“Well, come along, Sommer. Is your bandage still all right? I’ll have a look at it tomorrow morning.”
In the long corridor, before each cell door, lies a bundle of clothes.
“You put your clothes outside the door too. You’re only allowed to keep your shirt on inside.”
“Mayn’t I fetch some pyjamas out of my suitcase?”
“Pyjamas, nightshirts—things like that don’t exist here. You’ll get a decent institution shirt that’ll last you a week.”
We enter a long narrow cell, the air is fetid, stifling already. Eight beds stand in the narrow room, four below, four above.
“Yours is the lower bunk on the right by the window. Make it up quickly and put your things outside the door. It’s lock-up time immediately.”
The door slams behind me, I go over to my bed. I feel many searching eyes turned towards me, but nobody says a word. The bed is better than in prison. There are no straw-bags here but proper mattresses, hard as stone; one can lie on them better. There is a sheet too, and a fine white blanket which, rather clumsily, I button into a cover. There is also a bolster. The bed-linen is blue-chequered. All the time I feel the searching eyes on me, but not a word is said. Hurriedly I slip off my clothes, bundle them clumsily together, and run back to bed in my shirt. I creep into it. The plank bottom of the upper bunk is close above me, I cannot sit upright. The bed above seems empty. I wrap myself tight in my blankets and stretch out full-length. The warm cabbage-water rumbles disagreeably in my stomach.
A voice says loudly: “Don’t even say good evening or introduce himself, the miserable bastard!”
Murmurs of approval can be heard. I start up in my bed—I must not fall out with these people on the very first evening. I have had enough with my strained relations with Duftermann. I knock my head badly on the planks of the upper bed. Seeing this, the two men in the beds opposite laugh.
One cries: “He’s bumped his nut!”
And the other: “He crumpled his fine cloth pants up in his jacket, he’s got plenty to learn, the fat swine.”
Murmurs of approval again. I creep out of my bed.
“Gentlemen,” I say, “excuse me if I have not behaved properly. I didn’t wish to offend you. If I said nothing, it was because I thought some of you were asleep already.”
A voice from an upper bunk calls out: “That’s Zeese, he’s deaf and dumb, he can’t hear anything!”
I eagerly continue, “I’m not used to all this yet. I’ve only been a fortnight or so in remand prison. For the attempted murder of my wife …”
Murmurs of hearty approval. I have guessed rightly: “attempted murder” makes a much better impression here than “uttering menaces”.
“My name is Erwin Sommer, I have a market-produce business, and I’m here for six weeks’ observation …”
“You watch out it doesn’t turn into six years,” calls a laughing voice. “The medical officer loves us all so much, he doesn’t like to lose any of us.”
Laughter again, but the ice is broken, the bad impression is made good again. I go from bed to bed and hear the names: Bull, Meierhold, Brachowiak, Marquardt, Heine and Dräger. I shall not remember them, especially as it has become almost dark by now and I cannot recognise the individual faces in their box-beds. Then I creep back to my own bed.
A voice calls: “Hey, new fellow, tell us how it happened, that business with your wife.”
Another calls heatedly: “Shut your trap, Dräger! What do you always want to be so nosey for? Leave it to the fellow to tell what he wants. You just want to go crawling to the chief in the glass box tomorrow.”
A heated quarrel begins, about who is the head-nurse’s “earwig”. The occupants of other beds join in. Wild abuse is hurled to and fro. I am glad that, at least, they leave me in peace. I am tired, my nose hurts badly. The quarrel is just beginning to die down for lack of material when angry shouting is heard in the corridor, the sound of blows and howls. Our cell door flies open and a figure hurtles in.
A loud voice calls: “Will you get into your own bed instead of hanging round other people’s cells, you damned queen, you!”
And a shrill complaining voice—I recognise it immediately, it is the fang-toothed man: “You’ve hurt me bad, keeper. Keeper, I shan’t be able to work tomorrow!”
“You damned queen, you!” rumbles the voice outside once more. “Hurry up and roll into kip, or else you’re for it!”
The fang-toothed one thrusts his face into my bed.
“Well, new fellow, so you’re under me? I tell you straight, if you don’t lie still in the night, if you wobble about, I’ll come down and wobble you.”
“I’ll lie still all right,” I tell him, and I think anxiously of my rattling and snoring.
The little man undresses with incredible speed and shoots his rags outside the door. Then with a disgusting lack of ceremony he uses the bucket.
“You could have done that outside, Lexer,” calls an indignant voice.
“Are you too posh to breathe my stink?” cries the shrill insolent voice. “We’re real posh in here now the new fellow’s come! O.K. Now I’ll shit more than ever!”
And he lets a thunderous one.
“In hell,” I think. “I have landed in hell. However shall I be able to live here? And sleep? These are not human beings, these are animals. And am I supposed to live here for six weeks, perhaps longer? Perhaps very long? In this hell? This Lexer, or whatever he is called, is a devil!”
They try to question me further. But I do not want to hear or see anything more of them. I pretend to be asleep. And slowly they too become quieter, the shrill hateful voice falls silent. It becomes darker and darker, most of them are probably asleep already. I hear a clock strike three times. What would it be? A quarter to nine? A quarter to ten? I hope the clock strikes the hours as well. That would shorten the night. Above me Lexer tosses restlessly to and fro. My bed sways each time. And I am not supposed to move! I lie quite still, my face hidden in my arm. I am utterly alone with myself, I see clearly that from now on I shall always be utterly alone with myself. I am somewhere where neither love nor friendship can reach, I am in hell … I have sinned for a brief while and I am being punished for it, incredibly severely, for a long time! But one should have known, before one sinned, how severe the punishment would be. One should have been warned beforehand, then one would not have sinned … God, that bit of brandy-drinking, is it really so terrible? That squabble with Magda—well, all right, legally they could make out a case of uttering menaces, but do I have to spend a living death in hell on that account? If Magda knew how I am suffering—she would at least take pity on me, she would help me out of pity, even if she doesn’t love me any more. There is just one hope, and that is the doctor. Dr Stiebing, the medical officer, had not made a bad impression on me during that car journey. He had joked and laughed with Dr Mansfeld like a real human being. Perhaps he is a real human being, not just part of a machine. I will speak to him as to a human being, I will fight for my soul with him, I will save my soul from this hell.
“Sir,” I will say to him, “I take full responsibility for all I have done. I have never been so intoxicated that I did not know what I was doing. I want to be punished severely. I would gladly go to prison for a year, two years. I would do that gladly. But don’t leave me in this place, in this hell, where a man doesn’t know how he will come out again, and perhaps he will only come out feet first. Sir,” I will continue, “you know our family doctor, Dr Mansfeld. You joked and chatted with him in the car. Ask Dr Mansfeld, he has known me for many years. He will confirm that I am a decent, respectable, sober man. That affair was just a sudden attack, I don’t know how it happened myself”—No, I interrupted myself, I mustn’t tell the medical officer that, or he’ll certify me insane. “But Dr Mansfeld will confirm that I have always been decent. I put Magda into a private ward in hospital and paid the high cost of the operation without a murmur, and spared nothing for her comfort. I always was a decen
t man, sir, let me go back to live among decent men. Give me a chance.…”
The clock strikes, it strikes the hour, a quarter of the long night is past, it is now ten o’clock. And so I spend the first night in the asylum counting quarter-hour after quarter-hour, making speeches and writing letters, between sleeping and waking. Sometimes, exhausted, I have nearly fallen asleep, but then I start up again: Lexer above me has thrown himself about in his bed, or someone has gone over to the bucket. For a ‘joke’ I kept count this first night: from ten o’clock at night till a quarter to six in the morning seven men went to the bucket thirty-eight times. When I wanted to use it in the morning it was full to overflowing. And not a single man used paper—they were past that. Oh, I got to know a fine corner of hell that night.
38
I was clothed by the head-nurse. I got a brown jacket, striped cloth trousers, leather slippers, all new. The head-nurse treated me with discrimination. But perhaps it would have been better if he had given me old rags like the others. They could see I was wearing new things, and it strengthened their dislike of me.
“He wants to be something better than us, the fat swine,” they said, throwing malicious glances at me.
Incidentally, I did something strange while the clothing was being issued. I was allowed to take soap and a toothbrush out of my case, and I was able, in an unwatched moment, to steal a razor-blade. I had done this once before, but then I had been weak and cowardly, I had no idea what was in store for me. Now I would behave differently, I would slash myself without fear of the pain. No, not just yet; what I had done, this secret taking of the razor-blade, was quite a surprise to myself. Not just yet—first I would fight with myself. But should the fight be unavailing … well, all right, when I had had my hearing and my permanent transfer to this institution was confirmed, then, yes, then.… I was not going to spend my life in this hell, that much was certain.
I have taken my first breakfast with my fellow-sufferers. At half past six in the morning, in the rays of the early sun their faces look absolutely disconsolate. Raw faces, animal faces, blunt faces. Over-developed chins or chins completely missing. Cross-eyed men, hunchbacked men, stunted men. As pale and sad as their worn-out clothes. The head-nurse has assigned to me a place at the last table, right back against the wall. That is good. I can see and observe everything and sit quite undisturbed. From the orderly I have got a mug of some hot chicory brew, and the head-nurse has given me three thick slices of bread. Two I spread with margarine and one with jam. I eat them slowly and with great appetite. I chew thoroughly. Who knows what there will be for lunch today? The cabbage-water has frightened me a great deal. Some get more bread, they also get something extra to put on it. The extras may be chives or onion or skim-milk cheese. These, I learn, are the outside workers. They are engaged on heavy work all day, which is why they get such precious titbits.
Shortly after breakfast, the order “Fall in!” is heard, and all those who are working, line up, and are let through the iron-barred door by a keeper, and all that remain behind are the orderlies, the sick, and myself. There are many sick.…
I stand at the window and watch how the people from every block line up in the yard. There are many, many people. Over to the left stands a line of women. Then the yard is emptied. A fat man in a white coat, the head-nurse, has detailed them off for work. Some have marched off with scythes, others with hoes, many have gone to the factory. Now I walk along the corridor with Hielscher, up and down, up and down. Hielscher is a little hunchback, who speaks careful German in a soft, very clear voice. Hielscher calls me “Herr Sommer”, and that does me good. In his clear careful speech, he tells me many things about this place and its inmates. He usually peels potatoes. He has been peeling potatoes for six years. Altogether he has been eleven years in the asylum.
“I am a sexual offender,” he says gently, choosing his words with care. “The medical officer has made his report about me. I got congenital mental deficiency coupled with lack of control and a drastically impaired sense of responsibility, and besides I have a hump, that is obvious of course, and also I limp. Is that bad, Herr Sommer?”
I am quite perplexed at this question.
“Bad?” I ask, embarrassed. “How do you mean, bad?”
“Well, is it a bad ailment or only a slight one, Herr Sommer?” And he looks at me with his lively but sad eyes.
“No, it’s probably not too bad.”
“That is what I think,” says Hielscher. “I’m sure they’ll soon release me. Have you by chance a little tobacco for me, Herr Sommer?”
I told Hielscher that I had a longing for tobacco myself, and that unfortunately I had none to give him. Thereupon Hielscher’s interest in me faded rapidly, he left me, and I wandered alone up and down the corridor. That morning was interminable. I walked and walked, but the hands of the clock did not move on. Sometimes I glanced into one of the two day-rooms, but the torpid figures sitting there, the wrecks, repelled me. Only the orderlies were busy with bucket and broom, clean-looking, well set-up men, as in all prisons, skilful and unscrupulous, sucking up to the officials, informing on their fellow-prisoners about every trifle, corrupt, and rude to their comrades. I saw them going from cell to cell, pretending to tidy up, but mainly searching the beds for a hidden slice of bread or a plug of tobacco. It strengthened me in my antipathy when I saw that the hated Lexer was also a kind of orderly, an assistant-orderly, who spent the greater part of the day over in one of the workshops in the annexe, making brushes, but who always contrived also to make a job for himself in the block.
The staircase was being cleaned by a man in his middle years, with a face once clever but now confused and hopelessly sad; from time to time he broke off his cleaning, tore open a window and shouted filthy insults through the bars at some imaginary person outside. I watched Lexer creep up behind the yelling man, spring on him from the back and beat his head again and again against the iron bars.
He cried shrilly: “Will you get on with your work, you swine! What are you shouting about! You want to eat but you don’t want to work for it! Just you wait!”
And he beat his head again. I would have liked to help the poor fellow, but the grill on to the staircase was locked and during the previous night I had firmly resolved not to interfere in any quarrels but to remain completely neutral. The more unobtrusively I lived, the more favourable would be the doctor’s report. Besides, I was afraid of Lexer, and I had every reason to be. I long observed this scoundrel—or lout, rather; he was only in his middle twenties and of extremely backward development—with the watchful eyes of hatred. He was a born bloodhound. He took a delight in torturing his fellow-prisoners, he was always cuffing them here and pinching them there, hitting them, reporting them to the head-nurse. Nothing was too petty for him. If a prisoner brought in an onion he had secretly picked up, Lexer would either take it from him or else denounce him to the head-nurse as a thief. And since the onion really would be stolen, only from the institution garden of course, the thief would be bound to get fourteen days in the lock-up. The weaker ones Lexer would entice into some quiet corner and there he would beat them until they handed over their tobacco or whatever else of their possessions he coveted. The stronger ones he approached with cunning, deceiving them with promises of bread and never keeping his promise. But with the keepers, Lexer was not at all unpopular. He played the part of the court-jester; in his shrill insolent way, he always had some quick-witted joke at hand, usually at the expense of his fellow-prisoners. He would perform any service for the keepers quickly, skilfully, willingly, and if he was caught in any misdemeanour, he would take his thrashing with a comically lachrymose expression.
“You can’t be angry with the swine,” said the keepers and they tolerated him and his tyranny over the other prisoners. He was particularly useful to them; through him they got to know everything that happened in the place.
Lexer had been put into an orphanage at the age of six and from then on he had only spent a few weeks or mo
nths at liberty, and had always returned into the safe keeping of the State: in approved schools, reformatories, prisons. Eventually they had put him into this institution as incorrigible, and as he well knew, for life. But that did not upset him in the least. In this place, which seemed a hell to me, he was like a pig in clover. He felt in his element here. Here he could give rein to all his malevolence. He played the assistant-orderly, the assistant-keeper, the head devil. Here he was, beating the head of an imbecile, a schizophrene, against the bars and probably expecting praise for keeping the inmates so strictly to their tasks.
39
Even an interminable morning comes to an end. Lunch-time came, and the prisoners smiled: it was a good day, they got a good meal. Each man received in a string bag a pound and a half of potatoes in their jackets, and with it, in his aluminium bowl, a ladleful of sharply spiced gravy in which floated a few shreds of meat. Laboriously I peeled my potatoes with a spoon; knives and forks were too dangerous in this place of constant fighting. Watching the men as they ate, I noticed some who peeled their potatoes, put them in the gravy and waited until they finished peeling before they began to eat. But these were in the minority: most were so famished that they could not wait. The potatoes disappeared into their mouths just as they were peeled, only a few ever reached the gravy. Near me I saw a fat stocky man with iron-grey hair and the reddish-brown sunburnt face of a land-worker, who ate his peelings as he cut them off. I had hardly finished peeling my potatoes, when he threw a questioning glance at me, reached his calloused hand across the table, scooped up all my leavings and thrust them into his mouth.
“Hey!” I called. “There was a rotten potato among that lot!”
“Don’t matter, mate,” he said, chewing eagerly. “I’ve got to mow all day, I never get enough. Perhaps I can pinch some pig-spuds tonight. Hope so!”
He was not the only glutton, they were all hungry, always, even directly after a meal. I saw sick men going round, stealing tiny crumbs of potato off the table, while others scraped out their already spotless bowls. I saw one in the corridor polishing the inside of the gravy cauldron with his finger which he licked again and again. All this was happening under the eyes of the keeper, who regarded it as a commonplace affair.