mind, a scene which the medical officer himself had witnessed, when more than half-seas over, I had sat at the inn table kicking up a din with a villager just as drunk as myself, and I had nearly fallen over as I went out, and Dr Mansfeld had to help me to the car.…
“I shouldn’t have said that,” I thought desperately. “That was wrong. It detracts from my other absolutely true remarks.”
I wanted to prevent the health officer from turning this over in his mind, so I continued quickly: “In any case, in that scene with my wife which they first put down as attempted murder, I was in full possession of my mental faculties. I knew perfectly well what I was doing, and I did not do a bit more than I intended. And I had had comparatively little to drink before it.”
“Yes, my dear fellow,” said the doctor, suddenly smiling almost sarcastically, “our two views of what constitutes a little to drink seem somewhat far removed from each other. Reckon up for me how much you had to drink every day, on an average, as far as you can remember.”
I thought of Mordhorst and how he had reproved me for my foolish truthfulness in giving the magistrate such a detailed account of my consumption of liquor. I reflected whether the doctor would already have received these documents for perusal and decided that was hardly likely, since he had not yet been asked for a report. Nevertheless I decided to be very careful, not to deceive him too much, and to try to make as good an impression as possible. Till now, I had had little success with my statements, that much was clear. But everything depended on making a good impression on the doctor at the outset; once you’ve won a man over, it is difficult for any subsequent reports, even if quite unfavourable, to shake this good first impression. So I reflected, and arranged my testimony accordingly. I had hardly ever drunk more than a bottle a day, and mostly less.… What I had had to drink in the inn, I really couldn’t say for sure, because I had been drinking out of small glasses, and had mixed my drinks, and also I had paid for other people, I declared. The doctor listened to my rather rambling discourse with his head in his hand, almost in silence, just occasionally throwing in a question. Finally, when I had no more to say, he said: “As I told you, no report about you has been asked for yet. We’ve just had this little preliminary chat, so as to get to know each other. But get the idea out of your head, Sommer (Sommer! no more ‘Herr’ Sommer), that your account of things can decisively influence your stay in this place. The only thing that can influence your future is your will to be strong and to resist the sort of temptations you had before.…”
He looked at me seriously. I am not very quick-witted, indeed I am a rather slow thinker, so I nodded eagerly in token of my will to be better. (Only ten minutes later, when I was in bed, did it become clear to me that with this phrase, the doctor had branded my statements as lies—of course he had already been handed the documents and had seen there how I had accounted for my consumption of alcohol for pretty well every day, and had put the amount much higher than I had tonight. So it was already definitely too late to make that “good first impression”.)
Anyway, the doctor kindly offered me his hand and said: “Well, we’ll have another talk. I’ll send for you. Goodnight, Herr Sommer.”
I was just about to go when the head-nurse asked: “Is Sommer to work, doctor?”
“Of course he’ll work!” cried the medical officer. “Then time won’t pass so slowly for him, and he won’t brood. You want to work, don’t you, you busy wood-cutter?”
I assured him that I had no keener wish. I had seen a lovely big garden outside the wall, perhaps I could be put to work in the nursery? I always liked gardening so much.
The doctor and his right-hand man looked at each other and then at me. They smiled rather thinly.
“No, in this early period we had better not let you work outside,” said the doctor gently. “We’ll have to get a bit better acquainted first …”
“Do you think I’d run away?” I cried indignantly. “But doctor, where could I run to, in these clothes, with no money, I wouldn’t get ten miles …”
“Ten miles would already be too much,” the doctor interrupted. “Well, nurse?”
“I think I’ll put him on to brush-making, we need a man there. Lexer can instruct him.”
“Lexer?” I interrupted the head-nurse, terrified. “I beg you, anyone but Lexer! If ever I hated a man, it is that disgusting yelling little beast! Everything inside me turns over with disgust, just at the sound of his voice.… Anything you like but, please, not Lexer!”
“Did you suffer from such violent antipathies outside, Sommer?” asked the medical officer softly. “You’ve hardly been twenty-four hours in the place and already you’ve conceived such a hatred of this harmless feeble- minded youngster.”
I was embarrassed, nonplussed, I, had made a mistake again.
“There are such sudden antipathies, doctor,” I said. “You see a man, you just hear a voice and …”
“Yes, yes,” he interrupted me, and suddenly he looked tired and sad. “We’ll talk about all that later. Now, goodnight, Sommer!”
48
It was a defeat, an ignominious defeat, and nothing could gloss over the extent of the defeat in my mind. I was unmasked as a liar, I had symptoms of de-alcoholisation and suffered from sudden morbid antipathies. Perhaps I thought of escape. Powerless and despairing, I lay on my bed, I could have wept for shame and regret. So much thought out, so many precautions taken, and I fall into every trap like a stupid brainless youngster! And it’s not at all true, what they think of me, I cry desperately to myself. I really don’t think of escaping, I really have had no symptoms of de-alcoholisation, or only in the very first two or three days, and then only very slightly, and if I had lied a bit about my consumption of alcohol, it was not with the intention of deceiving the doctor. He came here with a preconceived and bad opinion of me, an opinion which did not accord with the facts, and it was a duty, an act of self-defence, for me to destroy this preconceived opinion by any means at my disposal.
But I could tell myself what I liked, the fact remained that I had suffered a heavy defeat, that in the eyes of doctor and head-keeper I was just a flighty little criminal who tried to wriggle out of the consequences of his guilt by hook or by crook.
“Guilt?” I thought. “What is this great guilt of mine? That little threat—Mordhorst told me that for uttering menaces one got three months at most! That’s nothing, one couldn’t count that! But they make a gigantic affair of it, they shove one in prison and in this asylum, they take the ‘Herr’ off my name Sommer, they give me cabbage- water for food, and they third-degree me as if I’d murdered my mother and was the lowest of human beings; I’m sure, if I could only be allowed to talk to Magda for five minutes, I could convince her; together we could confront that ridiculous prosecutor with the jutting underlip and starting eyes, and the fellow would have to stop proceedings against me immediately. But,” I suddenly, painfully thought, “but it’s Magda’s fault as well! If she had had a little love and loyalty, as partners in marriage should for each other, she would have applied for permission to visit me long ago, she would have moved heaven and hell to get me out of this death-house! Nothing of the kind! Not even a letter has she written me. But I know how it is: she’s hand in glove with the doctors. They tell her I’m well looked after here and have nothing hard to put up with, and that is enough for her, she doesn’t give me another thought. She has got what she wanted, she can do what she likes with my property—that’s the most important thing for her! But just wait, one of these days I’ll get out of this place by hook or by crook, and then you’ll see what I’m going to do.…” And in a wild rage I submerged myself in fantasies of revenge. I sold the business behind her back and I gloatingly imagined to myself how one morning she would arrive at the office and in her—in my place at the boss’s desk, the young proprietor of the rival concern is sitting, smiling at her ironically: “Well, Frau Sommer, come to buy a little something from me? Ten kilos of yellow Victoria peas, perhaps? A kilo of blue poppy-seeds for the Sunday cake?”
She would go red with shame and anger and desperation, and I, hidden in the big filing-cabinet, would see it all, with an exultant heart. Or I imagined how, after my release from this death-house, I would wander out into the wide world, how I would roam through foreign countries as a beggar and a tramp, and only eventually, unrecognisable to anyone, I would return to my native town.
There I would beg for a piece of bread at the door of my own house, but she would sternly refuse me. Then in the night I would hang myself from the plum tree in front of her window, with a note in my pocket to say who I was, and that I forgave her all the wrongs she had done me.… Tears of emotion at my unhappy lot came into my eyes, and these fantasies, childish as they were, did something to comfort my heart.
