by Keith Korman
Yet while Herr Tom Thumb talked, he masturbated almost continually: on his clothes, on his listener, against the windowpanes of the solarium…. The staff had quite given up trying to stop his chronic ten-minute bouts. And like most things repeated ad nauseam, the sight of Tom Thumb, little pecker in his pudgy fist, aroused no more reaction from the orderlies than a dropped cigar butt in the gutter. More amusing by far was Herr Doktor Jung engaging the dwarf in conversation. Herr Doktor sitting calmly on a bench by the glass windows while Herr Tom Thumb held forth from the top of a packing crate marked THIS END UP.
“I can’t imagine why I do this,” complained the dwarf. “Do you know why, Herr Doktor? Well, I don’t either. But I have to. I do it when I get up, I do it when I wash, before I dress, after I dress, I do it when I eat — I think I even do it in my sleep. You wouldn’t believe how sore I get.”
“Then why don’t you leave off for an hour or two, Herr Thumb?”
“Leave off” cried the dwarf in scandalized terror. “I can’t leave off. That’s what I’m telling you.”
“Well, my friend, it’s no use wearing the thing out, is it? You must see that you run the risk of infection — when who knows what might happen? A surgical operation could leave you with less than you have already — how would you like that?”
The young dwarf paled, swallowing his fear. “Never! I’d kill myself first.” Then, paling even a shade whiter, he demanded with quiet resolve, “Don’t you believe me?”
The little man was so earnest, only a cruel person would have laughed. “Yes, I believe you,” Herr Doktor assured him. “But let me see if I can get you some salve.”
The dwarf looked to heaven, clasping his hands to his breast. “Sweet succor in my hour of need!” Suddenly he leaned over the edge of the crate, whispering secretly, “See if you can make it petroleum jelly.”
“All right, then. But I’ll have to prescribe it officially, you know.”
“Is that a problem?” the dwarf asked, looking really worried.
“In the case of a baby with diaper rash, no … But in your case, Herr Thumb, I have to avoid making it look as though I approve of your conduct. This means submitting a procedural note defending the request for your prescription. First, there’s the incurable degenerative nature of your affliction.”
“Yes, there’s that,” the dwarf agreed readily
“Then there’s the hope of postponing the inevitable and drastic consequences from your … from your …”
“From the willful misuse of my bodily parts,” the dwarf tried hopefully. “The magistrate said that, not me.”
“And quite to the point, my friend. Admittedly this prescription only hastens the overall worsening of your condition, so I shall stress the alternative: that the situation ignored can only lead to more radical deterioration, irritation, inflammation, infection …”
“And surgery,” the dwarf murmured, appalled. “Help me,” he pleaded.
“I will do what I can, Herr Thumb. There’s no point in letting you whittle yourself away.”
The dwarf ceased handling himself for a moment and hurriedly crossed his breast in the Christian manner. “Bless you,” he said piously. Then peered suspiciously around the room. The nearest orderly was lounging against the wall not paying the slightest attention. Herr Tom Thumb leaned dangerously over the edge of the crate and asked conspiratorially:
“Why the devil do you come here?”
‘‘Why, to be with you,” Herr Doktor said immediately. “And to help, of course … Would you rather I sat in the cafeteria with my colleagues over limp Strudel, doing those droll impersonations of Le Chat, for instance?”
Herr Tom Thumb knocked his heels against the crate and began handling himself again. “Filthy practice,” he agreed. “I’ve never seen the humor in callous jests at other people’s expense.”
A newly admitted patient was always called the New Victim.
“Your New Victim needed restraint this afternoon.”
Or: “Victim in 504 needed a bath and purging.”
This time it was Nurse Bosch who passed by him as he sat in his regular chair, watching the Incurables in the dayroom. The Bricklayer had just laid himself another lodestone and was proudly showing it off to anyone who would admire it. Herr Doktor heard Nurse Bosch’s skirts swish as she approached.
The head nurse was an irrepressibly sunny woman with a broad Slavic face and one of those eternally optimistic dispositions. About forty-five, a large woman whose stoutness had no flab, she kept her hair in a starched cap. The first time young Herr Doktor saw her, he thought, Ah, at last I have met the Happy Pig. But all he said out loud was: “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Nurse Bosch.”
Now she passed him without breaking stride and said offhandedly, “Your New Victim has arrived, young man.”
When he turned to have a word with her, Nurse Bosch was nowhere in sight and he had to go about finding his New Victim him-self.
On his way to the registrar’s office, he glanced out the window into the garden. September was in its dusty middle days, the air still hot, and the branches on the trees hung parched, ready to shed their green. That morning he had noticed a few fallen leaves on the sidewalks and in the dry rain gutters, omens that the heart-quickening days of autumn were not far off. He passed an electric fan whirring noisily in the hall, stirring the dead air to no purpose.
The registrar knew the whereabouts of the New Victim’s parents. They had been waiting in Herr Doktors office for a quarter of an hour. He bounded up the stairs two by two. His mouth felt dry and awkward,- he hated meeting people for the first time. The soft sucking sounds of a man drawing on his pipe came out of his silent office, then the stiff rustle of a woman adjusting her dress as she sat. The parents were not talking to each other, Herr Doktor went in and apologized for keeping them waiting. The registrar’s admission form told only that the family owned a printing house for the preparation of legal briefs in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. They lived somewhere in the German quarter. The husband’s age was fifty-two. A cursory glance yielded the impression that the parents were nice, respectable, and bourgeois.
“Rostov is a long way off,” Herr Doktor remarked, waving his hand in the general direction of the east.
“That’s very true,” the husband agreed. And then the three of them lapsed into the consuming silence once more. The man went on smoking his pipe in an amiable, inoffensive manner, as though he had plainly said all that needed saying. Yet mixed in with the unmistakable smell of expensive tobacco was the calm, assured way he left his matches in the ashtray on Herr Doktors desk — as though it were his ashtray, his office, his desk.
The registrar’s form told even less about the wife. She had omitted filling in her age. She had the rich, satisfied air of an aristocrat, perhaps because of her fine clothes and the ease with which she wore them: the fur stole about her shoulders, the long black feather in her hat, the diamond sparkles in the veil she never raised, the touch of perfume…. Yet beneath the veil Herr Doktor saw the face of a hawk. She was at least her husband’s age, maybe older. And the first to break the silence, asking Herr Doktor questions in the matter-of-fact tone of a woman accustomed to getting down to business. “Forgive me, young man, but aren’t you a little youthful to be a physician?”
“No forgiveness necessary, Frau Schanderein,” he replied. “I’m barely thirty. I’ve been a doctor for three years. If I look too young, I suppose it’s my mother’s fault.”
The woman smiled thinly under the veil. And then more questions. How long at the hospital? she asked him. Three years, he told her. And who were his immediate superiors? Senior Physician Nekken and Direktor Bleuler, he told her.
“And why didn’t one of these men decide to take on our case?” she demanded.
So that was it! They felt snubbed for not being handled by the Burghölzli’s Herr Direktor personally! Insulted for being delegated down the chain of command to a junior physician. Weren’t they important enough? Were
n’t they entitled to a Herr Direktor — or a senior physician at the very least?
Oh, lord; he wanted to laugh. Should he tell them Herr Direktor Bleuler had already looked in briefly on their child, that what he saw gave him little hope, and so he passed the case along? Should Herr Doktor tell them that if they found their way to his office, most of the other senior physicians (Nekken included) had also rejected taking them on? And what would the parents think if they actually met the lofty Bleuler? Herr Direktor was an addleheaded, forgetful, morose old wheezer. Not particularly brilliant: perfect, in fact, for the bureaucratic administrative post he commanded.
His colleagues called him “distinguished” and “eminent.” Harmless, meaningless words for a man whose sole achievement had been to hang on forever without the blemish of a scandal. He had sad, puffy eyes, and his gaze wandered about when you spoke to him, glancing down at his black laced boots, or over the top of your head as if you weren’t there. But most revealing was his beard. He had the habit of continually stroking his thick badger’s beard while he engaged people. A matted furrow ran down each side of his jaw, and he had even worn some of the hair away. Irreverent staffers raised gales of laughter in the cafeteria mimicking the old codger, pulling on their own faces and mumbling, “Ahem, ahem, gentlemen … To be a doctor, the first thing you must learn is … ah … to find your patient’s room. And secure, if possible, ahem, a correct billing address.”
In point of fact, the Direktor had more than enough reason to be morose — for the Burghölzli Hospital almost never cured anyone’s madness. And Direktor Bleuler was often heard to say, “Ahem, gentlemen … we are not in the business of results. Results are for hotel chefs and … ah … hairdressers. We are in the business of diagnosis. So Î urge you, the first thing you must learn is how to find your patient’s room and, ahem, if possible secure …”
No, Herr Doktor knew, the eminent Herr Direktor had already had his look-see, stroked his beard, and sighed sadly. The senior physicians had had their look, smirked coldly, and passed the case on without a second’s remorse.
Let some junior physician take it on if he wanted. Who knew, he might be saved an embarrassing failure if the bills were paid on time.
So perhaps the parents suspected as much, as clever, self-important people often do. The wife’s interrogation went on, her voice provoking him at every turn.
“How many patients have you handled personally, Doktor Jung?”
“How would you diagnose our child?”
“You mean you haven’t examined the patient yet?”
Frau Schanderein used the word “patient” as if she assumed all the doctors and staff called them that, instead of by their real names or cruel nicknames: Crazy Hans, Le Chat, Herr Tom Thumb … So he told them that seeing the family first was not that unusual, and that yes, he had glanced into the child’s room, which was only one floor below. Now he asked them to tell him about their family history. And this demand raised a rumble of consternation. The husband blew out a great cloud of smoke as if the question were excessively personal, while his wife spoke up sharply:
“Oh, come now, Doktor, we’re not the sick ones here, the child is. Perhaps if you can get her to talk, she’ll tell you herself. As for our part — we were a normal family. Until the recent attack, the child was like any other. An attack of nervous hysteria. That is the right word, isn’t it, Herr Doktor Jung?” The woman’s hat and veil turned dramatically toward her husband, as though demanding he confirm every word she said. Cocking her head as if to say, Well, go on, you tell him.
But Herr Schanderein had let his pipe go out and held it impotently in his hand, staring idly into the bowl of ash. So the wife took up again. “We came to Zurich to see our child enrolled in medical school. The first attack occurred in the back of a carriage, near the railway station.”
Rostov station or Zurich station? Herr Doktor wondered. But he asked instead:
“Does the girl have any special interests?”
And the wife answered, “No, just the usual.”
“Nothing at all? Does she draw, or collect butterflies, or play a musical instrument?”
The husband was shaking his head no. He let the pipe fall on the rug, spilling charred tobacco. “Erik!” the wife snapped. The moment passed into uneasiness as the husband collected his pipe.
“Are you saying your daughter has no keepsakes, no personal things, no other interests aside from … ah … entering medical college here?” The father had become sadly crestfallen, as if the questions were intended to hurt him personally. The mother stiffened behind the feathered hat and veil, becoming priggish and tight-lipped,
“Moreover, it seems the patient is not exactly a child, being nineteen years of age.”
Again, no comment.
Finally Herr Doktor leaned back in his chair and let out a long-drawn-out sigh. At last he said, “I don’t believe either of you is being candid with me.”
The husband seemed to shrink inside himself. The wife swelled with indignation, bristling all over.
“Don’t be absurd, young man. I demand to see the Direktor, so he can be informed as to the extreme tone of this interview, the insolence of your personal questions.” Herr Doktor remained calm and silent, letting her go on. But she deflated as he failed to meet her on the rampart of her anger, trailing off with, “If you think you can just get anything you want from us …”
After a few more quiet moments, he said, “In cases where a person is withdrawn, I am always curious to discover the conditions leading up to the attack. I apologize if such curiosity seems inquisitive to the point of rudeness. As to your seeing Herr Direktor Bleuler — by all means, let me make an appointment for you with his secretary. Perhaps I am at fault for not explaining everything fully. But I was under the impression you understood Direktor Bleuler is already familiar with your case, as are several of the other senior physicians. And that it was decided I should look into it further.” Herr Doktor paused for a moment.
The husband was working himself up to say something. “No, no one told us anything,” he said doubtfully, as though long suspecting a hidden truth.
“Of course,” Herr Doktor went on, as gently as he could, “if I am not suitable for you, or you don’t think the Burghölzli can help, we can sometimes recommend private physicians in town, or specialists in other cities.”
A grim eventuality was dawning on the parents. An understanding, as they now saw the possibility of having their child back on their hands. In her present distressed condition, this prospect was dreadfully unnerving. With a sharp turn of the head, the wife shot a look at her husband that said, He’ll do as well as anyone. Go on, tell the bastard what he wants to know.
Clearly irritated, she fiddled with the brim of her hat and, as she did so, twitched aside the veil. For a brief second, the black lace fluttered from her face. And in that moment Herr Doktor saw a strikingly beautiful woman, once upon a time young, but now glittery and brittle like the crystal prisms of a broken chandelier, … Hard, mascaraed eyes, sharp mouth, piercing nose. Not really a woman any longer but the statue of a woman, ruthless and cunning, imposing her stony will at every opportunity and hardened with discontent at every turn. When the veil dropped back once more, it fell like a shade, shutting her off from the world. Herr Doktor knew he would get no more from her this day.
The husband put his pipe away, since it had proved only an encumbrance,- and by shoving the brown briar into his coat pocket, he seemed to concede all at once the uselessness of fighting anymore. He started haltingly, as though pained to admit:
“She never was really normal. What I mean is, she can talk — when she wants to. She can read — on and off, that is. Some years were bad.’’
“Bad?” Herr Doktor asked.
“Some years were bad. Where she fell behind. But she seemed to catch up. Î suppose we spoiled her, the way people do with their children —”
“You spoiled her,” the wife cut in. She seemed to think this a crucial poin
t of some kind. Like a disadvantage.
A flash of anger came into the husband’s eyes, and then died without a trace. “What I mean,” he went on, “what I mean is, maybe we weren’t strict enough, but Î always thought she caught an infection.” An injection. He seemed to put a lot of stress on that word, as if it explained everything. “You know, like the grippe. Only in the brain. Getting in her skull and making her sick. She was so young when she had her first attack. Maybe five years old. She didn’t eat for a week, î was sure she had caught something. But then every couple of years she’d have another attack —”
He halted suddenly. He had a handsome, fair-weather face, which seemed just right for easy smiles and breezy summer days, but now it was clouded and crumbling. He hid it in his hands…. The wife looked away in disgust, stiffening noticeably, humiliated by his weeping. She cast a sidelong glance at him, with a cruel twist of her chin. “Stop it, Erik! Erik, pull yourself together!”
She said it with almost a ventriloquist’s voice, her lips barely moving, as though the young doctor across the desk wouldn’t notice a papery hiss. He was reminded of a silly woman at a dinner party trying to kick her drunk husband under the tablecloth to shut him up. And since everyone pretended not to have seen her, she felt perfectly safe.
Now the wife spoke up sharply, as though to distract him from her husband’s disgraceful behavior. “Herr Doktor!” she chirped, “Herr Doktor, if you discover an infection, will you be able to cure it?”
He could see that in her heart she wanted to believe her husband. That their daughter had an infection like malaria, that reappeared throughout a person’s lifetime. With an infection there was some hope at least — this Herr Doktor might concoct some potion to cure the child. But he couldn’t simply ignore the husbands behavior, even if that’s what the Schanderein woman clearly wanted. So he addressed the man, face still buried in his hands.