“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 Drager. 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, Drager! 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 decent 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
