by Alex Pheby
‘Good! And now with your hands on the crown of your head.’
Schreber did it.
‘Five more, please!’
By the fourth, Schreber had no choice but to breathe in through the mouth. The Jewish gentleman’s cigarette smoke—tabac noir, thick and white and salted—came in with the cold morning breeze, making the old man cough.
‘It was not like this when we were boys, all this huffing and puffing, all this coughing,’ he said. ‘You were quite the perfect child. Healthy and robust. Isn’t that right? I, on the other hand was what your father called a “lop-sided degenerate.” But now… Please, attend to your hopping. I don’t mean to distract you.’
‘Arms out to the side and then jump up with the right foot, and come down on the left!’
Breath was hard to catch and the Jew was right—in his childhood Schreber could have continued crouching and bending and jumping from leg to leg for ever. Rössler inclined his pencil to the horizontal. All those years ago this doctor would have had an eternity in which to observe and make notes. But Schreber was no longer a child.
‘I feel faint,’ he panted to the Jewish gentleman, and his left arm fell from the horizontal.
Rössler made a sharp sound under his breath, but checked himself. ‘If you wish, you may return to your chair to regain yourself. We can continue in a little while.’
Müller came down from the pergola at a trot, wheeling the Bath chair, and Schreber sat in it. The Jew stood in front of him, put his cigarette in the corner of his mouth and held out his hand.
‘My name is Alexander, if that helps,’ he said. Schreber took his hand without thinking, and gave his own name.
‘I know your name, sir,’ Alexander said.
Schreber nodded, still trying to catch his breath. Rössler came over without as much as a glance at Alexander, who stood a little to the side to allow Rössler to pass.
‘Herr Schreber,’ the doctor said, adjusting his glasses with one hand and clutching his notebook to his chest with the other, ‘it is my understanding that the human body, of which the mind is but a constituent part, acts as a single mechanism. What affects the operations of one part often has an effect in another, and by acting on organ A, we might render an effect on organ B, and by observing part C, a fault might be brought to light in part D. With me so far?’
Schreber and Alexander both nodded. The smoke from Alexander’s cigarette found its way over to Müller and, to Schreber’s relief, the orderly began to cough. Rössler looked over at him, and he stifled the cough with his sleeve.
‘Well, with machines like the brain and, for that matter, any of the other internal organs, actual observation—in the live specimen at least—is very difficult—although not strictly impossible… I digress—it is a rule amongst physicians that we must attempt, where possible, the least invasive means of treatment before we embark on the more… fundamental ones. Do you understand?’
‘Not…’
‘I cannot look at your brain, sir, but I can look at the rest of you and work out from that if there might be a problem. Clear?’
‘Very familiar idea,’ said Alexander. ‘Your father might well have agreed. In fact,’—he pulled deeply on the last of his cigarette and then flicked the dog-end in a high arc off down the lawn—‘I think I might recognise the notion, the substantive part. Isn’t it in the Pangymnastikon? Don’t you recognise it?’
‘Yes,’ Schreber replied, to both men.
‘Very good,’ said Rössler. ‘You see what I’m getting at with this, do you then? Very good!’
The doctor nodded to Müller, who tipped Schreber up so that the soles of his shoes hit the grass, and when the judge leaned forward, Müller pulled out the Bath chair and followed Rössler back to the gazebo with it.
‘He is a good doctor, I’ve heard,’ Alexander said. ‘Not in your father’s league—he does not publish—but then, might this not give him more time for his patients? Mightn’t it alleviate the suspicion one always has of professionally successful men? That their attentions are not always fully on the matter in front of them? That they always have one eye looking, as it always must, toward their reputation, or some more important business, or the wider considerations of their field? I don’t know. It’s just an idea.’
‘I don’t know,’ Schreber muttered. ‘Is this to be my treatment?’ he called out to Rössler.
Rössler took off his glasses and cleaned the lenses with his handkerchief.
‘No, no! This is not treatment, Herr Schreber. My aim this morning is to make a close observation of you, and by doing so make a diagnosis of your problem. Treatment and diagnosis are not the same thing. I will attempt to diagnose any problems with your gross nervous function before moving on to understanding the psychic causes of your disease. From there we can consider further intervention. Clear?’
Rössler returned his glasses to his nose and raised his arms again. Schreber nodded.
‘You see, he wants to make a good stab at a cure. Just like your father. He wants to get a good look at the problem so that he can bring his science to bear on it. Like Moritz did.’
Schreber’s arms fell abruptly to his sides as if the strings had been cut.
‘You knew my father?’
Alexander smiled. ‘I did know him. And this Rössler reminds me of him. A poor imitation, but an imitation nonetheless.’
Indeed, the way Rössler was standing—stiffly and perfectly upright, with his head back and his chest out—was very like Schreber’s father, and the cool breeze that made goose-pimples rise on the old judge’s arms was just like the air on the cold mornings of his boyhood, standing in the garden of the Institute.
‘Didn’t your father stand in front of you in the same way?’ Alexander said. ‘And weren’t you expected to watch and listen just as this doctor expects you to watch and listen now?’
Schreber nodded.
‘It’s almost like being there again, isn’t it? On that day. Do you know the day I mean?’
Yes.
It was like that day. ‘I don’t know you. Please leave me to my exercises.’
Alexander did not leave him.
‘Didn’t your father come down, as he always did for the inspection of the children, precisely half an hour after your mother fed and watered you, and washed the dirt from behind your ears and under your nails, and straightened your collars and cuffs? Didn’t she pick specks of invisible dust and stray hair from your velvet jackets?’
She did, and afterward his father checked that they had not soiled themselves in some perceptible manner in the period between their mother leaving and his arrival. Then he marched them out, arms stiff by their sides like those of clockwork soldiers, down to the part of the lawn that was under the big tree.
‘Didn’t he stand there in front of you, occasionally in shadow and occasionally in light, depending on how the branches of the tree waved, with his jacket off, laid carefully on the grass beside him? There in his white shirt he puffed out his chest, and gestured that you should do the same, all of you, brothers and sisters alike, though, if truth were told, he always took more care that you boys did as was asked, and the girls had a little more leeway. Isn’t that right?’
It was, Gustav always said as much, and their father made one posture after another, a serious look on his face, and the children repeated them, smiling sometimes.
‘When the easy business was finished he rolled up his sleeves, didn’t he? First he’d take off the cuffs and put them on his jacket, and then he rolled the sleeves back up past the elbow and he started on the combinations—a jump and a stretch, a bow and a sweep. A hop and a twist and a sweep and a jump. Jump, bow, stretch, turn, hop, hop, twist, jump, bend. It got very complicated! As much a test of memory as of the muscles and sinews. Like a dance, though I don’t think any of you would have made the comparison. Too effeminate! By God if there wa
s something old Moritz didn’t like it was that a boy should be effeminate! Isn’t that right?’ The Jew frowned and Schreber knew that it was true. To be effeminate was the worst thing a boy could be: To wear his mother’s things, that was certainly not done. Or to pamper the little ones.
‘Old Moritz—Papa—he jumped higher and stretched lower and went faster and faster until by the end you children were flushed. Once, his collar came loose and flapped at the side. Do you remember that? Perhaps you don’t, but I can tell you that it did! Your straight and respectable old father, even he wasn’t completely immune! But then, you know that already. You know that already. No one’s immune. Are they? His collar coming unbuttoned…’
Then Papa walked off, back to the house. Gustav followed behind with the jacket and cuffs, returning a few seconds later to take them on laps of the trees until they were called in.
‘Rössler wants you.’ Alexander flicked a wrist in the doctor’s direction, pursed his lips, and took another cigarette.
‘Copy me,’ Rössler said, and bent down to touch his toes. He barely made it halfway.
Alexander frowned.
‘Dear, dear! Very bad…’
He walked over so that he stood beside Rössler. When the doctor moved, Alexander, cigarette placed firmly between his teeth, mimicked the movements the doctor made, except that this was not mimicry, it was something better: the perfect representation of the movements the doctor only hinted at. The Jew touched his toes and, it was clear to see, could have gone further and put the palms of his hands down flat on the grass if he had chosen to do so. Schreber followed suit, though he could not do much better than the doctor.
‘How old do you think I am?’ Alexander said with a smile.
Schreber shook his head.
‘Guess. Please. I won’t be offended.’
‘I have no idea.’ Not young, but then not old either. There was no telling from his dress.
Alexander reached down and touched his toes and then, as if to give a clue, he leapt up in a star jump.
‘I am your age, more or less. It is something, wouldn’t you say, for a man of our age to make these movements? To touch his toes and leap? Not every man can do it. Your father could, or should I say, would have been able to, if he had not been taken so young.’
‘You seem to know a great deal about my father.’
‘A great deal. We had much in common. We were both sickly children and we both made men of ourselves—or had men made of us, which is a little different. But I suppose in the end we all succumb to our original poverty. Don’t you think? He in his way, and we in ours?’
Rössler was demonstrating a squatting posture in which his arms were raised first up and then out to the sides. Schreber was too concerned with Alexander’s words to notice.
‘What business is any of this of yours?’
‘Please attend to me, Herr Schreber,’ Rössler snapped.
‘Do as he says. He might know what he is doing. Anything is possible.’
Alexander crouched and beckoned to Schreber to do the same.
Schreber stopped.
‘If I can do it, you can,’ Alexander chided.
Schreber did his best, but Alexander was disappointed.
‘Let me tell you a story,’ he said. ‘It might make this pass a little quicker.’
‘You may do what you wish. I have no interest.’
‘You might. The story is about you. Shall I begin?’
Schreber went down on his haunches and said nothing.
‘There once was a house in which things ran like clockwork. You could predict everything. There was never any doubt as to who should be where, and what might happen when. The people in this house—a family—they knew that they had only to follow the pattern of the day, and to do the things that were supposed to be done, and that everything would be fine. They were well off, this family: not ostentatiously so, but comfortable. The owner of the place was a doctor of sorts—I see you are starting to recognise yourselves—and this doctor had two sons and three daughters, and the doctor and his wife arranged matters so that order prevailed in their house. All to the good, no doubt. Well, one day everything changed, and not for the better.’
‘Herr Schreber, a little higher in the arms if you can.’
‘On that day the doctor was struck by an iron ladder, on the head, while performing advanced exercises in the gymnasium. An accident. No fault of his own. He followed his regimen the day before, and there had been no hint of anything unusual, nor anything the day before that, nor the one before that, nor off, back into time, for days and weeks and years. No one ever suspected that there would come a day when the order of things would be interrupted by this strange turn of fate. Isn’t that right? It was a surprise, wasn’t it?’
Schreber tried to appear as if he wasn’t listening, but Alexander didn’t stop. Rössler bobbed up and down in front of the gazebo and Schreber focussed on him. But the words kept coming…
‘Surprise or not, the fall of that ladder is inexplicable. You would know. I’m right, aren’t I? There was nothing to see? It was a mystery. For everyone? Perhaps. Though, if one were to have looked closely—very closely—at every square inch of that gymnasium, it must have been possible to see the signs—fatigue in the jointing that attached the ladder to the wall, perhaps. Or crumbling in the plaster. A little give which, through repetition, when the doctor removed and replaced the ladder every day, became a looseness, although never enough for the doctor to notice. A tiny increment each day, below the threshold of human sensitivity. Perhaps this could have been detected if an interested party had taken it upon themselves to go around with a magnifying glass, inspecting the gymnasium. It is irrelevant, because no one did examine the place in that degree of detail. What would have been the point? So, the strange day came and the ladder was removed from its fitting, as usual, and placed against the wall. He used it to exercise the muscles of his calves and thighs, ten steps up, ten steps down, ten steps up, ten steps down, and then, those parts of his body properly exercised, the ladder was returned to its fitting, apparently safely. The next set of exercises was begun. Your father was diligent and his diligence was reinforced by routine and repetition. All very laudable. All very reliable. Exemplary behaviour. Right?’
He was right. It was all right.
‘The only problem with this perfect predictability was, of course, that there was never any chance that he would not be where he always was, predictably, reliably, laudably, directly below the ladder as it hung from its fitting—put out of the way to maintain an efficient tidiness in the room, reflecting what he believed was an efficient tidiness in all areas of his life. A less conscientious man might have escaped your father’s fate by not adhering quite so strictly to the routine. He might have stopped for his coffee early, or been distracted by the paper. But not your father. Not Moritz. He was bound to be beneath that ladder when it fell. Where else would he have been at that time of day?
‘I suppose a suspicious man might wonder whether the other people about the place—I should have mentioned that this doctor’s home was also his place of work, a sanatorium for orthopaedic cases, and that it was frequented by the boarders of that institute, as well as by the staff and their families—we might wonder whether if, amongst the other occupants of the house, there was someone with a grievance against the good doctor. Someone who might lack the courage and manliness to confront him directly, and who might—let us speculate—have whittled away at the fitting with a purloined dinner knife, hanging one-armed from the climbing rope beside the ladder. But we are not suspicious. There is no need to posit the existence of such a criminal and, even if we did, there could be no proof, not this long after the event. Besides, the law of Occam’s razor argues against unnecessarily complicated explanations of events when simple ones are available, as any man of science will tell you. As your father would have told you. No, it is en
ough to say that the ladder fell, and that your father was beneath it, and that the ladder struck him on the head. It did not kill him, although it might well have done for a less vital man; an iron ladder is, after all, nothing to be lightly shrugged off, and when falling from a height it might easily crush a man’s skull. A reasonable man might, indeed, expect it to. He might rely on it doing so—in other circumstances—but, rather, on this day it merely caused the man’s nerves to become disturbed in his skull, and made vibrations where there should have been none.’
Schreber whirled on the Jew, and jabbed at him with his finger.
‘I ask again, what business is this of yours?’
Alexander stepped back and smoothed down his waistcoat.
‘It is merely a story,’ he smiled, ‘something to pass the time. Rössler wants you back on one leg. It is easier to obey him. It keeps him quiet. There, he returns to his notes and there is a smile on his face—good news? A solution to the Schreber mystery? We will see. To return to the story—the previous afternoon, your father exercised and was struck by a ladder. He retired to bed. This was in the early morning: he retired to bed before even taking his lunch. Absolutely unprecedented. Wasn’t it? And this was not to be an isolated deviation. The next morning, neither your father nor your mother came down to greet you children, and the maid was forced to seek your parents out, wondering whether there would be a change to the breakfast routine, though quite unable to imagine why. She found them in the bedroom, the doctor, your father, fully dressed down to his boots, lying on the neatly made bed with your mother standing by, chewing her hair. The girl was sent out to fetch your own doctor. This is all by-the-by. What is important is that there were no adults available to take you children in hand. You were left in a vacuum, one which would have been nothing in a normal house, where, let us be honest, chaos is more the natural state in the presence of five young children. But, in this haven of order, where each day was precisely like the next from the moment of birth to this one day, the contrast was jarring for you all, to say the least.