Doctor Glas

by Hjalmar Söderberg

  Oh, what foolishness! When dreams and premonitions begin to come true, and not just for serving girls and old women but for more sophisticated individuals, psychiatry claims it’s a sign of beginning mental deterioration. But how can the phenomenon be explained? The explanation is that in the vast majority of cases, what “comes true” never was dreamed in the first place, it just seems to have been a dream, or a previous experience, absolutely identical to the last detail. But I’ve written down my dream about the dark flowers! And the flowers themselves—they’re no hallucination, they’re standing over there, fragrant and blooming, and someone brought them here.

  But who? There’s only one possibility. Could she actually have understood? Understood and approved, and sent these flowers as a sign of this, in thanks? That’s insane, that’s impossible. Things like that don’t happen, must not happen. It would be too horrible. It shouldn’t be permitted! There are limits to what a woman may understand! If this is so, then I don’t understand anything any more, then I no longer want to play this game.

  Still, the flowers are beautiful. Should I put them on my desk? No. They’ll have to stay where they are. I don’t want to touch them. I’m afraid of them. I’m afraid!

  AUGUST 24

  MY COLD HAS TURNED into a bad case of the flu. I’ve closed the door to my patients to avoid infecting them and am staying indoors. I sent word to the Rubins that I couldn’t come to dinner after all. I can’t do a thing, not even read. I just played a game of solitaire with an old deck of cards my father left me. There must be a dozen decks of cards in the drawer of the lovely mahogany card table—that piece of furniture alone would send me to perdition if I felt the slightest urge to gamble. Opened up, the leaf is covered in green cloth; it has long grooves at the edges for the counters and delicate inlaid patterns.

  Well, he didn’t leave me much else, my dear father.

  More rain . . . And what comes down isn’t moisture, but dirt. The sky isn’t gray any longer, it’s brown. When the rain lets up for a moment it lightens to a dirty yellow.

  Rose petals are scattered over the hand of solitaire on the table. I don’t know why I sat pulling them off. Perhaps because I recalled how, long ago, we children used to crush rose petals in a mortar and roll them into hard beads, thread them on a string to make a necklace and give it to Mother on her birthday. They smelled so nice, those beads. But after a few days they dried up like raisins and were thrown away.

  The roses—yes, that was quite a tale, too. The first thing I saw this morning when I came out into the parlor was a visiting card lying on the table by the vase: Eva Mertens. I still don’t understand how I could have missed seeing it yesterday. And how in all the darkest recesses of hell could that sweet, considerate girl have come up with the idea of sending me flowers, unworthy sinner that I am? With a little intellectual effort and by overcoming my diffidence I can guess the underlying motivation, but the reason? The excuse? No matter how I ponder I can’t come up with any other explanation than this: She had read or heard that I happened to be present at the tragic death; she assumes I’m deeply shaken and so wanted to send me this token of her concern. She acted quickly, on impulse, in a way that seemed natural to her. That girl has a good heart . . .

  If I were to let her love me? I’m so alone. Last winter I had a gray striped cat, but he ran away when spring came. I remember him now when the glow of the first autunm fire dances on the red pattern of the rug: right there, in front of the tile stove, is where he used to lie purring. I tried unsuccessfully to win his affection. He lapped up my milk and warmed himself at my fire, but his heart remained cold. What happened to you, Murre? You were a poor sort. I’m afraid you may have come down in the world, assuming you’re still alive. Last night I heard a cat howl in the churchyard, and I thought I recognized your voice.

  *

  Who was it who said, “Life is short, but the hours are long”? It should have been a mathematician like Pascal, but I think it was Fénélon. Too bad it wasn’t me.

  *

  Why did I long for an action? Perhaps mostly as a cure for boredom. “L’ennui commun à toute créature bien née,” as Queen Margot of Navarra put it. But it’s been quite some time since ennui was a privilege of “creatures of high birth.” Judging by myself and people I know, it seems that, with more education and increased prosperity, it’s in the process of spreading to the populace.

  Action came to me like a strange, enormous cloud, shot down a bolt of lightning, and passed. And boredom remained.

  But this flu weather is truly damnable. On days like this it seems to me that the smell of corpses rises from the churchyard, forcing its way in through walls and windows. The rain drips on the windowpane. It feels as if it’s dripping into my brain, hollowing it out. There’s something the matter with my brain. I don’t know if it’s too dull or too sharp, but it’s not quite right. On the other hand I’m secure in the knowledge that my heart is in the right place. Drip drip drip. Why are the two little trees by Bellman’s grave so miserable and sparse? I think they’re diseased. Perhaps poisoned by gas. He should be sleeping under enormous, swaying trees, dear old Carl Michael. Sleep, well—will we sleep? Really? If only one knew . . . A couple of lines from a well-known poem pop into my head:

  L’ombre d’un vieux poète erre dans la gouttière

  avec la triste voix d’un fantôme frileux.

  “The shadow of an old poet wanders in the gutter with the sorrowful voice of a frozen ghost.” It’s a good thing Baudelaire never heard what it sounds like in Swedish. By and large ours is a wretched language. The words step on each other’s toes and push each other into the ditch. And everything becomes so tangible and crude. No half-tones, no subtle hints and gentle transitions. A language that seems to be created to support the rabble’s insatiable habit of blurting out the truth, come what may.

  Darkness falls more and more: December gloom in August. The black rose petals have already withered. But the piercing, strident colors of the cards on my table gleam in all the grayness as if to remind me that long ago they were invented to dispel the melancholy of an ailing, demented prince. But I dread the mere thought of the effort it would take to gather them and turn them right side up and shuffle them for another game of solitaire; I can only sit looking at them, listening to the way “the Jack of Hearts and Queen of Spades whisper dismally about their buried love,” as it says in the same sonnet:

  Le beau valet de coeur et la dame de pique

  causent sinistrement de leur amour défunts.

  I’m tempted to walk across to the squalid, ramshackle building over there and drink porter upstairs with the girls. Smoke a tangy pipe and play a hand with the madam and give her good advice about her rheumatism. She was here last week, complaining about her problems, fat and flourishing. She wore a heavy gold brooch under her double chin and paid five crowns in cash. She’d be flattered by a return visit.

  The doorbell rang. Now Kristin is answering it . . . What could it be? I’ve said I’m not seeing anyone today . . . A detective? . . . Pretending to be ill, appearing as a patient . . . Come on in, old fellow, I’ll certainly take care of you . . .

  Kristin opened the door a crack and tossed a letter with black borders onto the table. An invitation to attend the funeral . . .

  *

  My action, well . . . “If you’d like the story in heroic verse, Sir, it will cost eight shillings . . .”

  AUGUST 25

  IN A DREAM I saw figures from my youth. I saw the girl I kissed one Midsummer night long ago, when I was young and hadn’t killed anyone. I saw other young girls, too, who belonged to our circle back then; one who was confirmed the same year I finished secondary school and always wanted to discuss religion; another, older than I, who liked to stand whispering with me in the twilight behind a jasmine hedge in our garden. And another who always made fun of me but became nasty and furious and sobbed uncontrollably once when I made fun of her . . . They were pale in the pale twilight, and they made signs to e
ach other when I drew near. I wanted to talk to them, but they turned away and didn’t answer. In my dream I thought: that’s completely natural—they don’t recognize me, I’ve changed so much. But simultaneously I realized I was fooling myself and that they recognized me perfectly well.

  When I awakened I burst into tears.

  AUGUST 26

  THE FUNERAL WAS TODAY, in St. Jacob’s Church.

  I went there: I wanted to see her. I wanted to see if I could catch a glimpse of her shining eyes through the veil. But she sat deeply bowed under the black head covering and didn’t raise her eyes.

  The officiator drew on Syrak’s words: “From morning until evening the time changeth, and all things are speedy before the Lord.” He’s considered a man of the world, and it’s true I’ve often seen his gleaming pate in the best seats of the theater, his white hands discretely lifted in applause. But he’s a celebrated preacher, known for his eloquence, and clearly he himself was deeply moved by the ancient words that through untold generations have been uttered at untimely deaths and hastily opened graves and that are such a harrowing expression of human beings’ dread of the unknown hand that casts a shadow over their world and enigmatically brings them day and night and life and death. “Inertia and immutability are not granted unto us,” said the minister. “That would not serve us well; it would not be possible, not even endurable. The law of change is not merely that of death: it is first and foremost the law of life. And nevertheless each time we are faced by change, we are just as taken aback and shudder just as deeply when we see it so suddenly manifest and so at odds with what we had imagined . . . It should not be so, my brothers. We should think: The Lord knew that the fruit was ripe, though it did not appear so to us, and let it fall into His hand . . .” I felt my eyes grow moist and buried my face in my hat to conceal my emotion. At that moment I nearly forgot what I knew about why the fruit had so hastily ripened and fallen . . . Or more precisely: I felt that deep down, I knew no more about this than anyone else. I merely had some familiarity with the most immediate reasons and circumstances, but beyond them the long chain of cause and effect vanished into oblivion. I felt that my “action” was a link in a chain, a surge of a wave, a link and a surge that had begun long before my first conscious thought and long before the day my father first looked with desire at my mother. I could feel the law of necessity, feel it physically, like a shiver in the marrow of my bones. I felt no guilt. There is no guilt. The shiver was the same sensation I sometimes feel from solemn, majestic music or solitary, elevated thoughts.

  I hadn’t been in a church for years. I remembered how at fourteen or fifteen I’d sat in these very pews, clenching my teeth in fury at the fat scoundrel at the altar in his absurd get-up, thinking to myself that this hoax might last for twenty, even thirty more years. Once, during a long, boring sermon I decided to become a minister myself. I thought the ones I’d seen and heard were miserable representatives of the profession and that I’d be able to do all that much better than they did. I would attain great heights, become a bishop, then archbishop. And when I’d become archbishop—then there’d be entertaining sermons! Then people would flock to Uppsala Cathedral! But even before the minister said “amen” my career was over: I had a good friend at school with whom I discussed everything; I was in love with a girl; and then there was my mother. To become bishop I’d have to lie and put on an act even for them, and that was impossible. There have to be some people with whom one can be sincere . . . Oh, Lord, that was then, in those days of innocence . . . It’s strange to sit here trying to recapture a mood, a way of thinking, from long ago. This sort of thing makes one feel the passage of time. The law of change, as the preacher said (for that matter he’d stolen it from some Ibsen play). It’s like examining an old photograph of yourself. And I also thought: how much longer can I still have left to meander without purpose through this world of riddles and dreams and inexplicable phenomena? Perhaps twenty years, perhaps more . . . Who will I be in twenty years? If, at sixteen, through some sort of hocus pocus I’d had a vision of my life as it is now, how would I have felt? Who will I be in twenty years, in ten? What will I then think of my present-day life? These past days I’ve been waiting for the Furies. They haven’t come. I don’t think there are any. But who knows . . . Perhaps they’re not in a hurry. Perhaps they think they have plenty of time. Who knows what they could do to me over time? Who will I be ten years from now?

  And so my thoughts flitted about like speckled butterflies while the ceremony drew to a close. The doors of the church were opened, people surged toward the entrance while the bells pealed, the coffin shook and pitched like a ship as it was carried out, and an autumn wind blew into my face. Outside the sky was mostly gray, with a weak, pale sun. I myself felt somewhat gray and weak and pale, the way you do from sitting cooped up so long in a church, especially for a funeral or communion service. I went to the bath house at Malmtorg Street to take a Finnish sauna.

  Once undressed and in the sauna I heard a familiar voice:

  “It’s as hot and cozy here as a small compartment of hell. Stina! Rubdown in three minutes!”

  It was Markel. He was sitting curled up on a platform just under the ceiling, partially hiding his gnawed-off bones behind a fresh Evening News.

  “Don’t look at me,” he said when he caught sight of me. “Priests and scribes shouldn’t be seen naked, according to Ecclesiastes.”

  I wound a wet towel around my head and stretched out on a bench. “Speaking of priests,” he went on, “I noticed Pastor Gregorius was buried today. Perhaps you were at the service?”

  “Yes, I’ve just come from there.”

  “I was on duty at the paper when the news of his death came in. The man who’d written the article had sensationalized the story and mixed your name up in it. I thought that was uncalled for. I know you’re not particularly fond of publicity. I rewrote the whole thing and crossed most of it out. As you know, our paper represents an enlightened point of view and doesn’t make much of a fuss when a minister has a heart attack. But a few kind words had to be said nevertheless, and that gave me quite a bit of trouble. ‘Warm personality’ was an obvious choice, but that wasn’t enough. Then it occurred to me that given the way he died, he must have had a fatty heart or something like that, and lo—my characterization was complete: ‘a warm personality with an expansive heart’.”

  “My dear friend,” I said, “you have an enviable mission in life.”

  “Indeed—and don’t you laugh at it!” he responded. “Let me tell you something: there are three kinds of human beings: thinkers, scribblers, and cattle. In secret I count among the scribblers most of those who are considered thinkers and poets, and most of the scribblers belong among the cattle, but that’s not the point. The duty of the thinkers is to figure out the truth. But there’s a secret about the truth that oddly enough isn’t widely known, though it seems to me it should be clear as day. It’s as follows: the truth is like the sun. Its value to us depends entirely on our keeping the correct distance from it. If the thinkers had their way, they’d steer our planet directly into the sun and burn us to a crisp. It’s scarcely surprising that their activities periodically make the cattle so anxious that they cry, ‘Put out the sun, damn it, put it out.’ The task for us scribblers is to preserve the correct and beneficial distance to the truth. A really good scribbler, and there aren’t many of them, can reason with the thinkers and feel with the cattle. It’s our duty to protect the thinkers from the fury of the cattle and the cattle from too strong doses of the truth. But I confess that the latter is the easier of the two duties and the one that we ordinarily do best, and I also confess that along the way we receive invaluable assistance from a slew of spurious thinkers and intelligent cattle . . .”

  “Dear Markel,” I replied, “your words are wise, and despite the fact that I have a dim suspicion you place me neither among the thinkers nor the scribblers but in the third category, it would be a great pleasure to have dinner with you. Th
at confounded day when I ran into the pastor at the water stand I’d been chasing all over town looking for you with precisely that in mind. Are you free today? We could drive out to Hasselbacken . . .?”

  “An excellent idea,” said Markel. “That idea alone would place you among the thinkers. There are thinkers who have the savvy to hide among the cattle. That’s the most subtle kind, and I’ve always accounted you one of them. At what time? Ah, six o’clock—excellent.”

  I went home to free myself of the black trousers and white cravat. At home a pleasant surprise awaited me: the new dark gray suit that I’d ordered the previous week was ready and had been delivered. A blue vest with white polka-dots went with it. It’s hard to imagine a more appropriate suit for dinner at Hasselbacken on a lovely late summer evening. But I was somewhat uneasy about Markel’s appearance. He’s quite unpredictable along those lines; one day he can be dressed like a diplomat, the next like a tramp—after all, he knows everyone and moves just as freely in public as in his own rooms. My uneasiness wasn’t due to vanity or concern for how others would react: I’m a well-known man with an established position, and I can eat dinner at Hasselbacken with a cab driver if it pleases me; as for Markel, I’m always honored by his company regardless of what he wears. But it offends my aesthetic sense to see careless attire at a finely laid table in an elegant restaurant. The pleasure is diminished by half. There are great men who like to underscore their greatness by going around dressed as rag pickers: that sort of thing is indecent.

  I was supposed to meet Markel at Tornberg’s clock. I felt light-hearted and free, younger, renewed, as if I’d recovered from an illness. There was a hint in the fresh autumn air of a fragrance I associated with my youth. Perhaps it was the cigarette I was smoking. I’d gotten hold of a brand I was fond of long ago but hadn’t smoked in many years . . . I found Markel in buoyant high spirits, wearing a cravat that looked like a scaly green snakeskin, and overall turned out in such a way that King Solomon in all his glory couldn’t have been as elegant as he. We climbed onto a cab; the driver saluted with the whip, gave it a flick to stimulate himself and the horse, and drove off.