin wonders. Her corset itches. Her calf itches. Dr. Lohrman’s office smells of tobacco.
‘What do you think? Is the place something you remember from when you were little?’
‘No.’
Elvira Wallin looks up at the ceiling. Sees the white-painted planks. She blinks. Doesn’t want to say any more. It’s so real. The mold and chill. As soon as she closes her eyes, she walks down the next flight of stairs. Stagnant water. The cold stone under the soles of her feet. A cold wind creeps up her legs. She knows precisely how the dream continues. What is going to happen. When it gets cold and it begins to move. When it hurts and when it becomes unbearable. She knows what she is luring out. From the first gust till the moment when she faints, sweating and screaming. And wakes up.
She sits up.
‘I don’t want to go down there.’
‘But you do. What is it that compels you to dream the same thing over and over again?’
‘I don’t know!’ Elvira Wallin almost screams. And is so ashamed that she blushes. And thinks that mother’s friends are right after all. She’s hysterical. She’s hallucinating. They should send her to a hospital. And she knows what they do with hysterical girls at the hospital. They put them in ice water until they calm down. Lock them in small rooms. And big men hold the little misses tight and attach large leeches to their throats and breasts so the leeches will suck everything bad out of them.
‘I don’t want to!’ screams Elvira Wallin. ‘I don’t want to!’
‘Calm down.’ Dr. Lohrman sounds calm. And very far away. The whole apartment smells of dampness. Her leg itches all over. Where the thing in the cellar usually touches her. Before it creeps up towards her belly.
‘Lie down again.’ Dr. Lohrman hasn’t moved a muscle. ‘If you’d be so kind.’ Elvira Wallin blinks. Finally sees the doctor. Two steps away. Sitting in his armchair. His glasses shine so that you can’t see his eyes. She didn’t see him earlier. She didn’t see anything. Not the desk. Not the green curtains. Not the paintings. A sailboat over by the window. Dancing elves directly opposite. They’re dancing in the grass. Damp grass. A dark night. She thinks about something mother told her. About a dance at Stora Skuggan.
Elvira Wallin lies down slowly.
‘Excuse me.’
‘Don’t worry. In these conversations sometimes strong feelings emerge. That’s all right.’
‘It’s embarrassing.’
‘Oh, no. What is it that you don’t want?’
‘I don’t want to go to the hospital.’
‘Has someone said you’ll be sent to a hospital?’
Elvira Wallin is silent several moments. Someone calls out down on the street. A horse whinnies.
‘No one is thinking of sending you to a hospital, Fröken Wallin. That’s why we’re here. Instead of the hospital.’
‘So you’re not thinking of putting leeches on me?’ Elvira Wallin laughs at how stupid that sounds.
‘No indeed.’ Dr. Lohrman laughs with her. ‘But I have a bucket of them in the kitchen. If you’re obstinate.’
‘You’re joking?’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Almost.’
Elvira Wallin exhales. Concentrates on her corset. Her back itches. The edge of her right stocking is wrinkled.
‘Do doctors really use leeches nowadays?’
‘Occasionally perhaps. In any case to treat high blood pressure. Not for your sort of problem.’
‘Thanks. I think.’
‘Nowadays we use conversation. That is the latest scientific development.’
‘It sounds crazy.’
‘Think of it like the story about the troll. If one draws the nasty and troublesome things out in the daylight, they crack.’
‘It sounds like a fairy tale.’
‘It was a metaphor.’
‘I understood.’
‘We doctors have started having these conversations in recent years. And if conversation doesn’t help then we use massage to treat nervous disorders. With a machine.’
Elvira Wallin looks at the doctor. Her blouse chafes at her neck. ‘Machine?’
‘Oh, yes. A mechanical contraption that massages women with nervous troubles. I can give you a demonstration.’
‘Not on my account, thanks.’
‘But then you must talk with me.’
‘I promise.’
‘So, where were we?’
Elvira Wallin doesn’t answer. She closes her eyes. Concentrates on things that itch.
‘Fröken Wallin?’
‘Yes?’
‘The staircase. The backstairs. Can you describe what you see?’
‘It’s cold. And damp. It smells bad.’
‘Smells of what?’
‘Moss, I think. Peat. Rotten vegetables. The floor is cold.’
‘But what do you see?’
Elvira Wallin moves her head in astonishment. Looks around with her eyes shut. ‘Nothing. It’s dark.’
‘Is there no light at all?’
‘No, maybe a little from the staircase. But it’s very long.’
‘How can you see where you’re stepping in the dark?’
‘I walk carefully.’ Elvira Wallin hesitates. ‘And I’m holding someone’s hand.’ She gropes at the air in front of her. Without opening her eyes. Carefully grasps an invisible hand. Moves her legs. Tenses her abdomen. The chaise longue is small. Narrow. She extends her right wrist a little. Dr. Lohrman writes. Scratch, scratch.
‘So that I won’t fall,’ continues Elvira Wallin. ‘And won’t go astray.’ She sounds like someone who’s trying to talk about one thing while she’s reading about another. Absent. She looks around. Sees nothing in the darkness. Doesn’t know whose hand it is. It smells worse now. More moss and mold. Hears those sounds. A rustling. Sounds like someone is dragging a sack over a floor.
‘It’s good you have company.’ Dr. Lohrman talks very low. As if he’s afraid of frightening her. Elvira Wallin nods guardedly. As if she in turn doesn’t want to frighten the one holding her hand. She doesn’t want to be left alone in the cellar. For she is not wholly certain that she’s dreaming. About the damp and the darkness. About something playing in her undergarments. Stroking her foot.
‘Yes,’ she says at last.
The little room stinks so badly that she recoils. She gets dizzy. Things creep over her feet. Maybe rats. Eels. Up her calves. The hand she’s holding feels strange. Like it’s made of leather. A gloved hand that isn’t really a hand. It’s too narrow. Soft. She presses gently against it. Like one does when shaking hands. Fröken Wallin, how do you do. And the hand releases her hand and grips her wrist instead. Hard.
‘The patient,’ Dr. Lohrman wrote several hours later, ‘then freezes. With her right hand in the air in front of her. As if she is holding someone’s hand while she talks. She looks at her hand. With her eyes closed. All is calm and quiet and one hesitates to ask a new question that might interrupt the process going on within the patient. Then suddenly the patient is seized by the greatest confusion and horror. The patient feels as though she is falling and being embraced by some sort of monstrosity, and this delusion becomes so real to her that she falls off the chaise longue and tries to crawl backwards away from that imaginary attacker. At last I get Fru Hansson’s help in holding the poor girl still until after several minutes’ struggle she falls into a sort of light sleep. The whole time during the fit, the patient has her eyes wide open without seeing and is unreachable like someone in a hypnotic trance. The patient comes slowly to her senses, all the while complaining of severe paroxysms in her stomach, thigh, and lower abdomen. She thrashes with her body and kicks with her legs. The poor young woman’s clothes end up in disarray and it takes all my and Fru Hansson’s strength to prevent her from flailing her arms and clawing at the phantasms that besiege her.’
Dr. Lohrman and Fru Hansson laid Elvira Wallin on the chaise longue. Fru Hansson spoke to her reassuringly and straightened her clothes. Elvira Wallin leapt like a fish each time Fru Hansson touched her legs or hips.
Dr. Lohrman fetched laudanum. And the mechanical massage apparatus. He was unsure of what he should do. Was it more important for the girl to get rest, or that she get over the convulsions that were plaguing her? He needed to consult some colleagues. Talk with Dr. Sondén. Write a couple of letters to German colleagues. Lohrman was fairly certain that the girl’s symptoms were mental. A compulsive dream that took on a physical manifestation. But it could also be something physical that Elvira Wallin couldn’t explain and therefore wove into a dream. Anything whatsoever from colic to pregnancy. The massage apparatus could probably help there. Just in case.
Once Elvira Wallin has settled down, she has to answer questions about her body. Shameful questions. The doctor stands over by the window while he asks them. Looks at the traffic and tugs at his beard while he asks about her stomach. If she experiences pain when she passes water. If she is troubled by colic? Gas? That monthly thing. Has she gotten it? Does she drink wine? Does she eat a lot of cabbage? Onions? Fru Hansson sits beside the sofa and looks at her. A stern, black-haired woman with chapped hands. She has narrow lips and could be twenty-five or fifty-five years old. Elvira Wallin answers truthfully. She has no problems with her stomach. Eats moderately. Almost never takes strong drink. The monthly business comes as it’s supposed to.
Dr. Lohrman stuffs his pipe.
‘And your maidenhead?’
‘What about it? I’m not some servant girl who whores around in the rear house.’
‘I really wasn’t suggesting that.’
‘Thanks.’
‘But one’s maidenhead can be damaged even without loose living. By one’s youthful folly and curiosity. Or an accident. Or it can be weak from the beginning.’
Elvira Wallin blushes. Doesn’t answer. Dr. Lohrman lights his pipe. Looks down at the people in the street. He tries to remember what it says in Hoffman’s Forensic Atlas. Sometimes page after page about the womb. Could some defect in the womb trigger cramps? Does it secrete feminine seminal fluid and infect itself? The thought of having to examine Fröken Wallin in that way makes the doctor uneasy. And thank goodness there are more modern methods of treating women’s diseases than going in and cutting their uterus out. Besides, it would be so repugnantly familiar. After all he’s known the Wallins a long time. Remembers when her father offered him a cognac. Young Captain Wallin’s wife had had a daughter. And Captain Wallin toasted with everyone
he met. Of course the doctor would have a cognac with him. In the middle of a bright morning. ‘Cheers, damn it. I’m so damned happy, Lohrman.’ Those were the days.
‘We must rule out purely physical causes. If you have a stone in your shoe, it doesn’t help for us to talk about it. That won’t make the stone disappear.’
‘I have more than a stone in my shoe.’
‘Stones don’t give you any such nightmares,’ says Fru Hansson. Elvira Wallin stares at her. As if surprised that she can even speak.
Dr. Lohrman puffs on his pipe. ‘You’ll have laudanum to help you sleep. You’ll sleep soundly and won’t dream. That will make you calmer. But first we’ll try another thing that can help your body to relax. Many women have nervous syndromes connected with the lower parts of the abdomen. The female parts. Knots of tension seem to form there, which nature sometimes needs a little help in loosening up.’
He walks over to the desk. Unlocks the leather-covered case. Opens it. Elvira Wallin watches. Scared and curious. Fru Hansson watches Elvira Wallin. She smiles. Almost maliciously. Dr. Lohrman puts down his pipe. Takes out the massage machine. Inserts a crank in one end of it and begins to crank it. A faint ticking is heard.
‘These days there are even electric versions of these machines. But they’re not as reliable, and even if I think that as a doctor I should be open to the latest scientific discoveries, well, do we really know how electricity affects our bodies? There are experiments that show that plants die just from getting electric light. What does that mean for us? I’ll stick to this device for the time being.’
Something clicks inside the machine. Dr. Lohrman removes the crank and lays it in the box. Picks up a piece of chamois leather.
The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories Page 23