Playthings

by Alex Pheby

  He reached as far as he could, half expecting there would be an answering touch: a brother or sister’s hand stretched out from the other side of the bed. First recoil and then, when the fingers approached each other again slowly, a giggle—Anna? The weight of her on the mattress above, bowing the springs.

  A girl’s voice.

  When they touched again it was boldly, pushing each other away, fighting cheerfully for the territory within the reach of their hands. More giggles and—to a pinch—a yelp and a laugh, full blown and deep, from a boy whose voice had broken—Gustav—but who was still a boy, and Schreber, Paul, the little one, laughing and laughing without knowing why.

  Anna laughed to see them both laughing and rocked with it until the springs of the bed creaked and she got up and bounced up and down. They were laughing too much to think it through, even Gustav, who should have known better in the darkness of a winter’s evening, still early, so that in the summer it would have been light, but past the time when they should all have been asleep in their own beds, toys put away and the door shut, the lights snuffed out. Instead, this riotous, calamitous racket violated the silence of the house and suddenly, like a crack of thunder, any prelude unheard or unnoticed, the door opened with such force that it slammed the things off the little table. A glass half full of water was smashed, and the light of a candle shone bright in the room. Through the gap under the bed, two feet, bare and red.

  ‘Get up!’

  When Paul stood to attention he cut his foot on pieces of glass.

  His father’s rage—his red face and wide mouth, eyes slit, half-closed, and lines etching out over his cheeks and forehead like spider’s web—was worse than the wound. Red blood and stinging, small shards of glass in his flesh. All bearable. When he dared to lift his foot from the ground, only a little, he felt the tackiness of blood under his heel and his big toe. His father ordered him forward and when he went he left a trail behind him.

  When Gustav moved from his spot and came to put his arm around Paul, to ask him if he was hurt, it was the defiance that did it. It was the still unfamiliar deepness of the boy’s voice that did it. It was the impudence that did it. Their father’s hand sliced through the air, sleeve dragging behind it. There was a sharp report, like a rifle shot. The hand—his father’s hand—the wedding ring yellow against red skin, huge and stiff, that moved his wrists, came hard against Gustav’s cheek, who was passing from boy to man, but who still could not help but make a sound. Klara, seeing this, was mortified to silence and now Anna came out from under the sheets:

  ‘You’re a bad man! You’re a bad man! You are a bad man!’

  She was frightened of glass, this girl.

  So how could she be the one who had come here, bringing the clock but not the key? How could she have put this thing in his room without the key? Why? So that it would die unwound? Its hands stilled?

  Schreber is found by Müller the following morning in a poor state. The orderly gives in to the temptation to punish a symbol of his family’s downfall, and his patience is tested by Schreber’s endless questions.

  XIII

  The door hissed on its hinges.

  ‘Judge, Judge, Judge…’

  Müller. The orderly made a sound between his teeth, like a warning chirrup from a beetle, and rattled the trolley into the bedroom. Above the brass wheels clattering in their housings, a higher note: the loosely stoppered bottle, and a glass placed close by it, striking together as the trolley moved across the boards of the floor. It went over to the window, and a little later, there was sudden weight on the bed above.

  Müller drummed his palms on the tight, undisturbed sheets, one on the muffling blanket, and one clean on an edge where the blanket was turned back.

  ‘Judge, Judge, Judge…’

  The orderly got up and drew the bath, dragging his feet. When he came back he paused for a moment in the doorway and then went to the trolley, where he poured Schreber his morning dose. It sounded like wine in the pouring. Perhaps he stood and looked at the half-filled glass. Perhaps there was a drip on the rim that Müller wiped away with his fingertip. The finger held up. He could have wiped it on his frock-coat. He could have rubbed the drip away between his finger and thumb. Or put it to his lips.

  ‘Sorry, Karl,’ Müller said, under his breath.

  He reached down and perhaps he took Schreber’s glass. Did he drink the medicine—the bromides—and refill the glass? It was so quick that it might not have happened at all.

  ‘Judge!’

  Schreber’s legs, poking out from under the bed, went stiff.

  ‘Time to get up, Judge!’

  The edge of the blanket came up so that the morning sun poured in.

  ‘I thought I was in a strange place,’ Schreber muttered. ‘I was in a tiny room; the walls were all around me. My brother and sisters…’

  There was wetness. Schreber reached down and under himself.

  ‘I have had… an accident. Where am I?’

  ‘You are in your rooms,’ said Müller, ‘where you always are.’

  ‘I couldn’t see anything. There were boards in front of my face, and when I tried to step back, there was nothing beneath my feet.’

  ‘That’ll come from lying under the bed. Let me get you out,’ Müller said.

  Müller grabbed Schreber’s right leg and in one pull dragged him into the light.

  Schreber turned slowly over and blinked. His face felt skewed over to the left, away from where his cheek had rested on the floorboards. There was dust in his hair. He sat up, hinging from the waist carefully, as if he might snap, and it was clear that his jacket was filthy and his shirt would need to be boiled.

  ‘Where was I?’ Schreber said.

  ‘Under the bed, Judge. Under the bed.’

  Schreber looked at the man. Was he talking Dutch?

  ‘Why would I… I don’t understand,’ Schreber said, and across his face passed the various signs of a man who is piecing together the events of a day he cannot properly remember. His lips moved to the sound of unspoken words, and now and then he frowned and made cryptic gestures with his hands.

  ‘I was standing in the dark… and then,’ Schreber tried, but everything was a blur.

  ‘You know, Judge…,’ said Müller—he walked around to the other side of the bed, peered under, and when he rose he wore a pinched look—‘…it is often more comfortable to sleep on top of the bed than underneath it. In my experience. And to use the lavatory when you wish to pass water.’

  Schreber looked at the bed and then over at his bedside table and then, at last, over at the clock, which rested on the table in the same place it had been the night before. Müller reached over and untucked the sheets.

  ‘Cleaner, too,’ Müller said, ‘although, you’ve saved me the job of washing the linen at least. What have I told you about too much water before bed? It’ll have to be reported. Now take your medicine.’

  ‘The clock.’

  ‘Come on, Judge, take your medicine and let’s have you in the bath. We’ll get those clothes off and down to the laundry.’

  ‘Who brought that clock?’

  Müller followed Schreber’s pointing finger. He rubbed his forehead and came over to loosen the old man’s shirt.

  ‘After breakfast, eh? Medicine first, then we’ll pop you in the tub, the woman will bring up some eggs, and we can discuss the clock after that.’

  ‘Was it Anna? Was it a little girl? She might have her hair in pony-tails. Blonde. She carries a doll? Was it her?’

  ‘Yes and no.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Look, Judge, I can explain it to you, but not while you’re sitting on the floor in the middle of the room, drenched in your own piss, in yesterday’s tweeds. Do you understand?’

  ‘Was it her?’

  ‘Right,’ Müller said. ‘We’ll ha
ve that jacket off for a start.’

  ‘Was it her?’

  ‘Have you taken your medicine, Judge?’

  ‘Was it her?’

  Müller took the shirt from Schreber’s back, upended him over his knee—sitting first on the bed—and he pulled down the old man’s trousers and under-things and when he was naked, still asking after his sister, Müller carried him over his shoulder, marched him off into the bathroom, and dumped him into the hot bath water.

  ‘It’s too hot!’ Schreber barked.

  Müller nodded. The orderly licked his lips and looked back into the room they had come from. To the trolley?

  ‘It’s too hot!’ Schreber said again.

  ‘Sorry…’ Müller muttered, ‘sorry.’ He left the room and there was the sound of glasses rattling. Unmistakable.

  When Müller returned, Schreber was doused, lobster red, with cold water from the jug on the nightstand. Then Müller mouthed silently some few words, three or four times in succession, and left the room. When he came back, he wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve.

  Schreber tried to get out of the bath, but Müller pushed him back in. It was a gentle restraint, but Schreber slipped and his head and face went under the water and when he came up he spluttered and spat and gasped like a fish in an angler’s net.

  ‘You stay in there, Judge.’

  Müller swallowed. He looked back into the bedroom, where the trolley was. It seemed for a moment as if he was going to go over to it again.

  ‘You stay in there,’ he said. ‘You need a good soak to clean you up.’

  He put his hand on Schreber’s shoulder, sitting by the bath, holding the old man in place, but looking always into the other room.

  ‘Anyway, the eggs aren’t here yet.’

  ‘The water is still very hot…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The water is too hot.’

  ‘Right… right.’

  Müller reached for a clean, dry towel, and gestured for Schreber to stand.

  ‘You do not intend to boil me then?’ Schreber asked.

  Müller frowned and looked away.

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  He dried the old man down and passed him his gown.

  ‘I think I can hear the woman with the eggs.’

  Müller left, and in the emptiness of the room, through the steam, Schreber heard her bringing his breakfast tray and smelt the eggs and ham faintly. He slipped his arm into the dressing gown, sore from the heat, and followed Müller into the living room.

  ‘How did she carry it?’

  The woman closed the door behind her.

  ‘In her hands, how else? Sit down and eat.’

  ‘Not the maid. Anna, I mean.’

  Müller sighed and shepherded Schreber around to where the breakfast waited for him.

  ‘In her hands,’ he repeated, ‘how else?’

  ‘Did she touch the glass?’

  ‘I wasn’t paying any attention.’ He pulled out the chair, and when Schreber made no attempt to sit in it, Müller gently chopped at the back of his knees with the flat of his hand. When Schreber sat by reflex, the orderly pushed the chair under the table before he could resist. ‘My dad used to own this place, you know. Farmer. Not the buildings. Just the land.’

  ‘Who did she come with?’

  Müller put the knife in one hand and the fork in the other.

  ‘She came alone. He had to sell it, the land. Legal fees. My brother, Karl. Got himself in trouble.’

  ‘You’re lying!’

  ‘Am I? I’m not. Judge cut his head off for it. Karl.’

  ‘How could she come alone? She is a little girl. No girl her age would be allowed out carrying a valuable clock through the streets of Leipzig without an escort. The notion is utterly ridiculous! What makes you lie? Who was with her? Was it Flechsig?’

  ‘That anything to do with you, Judge? My Karl?’ Müller picked up Schreber’s fork hand and speared the egg yolk with it. ‘Hard again… Don’t worry, I’ll give her what for.’

  ‘Did she come with Flechsig? Answer me!’

  ‘Who…? No, she came on her own, and she was no little girl.’

  ‘Then she was not Anna,’ Schreber nodded to himself. He took control of his own hands and carved a piece of ham.

  ‘The woman was Anna Jung, née Schreber, and she was your sister. She came to visit you, at last, at your request, and finding you… indisposed, she left you the clock—your mother’s—and she went.’

  ‘Gibberish!’

  ‘And you think you’re going home for Christmas?’

  ‘I am cured! I am entirely well. Of course I am well.’

  ‘Yet I come in this morning and you’ve pissed your pants and are sleeping half under the bed.’

  ‘An old man’s accident.’

  ‘And now you can’t understand that your sister might be an old woman and not a girl?’

  ‘It is you who doesn’t understand,’ Schreber said, chewing his eggs and ham.

  Müller sighed.

  ‘When you’ve had enough to eat, Judge, I’m to take you to see Rössler. He wants you down at the bottom of the garden, first thing.’

  Then Müller tidied up, loading what could be loaded onto the trolley and, when he thought that Schreber could not see him, knocking back a last dose of his bromides.

  ‘Sorry, Karl.’

  Medical gymnastics, past and present, the former used as a means of ensuring moral and physical wellbeing and done well, the latter as a means of scientific diagnosis and done poorly. The mysterious Jewish gentleman demonstrates an unsettling familiarity with the intimate details of Schreber’s life. A poor dog is rescued by Schreber’s father.

  XIV

  ‘Let’s begin with some simple stretches. Follow my lead.’

  Rössler hopped from his left foot to his right, with his arms up. He was framed in the central arch of the gazebo, wreathed by spreading ivy, and he resembled nothing more than an elderly pixie. Schreber looked down at his feet—his shoe leather was dark with dew and criss-crossed with inch-long grass trimmings.

  ‘Left, right, left, right! Come on, Herr Schreber! I’m not doing this for my own benefit!’

  Schreber raised his feet in turn. There was grass on the soles, too.

  ‘Arms up!’

  Schreber put his arms up.

  Over Rössler’s shoulder, with one foot on the stone step and his hand on his knee, was Müller, smirking and looking back up the lawn for someone with whom to share his amusement. Finding no one, he was forced to rely on his own company, which was, apparently, sufficient, because soon he was shaking with silent laughter, clasping his fingers over his lips. Rössler pivoted from the hips and described a semi-circle with his torso. When Schreber executed the move the doctor stopped and took his pad of paper. He made a note. The degree by which he imagined Schreber deviated from correct geometry? The length of time he took to right himself after performing the movement? To aid him in his observations, Rössler held his pencil upright at arm’s length and sighted down the arm.

  ‘What does this remind you of, Herr Doktor Präsident?’ said a voice from over his shoulder. Schreber span and there was the Jewish gentleman, so close that their noses almost touched. He gave off the scent of cigarettes and gentian bitters. Schreber leapt back.

  ‘What does this remind you of, ball-crusher?’

  ‘Herr Schreber!’ shouted Rössler. ‘Face front, arms up! Please! We are hardly begun. I promise you it will be worth the trouble.’

  Schreber turned to him and took a wide step to the side, so that he was away from the Jew.

  He took a step, too.

  ‘He is like your father, isn’t he? Do you remember? Down at the bottom of the garden.’

  ‘To the front!’

  If Mü
ller and Rössler recognised that the Jew was beside Schreber they made no sign of it. Müller continued to laugh and Rössler to demonstrate the required gymnastics. Schreber determined to ignore the Jew, too, and put up his arms and hopped, as he was directed.

  ‘Not bad,’ said the Jewish gentleman, speaking directly into his ear, ‘after all this time. Not bad at all. Though I have to say I’ve seen you do better.’ The movement of the words through the air tickled his skin. Schreber hopped forward.

  ‘Try to stay in one place, Herr Schreber! As if rooted to the earth. Like a tree. Although, of course, not so much that you can’t jump when asked. I’m sure you get my meaning. Try again, please!’

  ‘Who are you? Why do you watch me?’

  ‘You don’t remember me?’

  He stepped to the front, smiled widely, and kept very still, so Schreber could see him properly. It was the man in the carriage, he was certain of it. And the man who tapped his cane on the railings at Angelikastrasse. But who was that man?

  ‘I don’t know you at all.’

  ‘Really? I’m disappointed. Not surprised, I suppose. I don’t make much of an impression, do I? I’ve never had that kind of face, voice, whatever it is that other men remember. Women, on the other hand…’

  ‘I have seen you before, I think, but…’

  ‘But you don’t know me? It’s no matter.’

  ‘Herr Schreber! Please do not speak, just perform the exercises as I ask you to. It will go much more quickly that way.’

  Schreber shut his mouth and kept his focus on Rössler. The Jewish gentleman was there at the periphery, adjusting his lapels. Schreber dipped at the knee and took in air through his nostrils, and as he came back up he let it out with a snort through the corners of his mouth.

  ‘Excellent! Again, please!’

  Schreber breathed through the nose and dipped again. On the up stroke he couldn’t help but let some spittle pass his lips. The gentleman reached into his jacket for a cigarette and smiled compassionately, as if between friends—these little indiscretions are nothing, for men like us.