by Keith Korman
“So we’re going to find her sheets,” Herr Doktor ordered. “Wherever they are. In the laundry room. In the wash bags. The tubs. The baskets. Right now!”
Bolzen found himself dragged off the chair by his coat lapels and plunging down the stairs. Madly trying to remember! What the hell did he do with those damn sheets from 401? Did he even bring them to the laundry, or did he throw them away somewhere? What had he done after that bolt of schnapps from his bottle in the boiler room?
They turned the laundry upside down — tearing through the baskets of sheets and towels, fishing through the sopping tubs, dumping out the stuffed wash bags. They scrounged the lower depths of the hospital like rats, until Bolzen finally remembered where he had tossed them. Mashed in a corner, near the black, oily door to the boiler.
Herr Doktor marched the orderly and the sheets back to the laundry. All other work came to a halt. The sheets with the odd square hole were bleached and washed and ironed dry. Orderly Bolzen looked uselessly on.
In thirty minutes they were back outside room 401. Inside the room you could hear the faint gasping, “ah —-ah — ah —” as the girl waited for their return. She kept gasping as Herr Doktor made the bed. He put the sheet with the hole on top and smoothed out the wrinkles.
“I’m leaving now,” he said.
The mummy’s faint gasps faded away. For a moment they stood together in silence. Outside the window, the sun had shifted again, turning the ice-clad tree shiny black. The branches were like antlers.
Àh yes, antlers … In his father’s house, Àntlers on a plaque over Nanny Sasha’s bed.
Before Herr Doktor left for the evening, he went once more to the girl’s room and stared through the viewing slit. She had the sheets off the mattress and twined about herself. She draped the one with the hole over her shoulders like a poncho, while wrapping her head in the folds of the other, making the whole getup some kind of eyeless burnoose. But in a trick of the light or her clever winding, Herr Doktor saw a black hooded cowl where her face ought to be, a shadowy void instead of wound sheets.
When he got home that night, Herr Doktor had a glass of whiskey from a bottle his wife, Emma, kept in the parlor for guests. He never drank much, so the stuff slid into him like a liquid club and he slept the whole night through in a black sleep.
The “incident” with the sheets took up more than thirty minutes of his time. The head of the Orderly Section protested. The old washerwomen in the laundry room protested. There were even protests from other physicians when they found their private patients in an agitated state later that day. And to top it off, Junior Physician Jung had lost his temper at a valued member of the staff. Shame on him.
His Note-of-Procedure regarding it all promised to be a small book in length. The whole point of which boiled down to why young Herr Doktor thought this highly uncooperative girl (who had yet to utter a single word in four months) was more partial to one set of bedsheets over another.
Somewhere in his justification he disclosed the nature of Fräuleins gifts in the hospital’s meat cooler. The result? Yet another protest from the kitchen staff. Why did the girl’s excrement have to be kept, and kept in the kitchen? Another report. Through it all Herr Doktor tried to demonstrate the establishment of a limited, slim line of communication with the creature. And some members of the executive staff even disputed this, saying that most of Herr Junior Physician’s claims of dialogue were mere stuttered salvos ired at a mute imbecile. Or worse, that Herr Doktor was only talking to himself. And yet… here he was saved.
Since in all fairness the patients original condition had changed since her entry to the hospital, and in view of Herr Junior Physician’s outstanding record so far at the Burghölzli …
Direktor Bleuler kept all the reports and various protests on his desk in a single pile tied with a blue ribbon. And there the pile languished in an impenetrable lump.
Another note had dropped on the top of the pile. This one from the hospital librarian, reporting that Herr Doktor was checking out an inordinate number of medical texts. Should anyone call for them, the texts were most likely in his possession. In fact, he had already informed her not to expect one book returned and had paid full price for it — Kohl’s Biology, a standard text for first-year medical students.
How curious … what could Jung possibly want with a first-year medical text? the Direktor wondered.
Herr Doktor had brought Fräulein Schanderein Volume I of Kohl’s Biology and left it by her meal plate on the floor. How dismaying then, the next day to see its cover torn off and pages missing. But he had the feeling her act of destruction established her possession over the thing. As she had with her room, her body, the food she ate, her excrement. And now the book he gave her. For if a book was damaged, clearly it could no longer be returned and must remain.
He brought her other books: Leaman’s Anatomy, Grunfeld’s Neurology, Eisens Psychology (a very thin text), but she never touched them. They stood in a stack by the door.
Then one day as he made to leave he heard the sound of a heavy book falling to the floor. She had pushed a thick volume out from under the covers. The anatomy text. Here again the book had been handled, the pages folded or crushed, the spine cracked.
Reading … ?
“You know, Fräulein, I’d be happy to get you any sort of book.” But the girl said nothing, made no sign. He thought of a trained chimpanzee given a fork and spoon by its master. The chimp eats with the spoon for a while, then sticks it up his nose. The audience howls. Was she like that, dumbly pawing the pages of the books he brought her?
December had been unusually mild. A dusting of fallen snow had all but melted. With the window closed, the air in room 401 began -to get fetid. Perhaps Fräulein S had ceased to wash from the sink,- he smelled the tang of her perspiration. One day in the middle of December, he went to remove her chamber pot, as usual But now the mummy on the bed began to shake and tremble, gasping, “Ah —! Ahh — ! Ahhh —!” So he hastily put the pot back in its place on the floor. It was about a quarter full, with a mixture of stool and urine. The gasps came again when he tried to remove her meal plate. And so he left the partly eaten meal on the floor. The onset of a new stage? That night he wrote in his case notes.-
Is she hoarding in preparation for some new gifts or artifacts? I think the patient’s diet is too varied now for any creations. If she means a message here, I am deaf to it. If a signal, blind to it. I wait on her pleasure….
Chapter 8
A Parade of Chamber Pots
When he looked at the last sentence of his case notes, he wondered if there was not something to it after all. Yet what was he waiting on? Should he write the man in Vienna? With a dull ache in his throat and a leaden hand, he began to draft his letter to Herr Freud … but after only a few lines abandoned it, a scrawl of unfinished phrases. The curtains in his hospital office were drawn tight against the cold. Soft creakings came against the glass, soft patters. He drew back the curtains and saw the moon shine briefly through torn clouds. The silvery light caught the snowflakes as they leaped upon the glass panes before their ghostly vanishing…. The mahogany wainscoting of his walls and the dark beams on the ceiling shone redly. He sat in an armchair of dark-green leather, as if in a quiet grove of trees, while the snow whirled without.
What kind of tale to tell? À child’s toilet-training tale. Wunderbar. He opened the window a crack. A few flakes danced into the room, holding their form for a moment before melting on the sill. So it was to be a snowy Christmas. And ja, he wanted to get her something, but what? Good question, What do you get a girl who has nothing? Some people in the hospital said openly Fräulein had made no headway whatsoever. That everything Herr Doktor claimed was an illusion. He folded his arms over the desk and rested his head. A snowflake blew into the room and coldly kissed the back of his neck,
* * *
After two more days her single chamber pot nearly brimmed over. Several dishes were strewn over the floor, overlapping each
other. God, the smell! You got whiffs of it in the hall. And when inside the room, you breathed in shallow puffs. After twenty minutes it became unbearable. And then the flies! Three or four little black devils. In December! Amazing!
He hoped these were the adventurous few lured up from the warm, dark reaches of the basement, where they lived all year round, and not some winter breed, spawned from maggots in the meat. They were puny, drowsy things, buzzing lazily over the patient’s refuse. One always crept across the top of his shoe. Whenever he flicked his foot it flew off, then darted back. How he hated them!
“May Î get you another chamber pot?” he finally asked, having at last the sense to think of it.
Now came the long open-ended pause he had almost grown used to, the silence saying, Leave it here and get me another one. So after a few more moments he rose, going to the door and calling out:
“Bolzen, Achtung! Please fetch another chamber pot. Thank you.”
A little while later, Bolzen came back with a clean chamber pot made of polished brass, with a broad lip curving inward so someone could squat comfortably. When Bolzen knocked, Herr Doktor announced, “I am going to open the door now. Bolzen has brought a fresh chamber pot.” As the door swung open, the smell struck the big orderly physically, a spasm of revulsion wrinkling his face. He thrust the chamber pot into the room blindly and stomped down the hall without waiting to be dismissed.
The smell was that bad, then…. Perhaps he had grown used to it. Better expect another protest soon and be ready with another report. He thought he caught a flicker of movement on the bed. He felt minutely examined, peered over, as if the patient was staring with one eye through a clever fold in the sheet. But when he looked directly at her, he saw nothing but the sightless burnoose.
He wanted to believe she looked at him on the sly, that she noticed him. How he tried to make everything right for her, how he tried to anticipate her every need and whim. What needs? What whims? The girl never said. He was guessing.
All at once the putrescence of the room overwhelmed him, as though a hundred drowsy flies were settling on his bare skin. He had heard people got used to flies crawling over them — but refused to believe it. He stood, weak and pale all over “May I come tomorrow?” he asked.
The next day was worse….
A new nurse, one Fräulein Simson, came on duty. She had been with the Burghölzli a week, having recently come from one of the public wards in the city. On the public wards she had learned mostly how to ignore patients calling her names and making lewd suggestions. Tired of it at last, she had hoped to find a more refined position under the eminent Herr Direktor Bleuler. And so far young Nurse Simson had been lucky, tending mostly to the cooperative paying patients on the fourth floor. Easy patients, whose wealthy families preferred them not to languish at home, the kindly sad ones … And so Nurse Simson felt sorry for the “poor dears” having to sit alone every day in a tiny room in a big stone hospital.
And since fetching meals and making beds had been her business up till now, she extended that business to the poor Schanderein girl in 401, despite the standing orders given by the extremely odd Herr Doktor Jung. So Nurse Simson went herself to fetch poor Fräuleins meal, adding an extra covered dish to the stack of plates destined for the fourth floor. Back upstairs, she unloaded the dumbwaiter, piling the plates on a cart, and started her rounds with room 401, at the end of the hall.
Calmly, then, she fetched the meal for 401. Calmly she opened the door and entered. Calmly she tried to ignore the overpowering smell. Calmly she tried to ignore the patients gasps, which shortly turned to howling shrieks. Calmly she tried to set the place to rights, attempting to carry out a few dishes, make off with a brimming chamber pot. Calmly she even tried to make the bed. But in the screaming room, it appeared Nurse Simson had gone berserk. Completely rattled, like a mannikin imitating the movements of a real person. A puppet, jerked about — stooping and stopping, fetching and putting down — never finishing a task she set out to do.
In the end she managed one thing only, to collect a few of the dirty dishes. And she almost made off with them, but for the full plate of food thrown at her head as she opened the door. Nurse Simson saw a flicker of the patient’s arm out of the corner of her eve — and then the plate exploded against the wall, covering her with splinters of glass and flecks of hot stew. She dropped the dishes and fled.
They called Herr Doktor to the nurses’ lounge, a dingy room on the third floor. Nurse Simson was being comforted by Nurse Bosch. Nurse Bosch seemed to revel in this role, for she had taken young Fräulein Simson right into her arms and pressed her face to her bosom, stroking the back of the sobbing girl’s head. She reminded Herr Doktor of a dowager cat mothering a bedraggled kitten. Nurse Bosch shot him a glance that said, See! See what you’ve done!
He noticed a dark-colored stain running down young Simson’s white starched uniform — feces or food? The skin of Nurse Simson’s neck was mottled bright red. When she tore her face away from the great mothering cleavage, she gulped air between sobs and spat, “She’s the devil! The devil’s in that room. The devil!” in a shrill, pointy voice —- and then went back to sobbing between Nurse Bosch’s breasts.
Herr Doktor felt another protest coming…. As things turned out, Nurse Simson left the Burghölzli the very same day. But he still had to answer the business in writing.
“And why didn’t anyone stop her?” Herr Doktor demanded.
Nurse Bosch and Orderly Bolzen stood in the hall outside 401. Echoes of the turmoil fled into the stairwell, escaping from the fourth floor. The patients along the corridor were still moaning and wailing, laughing and singing, calling for their doctors or arguing with longdead relatives. And underneath the din came the rising and falling “Ah —! Ahh —! Ahhh —!” of the sobbing young woman in 401. How many days till the girl returned to the way he had her before that idiot Nurse Simson barged into her room? How would they ruin it all next time?
Neither Bosch nor Bolzen replied. Herr Doktor tried to reason with them. “It’s about treating the girl decently. Respecting all the little things we take for granted. That no one will disturb us on the toilet. That we can sit and eat at peace. You think her habits revolting? If you didn’t, our good Doktor Nekken would slap you in room 402, next door. But that doesn’t give anybody the right to barge into hers…. We can’t help the girl and fight each other at the same time. Tell me, when will she realize we meant her no harm today?” He
1 ^i halted. Orderly Bolzen stared dumbly at the floor. Nurse Bosch’s eyes had snuffed out like candles, the lines of her face darkening with resentment. He suddenly saw what she disliked about him. His fair good looks. His take-it-or-leave-it manner. The fact that he bossed her around. But most of all how he called her attitude into question. As though she didn’t know the first thing about crazy people. This was going about it wrong.
He tried another approach.
“A physician’s standing order regarding his patient was broken today/’ he said. “Surely, Nurse Bosch, you know no one is allowed in Fräuleins room?” A short, irresolute silence elapsed as Nurse Bosch considered this. “Do you think we might have Orderly Zeik back on this floor during daytime hours?” Herr Doktor suggested mildly.
The dim lights in Bolzen’s eyes flared to life like grimy lamps…. Asking Zeik back — what an unforgivable insult! Bringing Bolzen's own record and seniority into question. Somehow it had gotten around that Junior Orderly Zeik had rendered special “services” to Herr Doktor — i.e., gaining entry to the kitchen meat locker. Zeik was now spending six months on waste disposal in the bowels of the building. The Orderly Section sending out a message to all concerned: junior nobodies were in no position to do anyone favors.
Nurse Bosch gazed into Herr Doktors cool gray eyes. She must make him an answer: a standing order had been broken, a patient disturbed, and a Burghölzli physician’s treatment temporarily halted due to the inattention of the staff. A price must be exacted. God … Bolzen was going to h
ate her for all eternity.
Slowly Nurse Bosch said: “Well, we’ll see what we can do about your request, Herr Doktor. In the end Orderly Bolzen and Orderly Zeik may have to swap shifts. It can’t be arranged all in a minute.”
“I understand,” Herr Doktor replied.
Done. Bolzen would leave the floor.
By the end of the day, the spot on the wall where Fräulein Schanderein threw the plate at Nurse Simson had dried, a long streak of decayed food smeared from shoulder height almost to the floor. In the coming days the streak would remind Herr Doktor of dried blood. Once again, five days passed since Fräulein S began refusing to yield up her meal plates and chamber pots. If the mummy wanted to keep them, fine, she could have them. Half a dozen plates lay scattered in their congealed grease about the floor. He had even stepped on one by mistake and nearly broken his ankle. But the mummy showed nothing, and he had difficulty during his visits not to stare continually at the chamber pots slowly filling up.
À few more days passed, and each day he inspected the condition of the receptacles on the floor of her room. Then going to the door and announcing, “Orderly Zeik! Another chamber pot, please!” Or whatever was needed. He no longer asked for permission to rise and go to the door — he just went ahead and did it. Perhaps a small omen of change.
On the eighth day, Nurse Bosch appeared personally with a clean chamber pot.
“Something wrong, Nurse. Bosch?”
“Nothing, Herr Doktor. Zeik was having some trouble finding fresh ones. Our supply is not unlimited, but Î knew where a few extras were kept.”
The gesture touched him, and he bowed to her. “Danke, Nurse Bosch.”
She handed him the polished brass chamber pot with a simple “Bitte.” Nothing showed in her face, though the sickly smell of the room flowed like a heavy fog in the hallway, almost liquid … Nurse Bosch nodded her head once in parting, then turned smartly on her heels as if to say, I am up to this — this and anything else. She might just as easily have appeared empty-handed, with excuses instead of a chamber pot: So sorry, Herr Doktor, we’ve run out. But she made it her business to find him one, gone out of her way. He had the feeling that if he asked Nurse Bosch into the room to sit with him that moment, she would have come. Even known enough to ask Fräulein for permission to enter. And known enough to wait for the silent answer. Something had changed between them.