THE MADNESS OF DR. CALIGARI

by Dennis Weiler

  She had been expecting the sort of dim, shabby hole-in-the-wall fit for a traitor to the royal court, littered perhaps with rat bones and burnt matches. Truthfully, she had been expecting Francis to be sitting on a stack of parliamentary papers, squeezing Alan by the throat. But this was not what she found at the end of the passageway. The secret room was a brilliantly-lit, perfect little red-carpeted cabinet, complete with gold-upholstered sitting chairs and a china tea set and a tear-drop crystal chandelier. Standing inside the room was General Caligari, listening to the wall with some kind of instrument that looked like a cross between a trumpet and a stethoscope. Alan was there too, sitting peaceful and free on General Caligari’s shoulder.

  “Oh, hello, Jane,” said General Caligari, whose head they promised her had rolled off the executioner’s block. Hadn’t they? She remembered fingers brushing her hair back from her sweaty temple in her fever-dreams, whispering, for high treason against the crown, in the name of God, the Sun, et Spiritus Sancti, he is dead. “I was wondering when you would find me here.”

  “I thought they killed you,” she said. “For high treason against the crown.”

  General Caligari clapped his hand against his medal-laden breast. Honor, valor, courage in combat. Were these the mark of a betrayer? It was growing increasingly difficult to believe. “I would never betray the crown,” he insisted. “Oh no. I bled for your father. Bled other men, I mean. I cried for thirty days when your father died. I’ve been so worried for you, Jane.”

  She fidgeted with her nightgown. The sudden manic impulse to check that her legs were still attached had overcome her. “Worried? Why?”

  “Well, because of all this.” General Caligari waved his arms at the palace that surrounded them. “I’ve been listening to all the gossip and whispers that goes on between rooms and behind doors, Jane, and let me tell you the truth: you are surrounded by the weak. Those royal advisors of yours care for nothing but the jewels on the crown. On your crown, Jane, on the crown that should be on your head.”

  Francis had showed her the glass box where the crown was being kept on a silk pillow. You see, he said, it’s safe, but safe from who? Why wasn’t she wearing it already?

  “And don’t get me started on that farce of a Parliament,” General Caligari continued with a snort. “What could those chattering mice possibly do about the Empire Beyond the Sea? Your father and his father and his father held them off for a hundred years. But I’d be surprised if these Senators can even put their pants on in the morning, to be honest.”

  “I’ve told Francis to build up coastal reinforcements. I’ve told him over and over…”

  “Ah yes, I know. I know that things would be different if you were sitting on the throne instead of locked up in your bedchamber.” General Caligari cocked his head to the side and looked at her with—well, with love. “I had always hoped that we could be friends,” he said.

  Jane blinked and opened her eyes to a dark, still room—her bedroom. Alan was watching her from inside his cage, and began hopping back and forth on his perch when she sat up as if he’d been waiting impatiently for her to wake. She stood and went to the window, where the light of the drowsy Sun was beginning to slowly illuminate the great black canvas of Night. In a few short hours, she would be married. And then the Pawn would become a Queen.

  ***

  The Sun was wide awake for the wedding, as Jane knew it would be, after days of fog. The presiding hierophant in the purple robe declared to the gathered crowd that “We are gathered here today to witness the holy union of Princess Jane and Senator Francis,” but he was wrong. That was not why the Sun was peeking through the enormous windows of the Great Hall, its enormous glowing eyes bathing the ceremony with sweet, paralytic incandescence.

  Francis was smiling at her, she knew, but under the light of truth all of his lies burned away. “We will make this nation beautiful,” he said, and for the first time she smiled back at him. “No,” she said, quite calmly. “I will.” He didn’t see her pull the knife from her bouquet. But there was so much that Francis did not see, would not see, could not see. God had nothing to say to him, and as for the Holy Spirit, well… it had already spoken, and not to Francis.

  She aimed for right between the fourth and fifth buttons of her father’s black uniform. At first, as Francis lay shuddering and shivering, Jane could not believe what she had done. And then she heard her little songbird twittering in her ear—time to finish the job, Jane. So she pulled the dagger from between Francis’s ribs and held it, dripping, above her head. “Senator Francis was the traitor!” she shouted, and as soon as she declared it, it was so. Francis was the traitor, and always had been. And so I have seen, and so it will be. “Your Queen does not lie to you!”

  So frightened her people were. So innocent. Their hearts and faces soft as marbled pudding as they clutched each other and wiped tears from their eyes. And no wonder—they wouldn’t survive an invasion by the Empire Beyond the Sea, not without the steady light of the crown. No doubt if Jane walked down to the harbor today she would see the blur of those white ships shimmering on the horizon like seraphim in the half-light. No doubt the blood of their kingdom had carried across the ocean by now: the King was dead, a squabbling Parliament had taken over, and the Princess—the last of her line—was nowhere to be found. They were due for a surprise.

  Jane looked at the soldiers standing at rapt attention. They were the ones that mattered. She had asked them to bring their muskets to the wedding, because if she had lost them—if they had forgotten to whom they had pledged their allegiance—she would rather just be killed on the spot. But none had drawn their weapons. None except Red-Veiled Jane. So at last she understood the truth: General Caligari had never wanted her dead. He wanted her reborn. He wanted her strong.

  “Parliament is dissolved!” Her voice cracked, so she screamed it again: “Parliament is dissolved! Never again shall we put the fate of our kingdom in the hands of the weak! As God intended, I will protect you. Troops…” she looked at the soldiers, and they looked back, ah, they looked back with love. “Prepare for war.”

  The crown was found and delicately placed upon her head. What remained of her bouquet, as well as what remained of Francis, were taken away to be burned. And throughout the winding city below, birdsongs rang out lovely and defiant from all the empty birdcages. As sweet as summer, and as crisp as morning.

  The two men—one of them tall and broad across the shoulders, the other short, all elbows and knees—were loading the oblong box into the back of a low wagon. A lantern shone on the ground at their feet, and their coats were bundled up against the night. Even a glance would show that the box was too large for what it appeared to be; if it was a coffin, it must be a coffin for a giant.

  Then the shorter one slipped, stumbled backward into the lantern, which tipped onto its side, the light throwing their shadows long and tall against the wall of the crypt. The corner of the box fell hard to the earth, and the lid came loose, showing just a few inches of darkness within. Slowly, ever so slowly, a hand began to rise from the box. Fingers first, fluttering on the edge of the darkness before coming to rest like a pale spider. Then an arm reaching up, white as bone, the fingers now a claw reaching toward the darkened sky as the arm extended, up and up.

  There was a flash of lightning and a loud pop as the one big klieg light that was illuminating the set—standing in for the hurricane lantern, which would barely have lit a closet—blew out, plunging the sound stage into dim confusion. From out of the darkness, the director shouted, “Cut!”

  While the actors sloughed off their coats on the hot stage, and various technicians scrambled around turning on the other lights and replacing the bulb in that one, Corny, who was lounging in a folding chair while I stood nearby, notepad in hand, told the producer that he would be at The Bodega—the nearest drinking hole—and to send a runner when filming was once more underway.

  Back in
New York a few years ago, Cornelius Sandoval had written two novels that made him the toast of the literary town for about an hour—which, according to him, was about as long as anyone ever got to be. He’d used the money and cachet that he’d gotten from The Bright Day is Done and The Second Coming of Salome to move out to sunny California; a place that was, according to him, more in keeping with his predilections.

  For myself, I’d never been to New York. Corny said that it was cold and dark and dirty, no fit place for a poet, but I wanted to go someday, to see Harlem and meet some of the writers there, where the nightclubs were hot enough to drive out whatever chill the city could throw at you.

  Together, Corny and I were Nathanial Blackstone, at least for the moment. The Blackstone name was owned by the studio; they slapped it onto every cheapie horror picture that they put out. But someone higher up the ladder had decided that they needed to add some respectability to their pictures in order to remain relevant—audiences weren’t clamoring for Bowery Boy knock-offs chasing after guys in gorilla suits anymore—so they wanted to hire a real writer to pen a few screenplays under the Blackstone name, in the hopes that the result would be some films that could compete with the classier fare that Lewton and company were producing for RKO.

  Enter Corny, who wanted to come to California anyway, and who could always use another influx of cash to support his habit of high living and heavy drinking. Or, more accurately, enter me, with Corny pretending to do the work so that they’ll foot the bill.

  When I showed up on set, one of the dressers must have mistaken me for one of the actors playing native girls, and practically grabbed me by the arm and dragged me off to get me fitted up for a grass skirt and a necklace of bones to only just barely cover my breasts. Corny had to ultimately put a stop to it by informing them that, “This lovely young thing is my amanuensis.” To which several of the men on the production crew leered at me, and I knew that they didn’t know the word amanuensis from the hole in the ground that they had crawled out of.

  It was a system that worked for us, though. No way would anyone in Hollywood have let me on a sound stage by myself, unless I was there to run and fetch, or dress up like a native dancer or a frightened maid. But Cornelius Sandoval was a famous novelist, which obviously meant that he was too important to jot down his own damn notes, so if I was there as his secretary, well then, I was tolerated and, thank Christ, mostly ignored.

  The thing was, while Corny really was a pretty great novelist, he was only any good at writing the same things he always wrote. He could probably write more Bright Days or Salomes ‘til the cows came home, but ask him to write a picture about zombies or creeping stranglers or gangsters swapping their brains into fresh bodies, and he would turn in something so clunky that even the cheapest of the Poverty Row hacks would know that it was hokum.

  I, on the other hand, had learned a long time ago that I would have to be a chameleon if I wanted to get anywhere. It meant that I would never be the subject of a champagne toast in the literary salons back east like Corny—as if that was ever likely anyway—but it also meant that I could do the work that he’d been hired to do under the Blackstone name.

  So he lounged around the sets and looked thoughtful, while I stood nearby and jotted notes before going back to my room or his at the end of the day to write the next day’s scenes. For my trouble, I got sixty cents of every dollar that the studio paid him, which was a lot better money than I’d have made cleaning some movie star’s house or working as one of the native girls in grass skirt and bone necklace.

  I don’t know that it was exactly an equitable arrangement—what ever was, for someone like me?—but it was a mutually beneficial one, and that was good enough. Corny and I had even become friends, after a fashion, and besides the proprietary hand he’d sometimes put around my shoulders or on my backside to make a show for the crew—it looked better if he was sleeping with the help than if they had known about the boys he actually preferred, and they were more likely to leave me alone if they thought I was his—he always treated me like an equal.

  When he wasn’t pretending to be paying attention during shooting or occasionally hollering out some note that I whispered in his ear, he mostly spent his time drinking— “My only vice,” he often quipped—or dodging phone calls from his publisher, since he was supposed to have turned in a manuscript weeks ago on which he had currently written some sixty-odd words.

  The movie we were working on was a zombie picture called The Corpse Walks—because on Poverty Row in those days pretty much everything either walked or creeped, from monsters to gorillas to killers to cats to, in our case, corpses. With the twist this time out that the majority of the action wasn’t set in Haiti or some other far-flung locale, but right there in sunny California, once the titular corpse got boxed up and shipped to the wrong place by accident, then used by a museum curator to commit grisly crimes once he figured out what he had on his hands. At least, that was the idea, though we were having trouble making it past the first few set-ups, because things kept going wrong.

  It was all little stuff at first, that gradually grew into bigger and bigger stuff. I’d been backstage in theaters before, and I knew that there were a lot of superstitions about productions being, well, cursed, for lack of a better word. “Unlucky” was what most folks said instead, or “jinxed.” The ones where nothing ever went right, where every successful step forward was accompanied by an audible sigh of relief. I gathered that back lots and sound stages weren’t much different, and I’d heard plenty of members of the crew complaining about all the bad luck that had gone into just the first couple of days of what was only supposed to be an eleven-day shoot but was already looking like it might stretch into two weeks or more.

  Normally, I gathered, the producer would have been storming around the place and pulling his hair out—or someone else’s—over the delays, but the producer on The Corpse Walks seemed weirdly calm about the whole thing. “The work will get done,” he would say in his sort of monotone voice. “The work is all that matters.” He had a habit of looking over your shoulder when he was talking to you, as though he was actually talking to someone standing just behind you.

  Neither he nor the director seemed to really be in charge on the set of The Corpse Walks, though. No, the real power behind the throne was the guy who seemed always to be standing just beside the producer’s shoulder.

  I called him Dr. Garlic, at least to myself. The name that he had given was Dr. Gralicia, which sounded Italian, though I would have made book that he was Swiss, maybe even German. Of course, if I was a Kraut in Hollywood in 1946, I wouldn’t have made a big production about it, either. I think they were even less well-liked than black girls right at that moment.

  He was a little guy, short and round with Coke-bottle glasses that he obsessively took off and polished on his handkerchief, and he spoke with an almost-imperceptible lisp. His job on the set, officially, was as a “consultant.” Apparently his doctorate was in anthropology, and he was an expert in Voodoo or zombies or something to do with the particular dumb movie that we were in the process of shooting.

  “I studied under Herr Mesmer,” he said when I asked him about it. “His theories of animal magnetism.” It didn’t mean much to me at the time, but when he said “studied under,” it must have been a defect in his English, because I looked it up later, and Mesmer was dead by 1815, and while Dr. Garlic was no spring chicken, I didn’t think he was more than a hundred years old. “From there, I met Mr. William Seabrook—who was himself a cannibal, you know—and from him I learned of the rituals of Voodoo and the zonbi.”

  Seabrook I was familiar with, at least by name. I’d read The Magic Island, which popularized the Hollywood view of what my nana would have called Hoodoo. Not that I knew a damn thing about it. “In Voodoo,” Dr. Garlic continued, “the bokor, he brings the dead body back to life and binds the soul using powders and rituals, or so they claim. Of course, in our more
enlightened society, we see, instead, drugs and an extension of the theories of Herr Mesmer. Such was my interest in the practice.”

  I said that Dr. Garlic’s job on the set was officially as a consultant, but what he actually did was wrangle the Corpse. That’s what we called him anyway, since it was right there in the title of the picture, and he was pretty obviously what it was referring to. I guessed that he was one of those actors—I’d seen them before—who never broke character. As such, he was always in his makeup, and I never saw him say a single word to anyone on the set. In fact, he never interacted with anyone at all except for Dr. Garlic, unless we were actually shooting. When we weren’t, Garlic would lead him by the hand back to what we called his “dressing room,” a partitioned-off portion of the sound stage with a door that locked from the inside with a sliding bolt.

  They made for an odd pair, Garlic and the Corpse. Where Garlic was tiny and round, the Corpse might have been the tallest man I had ever seen. He looked like he was probably black himself, or maybe what they call “high yaller,” but it was hard to say since I never saw him without his makeup, which was a chalky coating that covered him from head to foot, and raccoon-black circles around his eyes. Underneath the makeup, his eyes seemed to be all whites, rolled up like a panicked horse, but he wasn’t blind. I couldn’t ever tell if it was a trick of his, or if he had some kind of lens in there.

  I gathered that he was maybe some sort of physical oddity, like the kind you’d find in a freak show. Like Rondo Hatton over at Universal, but not acromegalic. Instead, the Corpse was just too damn tall and gaunt, his limbs stretching too far, his hands so long and thin that his fingers looked like they had extra joints. Cover him in that chalky makeup, and you had, if not a fairly convincing actual corpse, then at least a pretty spooky monster, and even I had to admit that his arm reaching up out of that box, that hand on the end of it hanging limp like a wilted flower, was creepier than anything I could have written in.