Doctor Glas

by Hjalmar Söderberg

  Markel turned toward me and inquired amiably if I’d like to join this select group of old alcoholics. I said no thanks, I was on my way home. That was my intention, but I really didn’t feel any longing for my solitary rooms, so I stayed a little while longer listening to the music from the Stream Terrace, which cut loud and clear through the evening silence, and watching the reflection of the blind, staring windows of the palace in the Stream—for right now it’s no stream, it’s smooth as a forest lake. I could see a tiny blue star twinkling above Rosenbad, the ministry building. I could hear the conversation at the next table, too. They were talking about women and love, debating what the most important condition was for really enjoying yourself with a woman.

  The bald man said, “That she’s sixteen, dark-haired and slim, and hot-blooded.”

  Markel, with a dreaming expression: “That she’s plump and cuddly.”

  Birck: “That she cares about me.”

  JULY 2

  NO, THIS IS TAKING a terrible turn. This morning at ten o’clock Mrs. Gregorius was standing in my room once again. She looked pale and ravaged and stared at me with enormous eyes.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked immediately. “What’s happened? Has something happened?”

  “Last night he took me by force. In essence raped me.”

  I sat down on the chair by the desk, my hand playing with a pen and piece of paper as if I intended to write a prescription. She sat down in the corner of the sofa. Poor thing, I said to myself. I couldn’t think of anything to say aloud.

  She said, “I’m destined to be trampled on.”

  We were silent for a moment; then she told the story. He’d awakened her in the middle of the night. He hadn’t been able to sleep. He begged and pleaded; he wept. He claimed his eternal soul was at stake—he didn’t know what terrible sins he might commit if she didn’t do his bidding. It was her duty, and duty came before health. God would help them—God would make her healthy regardless.

  I was speechless with shock.

  “Is he a hypocrite?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. No, I don’t think so. But he’s grown accustomed to using God for whatever suits his purposes. They always do—I know so many ministers. I hate them. But he’s no hypocrite, quite the contrary. He’s always considered it self-evident that his religion is the right one, and it’s more likely he thinks those who reject it are evil, deceitful people who deliberately lie to lead others to perdition.”

  She spoke calmly, with only a slight tremor in her voice, and what she said in one sense startled me: I hadn’t realized that this young woman could think, that she could judge a man, as she did the one of whom she spoke, so clearly and objectively even though she must feel a deadly hatred for him, a deep revulsion. I could feel the revulsion and hatred in the tremor of her voice and in her every word, and it rubbed off on me as she finished the story: she’d wanted to get up, get dressed, go out, walk the streets all night till morning, but he held her back, and he was strong, he wouldn’t let her go—

  I felt myself grow warm; my temples were pulsating. I could hear a voice inside me so clearly that I almost grew afraid I was thinking out loud, a voice whispering between its teeth: Watch out, Pastor! I’ve promised this young woman, this fair flower of womanhood with the lovely, silken hair, that I will protect her against you. Watch out—your life is in my hands, and I could, I will send you to meet your maker long before you wish. Watch out, Pastor—you don’t know me. My conscience doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to yours. I am my own judge; I’m a kind of person you’ve never suspected exists.

  Was she really sitting there listening to my secret thoughts? A little shiver went through me when I heard her say, “I could murder that man.”

  “Dear Mrs. Gregorius,” I responded with a smile, “that’s a figure of speech, of course, but even so it shouldn’t be used.”

  I nearly said: “Especially not as a figure of speech.

  “But—” I continued in almost the same breath, “changing the subject a little, tell me how it came about that you married Pastor Gregorius. Pressure from your parents, or perhaps a minor infatuation at confirmation time?”

  She gave a little shudder.

  “No, nothing like that,” she said. “It was so strange. It was nothing you’d be able to guess or understand on your own. Of course I was never in love with him, never in the slightest. Not even the usual girlish fascination with the confirmation minister—nothing at all. But I’ll try to tell you the whole story, explain it to you.”

  She withdrew farther into the corner of the sofa and sat there all curled up like a little girl. And with a gaze that looked past me out into the distance she began talking.

  “I was so happy as a child and young girl. That time seems like a fairy tale to me when I look back on it. Everyone liked me, and I loved everyone and believed the best of them. Then I reached a certain age—you know. But at first it made no difference; I was still happy, even happier than before—until I reached twenty. A young girl also has physical desires, I’m sure you know that, but at first, early on, this too makes her happy. At least that’s how it was for me. My blood was singing in my ears, and I myself sang, too—sang constantly as I did my chores at home and hummed to myself when I walked down the street . . . And I was always in love. I’d grown up in a very religious home, but I still didn’t think there was anything so terribly sinful about a kiss. When I was in love with a young man and he kissed me, I let it happen. Of course I knew there was something else, too, something you had to watch out for that was a terrible sin, but to me it seemed so vague and distant that it didn’t tempt me. No, not at all—I didn’t even understand that it could be tempting, I just thought it was something you had to submit to when you were married and wanted children, but nothing that could be significant in and for itself. But when I was twenty I fell deeply in love with a man. He was good-looking and good and kind—at least I thought so then, and I still do when I think about him. Yes, he must be—later he married a childhood friend of mine, and he’s made her very happy. We met in the summer, in the country. We kissed each other. One day he took me deep into the woods. There he tried to seduce me, and he nearly succeeded. Oh, if only he had succeeded, if only I hadn’t run off—how different everything would be now! Perhaps I’d have married him then—at least I’d never have married the man who’s now my husband. I might have had children and a home, a real home—I’d never have been forced to be unfaithful. —But modesty and terror made me panic; I tore myself out of his arms and ran away, ran as if my life depended on it.

  “The period after that was horrible. I didn’t want to see him again, didn’t dare see him. He sent me flowers, he wrote letter after letter begging me to forgive him. But I thought he was a scoundrel; I didn’t answer the letters, and I threw the flowers out the window. But I thought about him constantly. And now it wasn’t just kisses I thought about—now I knew what temptation was. I felt as if something about me had changed even though nothing had happened. I imagined people could tell by looking at me. No one can understand how I suffered. That autumn, when we’d moved back to town, I was out for a walk one afternoon by myself. The wind was whistling between the buildings and a drop of rain fell now and then. I turned down the street where I knew he lived and passed the house. I stopped and saw that the light was shining in his window; I could see his head in the lamplight bent over a book. It drew me like a magnet—I felt it would be so good to be inside there with him. I slipped in the door and went halfway up the stairs. There I turned around.

  “If he’d written to me then I would have answered. But he’d grown tired of writing and getting no answer, and after that we never met again—not until many years later, and by then everything was completely different.

  “I think I told you before that I had a strict religious upbringing. Now I fell back entirely on religion; I started studying nursing, but had to give it up when my health began to fail. After that I went home again, went about my household
tasks as before, dreaming and longing and praying God to spare me these dreams and this longing. I felt the situation was unbearable and that something had to change. Then one day my father told me that Pastor Gregorius had asked for me in marriage. I was totally taken aback—his behavior toward me had never led me to imagine anything like that. He’d been a friend of the family for a long time; Mother admired him, and Father was a bit afraid of him, I think. I went into my room and wept. There had always been something about him that I found particularly unappealing, and I think that was exactly what made me decide to say yes. No one forced me, no one talked me around. But I believed it was God’s will. After all, I’d been taught that God’s will was always whatever we wanted the least. Just the night before I’d been lying awake praying to God for release and peace of mind, and now I thought He’d heard my prayers—in His own way. It seemed to me I could see His will quite clearly before my eyes. At that man’s side, I thought, my longing would vanish and my desire die away, and this was what God had ordained for me. And I was sure he was a kind and good man—after all, he was a minister.

  “That’s not what happened. He couldn’t kill my dreams, he could only sully them. Instead he eventually killed my faith. That’s the only thing I have to thank him for, since I don’t want it back again. When I think about all of this now it just seems strange to me. Everything I longed for, everything that was wonderful to think about, was sinful. A man’s embrace was sinful if I longed for it and desired it—but if I found it distasteful and disgusting, a scourge, agonizing and repulsive—then it was sinful not to want it. Tell me, Dr. Glas, isn’t that strange?”

  She’d worked herself up while talking. I nodded to her over my glasses:

  “Yes, indeed it is strange.”

  “But tell me, do you think the love I feel now is sinful? It’s not just happiness I feel, perhaps even more it’s anxiety, but do you think it’s sinful? If that’s sinful, then everything about me is sinful, since I don’t know of anything about me that’s better or more precious than my love. —But I suppose it seems odd to you that I’m sitting here talking to you about this. After all, there’s someone else I could talk to. But when we meet we have so little time, and he doesn’t talk to me very much”—she blushed suddenly—“he doesn’t talk to me very much about what’s always on my mind.”

  I sat calmly and quietly, my hand on my forehead, watching her through half-closed eyes as she sat there in the corner of my sofa, her face flushed beneath the lush, blonde hair. Maiden Silken-Cheek. And I thought: if only she felt this way about me, that there wasn’t time enough to talk. When she begins speaking again, I thought, I’ll go over to her and silence her with a kiss. But now she sat there quietly. The door to the large waiting room was half-open, and I could hear my housekeeper’s steps in the hallway.

  I broke the silence: “But tell me, Mrs. Gregorius, haven’t you ever considered divorce? You’re not bound to your husband out of economic necessity—your father left a considerable sum, you’re an only child, and your mother’s still alive and well taken care of, isn’t that so?”

  “Oh, Dr. Glas, you don’t know him. Divorce—a minister? He’d never agree to it, never, no matter what I did, no matter what were to happen. He’d rather ‘forgive’ me seven times seventy times over, then raise me up again—who knows what he’d do. He’s perfectly capable of praying publicly for my soul in church. —No, I’m destined to be trampled on.”

  I got up.

  “Well, my dear Mrs. Gregorius, what else do you want me to do? I no longer can see a way out.”

  She shook her head, at a loss.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what else. But I think he’s coming to see you today about his heart—he mentioned it yesterday. Couldn’t you speak to him one more time? But of course without letting him suspect that I’ve been here today and have talked to you about this?”

  “Well, we’ll have to see.”

  She left.

  After she was gone, I took out an issue of a medical journal to distract myself, but it didn’t help—I could still see her before me, see her sitting there curled up in the corner of the sofa telling me her life’s story and how it had come about that everything had gone wrong. Whose fault was it? The man who tried to seduce her in the woods one summer day? Dear me, what other function does a man have toward a woman than to seduce her, be it in the woods or in the bridal bed, and then help and support her in everything that follows? Then whose fault was it? The pastor? He had merely desired her, as myriads of men have desired myriads of women, had even desired her in honor and good faith, as his strange vocabulary would have it—and she had agreed, without knowing or understanding, merely in desperation and under the influence of the strange, confusing system of belief she’d grown up with. She wasn’t awake when she married that man, she acted in her sleep. In our dreams the strangest things happen all the time and seem perfectly natural and ordinary—in our dreams. But when we awaken and remember what we’ve dreamed, we’re taken aback and laugh aloud or shudder. Now she’s awakened. And her parents, who certainly should have known what marriage is but nevertheless agreed to this, and perhaps were even pleased and flattered—were they awake? And the pastor himself: didn’t he have the slightest inkling that his behavior was unnatural, grossly indecent?

  Never have I felt with greater force that morality is a spinning merry-go-round. I knew this before, of course, but I’d always imagined that the revolutions must be measured in centuries or eons. Now they seemed like minutes or seconds. I grew dizzy, and the only guidepost through the madness was the voice I heard inside me, the voice whispering between its teeth: watch out, pastor!

  *

  Yes, indeed, he came during my office hours. I was seized by a sudden, secret mirth when I opened the door and saw him sitting there in the waiting room. There was only one patient ahead of him, an old woman who needed a prescription renewed, and then it was his turn. He spread out the tails of his coat in a slow, dignified manner and settled into the same place on the sofa where his wife had been curled up a few hours earlier.

  Of course he started off by talking a lot of nonsense, as usual. It was the issue of holy communion he chose for my amusement. His heart problem was mentioned only in passing, in a subordinate clause, and I had the impression he’d really come to hear my opinion, as a physician, about the health risks of communion, currently the topic of debate in all the newspapers as a diversion from the Great Lake monster in Jämtland. I hadn’t been following this discussion; I suppose I’ve occasionally seen an article about the matter and given it a cursory glance, but I was hardly well-versed in the subject, and so the pastor had to explicate it for me. What can be done to prevent the spread of communicable disease when taking communion? That was the question. The pastor deeply regretted that such a question had ever been raised, but now that it had been, it had to be answered. Various possible solutions could be considered. The simplest might be if every church acquired a number of small chalices that the sexton could wipe off at the altar after each use—but that would be expensive. Perhaps it would even be impossible for impoverished country congregations to acquire a sufficient number of chalices.

  I remarked in passing that in times like ours, when interest in religious matters is steadily on the rise, and when there are enough silver chalices to go around at every bicycle race, it surely shouldn’t be impossible to acquire multiple chalices for religious purposes. For that matter I can’t recall that the Biblical passage about holy communion says a single word about silver, but I kept that reflection to myself. Another possibility, the pastor went on, would be if every communicant could bring along his own chalice or glass. But how would it look if a rich man came with an artistically designed silver chalice and the poor man only a liquor glass?

  For my part I thought it would look quite picturesque, but I said nothing and let him ramble on. Yet another suggestion, from a modern, liberally-inclined minister, had been to partake of the blood of Our Lord in capsules. At first
I thought I hadn’t heard right—in capsules, like medicine? In short—yes, in capsules. And finally, a minister at court had constructed an entirely new kind of communion vessel, taken out a patent on it and set up a business. The pastor described it for me in detail—it seemed to be constructed along more or less the same lines as a magician’s equipment. Well, Pastor Gregorius himself is orthodox and not the slightest bit liberal, and consequently he finds all these ideas dreadfully alarming, but germs are alarming, too, and what’s to be done?

  Germs—I suddenly had an idea when I heard the way he pronounced the word. I recognized his tone of voice quite clearly and remembered I’d heard him talk about germs on some previous occasion; all of a sudden I realized he was suffering from a kind of phobia. In his eyes, germs in some mysterious way are impervious both to religion and to the moral order of the world. That’s because they’re so new. His religion is ancient, nearly nineteen hundred years old, and the moral order of the world can be dated back at least to the beginning of the century, to German philosophy and the fall of Napoleon. But germs have descended on him in his old age, completely without warning. He imagines they’ve started going about their nasty business only in these uttermost days, and it’s never occurred to him that there presumably were plenty of germs in the simple clay bowl that was passed around the table at the Last Supper in Gethsemane.