I Confess (9 page)

All three of us smoked. I got the feeling that Eulenglas' attentiveness was a bad sign. He seemed to have found something in my eyes and be of the opinion that I deserv^ed a cigarette. But I gritted my teeth and said nothing. I was not going to ask again. Vogt, who had just finished writing something down, suddenly looked at me amiably.

"Thank you," he said smiling.

"What for?"

"For not asking again."

"Oh . . . you're welcome," I said.

"How do you feel?"

"Good." I would be damned if I'd ask aeain.

"It's still too early to say anything." Vogt put out his cigarette, "Certain things indicate that your brain is irritated." As he said it he looked at me sharply, as if to observe the effect of what he had just said on the neurotic intellectual James Elroy Chandler, the affluent, cowardly hysteric, and I imagined he would probably have liked to see me show signs of shock. But I didn't do him the favor. "Is that so?" I smiled as if amused. Anyway, I hoped what I produced looked as if I were amused.

"To be quite sure, we'll set up an electro-encephalogram for you," said Eulenglas.

"Right away?"

'*If you don't mind."

"It's all right with me," I said, still smiling. They'd get to know me.

12

The electro-encephalogram examination took place in the basement in three large rooms. In the first a young woman doctor sat at a window, drinking coffee. She was good looking, had black hair with a white streak in it and wore wide, modem glasses. She was short-sighted. The rims of her glasses ghttered silver. "Good morning. Dr. Renter," said Eulenglas. "This is Mr. Chandler." We shook hands. She smiled, revealing strong teeth.

"I saw your last film, Mr. Chandler."

"Which one?"

She mentioned a fitei for which I had written the script about six years ago, a comedy about marriage. "That wasn't my last film."

"Well, it just happened to be playing in Germany."

I sat down in a chair she puUed forward for me. "Did you like it?"

"I hated it," she said, busying herself with all sorts of medical instruments.

"Well, that's all right," I said, giving her a friendly smile. She was smihng too as she came toward me holding in her hand a wide, thick, circular rubber strap. "Please close your mouth, Mr. Chandler."

I closed my mouth.

She slung the strap under my chin and began to pull it up so as to be able to slip it over the top of my head. Eulenglas and Vogt had begun to converse, and as they

did so they walked slowly into the next room. "Press against it," said Dr. Renter. I pressed against it as she pulled and tugged at the strap that was compressing my head. "Push hard against my chest." I closed my eyes. My nose now lay buried in her bosom. I could smell her. She smelled fresh and young. She pressed her body against my head. I had to cling to the chair I was sitting on so as not to fall off it. At last the bandage sUpped up over my hair. "There," she said, sounding satisfied.

A mirror was hanging on the wall opposite me. I could see myself in it. I looked like a man with a toothache. I couldn't speak any more; the strap had jammed my jaw closed. Meanwhile Dr. Renter had taken several curved, metal bands from a table and come back to me. She began to arrange the bands around my head and screwed them on tight. In a few minutes a crown of sorts had been constructed around my head. Every now and then she took a strange circular instrument and measured with it. Apparently the metal bands had to be attached at certain precisely designated points. While she did this she talked without cease. She told me all the things she hadn't liked about my picture. There was a lot she hadn't liked and she was perfectly frank about it. I felt that criticism under my present circumstances was unfair and picked up a pencil and a piece of paper. "Unfair," I wrote. "I can't defend myself."

She laughed, pleased with herself. "That's what makes it fun," she said. Then she went away and began to gather together what looked like wire leads with small metal plugs at the end. I watched her. Then something occurred to me and I looked away quickly. I had thought of what Yolanda had said. I had looked at Dr. Renter's legs. She had pretty legs.

She began to fasten the wires arid plugs to various parts of my head. Every time she attached one, she wiped my skin first with a watery liquid. All in all she attached nineteen plugs. I counted them in the mirror. Between each plug she took measurements with the circular instrument.

In the end I looked like a gift-wrapped hedgehog. The plugs stood out all over my head, I even had one on each ear. During the time it took Dr. Renter to do all this, she went on talking incessantly. I intended to hurt her feelings when I wrote down, "I'm afraid you don't like men."

She laughed gayly. "I hate them," she said and screwed my metal helmet tighter.

"I like you," I wrote.

"I Uke you too," she said and patted me on the shoulder. Then she led me into the next room, apparently a library—the shelves on the walls were filled with what appeared to be thin manuscripts in folders—and from there into the third room. Here I saw Eulenglas and Vogt again. They were standing next to what looked like a waist-high switchboard and were peering across the shoulders of the young doctor standing in front of it. Opposite the switchboard there was a bed. On it lay a man whose head was enmeshed with metal and wire, just like mine. From the plugs on his head the colored wires led to a small square socket that was fastened to the head of the bed, and from this "electrode board," a thick rubber cable ran to the switchboard which I now found out was the encephalograph. A computer, therefore, rather than a switchboard. "Open your eyes," said the young doctor.

The patient on the bed opened his eyes. He was perspiring a little. I watched him sharplv to see if he might be in pain, but he gave no such impression.

"Close your eyes," said the young doctor.

The patient closed his eyes.

I walked up to the switchboard. It had numerous lights, knobs, switches, buttons. Below them ran a wide strip of paper on which eight trembling pens were tracing eight fine lines. The paper seemed endless and folded itself neatly into a broad, thick pad. The eight lines looked all the same to me.

The young doctor turned a knob and the pens began to tremble in a different rhvthm. "Breathe deep," said the young doctor. "Fast and deep, please."

The man on the bed began to breathe fast and deep. "You may feel dizzy and your hands may fall asleep," said the young doctor calmly, "but that will pass."

The man on the bed nodded and breathed fast. The red pens trembled across the strip of paper. I had a close look at the machine. On the front I noticed a small identification plate. On it was inscribed: Type D, Electro-encephal-ograph, and below that: Offner Electronics Inc., Chicago. Crazy ... but the plate calmed me.

"The trade mark calms you, yes?" said Vogt. He had come over to me and spoke in a whisper. I nodded. "I can't speak aloud," he said, "because that would disturb our patient's impulses." I nodded again. "The machine," he said, "intensifies the waves sent by the brain ten mil-Uon times. You see, the brain sends out electric currents with a force of a thirty millionth voltage. We have agreed, worldwide, to concentrate on nineteen different points from which we test these currents, and by comparing our findings, we can draw certain conclusions on conditions inside the brain."

I nodded. Then I took the pencil of my liberated friend, Frau Doktor Reuter, and wrote on a piece of paper, "Thank you."

"What for?"

"For the explanation," I wrote. He smiled.

Five minutes later the man on the bed was finished and rose. I took his place and now experienced the procedure I had witnessed in his case on myself. Frau Dr. Reuter plugged the wires of the nineteen electrodes that were on my head to the nineteen small holes in the electrode board at the head of the bed. Then the machine began to hum and the eight red pens began their tracery across the paper. Vogt and Eulenglas stood beside the young doctor and watched.

"Open your eyes," said the young doctor.

I opened my eyes.

"Close your eyes."

I closed them.

Routine, I thought; here too as everywhere else— routine. A young man examines heads, human heads in which are crowded desires, ideas, passions, death and Hfe, heads with eyes that see, ears that hear, mouths that speak, noses that smell. One head every thirty minutes. In an eight hour day, allowing for an hour at noon, that came to fourteen heads a day. Eighty-four a week. In a month, four times as many. Three hundred and thirty-six heads. And in a year

"I shall now turn on a light above your head," said the young doctor. "When I say 'open,' please open your eyes. When I say 'close,' please close them."

He turned on a glaring lamp over my head, went back to his machine and again began to operate his switches. "Open," he said.

I opened my eyes and looked into the pamfuUy blinding light.

"Close," he said. I closed them.

"Please breathe for four minutes deeply and reeularly. You may feel a little dizzy and your hands may faU asleep but that will pass."

I breathed deeply and regularly. The machine hummed. In a mysterious procedure, complicated and totally incomprehensible to me, the currents my brain was sending forth were being intensified ten million times and transformed into a tremulous tracery on a strip of white paper. Why had I never written a story about this young doctor with his three hundred and thirty-six human heads per month? Or his four thousand two hundred and thirty heads a year? No, that wasn't right. He went on vacation for four weeks. That made four thousand two hundred and thirty-six minus three hundred and thirty-six, adding up to three thousand six hundred and ninety-six heads per year, national and relidous holidays excepted.

"Breathe deeply, Mr. Chandler, please."

I breathed deeper. Dr. Renter stood there, smiling. What she saw seemed to please her. She saw me perspiring. She saw me feeling sick and dizzy. Everything was

going around and around. She sat down on the edge of the bed and crossed her pretty legs. Her pretty legs were turning with everything else.

"Breathe deeper, Mr. Chandler."

I breathed deeper. How long are four minutes anyway?

"Do you feel dizzy?" asked Dr. Renter.

I nodded.

She leaned back, which elevated her breasts. T breathed deeper and felt very dizzy and very sick, and my hands fell asleep, but iSnally it was all over and I was allowed to get up and Dr. Renter unhooked me. Vogt and Eulenglas came up to me just as she was removing the metal bands. Eulenglas was carrying a pile of papers—the seismographic recordings of the currents of my brain. I felt confused and tired.

"What happens next?" I asked.

"You have lunch," Vogt said amiably.

"And the results?"

"We have to look at the tracings first, Mr. Chandler. You'll get the results this afternoon."

"Very well," I said. "Goodbye Frau Doktor."

We shook hands. "Goodbye, Mr. Chandler. It was a pleasure."

"I noticed that," I said, and both of us laughed. Then I walked through the many long white corridors and up and down various staircases, back to my room. I felt exhausted and my head hurt asain, now from the outside as well, due to the pressure of the metal bands. I reached the door of my room and opened it. On the bed sat Yolanda.

The birds were still sindng in the garden, the sun was shininq, somewhere nearby the noon bells were ringing, and on the bed sat Yolanda. She was wearing a shiny green dress with a black patent-leather belt. The dress gave a provocative view of her figure and she wasn't wearins a hat. Her red hair fell to her shoulders. She didn't look well: there were deep shadows under her eyes. She rrot up as T came in.

"Go away," I said.

She shook her head and came toward me.

"I forbade you to come here."

"I had to come," she said. Her voice was hoarse. She had reached me and now she laid both hands on my shoulders. I stepped back, toward the door, but she followed me. She was standing in front of me again.

"Why did you have to come?"

"Because I love you."

I laughed. "Since when?"

"Since today," she said softly. I felt her breath on my face, she was so near. "I saw Clayton. I read the telegram."

"What telegram?" I asked, although I knew very well.

"Halloran's telegram."

I said nothing. She embraced me and I felt her body close to mine.

"Your script is worthless," she said. "Am I right?"

"Yes."

"They rejected it."

"Yes."

"And fired you."

"Yes, Yolanda."

Her hair, her eyes, her lips, the aroma of her skin. "I .knew it," she said. "That's why I came."

"Because you noticed suddenly that you loved me?"

"Yes."

"All of a sudden?"

"All of a sudden."

"And the things you said . . ."

"Forget them."

I felt very dizzy. "And why do you love me?"

*TBecause you failed," she replied seriously. "Because you're worthless. Just like me. Because we're so alike, Jimmy. Because I've discovered you're just as worthless and lost as I am. That's why I love you."

I looked at her without saying a word. She was breathing hard. "Kiss me," she said.

I kissed her.

I could feel how she turaed the key in the lock behind me, and I could feel the blood on my lips as she penetrated my mouth with her teeth. I swallowed the blood. It tasted warm and bitter.

13

I met Yolanda for the first time in Joe Oavton's apartment. He had rented the second floor of a villa in Griinwald, and he gave a party for me on my arrival in Munich. I was staying at a hotel, but I already had my company car. I drove out with Margaret. It was a beautifully calm spring evening, the sky was lieht and the dark trees of the Griinwald forest were silhouetted against it.

The villa stood in a large garden. The lawn had gone wild, the grass grown high. Behind the villa there was a greenhouse. Everybody else was there when we arrived. Joe greeted us warmly and I was introduced to over a dozen people, among them Hellweg, the German writer, and a few members of the film crew. And Yolanda. As we shook hands, I could feel a slight shock, and started. I noticed that she started too. I looked at her; she looked back. Her face was blank. I let her hand fall. "Glad to meet you," I said. (English was spoken aU evening.) "Likewise," said she.