Nine Lives

interview question.

  ‘You are familiar with my work. I hope to continue with it; learn more about these unusual children.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘In my studies so far I have encountered over four hundred of them and in so doing have formed a distinct clinical picture.’ His pride broke the water’s surface, like a whale with a harpoon aimed at his back. ‘They are withdrawn, idiosyncratic and an enigma to their fellow human beings. Yet despite their quirks they can possess special gifts of intellect, in science, music, engineering. In fact, my ‘little professors’ can be…’

  Hans stopped, aware at last that Falke was looking critically at him with pinched eyebrows and a curious twisting of his lower lip. The finger tensed on the trigger of the harpoon gun and the ocean didn’t seem big enough to hide in.

  ‘I hope I wasn’t lecturing, Ernst.’

  ‘No, no!’ Falke replied, as if rousing himself from a daydream. ‘I can see it is a subject that holds great passion for you. It will make a name for you, I’m sure. But of course you realise you cannot devote all your time to this project.’

  ‘No, of course not! I carry out my research only after working hours.’ It was the most apologetic he could be without resorting to genuflection. Whatever the true purpose of this meeting, he had a suspicion that the stakes were very high.

  ‘You misunderstand, Hans. I only meant that as long as your department is run efficiently and professionally you can do whatever you chose with your time; so long as the former is not compromised by the latter. More coffee?’

  Relieved, Hans held out his cup. Keeping his eyes averted, Ernst poured first the coffee, then the cream.

  ‘You see, Hans, your work has raised eyebrows among the academic hierarchy. They are predicting great things for you, I hear. Which can only benefit the reputation of the hospital. If you understand me?’

  This time, he did; though it surprised him that he was talked about in such lofty terms by the intellectuals of the day, his paper on ‘the little professors’ going barely noticed by the scientific community two years earlier.

  Doctor Falke leaned forward earnestly, his voice lowered for impact like the horns of a goat. ‘My colleagues and I think you are on to something, you see!’

  Hans was a little flustered with embarrassment. ‘There is still much work to be done…’

  ‘And this is where you shall perform it, Herr Asperger! In this very hospital!’ This bellowed declaration was followed by a return to great seriousness. ‘But I trust we will have enough subjects for you. It is a large hospital, of course, but we cater for all sorts here, and this condition of yours is somewhat rare, is it not?’

  ‘As I said, I have so far identified over four hundred…’

  ‘But that was over many years, no?’

  A wave of anxiety rolled across his back.

  ‘What I mean to say is that it would benefit your research if you had access to as many subjects as possible.’ Doctor Falke’s persistence was making them both uncomfortable.

  ‘In an ideal world…’

  ‘Please, I am not making myself clear, Hans.’ He turned to face the large window to his right, as if unable to witness the other man’s naked anxieties. He steepled his fingers together before him in the absence of the church spire destroyed by Allied bombing, then continued. ‘We possess, despite the difficulties our country endures, a great many resources that an esteemed pioneer like yourself deserves if he is to push back the boundaries of scientific knowledge. Resources which, in maybe ten years’ time, will be denied by - how shall I say? - a more rigorous approach to research methodology.’

  ‘I’m not quite sure I…’

  ‘You worked at our Institute for Childhood Diseases during the war, did you not?’ Even Hans could not miss the accusatory tone of the question.

  ‘Indeed. Yes.’

  ‘That was where you had access to most of your four hundred subjects, yes?’

  ‘Yes. There and in private practice.’ Hans pulled his arms into his lap, feeling suddenly colder.

  ‘Are most of your subjects still living, do you know?’

  ‘Still living, Dr. Falke?’

  ‘Yes, alive. Are they still alive?’

  ‘I really wouldn’t…’

  ‘And more to the point,’ he paused to clear his throat, ‘were they alive back then, Hans? What I mean to ask is: did you ever use preserved specimens in your research?’

  ‘Why would I?’ He felt hot again, suffocated. ‘I was interested only in observable behaviour, in learning from what subjects said and did. If you read my paper…’

  ‘Yes, but your paper discusses only four subjects. Could you not have learned more about your ‘little professors’ by comparing the structure of their brains to those of normal subjects, for instance? Could that knowledge not have augmented your other findings? ‘

  ‘Perhaps. Though I’m not a neurologist. And besides, during the war it would have been difficult…’ A memory tapped him on the shoulder with an icy finger.

  Falke cleared his throat again and moved closer to the window, keeping his back to Hans. He clasped his hands behind him as if in some bizarre variant of prayer, and proceeded to address the fractured architecture below.

  ‘Things happened during the war that historians and theologians will be discussing for centuries. Unpleasant things. Disgraceful things.’

  ‘I know. I’ve been reading the newspapers…’

  ‘Tell me, Hans. Did you know a man called Walter Blauvelt?’ Still he preferred to bounce his questions off the glass rather than face their intended target.

  Hans took a deep breath. He had not seen Blauvelt for nearly two years. Back then he was a broken man. There had been a rumour that he had been sent to one of the camps just before the Red Army took Warsaw.

  ‘He was Director of a children’s clinic called Am Spiegelgrund. You have heard of it?’

  Of course he had - or more accurately of what had occurred there.

  ‘Herr Blauvelt committed suicide just before the Soviets entered the capital.’ Falke glanced over his shoulder at the sound of Hans’ sudden intake of breath. ‘I’m sorry if you didn’t know.’

  ‘He was a good man,’ Hans sighed. ‘Or at least he tried to be.’

  ‘Do you know what happened at Spiegelgrund? Did your ‘good man’ tell you that?’ Falke spat his accusation so hard a tiny fleck of spittle stuck to the window pane.

  Hans remembered that day of revelation clearly. It had been a productive day for him, building as he was on Eugen Bleuler’s observations of a group of strange, solitary children with peculiar mannerisms and eccentric behaviours. It was a day during which Hans paid particular attention to a boy called Fritz. He made copious notes on the boy’s aimless gaze, his ‘otherworldliness’, and his habit of rhythmically slapping his thighs or banging the table for no reason. But what had really gripped Hans’ imagination were the little chap’s extraordinary skills in calculus. With Fritz there was no warmth or reciprocity, no sharing or seeking to interact with others, but ask him to solve a math problem that someone twice his age might struggle with and he would present you with the correct answer instantaneously. And Fritz was not the only one. There was a pattern. Bleuler had seen it and now he could see it too. As Doctor Falke would later put it, he was on to something.

  So it was with a blissful smile that he greeted his colleague, Walter Blauvelt at ten minutes past four on a cold but clear winter’s afternoon. The look on Blauvelt’s face would have made it obvious to all but the dead or the blind that something was wrong.

  ‘My dear Walter, what is it? Is it Paul?’ he recalled asking. Blauvelt’s only son was stationed in occupied France. It was seen as the safe option in combat terms; but of course there was always the Résistance. ‘Sit down. Please.’

  And so, ashen faced, Walter Blauvelt described to Hans what had happened earlier that morning at Am Spiegel.

  ‘He was forced to cooperate,’ Hans said softly. ‘He had a son stationed in Burgundy
.

  They threatened to transfer him to the Eastern Front immediately if Walter refused to comply. What choice did he have?’

  ‘And those poor children: what about their choice?’

  ‘He had nothing to do with their murders. His remit was simply to organise and catalogue a brain bank for research purposes. They told him that the subjects had sacrificed themselves for the good of the people, that by understanding their psychopathology it might be possible to stop others like them being born. For the ‘purity of the Volk’.’

  ‘Playing God, then?’

  ‘Isn’t that what medicine is all about? Doing something rather than just nothing? Why else would God give us brains?’

  ‘Not so we could rip them out of murdered children’s heads and slice them up like cabbages.’

  ‘Most hospitals have brain banks,’ Hans whispered pathetically.

  ‘You approved, then?’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ he pleaded. ‘I wanted nothing to do with it. But they were already dead. At least the brain bank gave their deaths some meaning.’

  ‘So you did use specimens, then? Tell me the truth!’

  ‘No. Never! But I knew of others who did. They would have lost their jobs otherwise.’

  ‘Then how did you keep your position? Tell me that, Hans: how else could you have survived professionally?’

  ‘Because of the ‘little professors’. They – the Nazis - were interested in my little professors.’

  ‘How convenient for you.’ Falke was silent for a moment, and, as Hans watched, his body seemed to convulse fleetingly. ‘Tell me what