‘Are you sure, Emilie? Are you sure it was Alma’s father?’
Emilie nodded. ‘Five hundred Reichsmarks. Where else do you think it came from?’
‘She never told me.’
‘Of course not, Martin. Why would she tell you, when she knew perfectly well you’d find out?’
So that was Alma’s response: charity, pity, condescension. There was no reason why his family should suffer, just because he was a black sheep. But that seemed too complicated for Alma, too calculating. Kirsch stood staring at the memorial and it came to him that Alma simply did not accept what he had written. She considered it an aberration, caused by overwork and an unhealthy proximity to the insane. She was sitting at home, awaiting another letter from him, retracting what he had said in the first. In the meantime, everything would be business as usual.
Emilie was shaking her head. ‘You know, Martin, sometimes I think you don’t know your fiancée very well.’
The steering committee had organised a lunch party in the old school house, with sandwiches and potato salad on offer, beer for the gentlemen and punch for the ladies. The band stood outside playing marching songs. The lieutenant-general shook some more hands and left after ten minutes, but the mood of satisfaction lingered. If nothing else, the fourteen fallen heroes of Reinsdorf had put their village on the map, and the modern style of the memorial was generally considered superior to the limestone obelisks and crosses that had gone up in neighbouring districts. Kirsch helped himself to a beer and wandered about the room, nodding to old childhood acquaintances, accepting occasional congratulations on his upcoming marriage. His mother was one of the main centres of attention, it being well-known that it was she who had saved the day. She stood surrounded by the more eminent members of the community, the conversation punctuated with further requests to smile for the camera. At one point, she took her husband by the hand and led him into the shot so that they could pose arm in arm. It was a long time since Kirsch had seen them so calm and happy in each other’s company, his mother so serene. The memorial had brought people together. The village was a family, it reminded them. They had suffered as one and remembered as one. And now, with their names carved in stone, it was as if the fourteen heroes had actually died there too, giving their blood for its very walls, homes and soil – victoriously, because the walls, the homes and the soil were all still there.
After a while the band stopped playing and made their way inside. Kirsch passed them at the door, ignoring the way they stepped back to let him through, smiling like dogs eager for a congratulatory pat. He checked his watch: another hour and he would have to set off for the station again. He had just lit a cigarette when he realised his mother had followed him out.
She put a hand on his arm. ‘I know you had a part in getting us the money.’
‘No, I didn’t –’
‘It can’t have been easy asking Alma to intercede. I know how proud you are, and no one likes asking for charity.’
‘You’re quite wrong. I didn’t even know about it.’
But she was not listening.
‘To tell the truth, I wasn’t sure you really approved. I know how you feel about the war …’ Her gaze drifted towards the memorial. From a distance of a hundred yards it looked to Kirsch like an asteroid that had just fallen from the sky and buried itself in the ground.
‘Of course I approve,’ he said.
‘We’ll talk over supper.’ His mother squeezed his arm and turned back to the school house. ‘I had such a nice letter from Alma. You are staying, aren’t you?’
That evening after the meal, Kirsch stole up to the top of the house. He felt sure Max would be waiting for him, ready to vent his disgust at the day’s proceedings: the mendacious waste of good stone, the fantastical cant about national honour. Kirsch wanted to assure him that he was in complete agreement. But when he got to Max’s room, he found that it too had changed. The bed had been moved to the opposite side of the room, the old counterpane replaced with a quilt made up of pastel blues, greens and pinks. Instead of the old faded satin curtains, there were now new ones made of brightly printed cotton in a zigzag pattern. A new rug lay on the floor and the large chest of drawers, in which so many of Max’s old things had been stored, had been moved into the corner and was now littered with hairbrushes, clips, combs, nail scissors and a powder puff in a silver case. Max’s faded photograph was still there, but everything else had disappeared.
This was where Emilie slept now. After thirteen years she had finally moved out of the box room. These were her things on the chest of drawers, her clothes hanging behind the door. She had taken possession, putting everything to her use, according to her taste.
A small bookshelf had been put up above the head of the bed. The books were mainly novels and collections of poetry. Sylvan patterns embossed in gold ran up and down the spines: Goethe and Schiller, Shakespeare, Balzac, and some other writers Kirsch had not heard of.
What had they done with Max’s books, his clothes, his boyhood toys? Had they been consigned to the attic? Or had they been sold in aid of the memorial fund? Most likely the latter, he thought, it being deemed appropriate. He doubted if they had made much money. The clothes were old, the toys mostly broken, the books of a kind that did not enjoy wide appeal. Mostly people would have bought them out of sympathy. In a short time they would probably throw them out again, since they held no sentimental value. They would be left out for the dust cart, or tossed into an incinerator. And no one would ever miss them.
Forty-three
Kirsch’s new position was confirmed by letter. Heinrich Mehring’s caseload became his. He unpacked the files, which had been boxed up in the corner of the office, and went through them one by one. The records of the insulin coma therapy treatments he found in a special folder with its own lock – a lock he forced, there being no evidence of a key. Mehring had been thorough. Every step of every treatment had been meticulously recorded: dosages, times, responses, all according to a prearranged schedule. The patients were examined in the same way, the questions and stimuli being standardised for ease of comparison. By Mehring’s own measure, it was clear that his patients’ responses had become more appropriate over the course of their treatment. Paranoid and delusional claims had become less pronounced. In some cases, patients denied that they had ever made them. Almost all became more cooperative when asked to carry out tasks, both intellectual and physical, and expressed a willingness to rejoin society. On the renewed desire to please rests the best hope of the patient’s returning to a productive existence in the future, Mehring wrote after one especially satisfactory session.
Kirsch found the record of Sergeant Stoehr’s treatment. Of the incident on 30 October, in which Nurse Ritter had been injured, Mehring had written: Session terminated before completion. See addendum. But Kirsch could find no addendum.
He put the whole file in the incinerator. It was not something he had ever thought he would do, data being data, but once the job was begun he found it surprisingly satisfying. The following day he had all the equipment stripped out of Mehring’s laboratories: the beds, the drips, the stores of glucose water. The insulin itself he sent over to the main hospital, with a note saying it should be checked for contamination.
The patients, on the other hand, remained. Incurable schizophrenics, especially those deemed dangerous or suicidal, were usually removed to asylums, where they were kept under permanent sedation. To keep them at the clinic, it was usually necessary to carry on some form of treatment with a view to improvement. But Mehring’s notes were focused entirely on aberrant symptoms, collected for the purposes of identifying a pre-defined disease. He had cared little for his patients’ histories. The possibility that experience might have driven them to extreme or troubling behaviour had been ignored. Kirsch did not know where to begin.
The rest of the staff were not helpful. Perhaps because of Kirsch’s rank, they kept their distance, carrying out instructions promptly, but volunteering nothing. It was as
if he were back in the army, a chain of command both above and below him. He toured the wards, the workshops and recreations rooms, trying to make time for each and every patient, to listen and record; but there were too many of them, too many stories. Though troubled with vivid dreams and bouts of fever, he worked longer hours than ever, without tangible progress. He began to wish the clinic was in Switzerland, in some picture-postcard valley, so that he could at least prescribe peace and clean air and exercise, like one of those private institutions he had once considered a sham. As it stood, the clinic provided only shelter and security – and less and less of that.
He discharged patients wherever possible, encountering no opposition from colleagues. His attempts at thinning out the ranks was assumed to be a cost-cutting measure. It was widely known that the institution, like others of its kind, was under pressure to reduce its expenses. Cuts in staff had already begun at the main hospital.
Some families were pleased to hear that they were not in any danger from their afflicted relatives, and that the best treatment for them was consideration and care. Most were not pleased at all. Often they refused point blank to take their relatives back. Some of the patients had no family in any case, at least none remotely close enough to provide a home. Where they were concerned, there seemed even less hope of care than there was of recovery. It struck Kirsch as never before that where the mentally ill were concerned, there was simply not enough compassion to go around.
Kirsch went to see Mariya every day, though visiting hours were strict and limited, and the setting far from conducive to private conversation. After a week, she was discharged by Dr Brenner. Her physical symptoms, he confirmed, had finally disappeared, and her mental state appeared stable. Only the amnesia remained. At Kirsch’s insistence, she was readmitted to the clinic.
The same day, Kirsch received another communication from Dr Fischer, congratulating him on his promotion, and asking for information:
You will be pleased to learn that the Commissioner for Health and Medical Services at the Reich Ministry of the Interior has accepted the recommendations of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute regarding the redefinition of priorities within psychiatric medicine. All psychiatric establishments will soon be instructed to prepare comprehensive lists of patients past and present, who exhibit or have exhibited symptoms of incurable mental or neurological disease. In accordance with the precautionary principle alone, these must henceforth be regarded as congenital and therefore likely to have an hereditary component. Patients listed should include those suffering from any form of:
–schizophrenia
–manic depression
–epilepsy
–hereditary blindness and deafness
–grave bodily malformation
–hereditary alcoholism
–congenital feeblemindedness.
Such information will enable the state to protect the population as a whole, and future generations, from the ravages and misery of inherited disease.
As a practitioner at one of Germany’s most respected establishments, it would be to your advantage to begin work on this immediately. A willingness to show leadership in support of this crucial initiative will ensure the continued trust and support of those in positions of authority.
* * *
Frau Rosenberg told him the director was on the telephone. Kirsch said he would wait. For ten minutes he sat in silence in the outer office, while Frau Rosenberg tapped tentatively on the keys of her typewriter, determined, it seemed, to avoid his eye. When he was finally admitted into Bonhoeffer’s presence, he found the old man on his feet in front of the window, fiddling irritably with the latch. A cigarette burned unattended in an ashtray. Something in his appearance was unusual, although at first Kirsch could not identify what it was.
‘Damned draft,’ Bonhoeffer mumbled. ‘Take a seat, Dr Kirsch.’
Kirsch remained standing. He handed Bonhoeffer the letter. The director looked at it dubiously, then reached into his top pocket for his spectacles. It was then that Kirsch realised what had bothered him: Bonhoeffer was not wearing his white coat. He glanced around the room, trying to locate it. But the only white coat he could see was his.
Bonhoeffer handed the letter back. ‘I’m aware of the commissioner’s demands. Though I appreciate you keeping me up to date.’
‘They want lists. Patients past and present.’
‘Apparently.’
‘What for? What’s it all for?’
Bonhoeffer looked at Kirsch over the top of his spectacles. ‘Why don’t you ask your Dr Fischer?’
‘Dr Fischer? I hardly know the man.’
The lines deepened in Bonhoeffer’s brow. ‘How strange. He seems to know you rather well. And not just by reputation.’
He slid the letter back across the desk. Reluctantly Kirsch picked it up. His connection with Fischer was too complicated to explain.
‘What’s it for?’ he asked again.
The director regarded him steadily. ‘The names on the list will be removed to special facilities. When, I don’t know.’
‘What kind of facilities?’
‘Surgical facilities, I should imagine. Certainly psychiatry as we understand it will not be in evidence.’ Bonhoeffer sat down at his desk and began shuffling papers. ‘Of course, compulsory sterilisation will require a change in the law, likewise euthanasia, although I’m sure it won’t be long in coming. They’ll have to find the surgeons, of course.’ He reached for the cigarette, examined the end, then screwed it into the bottom of the ashtray. ‘But I doubt if that will prove an obstacle. Our colleagues in the mainstream profession have never believed in the value of psychiatry.’
‘You don’t intend to cooperate?’ Kirsch placed his hands on the desk. Bonhoeffer stared at them, as if afraid they were merely pausing en route to his throat. ‘You’re not going to give them those lists?’
‘Naturally I shall do what the law requires.’
‘Hang the law.’
Bonhoeffer laughed. ‘Be careful. Or the law may hang you.’
Kirsch could have sworn that the building was swaying beneath his feet.
‘Are you all right?’ Bonhoeffer said. ‘You look pale. And tired.’
‘I won’t cooperate.’
‘Are you sure you won’t sit down?’
‘It’d be better to shut the clinic. Better to empty the place, if this is what our patients can expect.’
‘Empty the place?’ Bonhoeffer put his head on one side. ‘Haven’t you made a start on that already? Hasn’t that been your aim all along?’
‘My aim? My aim is … has always been …’
Kirsch did not want to sit down, but his legs would not support him. He felt a burning around his chest, as if his skin were shrinking onto his ribs, stretching and tearing. Bonhoeffer offered him water, but he refused it.
‘Herr Director, you can’t surrender those records. It’s unthinkable.’
‘On the contrary: I think you’ll find it’s been thought about a great deal. The hereditary health of the European race? Your reading has been too selective, I think.’
‘They can’t force us to comply.’
‘Not legally, not yet. But I expect it’s only a matter of time.’
‘Then it’s time we must use.’
Bonhoeffer leaned back in his chair. Kirsch was a difficult man to read. In the beginning he had been dedicated and inquisitive. But slowly his ideas had hardened into a disregard for authority and accepted practice – that, at least, was Bonhoeffer’s perception. It had been the start of a general moral disintegration. Kirsch’s arrogance had fed his ambition and his ruthlessness. Heinrich Mehring had fled the country after threats to his life and that of his wife. It was widely rumoured that Kirsch’s powerful friends were responsible.
Now Kirsch wanted to do the honourable thing, regardless of the consequences. Was it a change of heart, Bonhoeffer wondered, or had he misjudged the man completely?
‘I’m not sure I know what you mean,’ he sa
id. ‘Use the time how?’
Forty-four
No one at the clinic was surprised when the new the deputy director assumed responsibility for compiling the list. When the psychiatric staff received Kirsch’s memorandum, instructing them to go through their records, many assumed that this eagerness to comply with the ministry’s request was the real reason for his promotion. The tone of the memorandum was brisk. All files relating to patients, past or present, who met the health commissioner’s criteria were to be surrendered without delay. Where the diagnosis was uncertain – in particular, where schizophrenia or manic depression were suspected – the relevant file was also to be handed over. Even the files of the dead were not to be left out. There might be relatives still living – brothers, sisters, children and grandchildren – all with the potential to scatter the seeds of feeblemindedness and insanity, endangering future generations.
Kirsch was vaguer about the fate of the patients themselves. He emphasised only the gathering and sharing of data; data which the Commissioner for Health and Medical Services would use to shape future policy. Even so, he knew there would be objections. Mental illness was a curse families had always been anxious to conceal. The stigma of congenital insanity was deep and enduring. It had taken the psychiatric profession years to change attitudes, to be trusted with family secrets the way physicians were. Surrendering sensitive information to the authorities – names, addresses and medical histories – would surely destroy that trust for ever.
As soon as the memorandum had been sent, Kirsch set to work at the top of the building, a damp-smelling attic where the oldest records were stored in mouldy cardboard boxes and bundles tied up with ribbon. Many were almost a hundred years old and pre-dated Emil Kraepelin’s first classification of mental illness. Kirsch sifted through the remainder, pulling out anything that might, in the ministry’s view, indicate congenital disease. The task proved difficult. Instances of mania, dementia or alcoholism occurred in most of the case histories; instances of possible epilepsy in hundreds more. The only way he could be sure no cases of hereditary illness had been missed was to take them all.
The Einstein Girl Page 31