THE MADNESS OF DR. CALIGARI

by Dennis Weiler

  I will now refer, if I may, to Fritz’ excellent transcript of our interview.

  ***

  To begin with, we asked Conrad if he knew where he was and what he was accused of.

  “I am in jail at the town of Weißensee. I am accused of two murders which I did not commit. But that is not the whole story. I am in a hot air balloon, floating high above the Indian Ocean. I think. I cannot be certain.”

  We asked Conrad which it was: the jail, or the balloon? For a man cannot be in two places at once.

  “I speak to you, Herr Doktor, in a jail cell, in this nightmare. In the sky, I dream.”

  We noted that Conrad was not certain about the balloon. Fritz noted that “a dark shadow crosses Conrad’s face and he looks down to his hands.” We repeated the question. Why was he not certain?

  “I fear that the balloon has ripped, and fallen from the sky. I fear I may be dead, or injured and trapped within a coma.”

  We should mention, gentleman, that Conrad’s lawyer was delighted with this lunatic turn of the discussion—so much so that Conrad requested he recuse himself for the length of the interview. We concurred, and when we were alone continued to press on what we presumed to be Conrad’s delusional belief that he was sleeping in the gondola of a balloon, or possibly had suffered some mishap. How did he come to be there?

  “It was a conveyance, merely that. It is the only way I can travel to visit my mother.”

  Ah hah! Conrad’s mother, the witch.

  “She does not practice the art much any longer, and even were it so—I am too tall and heavy for her to bring aloft now.”

  We inquire then as to where Conrad’s mother lives that he should require flight of one sort or another to reach it, and he answers without hesitation, “The Himalayas.”

  Over the course of our interview, we established many further details of Conrad’s so-called delusion. He lived in a great house in Tarethia, where he was employed as a trusted advisor to the King. He was unmarried at present, but for the past 10 years had been engaged in a long, traditional courtship with a Moon-Maiden whose name sounded like a water drop echoing from the depths of a well.

  “When I close my eyes, even here, I can nearly see her,” said Conrad. “I can hear her sweet voice, urging me to wake. But I cannot wake.”

  We noted that Conrad was awake at present, and perhaps he was describing a dream. Conrad shook his head violently.

  “Herr Doktor, I am not awake. This is the dream. This is the nightmare.”

  This is the dream, gentlemen. This is the nightmare.

  We might have concluded from this, that Conrad’s delusion was complete—he had disassociated entirely from reality, and delusionally concluded that this world of consequence and physicality was but a dream—and thereby we might conclude that he had no understanding of the consequences of his actions. We might at that have in good professional conscience, testified that Conrad was clinically, criminally insane.

  We might have finished with Conrad then and there, in other words. But our curiosity drove us to question deeper, and Conrad happily elucidated. He taught us the rudiments of lunar grammar, and Fritz, who had a greater faculty with language than we, joined Conrad in a simple conversation. We revisited Conrad’s childhood, and Conrad’s early attachment to his mother—and we achieved a breakthrough when we probed further as to the identity of the man with the scar on his throat. He was an Italian named Cesare and his mother took him on briefly as a lover. The scar was a result of a knife attack, but not at Conrad’s hands.

  Sometimes the simplest explanations are the true ones, gentlemen. And finally, we ended our interrogation, we looked upon Fritz, who remarked in his notes that our eyes brimmed with tears; and as we spoke, he dutifully wrote down our words as we spoke them. Here, again:

  “We are well-trained to decipher the deceptions of the mad neurotic. But how shallow we become, faced with the conundrum of truth amid simple despair.”

  ***

  In short, we did not participate in any declaration regarding Conrad’s unfitness to stand trial. We informed his lawyer that in our opinion, Conrad was entirely lucid, and that we would not, on the evidence we had collected, maintain otherwise. Conrad’s lawyer was incredulous, and you will not be surprised to know that the conversation became heated. But we were not to be swayed.

  We did not stay on for the trial, but returned the next morning to Vienna at our own expense. It was only a month that we received a telegram from the lawyer, informing us of the consequence of our inaction—that Conrad had been found guilty of both murders, and was to be hanged. The lawyer provided us a time and a place, should we wish to attend. We did not.

  Our failures, gentlemen, may advance our knowledge but they are not without consequence. Conrad was executed—a man, a patient of ours—had died. A word from us might well have saved him. He might have lived—might still live, in one of our very well-run asylums, drugged and sterilized, to preserve his life, and the sanctity of the nation.

  We did fail to save Conrad from the noose. Many nights since his death, we wondered: had we failed as physician? Had we allowed ourselves to be swept up in the numinous certainty of the patient’s delusion? We admit, gentlemen, that for many years we kept our notes on Conrad locked away—fearful of the ridicule and censure the exposure of this case might bring upon our practice—the questions it might give rise to, regarding our own fitness to not only work in our profession, but simply walk free in this quotidian world.

  Was Conrad simply a madman, so steeped in delusion that he might coagulate the mad symbols of his dream into a convincing reality? A mesmerist, who through his conviction could infect those with whom he spoke with his seductive but regressive imaginarium?

  Might he simply be leading us all, like a nation of somnambulists, deep into a true nightmare?

  These questions preoccupied us over the years, and we were mindful of them as the nightmare of Conrad’s dream survived and blossomed upon his grave. We wondered as our friends and neighbors began to vanish—as the very meaning of words shifted—as those qualities we took as axiomatically noble traded places with those understood to be noxious.

  And as it draws nearer… as the noose around us all tightens, we wondered: How death in a dream truly manifests?

  You are all familiar with the belief—that if one falls in a dream and hits the ground, one will perish in one’s sleep. Have you ever plummeted, and struck cobblestone? No. You might well be dead, if ever you had.

  And so we wondered…

  Did Conrad die, when the rope snapped his neck—did the gondola finally and truly plummet into the ocean below? Did we fail to save the true patient, by letting his dream show him death?

  And so it was, gentlemen, that we found the resolve to gather our notes and bring the case of Conrad—The Long Dream—to this august assembly. We may have failed to save Conrad. But here in the midst of this grey and terrible miasma in which we think ourselves to live, beneath a gathering storm so awful as to defy reason—as, we note, our kind overseers in this chamber seem to have reached the limit of their patience with our discourse, as they reach for their holsters to finally quiet it…

  It is not yet too late to save ourselves.

  Awake gentlemen, and end this fitful slumber once and for all.

  Awake!

  A frightful noise and then several sets of eyes looking. The eyes, compelled to look, stared widely and wider at the blank-faced woman who declared to all those in proximity, “We queens are not free to answer our hearts!”

  The woman was not a queen, of course, and there were no actual queens in the group around her, but upon hearing the words, one dark, frail man clutched his chest where his heart would be and fell back with a shriek.

  Again, the frightful noise. Again, the several sets of eyes looking.

  The man, just six days earlier had started making a det
ailed catalogue of his regrets. Upon the urging of his doctor in an effort to “compel away his inner demons” and to “reintegrate him into society without excessive remorse.” The man hadn’t seen his wife and son in seven years, and had been too ashamed to send any word in the form of a letter or message, no update on his condition or rehabilitation, and the more time that passed, the more shame he stacked into the ratchets of his spine. This, of course, was one of the regrets already listed in his catalogue, and he had indeed been listing, day and night, for the past six days.

  He regretted the time when he had broken his neighbor’s glass window when he was nine, had lied to Mrs. Schmidt and blamed it on the cat, and though no one believed him and knew just what he had done, in order to teach him a lesson about his lying, hung the cat from the oak tree in front of his house. They left the body up there for weeks, letting the various rounds of different creatures and weather patterns take their turns on the cat’s hanging carcass, and he couldn’t bear to look and he couldn’t bear to look away.

  He regretted too, the time when he had stolen an illustrated book of mythological creatures from the library and showed the chapter on demons and monsters to his sister, Elisa. She had a nightmare a few days later in which she saw one of the demons, from the book green and snarling teeth and reaching out for her and calling her by name, at the foot of her bed. It had revealed a truth too horrific to her that she had declared she couldn’t live with it, the truth that the demon had whispered to her in her sleep, its clawed fingers clasped around her neck, eyes wide and scrutinizing the depths of her soul She hugged her brother and kissed her mother and later that evening, they found her hanging in the stables.

  When he had started, he had begun the task with the hope for an end to his stay in this asylum and also empathy for the doctor and the doctor’s role and care and investment in his rehabilitation, and wanted to approach every assigned task with a certain level of engagement and fidelity. If he worked hard enough, it would come. He believed this. He had to believe it. The doctor kept repeating that they were making progress, that these things took time, and that he just had to trust in his own ability to become well again. Yet it had been years of various efforts and therapies and medications. And now, it had been days of various regrets.

  When he had started, he had also been under the assumption that he already had a good and concise idea of the regrets he carried with him. Of course he knew. He had been trapped here, after all, for those very actions and gestures he wished he could take back. He had been dragged to the front door of the asylum by men on a rainy evening, a brief flash of lightning allowing him to read the sign hanging on the wall outside the building, and the brief resignation and understanding of what his fate was to be. And yet, once he started, once he began to commit to paper the various regrets that were so familiar to him, new regrets sprang up, new associations made, and new regrets remembered, recalled, created, catalogued. He couldn’t stop. The regrets were birthing new regrets and then he regretted writing down certain regrets and he regretted agreeing to this task and he regretted regretting and breath and breath and—

  He regretted that the night his first son was born, he had been working all day at the fair, and because he had decided that he had worked hard enough and he was tired and exhausted and fed up with his lot in life, retired for the evening at the tavern where he drank his fill and fell asleep in his seat. When he awoke in the morning and returned home, ready with an apology in his pocket and a loaf of bread in his hand, he found a pool of red surrounding the body of his wife and ran over to her. She had given birth alone, and had called for the midwife and called for her husband, but neither had come, and the head of the baby had been so very large and she had been so very exhausted, and she had passed out from the ordeal and the baby had swallowed something and suffocated with no awake human nearby to hear any of the calls.

  He regretted that the night his second son was born he went to see a fortune teller with the horrible sensation that he would find something terrible waiting for him at home. He was a coward and was too afraid of facing what might be at home so instead spent half his day’s pay at the fortune teller, who told him that anything nefarious lurking in the shadows that was out to get his family, were lurking in his shadows alone. He slapped the fortune teller across the cheek in rage and ran home to find the midwife cradling his son and he felt a pain so strong in his heart he sat down in front of the fire and instantly fell asleep.

  He regretted that the day his mother died, he only knew to be angry at her for leaving. It was his birthday the next day and she had promised to take him to the fair and now instead of going to the fair, he would be attending a funeral and though he knew that he ought to be feeling something different, couldn’t help but feel that something was being taken away from, that it wasn’t fair, that she was doing this on purpose, and that he wouldn’t even be able to express his disappointment in her.

  And when the man had heard the strange’s woman’s declaration, 17 more regrets had sprung to mind and his lungs could not handle the constant holding of breath, the lack of air, the lack of sufficiency that comes with the acceptance of life. This man, however, was unable to accept a single action his body opted into. Once he acted, he immediately regretted. Once he regretted, he immediately regretted further.

  He regretted so many things, and other things he hadn’t remembered doing, and other things he may not even have done but had found themselves lodged into his personal memory, and he regretted the regret and the activity of regret and the meaning of regret itself, his feet scuffling down the hallways as he was dragged into his room, still regretting, still regretting regretting.

  He was finding it harder and harder to sleep, the regrets kept him awake at night. And it was as if, lying in bed and gazing up at the ceiling, that the regrets were circling around and birthing new regrets right in front of his eyes, like little demons growing out of other demons, dancing around his bed and poking him with sticks, the man unable to do anything as he recognized that he was the sole creator of these demons, and yet also insistently and instantly regretting them, that act of regretting, only producing more demons, more pokes and prods, until his room became filled to the brim with these regrets and he could hardly even sleep in his bed anymore because he was being pushed and squeezed at all sides and angles, yet couldn’t escape as all the windows and doors were blocked by regrets birthing regrets and it was dark and dismal as the lights had all been blown out or blocked by the regrets and he didn’t dare speak or move for fear of creating more of them and then, his inactivity rewarded by more regrets and he couldn’t see where his feet were or the edges of the bed or the fingers of his hand which he had been holding out in front of his eyes to test his vision after the lights had gone out but now, having realized the extent to which the regrets had taken over the space, and how they looked at him with those eyes, and he only wanted to close his own eyes and sleep but sleep, as he knew, was never to come to him again.

  The several and now plethoric sets of eyes continued looking. They looked so hard that he couldn’t close his eyes. They looked so hard that he had to close his eyes.

  He opened his eyes and he found himself outside the asylum, without his clothes, his hands covered in blood. His feet were blackened and bruised and he felt lighter somehow, the feeling one gets after eating a huge meal and then having a large bowel movement right afterwards. The streetlights were dim but he could see them and he instinctively held his arms above his head expecting to be crushed by the weight of regret, but he felt only air, saw only air, and took in a deep breath and released the deep breath and clasped his chest and felt his heart beating and saw that he was naked and felt cold, but only for a moment, the relief of being without the regrets giving him the feeling of a restful sleep and he had longed for so long to close his eyes and sleep and he had the absolute freedom to close his eyes now, huddled outside on the street under the blanketing sky, and so he could finally close h
is eyes and so he did. He slept.

  He opened his eyes again and found himself in a bed, arms strapped down, his gaze forcefully pointed at a bright and overhanging lamp.

  The regrets returned momentarily, like a flash of light, the regret of hands around a neck, the hands squeezing, the regret of the pet chicken he had adopted and betrayed so easily with the coming of winter, the regret of having taken a wife too soon, the regret of butterflies burned so easily under the grape vines, the regrets continued, flashes before his eyes in a matter of moments, of seconds even, and then—

  They were all there, all the sets of eyes, and he couldn’t see them but he could feel their gazes burning into his skin. Where were you? One set of eyes asked. Where did you go? Another set of eyes posed. Do you remember what you did? Why did you do it? More eyes prodded. How did you know they were visiting? Other eyes poked. Were you awake? Were you aware of what you were doing? The eyes inspecting and looking, heads looking, nodding, eyes wide and wider. Why did you do it? Why?

  What? What did I do? he wanted to ask, but he already knew the answer, knew where the regrets had gone, and who was in control of his body now.

  Finally, finally! The regrets muttered. Finally, finally! he echoed.

  When they dragged him away again, his legs countered the angles of the crooked hallways and the regrets could hear the scuffling of feet.

  The man lay in his bed with a smile on his face. He lifted his arms up into the empty space of the room and swung them around to feel the air between his fingers. He ran his fingers along the hairs on his other arm, savoring the sensation it brought him and savoring the breaths he could take without burden or compromise. He couldn’t remember now what had brought him here. He remembered events and actions and gestures, but they were all drowned together now in the same soup of his memory. The hierarchy that had been created by his regrets had now been pulled down and without regret he had lost too, hope. He didn’t see any reason to be in any such rush to be rehabilitated. This is a comfortable bed, he thought, pushing down on the mattress with the palms of his hands and pulling the edge of the blanket closer to his nose. This is a rather comfortable room, he thought, turning his head to focus his eyes on the various features of the room, the white walls, the concrete floor, the locked door. Time to sleep now, he assured himself as he closed his eyes. Finally, finally! he uttered to himself, and then the man fell fast asleep.