There was also a younger doctor with a pimply face, dark hair, and a hooked nose. Nobody spoke to him. His name was Kusniewicz.
Stefan gathered from the conversation that the work was demanding but interesting, that psychiatry, however tedious, was the finest of callings, although given the choice, most of those present would have changed specialties. The patients were awful even when peaceful and quiet, and should all be given shock therapy whether they needed it or not. No one said anything about politics. It was like being on the ocean floor: all motion was indolent and subdued, and the most powerful of storms on the surface would be felt here only as a ripple, cause for a professional diagnosis.
The next day Stefan found out that he had not met all the doctors. He was accompanying Doctor Nosilewska on morning rounds (he had been assigned to the women’s ward), and as they walked along a gravel path spotted with water from the dripping trees, they met a tall man in a white coat. The encounter was brief enough, but it engraved the man in Stefan’s memory. He had ugly yellow features that seemed chiseled in ivory, eyes screened by dark glasses, a large pointed nose, and thin lips that were stretched across his teeth. He reminded Stefan of a reproduction he had once seen of the mummy of Ramses II: an asceticism independent of age, features somehow timeless. His wrinkles did not indicate the years he had lived, but seemed to belong to the sculpture of his face. The doctor, who was the best surgeon in the asylum, was rail-thin and flat-footed. His feet were wide apart as he slopped through the mud, and after a perfunctory bow to Nosilewska, he trotted up the outside spiral staircase of the red pavilion.
Nosilewska held in her white hand the key that opened the doors between wards. Almost all the buildings were connected by long glass-topped galleries so that doctors on their rounds would not be exposed to frost and rain. These galleries were reminiscent of greenhouse antechambers. But that impression vanished inside the wards. All the walls were pale blue. There were no spigots, drains, plugs, or door handles—just smooth walls to the ceiling. Patients in cherry robes and clacking clogs strolled up and down the cold, bright rooms between rows of neat beds made up in what seemed a military style. The windows were discreetly barred or covered with screens behind wide flower boxes.
Nosilewska walked through the wards locking doors behind her and opening new ones with fluid, automatic, almost somnolent movements. Stefan had a key too, now, but could not handle it so deftly.
Faces loomed around him: some pale and drawn, as if shrunken down to the skull, others puffy, swollen, unhealthily flushed. The men’s individuality was erased by their shaved heads. The bumps and oddities of their denuded skulls were so ugly that they overwhelmed the expressions on their faces. Protruding ears, extreme myopia, or a gaze fixed on a random object—these were the patients’ most obvious features, at least at first glance. A male nurse was pushing a patient along in the corridor, his movements not brutal so much as inappropriate for dealing with a human being. They softened for a moment as Stefan and Nosilewska passed. There was a gentle cry somewhere in the distance, as if someone was shouting out of conviction, rather than compulsion or illness, as if practicing.
Nosilewska herself seemed strange. Stefan had noticed it earlier that morning. At breakfast, he had tried to memorize her features out of aesthetic interest, so that he could summon them up later. He noticed then that her eyes seemed vacant, staring at nothing, as she bent her head like a swan’s over the rim of a steaming mug. He watched all her other unconscious signs of life: the delicate pulse at the base of her neck, the peaceful clouding of her eyes, the trembling of her lashes. When she slowly turned her blue, piercing gaze on him, he was almost frightened, and a moment later he quickly drew his leg back when their knees touched—the contact struck him as dangerous.
Nosilewska had a neat office in the women’s ward. Though it contained no personal objects, a femininity more subtle than any perfume hung in the air. They sat at a white metal desk and Nosilewska took a card index from a drawer. Like all female doctors, she could not use nail polish, but the short, round ornamental shaping of her fingertips was boyishly beautiful. High on the wall hung a small black Christ, suspended from two disproportionately massive hooks. That fascinated Stefan, but he had to pay attention: she was giving him a rundown of his duties. Her voice seemed close to breaking, as if she were about to speak in a high-pitched trill. Stefan had never written a case history of a psychiatric examination; in medical school he had copied, of course. When he found that he would not have to start one from scratch but would be adding to old notes, he appreciated Nosilewska’s helpful suggestions. She understood, as he did, that all the writing was infernally boring and futile, but that it had to be done out of respect for tradition.
“So that’s it.”
He thanked her and got ready to try it himself. Later he wondered whether that elegant woman in sheer white stockings and the tailored white coat with gray mother-of-pearl buttons realized what a set piece they were playing out. She rang for the nurse, a stocky, towheaded girl.
“Usually you walk around and ask the patients how they are, and what they think about their—well, symptoms, you know what I mean? But right now I’d like to give you a tour of part of my kingdom.”
It was indeed her kingdom. Though he was not claustrophobic, he was keenly and unpleasantly aware of all the doors that had been locked behind him with the magic key. Bars darkened the window even here in the office, and behind the medicine locker, in the corner, lay a wrinkled fabric: a strait-jacket. The patient who was brought in was grotesquely deformed by pajama bottoms too long and tight. She wore black slippers. Her face was expressionless, but seemed to conceal some surprise. With makeup, she might have passed for attractive. Her eyebrows had been artificially blackened, apparently with coal. They extended all the way to her temples. This might have accounted for the sense of strangeness, but Stefan was so surprised by what she said, he had difficulty looking at her. She was asked in a subdued, uninterested way whether there was anything new. She smiled promisingly and replied in a reedy, melodic voice, “I had a visitor.”
“Who was it, Suzanna?”
“The Lord Jesus. He came at night.”
“Really?”
“Yes. He crawled into my bed and…” And she described sexual intercourse in the most vulgar terms, looking curiously at Stefan, as if to say, “And what do you think of that?”
Stefan froze and was so embarrassed that he didn’t know where to look. Nosilewska took out a small cigarette case, offered him one, took one for herself, and began asking the patient for details. Stefan’s hands shook so much as he tried to light her cigarette that he broke three matches. When Nosilewska asked him to check the patient’s reflexes, he did it awkwardly. Then the nurse, who had been standing by impassively, took the patient by the arm, lifted her out of her chair like a sack of laundry, and led her out.
“Paranoia,” said Nosilewska. “She has frequent hallucinations. You don’t have to write it all down, of course, but a few words would be in order.”
The next patient, a fat woman with reddish-gray hair, made countless fidgety gestures, as if trying to break free of the girl who held her from behind by the folds of her robe. She talked nonstop, a stream of nonsensically strung-together words that flowed on even when the doctor was asking her a question. Suddenly she jerked more violently, and despite himself Stefan flinched. Nosilewska ordered her taken away.
The third patient was barely human. A thick, cloying stench preceded her. It would not have been easy to guess the sex of the tall, wretched creature. Bluish skin on a shriveled frame showed through the holes in her robe. Her face was large, bony, and blunt as a scarecrow’s. Nosilewska said something Stefan couldn’t catch, and the patient, who had been standing stiffly with her arms at her sides, began to speak.
“
After the nurse took the patient away, Nosilewska told Stefan, “She has a Ph.D. For a while she was catatonic. I wanted you to see her, because she’s pretty much a textbook case: perfectly preserved memory.”
Stefan couldn’t help saying, “But the way she looked…”
“It’s not our fault. I used to give her clean clothes, but a few hours later she’d look exactly the same. You can’t have a nurse standing over every coprophagic, especially these days. I’m going over to the pharmacy now, but you write out the case histories. Enter the dates and numbers in the book. Unfortunately, we have to take care of that administrative formality ourselves.”
Stefan yearned to ask whether the sort of obscenity the first patient had used was common, but the question would have revealed his inexperience, so he held his tongue. Nosilewska left. He riffled through the papers. When he was finished, he had to force himself to get up and leave. Women were walking around. Some were giggling as
