they dressed up with scraps of paper, strips of rag, and string. In the comer was a bed with screens at the side and cords across the top. It was empty. As Stefan walked along the wall, instinctively trying to keep Ms back to the patients, he heard a scream of despair. He looked through a thick portal set into a small door. It was an isolation cell. The naked woman inside was throwing her body against the padded walls as if it were a sack. Her eyes met Stefan’s and she froze. For an instant she was a normal human being, ashamed of her terrible situation and her nakedness. Then she seemed to murmur something and came closer. When her face was up against the glass, her long gray hair falling across it, she opened her braised lips and licked the pane with her lacerated tongue, leaving streaks of pink-tinged saliva.
Stefan fled, unable to control himself. He heard a scream. In a bathroom, a nurse was trying to force a howling and fiercely struggling patient into a tub. Her legs glowed bright red: the water was too hot. Stefan told the nurse to make it cooler. He knew he had been too polite, but he felt he could not reprimand her. It was too soon for that, he thought.
A third room was filled with snoring, rattling, and wheezing. Women suffering from insulin shock lay in bed, covered with dark blankets. Here and there a pale blue eye followed Stefan with an insect’s vacant gaze. Someone’s fingers clutched his smock. Back in the corridor, he ran into Staszek.
Stefan’s face must have looked different, because his friend slapped him on the shoulder and said, “So how was it? For God’s sake don’t take it all so seriously.” He noticed wet stains under Stefan’s arms.
With relief Stefan told him about what the first patient said and how the others looked. It had been so horrible.
“Don’t be childish,” Staszek said. “It’s only the symptoms of disease.”
“I want to get out of here.”
“The women are always worse. I was just talking to Pajpak, because I could see it coming.” Stefan noticed with satisfaction that Staszek was using his influence. “But Nosilewska really is all alone here, and she needs help. Stay with her a week to make it look good, and then we’ll get you transferred to Rygier. Or maybe—wait a minute, that’s an idea. You assisted Wlostowski as an anesthesiologist, didn’t you?”
In fact, Stefan had been good at anesthesia.
“The thing is, Kauters has been complaining that he doesn’t have anybody.”
“Who?”
“Doctor Orybald Kauters,” Staszek intoned. “Interesting name, isn’t it? He looks Egyptian, but supposedly he’s descended from the Courlandian nobility. A neurosurgeon. And not bad.”
“Yes, that would be better,” Stefan said. “At least I’d learn something. Because here…” he waved his hand.
“I wanted to warn you earlier, but there was no time. The nurses are completely unqualified, so they are a little callous, a little brutal. In fact, they do some pretty rotten things.”
Stefan interrupted to tell him about the nurse who almost scalded a patient.
“Yes, that happens. You have to keep an eye on them, but basically—well, you know how people are. Behind one’s choice of a profession, there can be aberrant emotions…”
“There’s an interesting question,” Stefan said. He was looking for an excuse not to go back to the ward and wanted to talk. They were standing under a corridor window. “A free choice of professions sounds like a good thing,” he said, “but really it’s only the law of random distribution in a large population that guarantees that all important social positions will be filled. Theoretically, it could happen that no one would want to work in the sewers, for example. Then what? Would they be drafted?”
“It’s worked so far. The random distribution hasn’t failed. Actually, this is one of Pajpak’s favorite themes. I’ll have to tell him.” Staszek smiled, showing teeth yellowed by nicotine. “He says it’s a good thing people are so unintelligent. ‘Nothing but university professors—that would be a n-n-nightmare. Who would sweep the streets?’” Staszek intoned, imitating the old man’s voice.
But Stefan was getting bored with this too.
“Will you come back to the ward with me? I want to take the case histories up to my room. I guess one should be able to write in the ward, but I can’t with that door behind me.”
“What door?”
“I keep feeling they’re standing behind me, looking through the keyhole.”
“Hang a towel over the door,” Staszek said so matter-of-factly that Stefan felt reassured; Staszek must have gone through the same thing.
“No, I’d rather do it this way.”
They went back to the duty room, and to get there they had to pass through the three women’s rooms. A tall blonde with a ruined, terrified face called Stefan aside as if he was a stranger she was asking for help on the street instead of a doctor.
“I see you’re new here,” she whispered, looking around nervously. “Can I talk to you for five minutes? Even two?” she begged. Stefan looked at Staszek, who stood smiling slightly, playing with a neurological rubber hammer.
“Doctor, I’m completely normal!”
Stefan knew that dissimulation was a classic symptom in some forms of madness, so he thought he knew how to handle her. “We’ll talk about it during rounds.”
“We will? Really?” She seemed to cheer up. “I can see you understand me, doctor.”
Then she leaned close and whispered, “Because there’s nothing but lunatics here.
He wondered why she had been so secretive. Who else did she expect to find in an asylum? But as he walked with Staszek, it suddenly struck him: she meant everybody, including the doctors! Nosilewska too? He tried to ask Staszek, as delicately as possible, whether Nosilewska was perhaps a little strange, but his friend snorted.
“Nosilewska?” Staszek launched into a heated defense: “Ridiculous! She comes from the best family.” He’s hopelessly in love with her, Stefan realized. Staszek suddenly looked different to him. He noticed the badly shaved spot on his bobbing Adam’s apple, his ugly teeth, an emerging pimple, the receding hairline where a few years ago there had been lush dark waves.
He doesn’t stand a chance, Stefan thought.
Stefan himself had no interest in her. She was beautiful, even very beautiful, with extraordinary eyes, but something about her repelled him.
As they walked, Staszek remembered Sekulowski and decided to introduce Stefan to him.
“A fantastically brilliant man,” Staszek explained, “but scatterbrained. You can have a great conversation, but don’t set him off. And watch your manners, will you? He’s very touchy.”
“I’ll be careful,” Stefan promised.
They went outside to get to the recovery wing. The skies were clearing, the wind tearing great holes in the gray, fluffy clouds. Fog wafted low over the trees.
They came across a man in a short coat pushing a wheelbarrow full of dirt. He was a Jew, powerfully built and dark-skinned, with a beard that started almost at his eyes.
“Good morning, sir,” he said to Stefan, ignoring Staszek. “Have you forgotten me, doctor? Yes, I see that you don’t remember me.”
“I’m not sure,” Stefan began as he stopped and returned the other man’s bow. Staszek stood by in obvious amusement, kicking at a weed with the tip of his shoe.
“Nagiel, Salomon Nagiel. I did your dad’s metalwork, don’t you remember?”
Something clicked in Stefan’s mind. In fact there had been a handyman with whom his father would sometimes disappear into the workshop to build a model.
“Do you know what I do here?” Nagiel continued. “I am the First Angel.”
Stefan felt foolish. Nagiel came closer and whispered earnestly, “A week from now there’s going to be a big assembly. The Lord God Himself will be there, and David, and all the Prophets and Archangels. Everyone. I have influence there, so if you need anything, doctor, just let me know, and I’ll take care of it.”
“No, I don’t need anything.”
Stefan grabbed Staszek by the arm and pulled him toward the door. The Jew stood watching, leaning on his shovel.
“Who knows what laymen think an asylum is,” Stefan was saying as they turned into a long corridor with
