Playthings

by Alex Pheby

  Schreber tried to get up again, warier this time, with a backward glance over his shoulder, and this time Müller grabbed an elbow and tugged Schreber until he fell heavily.

  Rössler came closer, so that Schreber could smell his cologne.

  ‘Please remain seated, Herr Schreber,’ the doctor said, but he was looking over his shoulder at Müller, and he spoke in a monotone so flat that his mind was clearly elsewhere.

  Müller coughed and spat and stepped away from the chair.

  ‘Müller.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘That will be all.’

  ‘Sir.’

  The orderly walked away, and as he went he pulled off his white coat. Schreber heard the cotton snap on the buttons, and as he rounded a corner passing out of sight, the orderly, now only in his vest, let the coat fall to the ground. He did not stop to retrieve it. He left it where it was.

  Rössler coughed and frowned, but when he turned back to Schreber he wore a smile. ‘May I take you on a little journey, Herr Schreber? There is a carriage waiting.’

  ‘I will walk home. It is no distance.’

  ‘Let me help you in. You will not need the chair. If we walk at all it will be only a short way.’

  ‘Sabine will be waiting for me. Cook will have lunch ready.’

  ‘Let me help you.’

  Rössler called to the driver and he hopped down from his platform and, one either side, the two men lifted Schreber up into the carriage.

  ‘He ain’t going to do anything peculiar in there, is he, sir? Only I got a private client this afternoon, and I won’t have time to do any cleanup after him. That won’t be required will it, sir? Only if it is…’

  ‘There will be nothing unusual about the trip. We are going for a little ride, nothing more.’

  Rössler gently pushed the carriage door shut and rattled it in its frame with his gloved hands. When he was certain it was secure, he trotted off out of view.

  Schreber turned and waited for the doctor to appear at the other door. When he did, he was smiling. He knocked twice on the carriage roof and they moved away.

  ‘Are you comfortable? Warm enough?’

  ‘I suppose this will be quicker…’

  Rössler smiled, but said nothing.

  ‘Here! We are almost out of Dösen. Take a deep breath, Herr Schreber! Let the good air deep into your lungs.’

  ‘Is this the way home?’

  ‘Deep down, Herr Schreber!’

  ‘Is it?’

  Rössler filled his own lungs, and held his chest puffed out. He smiled and gestured, flapping one flat hand in front of his belly as if it were the wing of a bird. When Schreber tried to speak again, the other hand went up and the index finger came out and wagged from side to side. Schreber took a deep breath, but it had the opposite effect to that imagined by Rössler, and Schreber began an uncontrolled bout of coughing.

  When Schreber eventually opened his eyes, they were wet with exertion.

  ‘My apologies,’ he spluttered. ‘A little cold, nothing more.’

  ‘Of course. The ride will be very short—only a mile or two.’

  Rössler knocked on the roof of the carriage and it came to a stop: the Zeitzer Gate, where his father had bought land, then on the frontier of the city, but now huddled between a hundred other plots. There were people, and coaches and horses, but Schreber paid them almost no heed. He fixed his sights on the house where he had lived with his family.

  ‘The Institute, Herr Schreber. Quite a building! Only fitting for a place of world renown.’

  All the rooms empty—then at least—so that a boy might hide anywhere, and Sardines became a rather tedious affair.

  ‘Shall we take a walk around it?’

  Rössler went up to the gap in the railings—such a short old man—barely half the height of the fence around the Institute’s front garden. He gestured for Schreber to come, like an eager child. Schreber took a step, slowly, but his eye was directed up to a window on the third floor. The drawing of a curtain? Rössler made to come over and take Schreber by the hand, but he came of his own accord, looking up.

  ‘Good man! Shall we announce ourselves?’

  ‘No!’ Schreber grabbed the doctor’s arm. ‘You mustn’t ring the bell…’

  Rössler withdrew from Schreber’s grip, slowly, and took a step back.

  ‘It is very loud…’ Schreber explained.

  Rössler nodded and indicated that, in that case, they might instead prefer to take a look in through a window. When he walked away he took a quick glance over his shoulder. Anxiety?

  Schreber found his mouth was unaccountably dry, and swallowing did not seem to correct it. The old doctor was far too short to see in through the raised windows, and so he stooped and looked into the narrow slits at ground level.

  ‘There is nothing down there to see.’

  ‘Well, Herr Schreber, if our journey is not to be wasted then we must ask to be admitted, if only briefly.’

  Schreber marched quickly up the steps to the door, arriving there before the doctor could ring the bell. On a plaque to one side of the door was written Orthopaedic Clinic, Schildbach. Schreber touched the letters with his fingertip.

  ‘It is quite tarnished,’ Rössler said. ‘I wonder the maid hasn’t been dismissed.’

  The same could be said of the door handle and the knocker, and, when he looked around, Schreber saw that the flags on the ground were cracked and the glass above the door was almost opaque with dust.

  Rössler indicated the bell and raised his eyebrows as if to say ‘may I?’

  Schreber took the knocker and rapped twice, very quietly, barely making any contact at all.

  ‘Come now, man!’ Rössler said, and rapped hard and loud.

  Schreber flinched and waited, biting his lip and holding his breath.

  Nothing.

  Rössler tried again, tapping out a staccato rhythm.

  ‘It is too loud!’ Schreber cried.

  Rössler raised his finger to his lips and listened with his eyes narrowed.

  Nothing.

  ‘Not loud enough, it seems, Herr Schreber.’

  ‘He will not wish to be disturbed.’

  ‘Who, sir? Your father?’ Rössler asked, although he seemed to know the answer already.

  Schreber sniffed, but said nothing.

  Rössler rang the bell… several times.

  ‘Very odd… Wait here, I’ll fetch the driver.’

  The old doctor went off at a gallop. Schreber pressed his ear against the door.

  By the time the doctor came back with the driver, he had still heard nothing.

  ‘It really would be a shame to have come out here and have to go back with the day wasted,’ Rössler was saying.

  ‘Well, sir, the place looks empty to me.’

  ‘Mightn’t we, then…?’

  ‘Mightn’t we what, sir?’

  ‘You know…’

  ‘I ain’t a burglar, sir, if that’s what you are suggesting.’

  ‘No, no, not at all! How ridiculous! No… but a man such as yourself—a working man—a tradesman… you might… you know?’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know, sir. What I do know is I ain’t breaking into a place on your say so.’

  ‘No? Very well…’

  The driver stalked off back to the carriage, sparing only an appalled and derisive glance back.

  Rössler pushed his glasses up his nose and sighed.

  ‘Well, I’m afraid I’ve brought you out here on a rather pointless trip, Herr Schreber. Please forgive me.’

  Schreber stepped up to the door and lifted it by the handle, half an inch or so, and then shoved with his shoulder. There was a click and then a soft thud and the door swung in. The doctor was saying something excitedly, and laughing
, but Schreber paid him no attention at all.

  The door opened up onto the hall and it was clear to see that the place was empty. He stepped inside, wiping his feet on the mat that was no longer there, unbuttoning his coat, nicely, neatly, and it was only when he realised how cold it was in that empty place, and that there was no rack to hang it from, that he returned it to his shoulders.

  ‘Marvellous building! Terribly grand! Terribly grand!’

  Schreber blanched at the doctor’s noise at first, and then he straightened up, sniffed, and walked up to the foot of the stairs.

  ‘Hello?’ he said. The sound echoed and somewhere there was the flapping of wings and the scratch of clawed feet on wood.

  ‘Pigeons, they get everywhere!’

  Schreber coughed on the dust that seemed to swirl round in clouds, and he was taken again until his eyes watered. The rooms rang with the sound, and he clutched his arms around his chest. It was no good. Rössler rapped him twice, hard, between the shoulder blades and perhaps it was the shock, but it seemed to help.

  Schreber nodded his thanks and swallowed as well as he could. He found this was not well enough, so he walked down through the hall and into the gymnasium, where a tap and basin were set into the wall. The white porcelain was cracked around the drain and yellowing, and when he turned the fixture only air and dust and a great deal of noise came out.

  Rössler offered Schreber his flask.

  ‘A little brandy?’

  Schreber tried to refuse, but the coughing started again, and now the doctor was there with the flask at his lips, urging him to drink. With much spluttering, he managed to take a sip and the shock of the burning on the back of his throat forced him to take a deep breath, down from the stomach, and he found he could breathe a little easier.

  ‘If I had thought to bring my stethoscope… Is it on my desk? Or in the pocket of my other jacket…’

  ‘It is nothing… the damp. The cell is very damp.’

  Rössler looked down at his shoes.

  ‘Yes… quite right.’

  The doctor walked into the centre of the room.

  ‘We could use a room of this sort at the hospital. For the gymnastics…’

  ‘Why have you brought me here?’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’

  Rössler walked over to where Schreber’s father had done his exercises, and above his head was the ladder—the space for it, anyway, since it had been taken away.

  ‘We are here,’ Rössler continued, ‘to show you that this place is altogether normal.’

  The old doctor gestured around at the hall.

  ‘Nothing mystical. Nothing odd. Nothing out of the ordinary at all. Just a place.’

  The doctor went on, but Schreber did not hear it all.

  Above him, suspended from a climbing rope—one leg and one arm encircled by two sets of loops—was the Jew, Alexander Zilberschlag, as a boy.

  ‘Just a room, like any other room.’

  Alexander was silent and he swayed slowly from side to side like the pendulum on a clock that has almost entirely run down. In his hand was a bone-handled dinner knife, such as Schreber’s mother had always laid out for the children, the silver cutlery being too good for everyday use.

  ‘And we, standing here, are no different from any other men. And neither was your father…’

  Alexander did not seem to see them. His eyes were fixed on the door and his head was never still—he was always craning left and right, and trying to make something out. And he listened, squinting when he did it, for some sound.

  ‘I read his medical notes. Had them sent to me. A simple blow to the head, followed by chronic cephalalgia. An iron ladder, wasn’t it?’

  When Alexander was convinced no one was coming, he pulled himself close to the iron ladder and, with the knife, scraped at the plaster on which the fixture that held the ladder depended. He was very quiet, but, even so, each scratch made him nervous, and more than once he loosened his grip on the rope and began to slide down, eyes on the door, before climbing back up and scraping again.

  ‘It is only that I cannot find a physical source of your illness, and I am not temperamentally inclined to attribute a spiritual cause, unlike some of my colleagues. It seems, then, that perhaps your confusions might be rooted in your own history.’

  After a period of intense effort a piece fell from the wall—only about the size of a pebble, but it clattered onto the floor, and Alexander froze entirely for several seconds. Then he fell or slid down the rope—it was difficult to tell which, it happened so quickly—and, once he was down, he scampered away out of the room.

  ‘It might be that confronting those causes and seeing them for what they are could itself be helpful to you.’

  Rössler was under the ladder. If it had been induced to fall, by a failure of the bracket, by Alexander’s sabotage of the bracket, it would have crushed the old man’s skull.

  ‘What are you staring at, Herr Schreber?’

  He pointed up at the ladder.

  ‘The wall? What do you see there?’

  Schreber blinked and there was nothing—the ladder was gone and even the fixtures that had held it, and at that place where Alexander had scratched there was a patch about the size of a man’s hand, of fresh, smooth plaster that had not been papered and so was a shade lighter than the wall around it.

  ‘What do you see?’

  The old doctor was staring at him intently.

  ‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’

  ‘Very good. So, you see, there is nothing supernatural… and your father just a man… and you just a son…’

  ‘Am I cured?’

  ‘Not at all, Herr Schreber. You do not seem cured at all. But I don’t imagine there is anything much I can do to cure you. I can bring you here and you can see how it is that everything is quite sensible and ordinary. I can help you see that your anxieties are exaggerations of very simple and commonplace problems that a man might have. I can give you bromides to make you calm, and digitoxin for your heart, and these things will certainly help you. But I cannot make you see what is in front of you, or prevent you from seeing that which is not in front of you. So, perhaps, you do not really require my help as much as you require your home, and to be among those people that love you.’

  Rössler pushed his glasses back up his nose and came over to Schreber, so that he stood in the middle of the room and the ladder could not possibly strike him, however it fell. The little old doctor took him by the shoulders.

  ‘There is absolutely nothing, Herr Schreber, preventing you from returning home. Please think about what I have shown you today. I can do nothing else. Your wife and daughter have contacted me by telegram to say that they are coming to visit tomorrow, and when they arrive I will suggest that they should return to Dresden with you. As soon as the paperwork is signed, you may go home. Müller is already packing up your possessions. This is good news?’

  Schreber said nothing.

  ‘I am afraid you will need to remain in the secure chamber for one more night—there are no rooms available upstairs.’

  Only one more night?

  ‘Very well…’ Rössler said. He took his hands away from Schreber’s shoulders and led him back to the carriage. Schreber climbed into it entirely by himself, and it was only the old doctor that required assistance from the driver.

  ‘I am sorry I could not be of more help, Herr Schreber.’

  Schreber seemed to see him as if for the first time.

  ‘Nonsense!’ he said. ‘The credit for my cure is entirely yours.’

  Rössler smiled but said nothing. For the rest of the journey back to the asylum, neither man said a word: both kept to their own thoughts, and watched the trees and the fields.

  Müller comes to Schreber’s cell with too much liquor in his blood. There is talk of Karl, Müller’s inno
cent brother, who was executed for his crimes. The Jew appears behind Schreber’s closed eyes, and the attentive reader is left to wonder as to the ontological status of “Müller” and “the Jew” in a world overdetermined by a madman’s delusions.

  XXV

  The door swung in so forcefully that it extended past its full opening and, hitting the wall, bounced back. It stopped suddenly, almost closing again, but not quite. By the light that came in through the crack, Schreber saw a hand. A fist.

  It pushed the door again.

  ‘Where is he? You can’t hide from me, old man. He can’t hide from me…’

  Schreber turned away, and pulled his blanket up over his head.

  There was the chink of glass knocking onto the wall, and then a dragging. A bottle scraped on the uneven bricks, chiming in the gaps between them.

  ‘Judge?’

  The bottle came away from the wall and slapped on flesh. His thigh?

  Only a little liquor remained—it sloshed against the sides.

  ‘Calm, brother! Do you see him?’

  Acid, felt at the corners of Schreber’s eyes and at the back of his throat—it made him swallow. Foul, drunken breath. Hot air, pickled in gin, passing through the blanket as if it wasn’t there.

  ‘Judge! Wake up! I’ve got a case for you to hear.’

  The back of a hand wiped across a stubbled face. Very near. Prickling and rasping. Two sniffs.

  ‘Judge! Emergency session!’

  A hand on his shoulder. Schreber turned, and there was Müller.

  His coat gaped open to the waist. One side of it was pulled down and across, tucked into the ape’s belt, so that the other side was bunched up. In silhouette he gave the impression of being a hunchback, but he was surrounded by white light, illuminated at the edges. He was clearly drunk, shimmering and swaying, and there was, just as Schreber had pictured it, a bottle glowing in his left hand.

  He snorted and coughed and brought his sleeve across his lips. When Müller spoke, Schreber could see the light in the spray of spittle from the man’s lips, but of his mouth and face almost nothing.