‘Now, then, Fröken Wallin. Can you place the leather on your belly, please. Below your navel and down over your thighs. It protects your clothing.’
‘Is it going to hurt?’
‘Oh, no. You may perceive a very strong stinging sensation just before the knot loosens, but that is completely normal.’
Elvira Wallin places the piece of leather over her belly. Stretches out. Takes a deep breath. Looks at the machine. Gleaming brass and wooden handle. The white contraption at the end looks like a ball of white skin. With long calluses on it. Seams. Fru Hansson grabs her hands. And Dr. Lohrman starts the machine. It buzzes like a mechanical toy.
It takes almost twenty minutes. Dr. Lohrman has to tighten his machine several times. Elvira Wallin loses count, sweats and tenses in a strange way. She presses against Fru Hansson’s hands and feels how she too is sweating. She stares up at the ceiling. Closes her eyes. It flits. And flits. Elvira Wallin knows that she’s not dreaming this time, and Dr. Lohrman’s machine buzzes and rubs on the knots in her nerves. It’s like being on a swing. Twirling around when you’re dancing. Or when you lace a corset a little too tightly and you get breathless at the slightest movement. The machine sends thrills far down into her legs. It tickles, she wants to kick her legs and wriggle away. She presses herself against the machine’s head. Twists her hips. Clenches her teeth. Breathes harder. Presses the nape of her neck against Fru Hansson’s arm.
The machine does something that reminds her of her dream. But without clawing and tearing. As if the machine were making something nasty pleasant. And she would so like to take off some of her clothes, for it is so hot. Lie on the sofa in just her corset, underwear and petticoat, bonnet and chemise. Feel the wind blow and not let all that thick fabric in her skirts dampen the vibrations. Dream about the staircase. About Dr. Lohrman’s stern look. The darkness of the cellar. About how the men tearing down the mill in Tegnérslunden stare at her. About Fru Hansson’s strong hands. The smell of seaweed and putrid damp. About the two students who share a room high up in the rear house. Both of them are slender and lean. Light on their feet and quick to laugh. That which waits in the dark. Waits for her. In the smell of seaweed. She sweats. And sweats. The corset itches madly. One of the students has a little blond mustache. He must have tended to it with care. Maybe for her sake. She wants to swing on a swing. Kick. Scream out loud. The spasm makes her blush. Her breasts feel strange. The smell of the staircase. Mother’s perfume. Cooking fumes in the kitchen. Soft, gloved hands. Up her leg. Over her belly. Over all of her.
‘The paroxysm was exceptionally powerful,’ writes Dr. Lohrman, ‘and for a while plunged the young patient into an unreachable condition of the greatest exhaustion. She raves like a drunk and becomes weak in her limbs. She rests on the chaise longue, altogether heavy in that previously so tense body. Only a fit of speaking in tongues clears the released tension out of her body. The patient is given a glass of water to drink and slowly sits up, tired but her mind at ease. I explain to the patient that in all probability she will now be free from the tensions that caused the bad dreams, and that just to be on the safe side she will get a small dose of laudanum to take with her, to be taken at bedtime.’
Fru Hansson led Elvira Wallin to a room with a washbasin. Let her wash her face. Accompanied her back to the doctor, who told her about the laudanum and followed her to the door.
‘Are you sure you can walk on your own? Do your legs feel weak?’
‘I’m fine. And I don’t have far to walk. Mother and Fru Sandell are waiting at Café Petissan.’
‘I can ask Fru Hansson to follow you.’
‘I’ll manage, thanks.’ Elvira Wallin composes herself. The major’s eldest daughter. She thinks about her father while she walks down the two sets of stairs to the street. That it’s getting harder and harder to remember how he really was. He’s becoming more and more the portrait in the living room and the stories mother tells. She misses him. Misses having two parents. A stern and strict mother, and a cheerful and boisterous father. There’s more balance in life if there’s a man to liven up the days a little.
She walks up to Café Petissan. Self-assured and elegant, a nice catch for a Lieutenant Sparre or an industrialist’s son. Elvira Wallin knows French and German, can dance and dine, and knows her own worth. Boys watch her go by and she laughs inwardly. It’s lovely to be alive. As soon as those stupid dreams are gone she’ll really live. Go to the theater and help mother to manage father’s shares.
Hedda Wallin is curious and inquisitive. She wants to know if she feels better. If the doctor’s new methods really work. Elvira Wallin responds that they talked. Fru Sandell wonders about what. About dreams and why we dream them. She doesn’t mention the machine or the strange spasm. But she assures them she feels more at ease. Less tense.
‘And now you’ll have a proper lunch,’ says Hedda Wallin. ‘So that both body and soul get what they need.’
It’s a lovely walk home. Fru Sandell accompanies them. She’s curious. And a little impertinent. She asks if her friend the doctor takes liberties? She has heard of doctors who do such things. Mesmerize their patients and unbutton their clothes. And if someone were going to unbutton your blouse, wouldn’t it be nicer with someone other than Dr. Lohrman? Hedda Wallin rolls her eyes. Elvira Wallin laughs. Dr. Lohrman is so old. Probably forty. Mother rolls her eyes even more.
‘Totally ancient, in other words?’ Fru Sandell laughs. ‘Do you know how old I am?’
‘I didn’t mean it like that.’
‘Oh no, don’t worry. But that beard of his. The man looks like a little billy goat.’
‘Goat or not,’ Elvira ventures to joke. Cheeky with the adult women. ‘He has his housekeeper there. It’s all very respectable. A tailor is more intrusive.’
They laugh their way up Tegnérsgatan. Even mother laughs a little. That makes Elvira Wallin happy. Mother is often so weighed down with worry. Problems with money and stock shares. Karl and Margareta’s studies. It’s not easy being a single woman and having a hysterical daughter on top of things.
They eat. Vegetable soup and a small cutlet. Mother talks with Fru Sandell. They sit the whole evening and talk about the old times. When they were young and rushed off to dances with officers from the Life Guards. Mother loves talking about those times. How fun it was for her and her friends then. When the king was crowned and there were parties in Stockholm. Before the regiments moved out to the wilderness. They never talk about having fun nowadays. Instead, they get together, the same officers’ wives, and complain. They crochet, help the poor and bake cakes. Talk about books. Zola and Fröding. Politics. Julius Mankell and the Suffrage Union. And they read coffee grounds, go to séances and visit churches. They crochet and embroider. Go to the theater. Go for strolls. Watch the parade of Guards. And have little secret gatherings. Like a secret society. The Göta Life Guards’ Handcrafts Association, mother calls it. A little order of women with education and taste. And ‘who get along fine without men’.
She takes the laudanum in her room. After she’s brushed out her hair. Before she extinguishes the lamp. Two drops in a little glass of water. It tastes strong. Burns like brandy. She takes another dose. Just in case. Blows out the lamp. Lies a little while in the dark and listens for sounds in the house. She waits to get to ride the dragon. To take off in a colorful Chinese dream, but she gets extremely drowsy. She hears steps. Creaking. Distant voices. Elvira Wallin falls asleep to the sound of Dr. Lohrman’s machine and with the bitter taste of laudanum on her tongue. The memory of the spasm creeps up and down her legs. Pulls at her. Tickles. And Elvira Wallin walks down the stairs. The long, narrow backstairs down into the cellar under the house on Upplandsgatan. She dreams. A special laudanum dream. Mother gives her the key there. And Fru Sandell and Fru von Kantzow and Fru Mosander are there too. They stand on the staircase and watch as she goes by. While a wind licks at all their white petticoats. She’s l
ightheaded. Tired and feverish. She takes someone’s hand. Thinks about the machine. That it was nice to drive the tension out of her body. She wants to try it directly against her skin. Where she can feel it more.
It’s dark in the cellar. A hand is holding her wrist. Someone is standing behind her. Takes hold of her other wrist. Shoves her forward. Towards that which smells. Towards that which twists around her legs, which tears and claws and makes her think of Fru Hansson. Is she the one holding onto her? Elvira Wallin stumbles forward. And falls. She starts to scream in the dream. But doesn’t wake up. It tears at her hair and her petticoat. Presses her down on the dirt floor. She hears Dr. Lohrman’s voice far away. Thinks about Fru Hansson and mother and what she feels is a thousand times stronger than the doctor’s machine. It buzzes and hisses and thrusts until everything goes black.
Elvira Wallin wakes up in the hallway outside her room. On the floor. In just her petticoat. She’s sweaty and her whole body is shaking. Her hair is tangled and there is dirt under her fingernails. She doesn’t cry. Doesn’t scream. She just lies there. Waits out the spasms that shake her body. She thinks that she’s had a fit. That she’s drunk. That her stomach hurts. Her groin. She can’t remember how she got out of bed. She can’t remember where she’s been.
She crawls into bed. Splashes a lot of laudanum in the water glass on the bedside table. A cup of water and opium. It tastes bad. And her head spins until she doesn’t remember anything anymore.
Much later her mother comes in. She’s worried. Elvira has slept too long. Mother found her corset in the kitchen. Does Elvira walk in her sleep? With her frail back, she should sleep tied down. She knows that. Mother goes for coffee. Fusses over her. Sends an errand boy to Dr. Lohrman.
The doctor comes at lunchtime. Elvira Wallin is still lying in bed. Tired and feverish. The maid Signe gave her honey water and wheat bread with butter. Helped her to comb her hair and change her undergarments. Elvira Wallin has long scratches on her legs. From her ankles all the way up around her hips. Thin, superficial wounds. As if a cat clawed her, says the maid. But she wouldn’t have a cat under her skirt. Hedda Wallin orders her to cut Elvira’s fingernails. So that she doesn’t scratch herself like a dog.
‘Do you remember what happened last night?’ the doctor asks. He sits on a stool in the doorway to Elvira Wallin’s bedroom. Fru Wallin and Signe stand in the hallway, silent and out of sight.
‘I went down the stairs.’
‘Again?’
‘Yes.’
‘And it was the same dream you usually have?’
‘Yes. But yet it was so different.’
‘Can you say what was different?’
‘The dream was blurrier than ever before. It was so frightening. I think I’m going to need your machine, Doctor. I have knots of tension.’ Elvira Wallin points at herself. ‘There and there and there and there. It itches so.’
‘Is that why you scratch yourself?’
‘I’m not the one scratching me. They hold onto my hands and scratch me. It’s driving me crazy.’
‘Who scratches you? Is it one person or more than that?’
‘I don’t know. But there are many of them. I can’t see. It’s dark.’
Dr. Lohrman takes off his glasses. Tries not to look when Elvira Wallin scratches the inside of her thigh.
‘I want massage and laudanum. Then I’ll be quite well.’
‘Do you promise to tell then? About what was different?’
‘The patient promises to reveal the most painful and private details of her dream,’ writes Dr. Lohrman. ‘But as soon as she is brought to a strong paroxysm and has gotten her small dose of laudanum, she falls into a deep sleep. The patient giggles during the massage and her mother and the maid have to hold her so that the process can be performed correctly. The little maid who holds the patient’s legs gets kicked in the face and her nose starts to bleed. The tumult attracts the housekeeper Andersson and Fru Wallin’s other two children, who all three stand in the doorway and witness the procedure. The older child, a boy of fourteen, finds the procedure interesting, while his younger sister finds it frightening. When her older sister’s giggles turn to screams, the little girl begins to cry. Fru Wallin reprimands the housekeeper and asks her to take the child away. As soon as the patient’s paroxysm has passed and she has become limp and docile, Fru Wallin lets go of her and runs to see to her younger children.
‘A little later, when the patient is sleeping, I talk with the mother. She wants to know everything about her daughter’s condition. She strikes me as both curious and concerned and tells me that when she was young she was afflicted by similar nightmares. Before she married and, however, not with the same intensity. It seems to me that it pains her to see her daughter suffering the same kind of torments as her. She is very inquisitive about my methods and conclusions and what I have learned about her daughter’s dreams.’
‘She says I give her a key?’
‘Yes. To the cellar. It’s common for family to be incorporated into dreams. The mind plays with the things it knows best.’
‘How preposterous.’
It all soon becomes a habit. In the evenings, Elvira Wallin sleeps full of laudanum. At night, the nightmares come. In the daytime Elvira Wallin stays in bed. Slumbers for long periods. She drinks tea and eats biscuits. She is warm and languid. Pale but lucid. She reads the newspapers. The Family Journal. Magazines about art, news, and fashion. Bathes. Doesn’t want to go out. Hedda Wallin is supported by her friends who come to visit. One and another two and two more. They look in and greet Elvira Wallin. Are worried, but encouraging. They sit in the parlor and talk with Hedda Wallin. Elvira Wallin hears them talking far away. But never about what. She wants to sit with them. To be grown up and talk about balls and theater and suffrage. Not to be sick and tired. To be hungry for something besides applesauce and laudanum. To be happy and not just want to scratch herself all over.
Dr. Lohrman comes every afternoon. With the machine in its case. Elvira Wallin wants massage. That makes her calm. Almost happy. Affectionate. One afternoon she asks little Signe to come and kiss her. She says terrible things when she refuses. That Signe too will surely be ridden by the dragon. As soon as it rides Elvira Wallin to death, then it will come straight for Signe.
‘Are we merely alleviating the symptoms of something incurable?’ Fru Wallin asks when the doctor is about to leave for the evening.
‘Right now we are only alleviating the symptoms.’
‘I’m very grateful to you for admitting that. And for doing what you can. No one did as much for me when I was sick.’
‘I hope I’ll be able to get at more than just the symptoms.’
‘You’re very persistent. But sometimes maybe all we can do is just alleviate suffering. Until the problem resolves on its own.’
‘Do you think it will resolve on its own?’
‘My dreams stopped.’
‘I want to understand. That is modern medicine. One understands the mind and cures it.’
Fru Wallin laughs. ‘Understand the mind? Can one ever do that?’
‘I think so. If one looks deep enough.’
‘And you aren’t afraid that the abyss will stare back at you?’
‘Not really. It’s another person’s mind we’re talking about. Not some kind of inferno.’
Dr. Lohrman asks Fru Wallin politely about her dreams. If she recognizes her daughter’s nightmare. Whether she too scratched her legs. He doesn’t dare ask about the worst details. If she also thought that snakes crept inside her. Fru Wallin doesn’t want to answer. The dreams were dreadful and private. And they disappeared when she got pregnant. ‘Maybe I was afraid of ending up an old maid,’ she laughs.
But Elvira Wallin isn’t pregnant. And she soon claims that she doesn’t dream anymore about going down the stairs. She doesn’t remember her dreams anymore. Dr. Lohrman is
sure it’s the laudanum that makes her not remember. He takes the matter up with Fru Wallin.
‘Could it be something other than ghosts in your daughter’s head?’
‘What would it be?’
Dr. Lohrman wonders. Looks at Fru Wallin’s hair. It’s almost white. Simply but faultlessly done up. ‘That someone is assaulting her here in her room and the dreams and all the theatrics are a defense against the trauma.’
‘You and I both know that you’re the only man who comes around here.’
‘Besides the night-soil men.’
‘But they only come for a little while every other day. And Andersson escorts them. One can’t have such people running around loose in one’s home.’ She laughs. And looks tired. ‘You can do better than that, Doctor.’
‘Can she be meeting someone?’
‘A boy, you mean?’
‘Why not? I’ve seen both the youths who live in the rear house. Charming young men, to be sure.’
‘Do you seriously think that my daughter runs out at night to cuddle with a poor student? And moreover that she’s playing at being crazy in order to hide it?’
‘It was a hypothesis.’
‘Signe lives on the ground floor of the rear house. She keeps an eye on who’s coming and going. It is after all my house.’
‘And I suppose you’ve asked her if Elvira comes round there.’
‘Naturally.’ Fru Wallin sounds pleased. ‘Signe sees who comes and goes. She may be young, but she’s a shrewd girl with sharp eyes.’
Dr. Lohrman investigates the backstairs. One afternoon when Elvira Wallin is sleeping and her mother is entertaining two women from a handcrafts society. It’s a narrow spiral staircase with narrow windows, one between each floor. It is barely wide enough for two people. Not more. Down at the courtyard there is a little landing. A door leads out to the yard. Unlocked. A door leads to the coal cellar. Locked. He asks the housekeeper Andersson who has the key. It’s hanging on a hook by the stove. Where it always hangs. Where else would it hang?
The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories Page 24