THE MADNESS OF DR. CALIGARI

by Dennis Weiler

That must be him, that face. Pale cadaverousness was a desirable look, in his younger Goth days. Now it’s evidence of sickness.

  “2722 N. Diagonal Road, Portland, 97203. That’s in St. Johns, near the theater.”

  Nurse V seems to be writing, rather than typing, Conrad’s replies.

  “Diagnosis was PTSD. About a year ago.”

  Nurse V, that’s not even a name. Just a letter.

  “Yes, my primary physician, a couple different shrinks. No help.”

  Such predictable questions give no hint of the clinic’s renowned unorthodoxy.

  “Not just mainstream. I tried hypnosis, naturopathy, traditional Chinese. Later tried alcohol, ecstasy, sleeping pills, over-the-counter, prescription. Even meditation and yoga. Nothing helped. I need something else.”

  Attention subsides, replaced by rising impatience. Conrad isn’t bothered by the questions, but the notorious doctor’s refusal to show himself. Many scoff at the methods of Doctor Zyz, characterize him as occultist or charlatan. Others insist he possesses an unmatched understanding of the ways and mechanisms of sleep.

  “At first I was dealing with grief, so I didn’t notice the insomnia until months later. I realize I’m making it worse. My own mind, nothing external. Physical fatigue, depression, cyclical panic attacks. Anxiety becomes a feedback loop. Inability to exercise, to work. I never go out except to buy food.”

  The intake room’s dramatic lighting casts sharp-edged black polygon shadows on walls. Conrad can’t discern which objects in the room create which shadows. He raises a hand, and in vain searches the glaring surroundings.

  Nothing moves. The shadows are painted on the walls.

  Focused on this oddity of decor, Conrad realizes he’s missed Nurse V’s latest question. She repeats herself.

  “How would I characterize my experience? Like drowning in black pitch. My body disintegrating, being digested in the belly of some monster. And that monster is the entire world outside my own head.”

  ***

  Every elevator Conrad’s seen, in hotels, offices or hospitals, has been brushed stainless steel and wood paneling. This one resembles a gray stone box, slightly larger than an upright coffin. He enters the compartment alone while Nurse V remains outside. The door slides shut.

  Only two buttons, impossible to mistake.

  Above.

  Below.

  Mind clouded with fatigue, Conrad doubts his first, obvious assumption, that this indicates a simple, two-story structure. The elevator starts down, and continues so long, Conrad realizes he must discard all preconceptions, simply wait and accept whatever comes. After a while, he no longer feels a sense of downward movement, begins wondering if he’s ever been moving at all.

  He presses the “Below” button again. When the car finally slows, stops, gravity seems briefly increased.

  “Below” illuminates. How long did the ride take? How far down has he gone?

  The door opens, revealing vacant darkness. Strange, this extreme contrast, from brutal luminosity above to this endless, quiet black openness.

  Out of the dark, a voice. “I’m Doctor Zyz.” The name rhymes with fizz. That’s one of Conrad’s questions answered.

  The old doctor steps into the light spilling from the elevator. His hair is an explosion of white cotton. He wears white gloves and pants, with a wrap-style gray jacket more suited to practice of martial arts than medicine. He holds a monocle to his left eye with a pearl and silver handle. Conrad’s unsure whether it’s still called a monocle, mounted to a handle this way.

  The Doctor gestures behind. “Let us sit.”

  Conrad can’t stop wondering how far below ground he’s descended. The appellation “underground” to this research facility is both metaphoric and literal, then. No matter. Conrad is ready to accept the strange, the unexpected. His mind has reached a point of such disintegration, he’s prepared to try anything.

  Two chrome and black Barcelona chairs face across a Le Corbusier coffee table. Conrad tries to formulate some comment of appreciation for the doctor’s Bauhaus furnishings, but thoughts won’t cohere.

  “Please.” Doctor Zyz takes the right chair, gestures at the left. “Conrad Snow. Describe your trouble.”

  “I just finished describing—”

  The doctor interrupts. “Yes, your interview with Nurse V. I need to hear your words, unmediated. Often the story is told differently, this way. Down here.”

  “My trouble. It’s complicated. A life ruined by trauma. Or maybe it’s simple, my sleep mechanism’s broken. My mind’s stuck, an unbreakable loop. A wrecked machine.”

  “I will fix the machine.”

  Surprised to feel himself encouraged, Conrad recounts details of a year of hell. Agony of mind, a body failing.

  Doctor Zyz nods. “Cerebrospinal fluid flushes toxic byproducts of consciousness. Waste material of thought, of life. This occurs only during sleep. In the insomniac, poisons accumulate, adding to misery. Eventually the wretch finds a point of no return, too sick and traumatized to relax. The only possibility that might forestall death, sleep itself, remains out of reach.”

  “Maybe I try too hard. Intentions end up running wild. I become overly focused—”

  “Overly focused, on what are you focused? On whom?”

  “You already know.”

  “Again I say, you must become willing to name your difficulty. Restate it, again, again. You may believe your answer repeats identically, but in my experience, answers shift. So. Please name this object of your excessive focus.”

  “Hanna.” Conrad exhales, almost deflates. “Hanna.”

  Doctor Zyz mouths the name silently, as if trying it out before he speaks. “You are focused on Hanna. What aspect of her? What is it about Hanna?”

  Again, Conrad’s first impulse is to protest. “What happened... is hard to think about. Let alone tell.”

  “You must tell. Must relive. Face your memories until it becomes second nature.”

  “Must relive, you say. That’s practically all I’ve done. That’s my entire problem. I want to stop reliving. Not start.”

  “You misperceive psychological mechanisms crucial to your cure. You must relive, to transcend this state of trauma victim. This you will be able to do, under my guidance, influenced by medications of my design, and physically manipulated by my constructs.” Doctor Zyz presses a button on a tiny remote. Lights flicker on. Convoluted machinery, chromium arrays like perverse jungle gyms covered with white cushions, entangled with black straps. Tools for sadism. For torture.

  Conrad refuses to reveal fear, even reservation. “Why is this room so large?” he asks, instead of what he’s thinking.

  “Is the room in fact large? Or merely so dark, your eyes mistake its measure?” Doctor Zyz leans forward, flicks the monocle away from his eye. “Our work requires open space. You will dream with ferocious intensity. With violence. Such summonings of mind are impossible to restrain. They require room to fly.”

  Conrad fumbles for a response, uncertain whether Doctor Zyz is joking.

  The doctor gestures dismissal. “Enough evasion. Describe her to me now. Describe Hanna, not in detail. How would you evoke her in a few simple sentences, to a friend who has never met her?”

  “Hanna was...” Conrad subsides into memory, lets himself sink into waters both painful and comforting. “She’s like this place. At once brilliant, blinding to the eyes, also dark, with deep, hidden aspects. When we met, Hanna called herself Onyx. She wore only black, and her skin was powder white, like alabaster. In darkness, in night, she felt most comfortable. She considered the dark sensuous, beautiful. Onyx modeled for magazines, and for record labels. She managed Goth nightclubs, the Batcave and the Vogue. Later she became a photographer herself. When she discovered poetry, she became Hanna. She began to wear colors, not just black. Hanna wrote stories, books of erotica. Ca
lled them perverse romances.”

  “Yes. Now I picture her.” Doctor Zyz turns. “See my machines. My therapy is a brute medicine. A mechanistic hypnosis. You will be strapped down while metal braces adjust, by subtle hydraulics, flaws in your alignment. Attitude and posture, manipulated as you sleep. Body-mounted sensors give feedback from your organic machine.”

  Sweat dampens Conrad’s skin, and tension pulls in his chest. Change is exactly what he wants, what he’s come seeking, yet still he resists. Is this fear of the unknown, or resistance to relinquishing some final, perverse closeness with Hanna?

  “We will discern your future,” the doctor says, “if we stare sharply enough at your past.”

  Conrad refuses to see the racks, gears and engines. “It’s my future that interests you?”

  “Future should interest you, as well. It’s the only thing you may hope to change.”

  ***

  Conrad is prepared to stay as long as necessary. Overnight, at least. Probably longer. Nothing waits for him at home. Here in the clinic, everything he requires will be dispensed.

  After a period of psychotherapeutic preparation, and injection of medicines, Conrad reclines. He feels ready to be bound to the curved platform of chromium steel, undergirded by mechanism of oiled gears ready to churn and pull. Hydraulic motors hum, idling. He tastes burnt sour cherries, an artifact of the drug cocktail already trickling in his blood.

  Doctor Zyz stands over Conrad. “I will deprive you of sleep before finally I grant it. You may be impatient to give in, impelled by medicine and latent physical need, yet I keep you teetering on the edge, escalating your hunger for rest.” The doctor pauses as if he anticipates objection.

  Conrad says nothing. He feels his mind soften and deform.

  “Observe within yourself an increase of urgency, as inner proportions shift. Mind, muscle and viscera. Blood, hormone and aether. All these combine into yearning for the other world. Your thought slows to a stillness. Physicality trembles with wanting, as on the cliff’s edge before a dive, or the verge of penetrating a new lover for the first. Desire so great finally will become irresistible.”

  “If I do fall asleep...” Conrad steadies his breathing. “Will you let me remain there?”

  “Of course, in this first instance at least. Crucial at this stage is repair, recovery. Our primary goal is to restore basic function to compromised systems.”

  Doctor Zyz works alone, fastening cuffs around wrists and ankles, wrapping heavy bands around chest and waist, until Conrad is so tightly bound to this articulated platform of armatures and mechanisms, he feels he might be instantly torn to pieces at the whim of some unseen controller. But of course Doctor Zyz will be in charge.

  The brute engineering force of heavy welded components purrs beneath him. Smells of oil and subtle smoke. High-contrast light overwhelms Conrad’s vision, so his surroundings resemble some grainy, flickering silent film, a perverse documentary of sadism.

  The doctor turns, makes some adjustment. Pinpoint spotlights die.

  Conrad needs only lie still, eyes shut against the outsized gravity of the room’s immaculate lightlessness, and hope the doctor achieves his intended effect. As Doctor Zyz murmurs final instructions, Conrad wonders when sleep might come. The possibility seems beyond all hope. If it does arrive, will the reunion be wrenching, traumatic rather than restful? It’s been so long. He needs help to relearn the practice of peaceful sleep, and put behind him the blood-soaked visions of murder. Why does he feel so terrified, just facing the possibility of dreaming?

  He sees the knife swing, hears the cutting of flesh. The cries. Dripping of blood.

  Sees. Feels.

  Hanna’s breath hisses out, through a hole cut in his own chest. This is different. A vision imposed, forcible intrusion from without. Like watching a movie of his own life. The light flickers, unreal.

  ***

  Relive:

  Leather bonds constrict my wrists. Fingers pulse, hands tingle without circulation. How can I grip, cut? How am I supposed to cook? Have to finish dinner. Hanna’s coming—

  Bound hands can never untie themselves. My eyes shut against the world, my past. See myself waiting anxious in the kitchen. Quartered red potatoes boiling, olive oil at hand, green onions sliced. Smashing cloves of garlic, pulling each from dry skin.

  Eye meets the chef’s knife, resting on the board, the blade’s angle threatening—

  Hanna, what time?

  Premonition rises to mind, heaves with force. Is that what it is? Ache of worry, impossible to place.

  I’ve handled things badly, given Hanna less than she deserves. Twelve years. Made her wait too long for a future. Finally ready to move in. Finally to marry. A new kind of foundation.

  I blame myself, guilt ever-present. Try to stop, it’s fine, we’re fine, what matters is the future. Don’t let the past be a curse. Don’t carry it any more. Have to move forward.

  No, this feeling isn’t that. Not regret for past wrongs. What nags is agony to come. Tragedy looming.

  Do we give birth to trouble just by imagining? Worry creates the very problem it fears, wishes to prevent. A harm made manifest in mind, like a jinx. But real.

  ***

  A new input, a sensation. Vision from without. A hint of light.

  A voice. “You slept.” Doctor Zyz.

  Eyes open. “I did? Already?”

  “Quickly now, recount your dreams.”

  Conrad seeks to assemble fragments into sensible narrative. “I found a child on the street. Murdered. Maybe I killed her myself? No, I wouldn’t. Maybe the child is my symbolic self. I remember when life was simple. But it was a girl, I think. Could be a version of Hanna, young, innocent?” He tries to sit up, can’t move against restraints.

  “The dreaming mind rarely generates such obvious symbolism,” the doctor insists.

  “If I’m both dreamer and murderer, how can I also be the victim?” Conrad wonders. Does this makes any sense?

  Doctor Zyz shakes his head, looks into Conrad’s eyes. “Stop trying to analyze. Relive. Describe the child.”

  “A girl. I’m sure she was a girl now. Maybe nine or ten. She wore her mother’s shoes, too large, and an overlarge black shirt. It went to her ankles, like a dress. She lay in a pool of blood, blinking as if sightless, mouth making a kissing motion, like a fish suffocating in the air. I couldn’t see her body under that black silk. Couldn’t see where she was cut. But the blood kept running. It could only come from her. Where else could it—”

  Doctor Zyz turns, reaches for a control panel. No more light.

  ***

  Relive:

  Memory of screams. I hear the shrieking before the sound makes any sense. Then I know. Familiar, it’s her. Hanna.

  It can’t be her. I tell myself I’m only associating that sound of screaming with Hanna because it echoes my paranoid, idle thoughts while preparing our dinner, waiting for her arrival just moments earlier. But I’m not in my kitchen, back then. I’m in the dark below—

  Another scream. A thump, someone falling to the ground.

  I run outside, downstairs. Dusk sky, streetlights no help. Not a single car on the street.

  Run slow-motion, flickering on a screen.

  Do I see a shape flit away, not huddling over the body but slipping free? He’s decorated to blend perfectly into the background, shadows painted across his form, matching shadows cast from trees overhead. Black paint slashes on the sidewalk. Pattern of his clothing, asphalt camouflage invisible against the street.

  I reach the gate barely moving, as if reality is a film cut again and again, edited to move me forever further away—

  This fleeing man, an impossibility. It’s me, another Conrad, visiting from a future which becomes this present dream. Intruding upon worries of a lost moment, a futile wish to change his past. Her past, theirs toget
her. Ours.

  The present instant must not unravel.

  Obsessive in heartbreak, drowning in unceasing remembrances, doomed forever to haunt this scene. Hanna lying there. It’s her, must be her. Recognition twists. Blood trickles from her gut, gurgling breath. Hanna. Is she already lost?

  Stay with me, stay with—

  I kneel, afraid before I reach her she’ll be pulled away, vanish from my grasp. Slipping, impossible to hold. So much blood. Touch her face, say her name. Her eyes remain open, but does she see? I’m here, she must know I’m here. I believe I see through her eyes, see her perspective from where she lies sprawled there, it’s Conrad leaning in, meaning to diminish her fear of the onrushing cold.

  It’s me.

  Is this my own perspective, my future mind coping with what happened before, or is it Hanna’s final moment, impressions of a fading mind? A twinge of regret for the heartbreak cut across my face. I impose this upon her, something she never felt.

  ***

  Cycles pass, including brief interludes in which Conrad sips water from a straw, or strains to clarify his mind sufficiently to respond to Doctor Zyz’s efforts at talking therapy. Sometimes his eyes are open. His body is never unbound.

  “This is the stage,” the doctor intones, “at which the course of your future will be set.”

  How many cycles? Conrad doesn’t care. He desires only rest, to never again relinquish the embrace of emptiness.

  This morning, if it is morning, his eyes open wide. His voice comes forcefully. “Music is restored to me,” he proclaims. At length and with passion he digresses upon the recovery of a pleasure almost forgotten, or at least believed forever lost. For some reason the rougher music of his twenties remains at a distance, but he has somehow regained the restrained music of his thirties. ECM minimalism, David Darling’s honey-thick cello atmospheres, the ecstatic and infinitely varied piano improvisation of Keith Jarrett, Terje Rypdal’s glittering blue-black guitar clouds. Conrad expounds upon the enigmatic structures, the glorious delicacy and balance. Music formed like a painting. At last he recalls how it felt to listen. It’s like awakening to find a missing sense miraculously restored. He loves to listen, with a glass of port, in a room dark but for a single candle. It’s not necessary to hear the music now. He remembers, knows he will listen again.