by Uwe Tellkamp
‘Since when,’ said Müller, cutting him off, ‘since when, Herr Hoffmann, does an anticoagulant stop us performing our duty as surgeons and lancing an abscess?’
‘Herr Professor’ – Trautson nodded to Richard – ‘I had arranged for the operation, but the anaesthetist flatly refused –’
‘Then we’ll administer the anaesthetic ourselves, goddammit! An abscess on the thigh doesn’t require a general anaesthetic and you’re surely not going to tell me the man risks bleeding to death from having an abscess lanced!’
‘He’s at risk of sepsis if we don’t operate,’ Kohler pointed out.
‘Well, then you do it!’ Richard burst out. ‘The coagulation is poor and so far the antibiotics have kept his temperature under control –’
‘So far,’ said Müller. ‘I’m not happy, Herr Hoffmann, I want to see you this afternoon.’
No one had ever heard such criticism, in front of all the doctors and nurses, of the senior surgeon. Richard felt like a schoolboy who had been given a dressing down. The gaggle went on to the next ward. Trautson drew Richard aside. ‘What on earth can have got into the old man? He knows perfectly well that the anaesthetists are right. And all that fuss just because two patients’ charts are missing and, anyway, they’re already being operated on …’ Trautson shook his head. ‘Oh, great, we’ve got something coming. In your place I wouldn’t take it to heart, Richard. Who knows what’s really behind it?’
‘Can I have a word, Herr Wernstein?’ Richard asked. They went to the ward day-room. ‘Now will you for God’s sake tell me what you’ve been up to. If I’m going to get hauled over the coals because of you, I need to know why. It’s Herr Kohler’s complaint I’m talking about.’
Wernstein told him. As so often, it was about reality and what one made of it – and the barbed-wire fence between the two.
‘And then I told him to mind his own business.’
‘Told him?’
‘In so many words. That smart-arse – we know what sepsis is as well.’
‘And he said?’
‘That he’d been observing me for a long time, I was a troublemaker.’
‘And you said?’
‘That the troublemaker was of the opinion that political bunkum never cured a patient.’
‘Hmm.’
‘Well, something to that effect.’
‘Instead of bunkum you –’
‘… said something else, yes.’
‘My God, Wernstein, have you gone mad?’ Richard got up and started to walk up and down the room. ‘You know the old man’s relationship to Kohler. And anyway.’
‘I know,’ Wernstein growled. ‘Them and their fucking Karl Marx Year.’
‘The question is, what do we do now? I’ve been told that the complaint against you is being considered. Kohler’s being transferred to North I next month and Müller’s spoken to the head of Orthopaedics in Friedrichstadt.’
‘In other words … they want to get rid of me.’
‘Perhaps not only you, Herr Wernstein. I’m afraid I won’t be able to protect you. I suggest that for the time being we wait to see what happens at the meeting this afternoon. Perhaps I can get the Rector to do something.’
‘I’m sorry, Herr Hoffmann. And thank you.’
‘Off you go now – and keep up your good work on the operating table.’
Richard called Josta. ‘Hoffmann from the Surgical Clinic, Frau Fischer, could I have an appointment with Professor Scheffler? It’s urgent.’
‘What is it about, Herr Hoffmann?’ Josta’s voice was cool, she sounded businesslike and uninvolved; it cut him to the quick.
‘It’s about a colleague in the clinic, Herr Wernstein.’
‘Are you in the ward? I’ll call you back.’ For a few moments he could hear her breathing before she hung up.
The afternoon meeting with Müller was cancelled. Richard went to Administration, where he’d been given an appointment for five o’clock. He had to wait and went out because he was afraid Josta would watch him and try to catch his eye, despite the other secretary working in the office. But he was even more afraid that she wouldn’t try to catch his eye. He attempted to concentrate on the discussion facing him, to imagine what direction it might take. He didn’t know Scheffler particularly well, the last time he’d spoken with him was about the Christmas lecture. Richard seldom attended the meetings of senior surgeons that were held in Administration and that Scheffler chaired; Trauma Surgery was formally part of General Surgery but almost had the status of a separate department. ‘Almost’; it was undetermined, sometimes Richard was sent an invitation to a meeting, sometimes not, and when he was invited Richard found himself with conflicting attitudes to Müller: on the one hand he didn’t want to go over his head, on the other, that made him feel like a little boy who had to ask permission for everything. Moreover it annoyed him that, when reading these invitations, Müller would turn away from him and give him irritated responses such as: he couldn’t see the point of Administration keeping two senior surgeons in the Surgical Clinic away from their work.
Scheffler was a pathologist and, like all pathologists Richard knew, interested in the arts. He had quite often seen him with his young, attractive wife in the theatre, cautiously applauding so-called problem plays or closing his eyes at arias from Mozart operas. Scheffler smoked, which was unusual for a doctor, especially for a pathologist, who saw the smokers’ lungs; he smoked Cuban cigarettes, which, despite the fraternal socialist economic relations, could hardly be bought in local shops. The Rector must, therefore, have his own special sources and he seemed, like many pathologists, to be a hedonist. Dermatologists, psychiatrists, clinicians liked beautiful women, could distinguish good from poor wines, read the latest literary works, quoted Goethe and Gottfried Benn, and loved classical music, especially the piano, which they could often play themselves. Moreover they grew to be old. Surgeons loved beautiful women and beautiful cars, and died at sixty-five when their retirement started. Scheffler, Richard hoped, would be open to discussion.
‘I’ve come to see you about a colleague, Rector.’
‘I know. It’s about Herr Wernstein, Frau Fischer told me. Yes. Shall we sit down?’
Richard saw that the portrait of Brezhnev with the black ribbon had disappeared and been replaced by one of Yuri Andropov. Scheffler noticed his glance. ‘Can I offer you a coffee? Some mineral water?’
‘No, thank you. I wouldn’t want to take up more of your time than necessary, Herr Professor. Herr Wernstein is –’
Scheffler gave a weary wave of the hand, asked for coffee and mineral water over the intercom. Then he got up and stood, with his hands clasped behind his back, looking at the photos. The telephone rang, but he ignored it. His shoes were of fine, perforated leather and certainly hadn’t been made in a state-owned company, his suit was of an elegant cut, Richard wondered if he had things made by Lukas, the tailor on Lindwurmring; Scheffler too lived in one of the villas up there.
‘Are you interested in politics?’ he asked abruptly, half turning to face Richard. Only now did Richard see that Scheffler wore the Party badge in the buttonhole of his elegant suit. Why not, he thought, Ulrich’s in the Party too and Scheffler, as Rector, has no choice. Does he always wear it? I certainly didn’t notice it at Christmas.
‘I believe one ought to be, Comrade Rector.’ Scheffler had turned back to Andropov’s smile and gently raised his hand, like a conductor for a piano entry. ‘Oh, let’s stick to academic titles, Herr Doktor Hoffmann, I believe that is what you prefer. – Do you know that they say Yuri Vladimirovich’ – he pointed to the picture of Andropov – ‘loves jazz? He’s also said to enjoy watching films from the West and to read a lot. I haven’t asked him myself and you can’t believe everything you read in the press.’
Richard wondered where in the press it could have said the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was supposed to love jazz and liked films from the West. Certainly not in Neues Deutschland. Josta
brought the coffee – although he had declined there were two cups – and mineral water. Richard drank the coffee after all.
‘Thank you, Frau Fischer. Tell the gentlemen from the Ministry I’ll call back immediately. – We talked in German, by the way, he speaks it quite well. I believe he can’t stand medals, in the past the jingling in the sacred halls was considerably louder.’
‘I agree with you, Rector, that the younger doctors as well ought to show more interest in politics, it’s just the fact that –’
‘– Herr Kohler is the chairman of the Party organization in the Surgical Clinics,’ Scheffler broke in mildly, going back to his desk, ‘one of the idealistic hotheads among our young comrades, who are always on the attack. But we must win over the doubters, as Yuri Vladimirovich indicated in his last communiqué.’ Scheffler scribbled something on a piece of paper, showed it to Richard but didn’t give it to him. It said, ‘I can’t promise anything. But I would like to point out that I’m not a careerist member of the Party.’
‘I thank you.’ Richard stood up, Scheffler tore the piece of paper up into tiny bits and let them trickle down into the wastepaper bin.
Now Josta wrote lots of letters without worrying that Richard only collected them from the hiding place they’d agreed on – behind a loose brick in the labyrinthine subterranean passages of the Academy – at very irregular intervals; he once found four letters there that had been written in one week. She avoided complaining and making demands, concentrated on everyday matters and little expressions of affection, but Richard sensed that this cheerfulness was forced and felt worried. He wrote that he wanted to see her, on one Thursday before he went swimming, she replied that it wasn’t necessary, that he had been right when he’d said she lacked self-control and was taking things too far. She was, she said, too impatient and demanded too much of him, she had let her fears run away with her and through that was endangering their relationship, her excessive fear of her fears was making them come true, like a self-fulfilling prophecy. He didn’t believe that reasonable tone. Josta was many things, but reasonable wasn’t one of them except on rare occasions. The language of the letters seemed to be a protective sheet, supposedly fireproof, but beneath it there were fires waiting for the whiff of oxygen that would be enough to fan the crazy smouldering white between the lines into a blaze. Once, on a Wednesday, he went to her apartment and rang the bell but she didn’t open the door, even though he was sure he heard a noise inside. He wrote a few lines and pushed them under the door. In her next letter Josta reproached him for his lack of caution, on that very day, she said, she’d given her key to an acquaintance who was to look after Lucie because she was being sent home early from the kindergarten; by chance Daniel had found the piece of paper and pocketed it, he’d just happened to go up to get a lemonade out of the fridge, Lucie had come along only a few minutes later with the acquaintance, who would surely have read it. But then I would probably have seen them, Richard thought, I waited by the door for a while and it would have been Daniel who’d made the noise I heard. There was something not quite right about it. He found all this disturbing, and on top of it came the trouble with Müller, who rearranged their meeting, first of all asked him, all innocent, about the Querner painting and then rebuked Richard again, though not for the postponed operation this time – the anaesthetists were unmoved and had supported the trauma surgeons – but because he didn’t set a proper example for the political attitudes of his junior doctors. Wernstein had to apologize to Kohler in front of all his colleagues and the nurses but was not transferred to Orthopaedics in Friedrichstadt.
Suddenly the tone of Josta’s letters changed, despair, reproaches and fear returned. Richard was up to his eyes in work, there was a doctors’ conference coming where he had to give a paper on techniques for operating on the hand; Robert was having difficulties at school, he was now in the ninth grade, the results of which were used to apply for one of the much-sought-after places at the senior high school, and Anne said something wasn’t right with Christian; but when Richard tried to discuss it with him, Christian became evasive. Richard put it down to puberty when his son didn’t come home at some weekends. At least his marks were all right, Richard had checked with his class teacher. Josta was once more demanding he leave Anne, she had started calling him ‘Count Danilo’ again, which he didn’t like precisely because he was aware that there was something true about the nickname; he didn’t believe Josta had the psychological insight and judgement of character to give him the name of the character from The Merry Widow; he assumed Josta had only given him it because of some vague similarity to a singer from the State Operetta in Leuben, that she had hit the bull’s eye by mere chance and he held that against her. The singer could just as well have played the hero of any other operetta and Josta would probably have chosen the name of that character. He believed she wasn’t very observant but secretly he knew he was wrong. Towards the end of May a letter came in which she threatened to turn up at his door some time in the near future and force him into a decision, she wrote about his cowardice, about holidays together, about Lucie and Daniel, then about gas and sleeping pills. Richard didn’t take that seriously, the letter had too obviously been written in the heat of the moment, people who actually committed suicide didn’t threaten to do so but acted; he’d seen too many such cases in his years in hospitals. And still saw them – at this particular time of the year, in May, the loneliness, the despair, the pain seemed to become unbearable for many people. Josta asked for a meeting, he agreed, but something intervened, he was late and when he reached the place of their rendezvous, she’d already gone. She had no telephone at home; for such eventualities they’d agreed that she would leave a sign indicating where she’d gone: a ball of paper that had apparently rolled under a park bench said – gone home; two crossed twigs – waiting for you at Holy Trinity Church; in the winter they arranged snowballs in various patterns. This time he couldn’t find anything. He waited, perhaps she’d gone away for a moment. She didn’t come.
‘Oh, Herr Hoffmann, are you waiting for someone?’ That was Heinsloe, the senior manager.
‘Me – N-no. Just getting a breath of fresh air.’
‘And quite right too, Herr Hoffmann. Now is the month of Maying … You feel a new man, don’t you?’ Heinsloe rubbed his hands. ‘I had a letter from Herr Arbogast a few days ago. Do you know him? He wrote to say that he’d like to work together with the Surgical Clinic, more specifically with your department. I’m sure he’ll write to you as well. – As far as your application for funding is concerned, I’m afraid no decision has been reached yet. Have you a moment?’ Heinsloe took Richard’s arm and drew him along with him in the direction of the Clinic for Internal Medicine. Richard was not at all in the mood for discussions about budgets, equipment or funding for a special room for operations on the hand that he had requested a long time ago and that was presumably what Heinsloe was talking about.
‘I really haven’t got time, Herr Heinsloe, you must excuse me –’
‘You have to go back to the clinic?’ He was so unprepared for the question that Richard could do nothing but nod. ‘That suits me very well, I was going to come and see you anyway, I can deal with it now. Let’s walk along together, it’ll save you having an appointment with me.’ As he went to the clinic, with Heinsloe’s chatter filling his ear, he was silently cursing the chance meeting there, of all places, with the senior manager, of all people. He only got rid of him in Outpatients.
‘Oh, and congratulations on the award of “Medical Councillor”.’ Heinsloe gave him a conspiratorial wink. Richard had no time to reflect on the broad hint, Nurse Wolfgang was waving to him. ‘Herr Hoffmann, they’ve been looking for you. Phone call for you.’
Richard went to his ward. ‘A Daniel Fischer, sounded pretty young,’ said the nurse who had taken the call.
‘What did he want?’
‘He just said that his mother had been taken into hospital.’
‘Aha. And to which one?
Richard asked, leafing through patients’ charts.
‘He didn’t say.’
‘Thank you. Have a nice shift.’ It was only with difficulty that Richard managed to control himself and not to dash off. He called Rapid Medical Assistance from his office and was told that Josta had been taken to Friedrichstadt.
‘Why?’
‘One moment.’ Richard could hear the man wheezing as he got up and rummaged through some papers. ‘Suspected of having taken pills with the intention of suicide. I shouldn’t actually be telling you this, but since it’s you, Dr Hoffmann.’
‘How long ago?’
‘A good hour.’
Richard held down the cradle, closed his eyes. He stood like that for a few seconds, then he could think clearly again.
‘Hello, Anne, I’ll be late today. – No, a meeting in Administration. I met Heinsloe, it’s about the hand operating theatre. – I hope you do too.’ He was surprised he’d managed to sound calm. He went to the washbasin, washed his face, looked at his dripping reflection and spat at it. As he was wiping away the spit with a towel, he noticed a single hair on his cheek that he’d missed when shaving. He went to the cupboard where he kept a full toilet bag for when he was on duty at night, took out his razor and shaved off the hair.