by Keith Korman
And the train went clackety-clack, can’t wait to get borne, can’t wait to get back Herr Doktor settled down in his seat, his feet propped on the couch opposite. He poured his May wine into a silver traveling cup. Drained it and poured himself another. The fantasy of power shifted to a new one…. His time with Fräulein, going on as before, only more so. The girl coming every day to his office, where they analyzed her dreams. And helping her to study for medical school, helping her to become Fräulein Doktor. Then their timeless moments together on the couch. It was this last sweet thought he lingered over. Feeling her under her hands, holding her as she unbuttoned herself, undid herself for him.
Then going back to good, fine Emma. The two women seemed to blend in his mind. The plush train compartment came alive, belonging to one woman or the other. The walnut paneling above his head like Fräuleins skin along her arms, the delicate gold filigree like Emma’s wide eyes staring at him as he came for her in bed. Tugging at his coat, he heard the girl clutching her own clothes. When he moved his feet on the couch, he felt the rasp of his hand across his wife’s smooth spine. The padded armrest under his elbow was the tender curve of Fräuleins thighs, waiting to open. Beneath him, the taut seat cushions were Emma’s spread behind as he rose and fell, emptying himself into her. The rush of air along the car was the girl’s last sigh … while all about, the warm compartment cooed him steadily to sleep. And when the train whistled its lonely whistle across passing fields, he heard the women’s wail, calling his name.
Calling him home …
But in the short time Herr Doktor had gone abroad, unexpected things had come to pass. In his hospital office he found a white envelope sitting on his desk. With a sinking feeling, he examined the letter. The girl’s mother, Frau Schanderein, had plainly addressed it. But with a copy sent to Herr Direktor Bleuler. He read the woman’s letter twice. It was strange and cryptic and totally unfathomable.
He went directly to his superior’s office. Bleuler waved languidly for him to sit, nodding to himself as though he knew the reason for the visit. “The trip went well, did it? That’s good. You can tell me about it later. Had a look at the mother’s letter, did you? Came yesterday. What do you think?”
What was he supposed to think? He suppressed the urge to bite his nails. Finally he chose to remain silent and simply shrugged.
“My reaction completely,” Bleuler remarked casually. “Thought maybe you’d have some insights I overlooked.”
Insights! He suddenly waved the letter and burst out:
“What is this woman accusing me of? She says, quote: I’ve heard various tales of your behavior with my daughter in compromising private sessions. And then, quote: Have I a history of mistresses and conquests? And then, and then! Since I’ve paid a great share of her daughter’s hospital bills, am I expecting additional favors in return? Favors! How many tales of my behavior has she heard? Stories of my dancing in her room? Of blood on my face? Which tales did the damn woman hear?”
“Heavens!” Bleuler implored, raising his hands. “I don’t tell tales myself, you know.”
“Is it about money, then? Did she know I paid her husband’s whore bill from that club in town? Perhaps the mother should know about that too!”
Bleuler quietly pushed back his seat, a look of silent shock in his eyes. His fingers played with a pencil. “Actually, I’m sure she does know,” he said flatly.
But Herr Doktor wasn’t pacified. “How do I respond to this assault? Shall I resign? When the girl first came here she slobbered like an idiot, wore a ratty sheet instead of clothes. Next month she’s to attend Burckhardts introductory lectures at the medical college.” His voice rose to a shout. “How long have we had? Tell me. Nine? Ten? Eleven months! Who cares! Freud does them in five years. Yesterday he told me so!”
Herr Direktor held up his hands in entreaty. “I’m not accusing you of anything. You’ve had remarkable success with the girl. No one’s questioning that. I’ve read the reports,- I know what the poor creatures been through. Give me a little credit, please. The mother is obviously deranged. The father — worse than useless. The only question is how do we reply?”
Herr Doktor slumped back in his chair and picked a fallen page off the floor. Yes, of course, how to reply. He shook his head to clear it, but the room shifted. Again, Herr Bleuler’s voice coaxed him.
“Let’s all be reasonable. The mother’s lifetime work was making the poor girl crazy. Then you came along and made her better. Cured her, ja? And so that makes young Herr Doktor Siegfried the enemy now. All that remains for us is to … ah… disarm the mother. Perhaps we — the hospital — can waive the outstanding balance on the girl’s bill. Perhaps we can congratulate the damn woman on her daughter’s stunning progress. I assume you are presently being compensated for the private sessions? Fräulein is paying you something, isn’t she?”
Herr Doktor pressed his fingers to his head. The room turned slowly around…. What was the man asking? How was the girl? How was she in private? Bleuler’s voice prodded him:
“The girl is paying you something, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” he said with effort. “She’s paying me something. Privately. A private fee …”
“Fine,” Bleuler said confidently. Herr Direktor seemed so sure of himself, so ready to take the problem in hand. “Now as for the rumors. Ignore them. Who knows why people start rumors? Idle. Jealous. Stupid. People are all those things.”
Herr Doktor felt too exhausted to comment. Wearily, he said at last, “I’m not sure I’m capable of replying sensibly to this letter.”
“No, but I can. Official stationery and all that. I’ll show you a draft before I send it out.”
The room stopped turning. Now Herr Doktor focused on the man’s face across the desk. “All right… if you want.” Bleuler seemed pleased, chuckling softly to himself. He had taken on a measure of stature. Impotent during the long months of the girl’s treatment, if he helped young Senior Physician in this small way, then he too had contributed to Fräuleins recovery. He began gently bouncing the heavy rubber eraser of his pencil on the desk, bouncing it and catching it deftly between the ends of his fingers on the hop: tap-tap-taptap, “Well, that’s that/’ he said with a thin smile. “Why don’t you tell me about your trip?”
She let him spread her open in the quiet dark of his office. She thought of it as his “welcome home.” Her days had been uneventful — no sudden traumas, no frights, no conflicts, nothing to break the steady rhythm of wake, study, eat, sleep, wake again…. So there was nothing really for them to talk about. They quietly lapsed into what was simplest for them to do. He had kept his office dark on purpose. She barely said hello,- simply entered and walked across the carpet. She led him to the couch. It was so familiar,- they knew the rest. The touching. The taking. The sweet finish.
She sensed the trip had gone well, though he hardly spoke of it. She could guess what they talked about mostly. Her. His great success.
Is this what it meant to be his mistress, then? Groping in the dark, then, later, walking out of his house and back to her room? Always in his possession but never properly possessed? And him never really being hers?
“What is it?” he asked.
Am I his mistress? she wondered.
People talk. Many were capable of saying it.
Bleuler, Nekken, Bosch, Zeik! They were all capable. Someone joked. Another lied. A cretin who scribbled dirty filth in a back stairwell: the crazy bitch is a doctor’s whore. She’d seen a scrawl in the women’s toilet. You’re a slut, it read. And so are you, she scribbled back. With worms in your cunt.
Then last of all there was Frau Emma.
Wife.
Yet every time they met, the woman showed nothing but polite poise. If she suspected something, wouldn’t there be the sharp flint of anger in her eye? A blackness in her smile when she greeted Fräulein at the door or met her coming weakly down the stairs from his office after an hour under her husband’s hands? Why cajole the girl into
the kitchen for tea? Blushing and a little flattered, Fräulein always came. She loved the way Emma brought out pieces of cake or leftovers from the night before, the way she clucked, “Look at you! Thin as a rail! Don’t you eat at home?” While Fräulein, with her mouth too full to talk, devoured everything set in front of her, nodding eagerly when Emma said, ‘isn’t that soup better the next day?” And hiccuping in laughter as the older woman chased Geschrei from perch to perch, until in frantic desperation the cat hid, hissing, under the stove.
To Fräulein they were like two girls together, talking for an hour about things that made no difference. Like what flavor frosting went best with orange buttermilk cake, or how many ribbons go well in your hair, or how difficult it is to sneeze politely with beef goulash in your mouth. The woman’s books and private studies were strewn about the kitchen, just like Fräuleins at home. And from her books, Frau Emma showed her pictures and drawings from a time even older than the ancient dream tale. No ladies in veils — but there were deer men with antlers. And in one picture she saw the shape of Mother of Stone carved into the rock of a cave wall,
“I dream of this,” Fräulein whispered in confidence.
The older woman did not seem surprised. “So you’ve seen her too, eh? In a museum? Or a book … ?”
What an odd light in Emma’s eyes, as though she herself had seen what went on in those strange dreams. Fräulein had the terrible feeling that if she told of what she saw — the village fields, the woods and rushing stream — the spark in Emma’s eyes would leap eagerly to flame and she’d cry, “Yes, I saw that too!”
But Fräulein always held her tongue. Was this woman who fed her and sometimes made her laugh, was this the same woman who wrote lies to her mother? Who now touched hands across the table, not with leaden cold fingers but with warm living ones that seemed to speak endless tales of the shadowed man they shared? Frau Emma had more reason than any to write those lies. Saying:
My husband dances lurid dances in your daughter’s private room.
Saying:
He bought her clothes. Entertaining her at late-night parties.
Saying:
He gave her baths.
Saying:
He took her out of the hospital so he could have her under the same roof as his wife. So he could have them in the same bed; watching them woman to woman or having both on him. Perhaps Frau Emma was more capable than anyone…. Writing this spiteful letter even if it wrecked her husband’s future at the Burghölzli. Even if it tore apart the remains of her marriage. For what hope had she? Frau Emma must suspect them in her heart. Yes, actually know in that secret wordless way a woman always knows about a man. So if his passion for Fräulein could be defiled, the wife would wait. Circling like a bird of prey over the wasteland, waiting for the shreds of him when all was done.
Fräulein rose abruptly from the cradle of his arm.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
Suddenly the man seemed so callous and transparent. What did really matter? What mere foul-mouthed letter could hurt them? What on God’s earth could Mother do to her now that she had not already spent a lifetime doing?
"I'm not a twiddler in the dayroom,” Fräulein said out loud. "I'm a person living in my own apartment. Soon I’ll go to school. And if I still want to be crazy I can do it alone. In private. For my own relief. But not out there for everyone to watch!” She waved her hand to the drawn curtains and the vast world beyond. “When I was a safe little egg, I didn’t exist. When I fed my babies to Herr Wolfpants, I was half alive, trying to create the other half. But now I exist. So alive that turd-mouthed people scrawl about me in women’s toilet stalls. So important some maggot-eating ghoul writes my mother, telling her how bad I am. Telling her I’m your mistress. Well, nobody asked me — and I’m not your mistress. I’m my own mistress.
“My own!” she shouted.
Herr Doktor sat bolt upright. How did she know?
“Did you think Mother would write just you?” Scorn and pity in her eyes … He fell back against the cushions, breathing with his mouth open like a trapped man. “Did you know Father left her?” Herr Doktor shook his head silently no.
“Now Mother says she’s coming here to Zurich. She wants to see where I live.”
“Oh,” he said after a moment. She stared at him for a long time. He appeared blank and confused. Fräulein knew she was going to tell him the final truth of how she wanted things. Ask him to take the last step with her. In life. In death. Forever. Take her by the hand and go into the future as it was meant to be. The words surged out.
“Leave her,” Fräulein told him. “Leave Emma, And come to me, Because of what we’ve been. And what we are now. For what we’re supposed to be. Man. Woman. You … and me.”
Her words were like the first crack in a wide beam supporting a roof. No sign of mounting stress or impending collapse under the massive weight, but the sudden searing break as the thick wood splintered across the grain.
Herr Doktor looked neither at the girl nor at any object in the room. She saw his reason unraveling inside: eyes that fled inward, los-ing touch with her, the moment, reality. Dead eyes. Slack mouth. His body drooping with no will — except the fingers of his left hand covering his groin as if it pained him. Fräulein had never seen a sane person that way before.
Then with great hesitation he staggered awkwardly across the carpet to his desk, free hand groping for support. He touched the desk, and its solidness seemed to guide him. He shuffled slowly around the edge, coming to a stop. And there he stood, wavering gently like a reed. Is that the way I looked? A broken doll? A dummy head stuffed with sawdust? No wheels moving inside. Just a face to the wall? A sickening, knowing weakness flooded her. Yes, just like that.
Why doesn’t he just come to me?
Doesn’t he know it’s all right?
But Herr Doktor made no sign nor any sound. Yet she waited, as he had waited for her through the endless sick time … watching a slim knife of sunlight from a gap in the curtains inch its way across the carpet. And when, at the end of the hour, the man still hadn’t stirred, Fräulein gathered herself together and left his office. Shutting the door sadly behind her. While Herr Doktor remained as before.
A face to the wall.
Chapter 5
Dark Passage
The maid knocked, heralding the arrival of the next patient. When Herr Doktor did not answer, the maid peeped cautiously inside. She saw the man slumped against the wall; his head sagged.
“I’m not here,” he mumbled. “Can’t see anyone. Tell them to go away.”
The maid fled. She found Frau Emma. And it was Emma who made the apologies, turning the patient away with; “I’m terribly sorry, Herr Doktor is feeling poorly today…. Can you telephone us tomorrow?” The patient said he’d telephone tomorrow.
Emma went back to the office. She tried to comfort him with clumsy words. She petted him, she kissed his dangling hand. She tried to pry him gently from the wall. But he was made of wood. With a dull quaver, Emma noticed a dark article of clothing abandoned on the couch. One of Fräuleins black kid-leather gloves. She picked it up. The kid glove felt warm to the touch. She drew it slowly over her fingers and slipped her hand inside. How appropriate. A perfect fit.
When evening threw its long purple shadows into the office, Frau Emma still sat with her husband as the day wore away. Now he trembled with fatigue, as if at any moment he might fold. Gently Emma went to him once more. “Please, come. Come with me….” The words seemed to rouse a deep echo. Then an imperceptible shiver, like the final crumbling of some private foundation. After what seemed an age, his fingers twitched to life. Hesitantly he searched out hers. His hand was limp and clammy. At length he let himself be led off to the bedroom, docile and unresisting.
She undressed him. She said tender words to him, words he did not seem to hear. Dusk darkened into night. He lay in bed a sick man, his inward eyes staring out at nothing.
Whom did he love?
&nbs
p; Which one with all his life?
The girl he saved from insanity?
Or his wife of years, the keeper of his bones?
They were players in a play he had written for himself. Players on a stage of good behavior, of life’s rules, of work and sacrifice. And upon this barren stage he was frantically groping for an open portal, a way out, a trapdoor…. The sounds of the night preyed on him. The dripping of water down a gutter, the whirring of a motorcar on a distant road, the creak of wind against the windows. Next to him, the rhythm of Emma’s breathing pounded like a hammer inside his skull. He wished he could take a pillow, press it to her face, and stop her maddening sighs. While across town he thought he heard the girl — her pen scratching across the blank paper of her art book, the sound like the screeching of a rusty weather vane. Setting his teeth on edge.
Which woman?
Which one forever?
He closed his eyes and slipped off into the ancient dream time…. But the girl’s sacred place was no longer any refuge. Now a loathsome swamp of stench and dread. Bitter sun beat down upon the village fields. The crops had withered to brown, rattling stalks. Birds sat on the orchard’s dying branches, pecking at the rotten fruit. A powerful thirst took Herr Doktor, overthrowing his whole mind. But the rushing stream had shrunk to muddy pockets,- bleached stones lay in the bed. Clouds of flies and mosquitoes hovered over the stink.
The body of a woman lay sprawled where she had knelt for her last drink in the fetid puddles. She was stripped naked to the waist. Her flesh hung loose, breasts sagging to wrinkled sacs. A green spotted toad had stuck to her tit, drinking the body’s water through her skin. She was too weak even to detach it from its sucking. A swarm of gnats covered a swollen, bloated face. Fräulein smiled at him through blistered lips. “Come to me. For what we’ll be. Man and woman. You and me.”
* * *
Herr Doktor awoke in bed. The morning light, airy and golden, slanted in at the window. Sparrows chirped in the trees outside. He quietly moved his eyes about the room. Then to Emma, sleeping peacefully beside him. Good, fine, deep-sleeping Emma. The covers had fallen back from her. He contemplated her long, strong body. Slowly he perceived the lines of Emma’s figure had undergone a subtle change. The slimness of her belly gone,- and a heavy roundness had come to her breasts. Was it all in his mind? Or had he just noticed her change for the first time? Think back! Seven, eight, nine weeks ago … too early to show? A little early But still, what an undeniable firmness to her skin, a ripening luster. Ja, more than possible. With all the madness between himself and the girl, then going straight to Emma afterward. Never taking any precaution, just spreading her and going in … He gently caressed the first swelling. Emma wriggled pleasurably under his hand.