To Room Nineteen

by Doris Lessing

  ‘So,’ he said again, smiling dryly.

  At which, Mary Parrish – since he was conveying a feeling of total isolation – said quickly, ‘But we are very interested. We would love to see some more, if you have time.’

  It seemed that he needed very much to hear her say this. For the ironical condemnation left his face and was succeeded by the pathetic anxiety of the amateur artist to be loved for his work. He said that he had had two exhibitions of his paintings, that he had been misunderstood by the critics, who had praised the paintings he did not care for, so that he would never again expose himself publicly to the stupidity of critics. He was dependent for sympathy on the understanding minority, some of them chance visitors to his hospital; some of them even – if they did not mind his saying so – inmates of it. He would, for two such delightful guests as his visitors from England, be happy to show more of his work.

  With this he invited them to step into a passage behind his office. Its walls were covered from floor to ceiling with pictures. Also the walls of the passage beyond it.

  It was terrifying to think of the energy this man must have when he was ‘depressed’. Corridor after corridor opened up, the walls all covered with canvases loaded with thick, crusted paint. Some of the corridors were narrow, and it was impossible to stand far enough back for the pictures to compose themselves. But it seemed that Dr Kroll was able to see what his hands had done even when he was close against the canvas. He would lean into a big area of thick, dry paint from which emerged fragmentarily a jerky branch that looked like a bombed tree, or a bit of cracked bone, or a tormented mouth, and say: ‘I call this picture “Love”.’ Or Victory, or Death; for he liked this kind of title. ‘See? See that house there? See how I’ve put the church?’ And the two guests gazed blankly at the smears of paint and wondered if perhaps this canvas represented the apotheosis of his madness and had no form in it at all. But if they stepped back against the opposite wall as far as they could, and leaned their heads back to gain an extra inch of distance, they could see that there was a house or a church. The house was also a skull; and the dead grey walls of the church oozed rusty blood, or spilled a gout of blood over the sills of its windows, or its door ejected blood like a person’s mouth coughing blood.

  Depression again weighed on the pair who, following after the dignified back of Dr Kroll as he led them into yet another picture-filled corridor, instinctively reached for each other’s hands, reached for the warm contact of healthy flesh.

  Soon their host led them back into the office, where he offered them more coffee. They refused politely but asked to see his hospital. Dr Kroll carelessly agreed. It was not, his manner suggested, that he did not take his hospital seriously, but that he would much rather, now he had been given the privilege of a visit from these rarely sympathetic people, share with them his much higher interests: his love for their country, his art. But he would nevertheless escort them around the hospital.

  Again he took up the great bundle of black keys and went before them down the corridor they had first entered by. Now they saw that the pictures they had noticed then were all by him; these were the pictures he despised and hung for public view. But as they passed through a back door into a courtyard he paused, held up his keys, smiling, and indicated a small picture by the door. The picture was of the keys. From a scramble of whitey-grey paint came out, very black and hard and shining, a great jangling bunch of keys that also looked like bells, and, from certain angles, like staring eyes. Dr Kroll shared a smile with them as if to say: An interesting subject?

  The three doctors went across a courtyard into the first block, which consisted of two parallel very long wards, each filled with small, tidy, white beds that had a chair and a locker beside them. On the beds sat, or leaned, or lay, the patients. Apart from the fact that they tended to be listless and staring, there was nothing to distinguish this ward from the ward of any public hospital. Dr Kroll exchanged brisk greetings with certain of his patients; discouraged an old man who grasped his arm as he passed and said that he had a momentous piece of news to tell him which he had heard that moment over his private wireless station, and which affected the whole course of history; and passed on smiling through this building into the next. There was nothing new here. This block, like the last, had achieved the ultimate in reducing several hundred human beings into complete identity with each other. Dr Kroll said, almost impatiently, that if you had seen one of these wards you had seen them all, and took off at a tangent across a courtyard to another of these regular blocklike buildings which was full of women. It occurred to the British pair that the two buildings on the other side of the court had men in them only; and they asked Dr Kroll if he kept the men in the line of buildings on one side of the court, and the women on the other – for there was a high wire fence down the court, with a door in it that he opened and locked behind him. ‘Why, that is so,’ said Dr Kroll indifferently.

  ‘Do the men and the women meet – in the evenings, perhaps?’

  ‘Meet? No.’

  ‘Not at social evenings? At dances perhaps? At some meals during the week?’

  Here Dr Kroll turned and gave his guests a tolerant smile. ‘My friends,’ he said, ‘sex is a force destructive enough even when kept locked up. Do you suggest that we should mix the sexes in a place like this, where it is hard enough to keep people quiet and unexcited?’

  Dr Anderson remarked that in progressive mental hospitals in Britain it was a policy to allow men and women to mix together as much as was possible. For what crime were these poor people being punished, he inquired hotly, that they were treated as if they had taken perpetual vows of celibacy?

  Dr Parrish noted that the word ‘progressive’ fell very flat in this atmosphere. Such was the power of Dr Kroll’s conservative personality that it sounded almost eccentric.

  ‘So?’ commented Dr Kroll. ‘So the administrators of your English hospitals are prepared to give themselves so much unnecessary trouble?’

  ‘Do the men and women never meet?’ insisted Dr Parrish.

  Dr Kroll said tolerantly that at night they behaved like naughty schoolchildren and passed each other notes through the wire.

  The British couple fell back on their invincible politeness and felt their depression inside them like a fog. It was still snowing lightly through the heavy grey air.

  Having seen three buildings all full of women of all ages, lying and sitting about in the listlessness of complete idleness, they agreed with Dr Kroll it was enough; they were prepared to end their tour of inspection. He said that they must return with him for another cup of coffee, but first he had to make a short visit, and perhaps they would be kind enough to accompany him. He led the way to another building set rather apart from the others, whose main door he opened with an enormous key from his bunch of keys. As soon as they were inside it became evident that this was the children’s building. Dr Kroll was striding down the main passage, calling aloud for some attendant who appeared to take instructions.

  Meanwhile, Mary Parrish, doctor who specialized in small children, finding herself at the open door of a ward looked in, and invited Dr Anderson to do the same. It was a very large room, very clean, very fresh, with barred windows. It was full of cots and small beds. In the centre of the room a five-year-old child stood upright against the bars of a cot. His arms were confined by a straitjacket, and because he could not prevent himself from falling, he was tied upright against the bars with a cord. He was glaring around the room, glaring and grinding his teeth. Never had Mary seen such a desperate, wild, suffering little creature as this one. Immediately opposite the child sat a very large towheaded woman, dressed in heavy striped grey material, like a prison dress, knitting as comfortably as if she were in her kitchen.

  Mary was speechless with horror at the sight. She could feel Hamish stiff and angry beside her.

  Dr Kroll came back down the passage, saw them, and said amiably: ‘You are interested? So? Of course, Dr Parrish, you said children are your fie
ld. Come in, come in.’ He led the way into the room, and the fat woman stood up respectfully as he entered. He glanced at the straitjacketed child and moved past it to the opposite wall, where there was a line of small beds, placed head to foot. He pulled back the coverings one after another, showing a dozen children aged between a year and six years – armless children, limbless children, children with enormous mis-shapen heads, children with tiny heads and monstrous bodies. He pulled the coverings off, one after another, replacing them as soon as Mary Parrish and Hamish Anderson had seen what he was showing them, and remarked: ‘Modern drugs are a terrible thing. Now these horrors are kept alive. Before, they died of pneumonia.’

  Hamish said, ‘The theory is, I believe, that medical science advances so fast that we should keep even the most apparently hopeless people alive in case we find something that can save them?’

  Dr Kroll gave them the ironical smile they had seen before, and said, ‘Yes, yes, yes. That is the theory. But for my part …’

  Mary Parrish was watching the imprisoned little boy, who glared from a flushed wild face, straining his small limbs inside the thick stuff of the strait jacket. She said, ‘In Britain strait jackets are hardly ever used. Certainly not for children.’

  ‘So?’ commented Dr Kroll. ‘So? But sometimes it is for the patient’s own good.’

  He advanced towards the boy and stood before the bars of the cot, looking at him. The child glared back like a wild animal into the eyes of the big doctor. ‘This one bites if you go too near him,’ commented Dr Kroll; and with a nod of his head invited them to follow him out.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he remarked, unlocking the big door and locking it behind them, ‘there are things we cannot say in public, but we may agree in private that there are many people in this hospital who would be no worse for a quick and painless death.’

  Again he asked that they should excuse him, and he strode off to have a word with another doctor who was crossing the court in his white coat, with another big bunch of black keys in his hand.

  Hamish said, ‘This man told us that he has directed this hospital for thirty years.’

  ‘Yes, I believe he did.’

  ‘So he was here under Hitler.’

  ‘The mongrel upstart, yes.’

  ‘And he would not have kept his job unless he had agreed to sterilize Jews, serious mental defectives, and communists. Did you remember?’

  ‘No, I’d forgotten.’

  ‘So had I.’

  They were silent a moment, thinking of how much they had liked, how much they still liked, Dr Kroll.

  ‘Any Jew or mental defective or communist unlucky enough to fall into Dr Kroll’s hands would have been forcibly sterilized. And the very ill would have been killed outright.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ she objected feebly. ‘After all, perhaps he refused. Perhaps he was strong enough to refuse.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘After all, even under the worst governments there are always people in high places who use their influence to protect weak people.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘And he might have been one.’

  ‘We should keep an open mind?’ he inquired, quick and sarcastic. They stood very close together under the cold snow in a corner of the grey courtyard. Twenty paces away, beyond walls and locked doors, a small boy, naked save for a straitjacket and tied to bars like an animal, was grinding his teeth and glaring at the fat knitting wardress.

  Mary Parrish said miserably, ‘We don’t know, after all. We shouldn’t condemn anyone without knowing. For all we know he might have saved the lives of hundreds of people.’

  At this point Dr Kroll came back, swinging his keys.

  Hamish inquired blandly, ‘It would interest us very much to know if Hitler’s regime made any difference to you professionally?’

  Dr Kroll considered this question as he strolled along beside them. ‘Life was easy for no one during that time,’ he said.

  ‘But as regards medical policy?’

  Dr Kroll gave this question his serious thought, and said, ‘No, they did not interfere very much. Of course, on certain questions, the gentlemen of the Nazi regime had sensible ideas.’

  ‘Such as? For instance?’

  ‘Oh, questions of hygiene? Yes, one could call them questions of social hygiene.’ He had led them to the door of the main building, and now he said: ‘You will, I hope, join me in a cup of coffee before you leave? Unless I can persuade you to stay and have a meal with us?’

  ‘I think we should catch our bus back to town,’ said Hamish, speaking firmly for both of them. Dr Kroll consulted his watch. ‘Your bus will not be passing for another twenty minutes.’ They accompanied him back through the picture-hung corridors to his office.

  ‘And I would like so much to give you a memento of your visit,’ he said, smiling at them both. ‘Yes, I would like that. No, wait for one minute, I want to show you something.’

  He went to the wall cupboard and took out a flat object wrapped in a piece of red silk. He unwrapped the silk and brought forth another picture. He set this picture against the side of the desk and invited them to stand back and look at it. They did so, already prepared to admire it, for it was a product of one of the times when he was not depressed. It was a very large picture, done in clear blues and greens, the picture of a forest – an imaginary forest with clear streams running through it, a forest where impossibly brilliant birds flew, and full of plants and trees created in Dr Kroll’s mind. It was beautiful, full of joy and tranquillity and light. But in the centre of the sky glared a large black eye. It was an eye remote from the rest of the picture; and obviously what had happened was that Dr Kroll had painted his fantasy forest, and then afterwards, looking at it during some fit of misery, had painted in that black, condemnatory, judging eye.

  Mary Parrish stared back at the eye and said, ‘It’s lovely; it’s a picture of paradise.’ She felt uncomfortable at using the word paradise in the presence of Hamish, who by temperament was critical of words like these.

  But Dr Kroll smiled with pleasure, and laid his heavy hand on her shoulder, and said: ‘You understand. Yes, you understand. That picture is called The Eye of God in Paradise. You like it?’

  ‘Very much,’ she said, afraid that he was about to present that picture to her. For how could they possibly transport such a big picture all the way back to Britain and what would she do with it when she got there? For it would be dishonest to paint out the black, wrathful eye: one respected, naturally, an artist’s conception even if one disagreed with it. And she could not endure to live with that eye, no matter how much she liked the rest of the picture.

  But it seemed that Dr Kroll had no intention of parting with the picture itself, which he wrapped up again in its red silk and hid in the cupboard. He took from a drawer a photograph of the picture and offered it to her, saying, ‘If you really like my picture – and I can see that you do, for you have a real feeling, a real understanding – then kindly take this as a souvenir of a happy occasion.’

  She thanked him, and both she and Hamish looked with polite gratitude at the photograph. Of course it gave no idea at all of the original. The subtle blues and greens had gone, were not hinted at; and even the softly-waving grasses, trees, plants, foliage, were obliterated. Nothing remained but a reproduction of crude crusts of paint, smeared thick by the fingers of Dr Kroll, from which emerged the hint of a branch, the suggestion of a flower. Nothing remained except the black, glaring eye, the eye of a wrathful and punishing God. It was the photograph of a roughly-scrawled eye, as a child might have drawn it – as, so Mary could not help thinking, that unfortunate straitjacketed little boy might have drawn the eye of God, or of Dr Kroll, had he been allowed to get his arms free and use them.

  The thought of that little boy hurt her; it was still hurting Hamish who stood politely beside her. She knew that the moment they could leave this place and get on to the open road where the bus passed would be the happiest of her life.

/>   They thanked Dr Kroll profoundly for his kindness, insisted they were afraid they might miss their bus, said goodbye, and promised letters and an exchange of medical papers of interest to them all – promised, in short, eternal friendship.

  Then they left the big building and Dr Kroll and emerged into the cold February air. Soon the bus came and picked them up, and they travelled back over the flat black plain to the city terminus.

  The terminus was exactly as it had been four or five hours before. Under the low grey sky the black chilled earth, the ruins of streets, the already softening shapes of bomb craters, the big new shining white building covered with the energetic shapes of workers. The bus queue still waited patiently, huddled into dark, thick clothes, while a thin bitter snow drifted down, down, hardly moving, as if the sky itself were slowly falling.

  Mary Parrish took out the photograph and held it in her chilly gloved hand.

  The black angry eye glared up at them.

  ‘Tear it up,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Why not? What’s the use of keeping the beastly thing?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be fair,’ she said seriously, returning it to her handbag.

  ‘Oh, fair,’ he said bitterly, with an impatient shrug.

  They moved off side by side to the bus stop where they would catch a bus back to their hotel. Their feet crunched sharply on the hard earth. The stillness, save for the small shouts of the men at work on the half-finished building, save for the breathing noise of the machine, was absolute. And this queue of people waited like the other across the square, waited eternally, huddled up, silent, patient, under the snow; listening to the silence, under which seemed to throb from the depths of the earth the memory of the sound of marching feet, or heavy, black-booted, marching feet.

  One off the Short List