Secret Dreams (22 page)

Herr Master Chef
Freud
was the only man he knew to have cut a slice off the void. Discovering the Two Great Secrets: that hysterics concealed a method to their madness. And that dreams spoke in tongues the adept could master. Two secrets great enough to bring the world of men to their knees. Yet no one believed him. People said he paid his rent on the borrowed money of wealthy friends. By entertaining lonely middle-aged ladies with “therapies” for their innumerable and mysterious “female complaints.”

Am I jealous? Is this envy?

Ah … the familiar burning at the back of the neck. The bitter longing. So how had Master Chef Freud done it? With his own dreams. Done it on the scraps flung at him from other men's tables. Done it with the dregs of his colleagues' referrals. With patients nobody else wanted.

A wild, sickly hope ran through Herr Doktor, like a lame man hobbling hurriedly down a crooked street. What the world ignored from one, another might reveal. Surely sooner or later the world must listen. Why not to him … ? Such ideas were mankind's property, not one man's alone. Why shouldn't he be the prophet, shouting the Word from out of the wilderness where Herr Freud had wandered lost all these years … ?

If fame came, and recognition, mightn't they share what there was to share? Herr Doktors stomach burned.

What crazy thoughts were these?

To rob another man of his discovery. He felt exultant and horrid at the same time. Sitting alone in Zurich, sharing these secrets with a man who didn't even know he existed. Yet coveting them. God, he was despicable.

Zeik must have eaten a slice (off the void)
…
he was empty-headed enough so it wouldn't bother him
.

Eating slices off the void didn't bother Zeik,- just another way of saying Herr Orderly kept an open mind. Zeik —- who called the Schanderein girl's creations “gifts.” And Zeik again — who spontaneously felt pity at throwing the infant images away. Zeik —- the intuitive one, the sympathetic one, saving Herr Junior Physician from a serious error. Putting Herr Doktor doubly in debt. Not only to the ignored man in Vienna but also to a floor orderly for showing him the proper way. So which one really had the empty head?

Suddenly he wanted to protest, make Küchenchef Prunk understand that this was a gift.

Who wouldn't want to lodge a protest with the proper authorities! The gift of insight given Master Chef Freud. The gift of mind reading given fluff-brained Orderly Zeik. The girl's gifts of her own personal artifacts. His eyes were watering, squeezing out hot, embarrassed tears. He had almost thrown out her gifts! What a blunder to have cast them away.

Had he no gifts? None of his own?

The notepad hung loosely in his hand, his pen fallen to the floor. All gifts were sacred, wrapped in packing paper, put in a box marked “Personal.” Why hadn't he seen that the moment Fräulein put all those plates outside her door? She gave of herself and expected him to know her offering as sacred. My God, how close he had come to failing her!

Now Herr Meister Küchenchef Prunk had managed to cut a very tender slice off the hooded shadowy void of the cowled head and offered it to him
.

Master Chef Freud cutting a slice off the void, drawing reason from chaos, spinning straw into gold. And soon it would be Herr jung, offering up the cowled head of Fräulein Schanderein to one Herr Professor in Vienna. Finally defeated by the girl, until at last he surrendered and begged the older man for help. And in so doing, offering up his own head for examination. Oh, what a lovely tender slice might be taken from it! A tender slice carved from his own head and shown naked to the world. The last dread sacrifice … And now you must wake, Herr Junior Physician. Unless of course you wish to continue this cross-examination of your flawed character a little while longer?

“Mo,
thank you. I've had plenty. “

He sat in the bedroom, depressed and deflated. At some point he had mindlessly doodled an ugly sketch. The face of a screaming woman with a wild, open mouth, tangled hair, and bloody eyes. A Medusa face. He added some finishing touches — the malevolent line of her jowl, cruel crow's-feet about the eyes, a lick of the tongue, a glimmer of spittle. Whose nasty face was this? The girl's face, howling beneath the mummy covers?

No: the face of an unscrupulous plagiarist. The face of a worm, jealous of an orderly. The face of a nincompoop, ready to throw out a patient's precious gifts.

“Does she want me to wait outside the room forever?” he asked out loud. How much longer? Days, weeks — forever? He would make himself a statue waiting in the corridor of the hospital. Strong. Resolute. Quiet as stone. For sooner or later the door would slowly open. Even after eons, while the hospital rotted away to dust about the statue's feet, even if the door itself disintegrated. In the end she would see him standing there, waiting for permission to enter. Waiting till she let him in.

What was there to tell the man in Vienna? That the girl shrieked? Hid her face? Made strange dolls out of her feces? No: now was the time to wait. Wait for the door to open.

Wait till he got inside her room.

Once again he stood outside 401.

“May I come in, Fräulein Schanderein?” he asked through the door.

At the end of the hall a new orderly sat in Zeik's accustomed place, Orderly Bolzen, a thick fellow with the neck of an ape and a heavy ridge of bone across his brow. Like Zeik, Orderly Bolzen seemed to have found the chair's secret, as if somehow all orderlies knew how to slouch for long periods of time in uncomfortable hard-backed chairs.

“May I come in, Fräulein?” Herr Doktor asked again. He recalled that in the past, her only answer to his questions was a steady silence.

In her silence he saw the nod of consent, as in, May I leave your meal beside the door? In her silence, her answer: Yes, you may.

“May I come in now, Fräulein?”

He opened the door and put his foot in the room.

The shriek went up for the first time in weeks, echoing all along the hall — her shriek answered by other patients in other rooms. Herr Doktor leaped back into the corridor and shut the door. Orderly Bolzen leered at him from the chair. The girl's shriek slowly dwindled inside 401. Then all along the floor the answering calls fell off. Finally the hall became quiet again, except for one patient weeping softly down at the end.

“Orderly, wipe that smile off your face,” Herr Doktor said sternly, “or I'll have you assigned back to the dayroom.” Bolzen dropped the leering grin.

Herr Doktor put his hand on the girl's door again.

“Forgive me, Fräulein. I suppose I should have asked first, ‘May I open the door?'“

Again, only silence from the room.

He took a deep, shaky breath, then turned the doorknob. It creaked horrendously as the lock unlatched. A long silent yawn. He exhaled with a shudder that sounded like, Thank H-h-heaven…. Fraction by fraction the door eased open. He gazed steadily down at his black shoes, not daring to look in. Afraid to break the silent spell by a callous glance, by any careless gesture. His head bowed in respect, hands by his sides, nothing more. He stayed that way for many minutes…. At last, when his heart slowed and his breath steadied, he spoke softly into the room. “May I look in?” he asked.

Nothing. He waited. Still nothing.

He raised his head. The mummy sat on the bed; the air in the room, stale and overused. The door stood open.

As the first weeks of November swept by, the leaves in the garden below the patient's window froze and shook themselves free. Scrambling over the garden wall, they scampered down windy streets. And as the garden's leaves blew off to other courtyards, foreign leaves from the wild countryside flew in to settle on the hospital grounds. Very little changed in 401.

Now the meals were brought at normal times. Often Herr Doktor did the bringing, and Zeik helped too, on time stolen from other duties. Orderly Zeik was the only other member of the staff allowed to set the girl's plates by the door and make the announcement that food had arrived. Thrice weekly the patient left her chamber pot right inside the door, indicating her desire for an empty one. Herr Doktor and Zeik took to carrying chamber pots with them when they brought her meals, not knowing which day she might yield up a filled one. Only in the middle of the night did Fräulein push her empty meal plates out into the hall and quickly shut the door. And so far the new night orderly, Bolzen, had not managed to catch her at it. He too liked to sleep at night — but denied it all around.

Herr Doktor assumed she washed herself in the sink, for the place would have smelled much worse if she hadn't. Yet as for the bedsheets, her wrappings, those hadn't been changed since she arrived; two months slept in, never washed.

Every day Herr Doktor went to room 401 and asked permission to enter. Every day came the mute silence and the ten-second pause while he gave the patient time to change her mind. And every day he opened the door, putting her meal on the floor, asking, “May I come in?” But always — a shriek in answer. He might look, but not enter. No crossing the threshold. He stood at the door.

“Maybe tomorrow then,” he always said, “Perhaps tomorrow.”

He lost count of the days and stopped looking at the calendar. November passed into December He stopped reading the newspaper. Or answering his mail. He abandoned his casebook and moved through his duties as though in a daze. The rounds with Bleuler and company seemed endless; he made sensible responses to questions he hadn't really heard. He lost Herr Tom Thumbs petroleum jelly appeal — and didn't care. He was assigned two New Victims by Senior Physician Nekkem young women with nervous paralysis of the legs. He cured one when she admitted her uncle had been sexually abusing her. The other miraculously shuffled along after galvanic treatments to the hips. A treatment she herself insisted upon. Herr Doktor suspected a tumor at the base of her spine, but his diagnosis was rejected. Both women left in high spirits. Nekken congratulated him on his success,- he didn't even remember their names. He had forgotten there was anything but the black-and-white-checkered marble floor leading from the stairwell to the door of 401. Forgotten who he was, except for the twenty seconds when he stood at her door, asking, “May I come in?”

And then it came. The nothing silence of consent. His neck stiffened, bracing for the shriek. He flinched anyway, almost saying out of habit, “Maybe tomorrow, then.”

But the silence drifted from the room, while he heard the faint noises of the hospital all around him — two nurses calling each other in the garden, the whir of hard rubber wheels as an orderly pushed a cart down the hall, the incoherent whine of another patient, complaining. Had he given Fräulein Schanderein enough time to change her mind? Who knew? He went through the door and stood there, head bowed. Leaving the door open.

Silence.

“May I close the door now?”

Again silence,- he counted to ten, pausing once to ask, “May I?” And when he reached the full ten, he closed the door behind him. God, he didn't even know today's date! No later than the second week of December. His eye strayed to a naked tree bending outside the girl's window. À few faded maple leaves clung on, refusing to let go. The sun slanted across the mummy's shoulder. Shredded rags of white clouds fled into a blue sky. He was alone with her.

Alone.

An immense blackness settled on him like chimney soot; a weight too, like a wet overcoat…. He listened for her breathing. She sat on the bed, knees to chest, exactly as he had seen her that first time. Seeing her so unchanged made him limp and watery, daunted by the power of her will to remain of stone. Only he himself had changed over the passing months. The blood seemed sucked from his limbs,-he felt his legs going out from under him.

“May Î sit down?”

Nearby stood a hard-backed chair, brother to the one at the end of the hall. As he slumped down, the figure on the bed began to gasp:

“Ah —! Ahh —!” building to a crescendo, in half a moment to a full-blown shriek.

“Never mind.” He leaped to his feet, shoving the chair to the wall. Then paused awkwardly, his hands hanging foolishly at his sides. He let the seconds tick by … afraid he'd wreck it now if he said the wrong thing.

At last he said, “May I introduce myself? I'm Doktor Jung. I'm your doctor.” The blockish idiocy of the remark … she might not even know she was in a sanatorium.

“Your parents brought you to the Burghölzli Mental Hospital. You've been in this room for about three months. In the beginninging I meant to ask if you were comfortable, but, well —” He shrugged, admitting, “I still haven't examined you.” He was speaking too hurriedly, his voice a note too high. He tried to speak slower. “If you're not comfortable, I'll see you get whatever you need. If I'm not acceptable, perhaps you'd like to choose another physician….”

If the mute thing on the bed understood a word, it made no sign. He forced himself to speak evenly and clearly.

“I apologize for not realizing sooner you wanted the room to yourself. I hope I come to understand things better as we go along.”

He had run out of ideas.

“Would it be all right if I came to see you tomorrow?” Every day he returned. The routine repeated. First the announcement in the hallway: “Fräulein Schanderein, Î have brought your meal. May I open the door?”

Then, standing in the open portal, “May I come in?” Then, once inside, “May I close the door?” And finally, “May I sit?” To each question came the mute answer, during which he counted to ten, bracing for the coming shriek, his nerves on razors edge. And then, when the silence of consent lay before him, he always replied, “Thank you,” into the hush.

On the third day after his gaining entry, she allowed him to sit in the uncomfortable chair. Within several days, the various “May I”s had been condensed into only two: May I come in? and May I sit? On the eighth day, he glanced through the viewing slit in her door to see her standing by the window. At first he feared some new change had occurred in the night that would prevent him from entering — and only with the greatest strain did he ask, “May 1?”