Playthings

by Alex Pheby

  ‘Did your wife never wish to provide you with an heir?’

  Rössler crossed the distance to the window without turning away from Schreber.

  ‘There are things I do not allow myself to think of.’

  Rössler stopped with his hand on the blind.

  ‘What things?’

  Schreber turned away. He looked down at the floor between his knees—at a bare heel, the remainder of the foot enclosed in the slipper. He lifted the heel and watched, as if it belonged to someone else, as he put it down again. Then he did the same with the other foot.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Rössler nodded, but he did not open the blind.

  ‘Did your wife never wish to be pregnant? It is something that most women desire, at some point? Or was there some difficulty?’

  The slippers were cheap. They were of the type Schreber preferred—soft leather uppers and a firm flat sole—but the stitching was loose.

  ‘Some incompetency on your part? Impotency?’

  ‘No,’ Schreber snapped. ‘I am very tired.’

  ‘Then why?’

  ‘I find it hard to breathe.’

  ‘If there was no obstruction…’

  ‘I cannot sleep.’

  Now Rössler was in front of him. He knelt at his feet and with his thin, hard hands he gripped Schreber’s wrists.

  ‘Why didn’t you have children?’

  His hold was tight.

  ‘We had Fridoline.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Of course. She was there when I came home. Sabine arranged it all, while I was away. The adoption.’

  ‘Indeed? Why did she not adopt a boy child? To continue your father’s line? To maintain the family name?’

  Schreber pulled away, but Rössler held tight. Tighter. He did not intend to let go.

  ‘I…’

  ‘Surely this was something necessary?’

  Rössler directed Schreber’s movements.

  ‘Please, do not speak of my wife.’

  ‘What of her?’

  Sabine lay on the bed. The room was terribly quiet. The midwife was so thin. He had expected someone fatter. Someone matronly. But she was like a stick. She moved about the room without making a sound. She went here and there, tidying things away. Piling things and wrapping things: red sheets, red linens, red cotton—everything red, wrapping them in a quilt—quite ruined. Quite, quite ruined.

  She dipped her hands in a porcelain bowl of water.

  ‘Didn’t she want you to have an heir?’

  Sabine lay on the bed with her nightshirt riding up over her waist and a fresh towel laid over her legs. She was pale and her mouth was open so that he could see her teeth. Sleeping? Her hair was slick against her forehead.

  ‘Didn’t you want one?’

  On the towel beside her was Schreber’s daughter.

  She was a good size—that is what the woman had said.

  A good size.

  With these things one generally expects them to be runts. This is what she said. She kept saying it. When the missus comes round you’d better go. A man’s no good in this. She kept saying all of it.

  Schreber touched the girl’s head. She had dark hair. Soft and dark.

  ‘It is my responsibility.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘That is what my mother said. It is your responsibility.’

  ‘What is your responsibility, Herr Schreber?’

  His daughter lay out on the towel beside Sabine. She lay on her back, her arms out to either side of her head, hands balled up in fists. She was very beautiful.

  ‘If Sabine cannot do it…’

  ‘Cannot do what?’

  ‘One must be strict with children.’ It is the loving thing. To let children do what they will, to lie in bed past their time, to give in to their desires—this is the road that leads to indolence, to softness. That beautiful little thing.

  The woman left the room, the bundle of linens so large that it pushed up her chin. Schreber watched her go. Then he took the girl by the wrists, the little thing, so beautiful, and he made her move where she would not. He held up her arms, straight, and her head stayed up with them, so that Schreber thought for a second that perhaps there had been a mistake—that she might open her eyes after all. It was not a mistake.

  He held her there, letting her feet—they were still turned in from being inside—he let her feet touch the bed, and he said to her:

  ‘You must move.’

  ‘Who must?’

  He held her there and he said it again. Then he moved her arms apart, slowly.

  ‘You must move.’

  ‘Who must move, Herr Schreber?’

  As he moved her arms, her head went back and her mouth fell open. He thought for a moment that she was trying to speak, that it had all been a mistake, that her eyes would open and she would speak, but the further he moved her arms apart the more her head went back on her shoulders.

  ‘I order you!’

  He shook her a little.

  ‘I order you! I demand it!’

  ‘What do you demand? Of whom?’

  He moved her arms like his father had moved his, to demonstrate the correct mode of movement, the postures and positions of his gymnastics.

  ‘You must! You must!’

  She did not.

  When the woman returned she snatched the child from him, saying nothing, clutching the beautiful little thing to her chest and backing away from him, as if he was an animal from whom the child had to be protected.

  ‘It is your responsibility.’

  ‘What is, Herr Schreber?’

  The doctor reached for the blind. ‘If Sabine cannot do it… If she cannot do what?’

  ‘Do not speak of my wife!’

  Please help me, Paul.

  I cannot.

  Please!

  I am not a doctor, Sabine. You must try again.

  Even when his son was the same. He had felt the boy kicking—one hand on Sabine’s belly, the other on the back of the chair. But he was just the same, in the end. He would not move. Could not move. Could not be induced to move no matter what Schreber said or did. Dead. No matter how much he pleaded and shouted. Like a creation of a lower god. An incompetent god. A god who could not understand living things. A god who knew only corpses, and made of these his playthings, animating them by pulling their puppet strings, but refusing even that.

  ‘You must move!’

  I cannot do it again, Sabine said.

  ‘But you must, my sweet.’

  Help me!

  ‘I am not a doctor.’

  I cannot do it again, he had said to his mother. But you must! If not for yourself then for him. His name. His legacy. Your father. Are you so weak?

  Might we adopt a son? It is not the same. If Sabine cannot provide an heir…

  ‘Do not speak of my wife!’

  ‘I was not speaking of your wife, Herr Schreber.’

  Rössler opened the blinds and in came the sun, blinding white, so that he could not see. He held that boy’s wrists, moved him like a puppet, gave him motion and life but the moment he stopped the child would not obey, no matter how Schreber screamed.

  The responsibility is yours! For your father!

  Now Rössler was in front of him, blocking out the sun. He put a glass to his lips.

  ‘Close the blinds!’

  Rössler did it and came back with the glass refilled.

  ‘It is too bright. God will see me. In my belly is an octopus and in it are God’s children. Living children. There are things I must not think of.’

  ‘I can’t make any sense of what you are saying.’

  One day Paul came upon his father. He was in a terrible rage at his wife. There was no tellin
g what she had done, but he slapped her hard across the face. The way she took it, it was as if it was no surprise to her, just as it had come not to surprise Paul. Nevertheless, he ran over and grabbed his father’s wrist, in case he intended to strike her again.

  His father looked at him as if he had never seen him before that day—he was fifteen or sixteen. He allowed Paul to hold his wrist: perhaps the son had become old enough to prevent these acts of violence, so that the father saw in him strength. Paul turned to his mother and opened his mouth to speak—what he intended to say is forgotten. Without a pause, and with no particular animosity, she slapped him.

  The mother took the father’s side in domestic matters.

  Schreber closed his eyes and gripped his temples. ‘Do not speak of my wife!’

  ‘Herr Schreber, I was not speaking of your wife.’

  Do not speak!

  Schreber is visited by Alexander. He comes with a message of hope.

  XXIII

  There was a sound.

  It came from the walls, and at first it seemed to Schreber that it was nothing: the wind, or the movement of water in pipes that ran behind the cell, across the ceiling. But it persisted, regular and even in tone. There was the hiss of a letter cut off before it could be properly spoken, or falling into silence too early, muffled by something. The bricks of the wall?

  Schreber sat up in the dark and angled his head first one way and then another, like a small bird—a blue tit, perhaps—in the way those little creatures tilt their heads when they listen out for the songs of other birds, or are made wary by the appearance of a cat in the garden. He made sharp, sudden, seemingly random movements, trying to locate the source of the sound. Schreber was made to think of a man impersonating a snake, or the escape of steam from a valve.

  There was silence for as long as a minute, and then the knocking came. It was hard and insistent, coming from the window. Schreber backed away on his hands and knees, not daring to look up, but listening. The hairs pricked up on the back of his neck with the effort to hear something recognisable in the sound. When the soles of his feet met the far wall he stopped. The knocking did not stop. Schreber wrapped his head with his arms, as if by doing so he could deafen himself, but when he became still he could hear it almost as well as if he had chosen not to block it out. He put his fingers in his ears and hummed a tune; it was one his father had hummed. What its name was he could not recall, but it was bold and fearless and he hummed so loud that it echoed in his mind. Where there had been speculation on what devil might be knocking on his window, instead there was his father dressed in his uniform, offering his hand to his poor son. Such was Schreber’s confusion that he reached to take it, and with his finger out of his ear the knocking became appallingly loud. Then there was silence for a short while, and then a sharp crack. Glass breaking.

  A voice.

  ‘Herr Schreber,’ it whispered. ‘Paul!’

  For a missed beat of his heart Schreber thought it was his father’s voice. But it was not. It was the Jew. His flat sardonic tone.

  ‘I heard you humming; I know you are in there! Pom-pom-pom-ti-pom, pom-ti-pom, pom-pom-pom. “Prussia’s Glory”? Am I right? I’ve come to help you.’

  ‘What do you want from me?’

  There was a pause in which the sound of a man clapping his hands together may have reached Schreber, or it may have been the cracking of a bone from somewhere deep in his chest, but it was something. The darkness lessened for a moment, like ink diluted with water. The dead black cell became black-grey, and when he put his hand in front of his eyes there was the faintest outline: barely more than a trick of the imagination. When he moved his fingers he could see something corresponding to them move in the darkness, as if at a great distance, as if he was on the shore watching moonless waves in a black storm.

  ‘Come over here!’

  Schreber turned to the sound and there, seemingly miles away—a distant lighthouse—was a tiny irregular square of light, orange and flickering. He was drawn toward it, as an insect is drawn to a lamp: not considering anything other than that he must go there. He got to his feet and moved. There was a hole in the boards on the window.

  ‘Are you well?’

  The glass was broken off in a single piece the shape of a dog’s tooth. He jumped up and held the bars with one hand and there was just enough room for the other to pass up to the wrist. Behind that was wood—a smaller gap here, and rough. Schreber stuffed his fingers into the hole and pushed them until his knuckles stopped any further progress. After all his work, was this all it took? To be outside?

  ‘I can feel the wind…’

  And rain.

  And the warm touch of a hand, shocking like a rat bite. Schreber pulled away, cutting the back of his hand in his hurry.

  ‘If you have come here to torment me…’

  There was a long silence. And then a face appeared in the gap, lamp-lit and dripping wet. The eyes were wide, excited, but also somehow soft. Reassuring. Rain gathered at the tip of the nose until there was too much of it and then it ran down to the lips.

  ‘Don’t you remember me?’

  ‘You are the Jew.’

  Alexander wiped the rainwater from his face and smoothed back his hair.

  ‘My name is Alexander Zilberschlag. I want to help you.’

  Schreber said nothing, and Zilberschlag sighed. From somewhere he took a cigarette and lit it on the flame of the lamp. It hissed as a rain drop put it out, but he pinched off the end, lit it again, and held it downward so his hand shielded it and the lower part of his face. When Zilberschlag spoke, smoke came with his words.

  ‘I think the hole will become conspicuous if I make it any larger. Will it do?’ When he leaned forward, Zilberschlag’s eye filled the hole, filled the world. ‘You have not been forgotten! Is there anything I can get for you? Food? Paper?’

  The eye circled and moved, searching.

  ‘Are you getting enough to eat?’

  Schreber turned away from the eye, dropped to the ground and crawled until he reached the far corner.

  ‘I eat nothing,’ he whispered. ‘My organs are destroyed and remade daily. If I attempt to satisfy my hunger pieces of my throat are swallowed with the meal and my stomach is made to vanish. There is an octopus. In it are parasitical children. They consume me from within. I am damned.’

  There was quiet for a long while and Schreber kept his back to the window.

  ‘With your permission, I will write to your wife. Perhaps I can persuade her to visit. Is that something you would like?’

  Schreber said nothing, but hunched over and covered his head with his arms, as if the rain was within the cell and not outside of it.

  ‘I’m not a lawyer,’ Zilberschlag continued, ‘but I seem to recall that a lack of protest can be taken for assent. I must go. If the staff find me out here they’ll put me in the cell next to you, but I am determined to make amends. Keep your spirits up, Paul! Remember what your father used to say—there is nothing a good German boy cannot endure! Let us hope that he was right.’

  Rössler takes Schreber on a trip. They visit the house in which Schreber was raised. Rössler’s hope is that Schreber should see that the place is very ordinary, and to allay any anxieties Schreber might have. His anxieties are not allayed, but there is good news.

  XXIV

  In the morning, Rössler came, and this time he was followed by Müller. The orderly glowered in silence. He dropped the pair of slippers on the ground, held out the dressing gown, and gestured for Schreber to get into the Bath chair.

  ‘We are going on a journey, Herr Schreber,’ the doctor said.

  Schreber began to say something, but Rössler had already gone up the stairs.

  ‘Come on!’

  Müller leaned over Schreber and hissed in his ear: ‘You’ve dropped me right in it, haven’t you?’

 
‘I…’ Müller dragged the chair backwards after the doctor. Each step jolted Schreber so that he almost fell out, and it was only the orderly’s hand clamping hard on the back of his neck that kept him in his seat.

  When they were out, Rössler was nowhere to be seen. Müller wheeled the chair between the buildings, cutting close to the walls, going so quickly that Schreber had to grip the sides.

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘I said nothing.’

  Müller gripped him so that his nails bit into the flesh.

  ‘No? Nothing about the bromides? Nothing about the bath? Nothing about the food? You’re for it. Do you understand?’ Müller barked, and he pinched Schreber’s arm.

  After that he said nothing, and Schreber was happy for it.

  They rushed through unfamiliar gardens, past a patch of turf that had been taken up: a perfect brown rectangle the size of a man—a little bigger—surrounded by green grass. The chair skirted its edge, the wheels so close that when Schreber leaned over he felt he could almost take a handful of the fresh dug soil. Worms lay in and out of the dirt, glistening, amongst the dirty pebbles and pale white grass roots. Schreber reached out, and the chair was swung hard to the other side, almost emptying him onto the ground. Schreber sat straight and gripped the arms of the chair.

  Müller took him onto the path, new flags with barely a crack in them, smooth except for where one ended and the other began—a little jolt—nothing much. Schreber watched his feet as they cut through the grounds of the asylum. These slippers were different, stiff fabric, and when he moved them the whole toe articulated along a single line, like a fold in a piece of paper.

  They came out into a courtyard and there was Rössler at one corner. He raised his hand.

  ‘It must be nice for you to get some fresh air.’

  ‘Are you taking me home?’

  ‘In a way, Herr Schreber.’

  Schreber got up, almost as far as to stand straight upright, but Müller grabbed him by both shoulders and slammed him back into the chair, so hard that it made his spine shudder and, unbidden, tears came to his eyes. Rössler stepped forward, staring at Müller.