I Confess (15 page)

"Sinister," I said and traced over the cross with my pencil.

"Your man must of course have a glioblastoma.'*

"Why?" I was startled.

"Didn't you say he had only a year to live? The whole story is based on that, am I right?"

"Yes," I said and laughed. "The whole story is based on that. So it has to be a glioblastoma. I can't think of anything better. I'm really grateful to you, Herr Doktor. You have done something invaluable for me."

"Oh, not really...."

"Yes, really. I don't know what I would have done without you."

"I'm glad to hear that, Mr. Chandler."

"So what happens when you have diagnosed it as a glioblastoma?"

^TNothing. We close up the two small holes again, and that's that."

"Aha," I said "And the patient? You tell him that he is incurably ill?"

"Good heavens, no!" He shook his head. "We don't tell him anything of the sort. His next of kin, perhaps."

"And what do you tell him?"

"We tell him that the examination showed the growth to be harmless and an operation is therefore not necessary."

"But that's a he!"

"Of course it is, Mr. Chandler. But what good would it do to tell the poor devil the truth? He'd go downhill even faster. The examination is anyway very exhausting. He has a little peace of mind coming to him. We tell him to come back after he's recouped his strength, and when he does we give him x-ray treatment."

"Every second or third day," I said and stopped short

"How do you know that?"

"I read about it somewhere," I said.

He nodded. "Yes. Every second or third day; twenty to twenty-four treatments in aU."

"And do they help?"

Kletterhohn shrugged. "Hard to say. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but a Uttle—^yes. In this stage the patient's disposition is of the utmost importance, and his powers of autosuggestion. For the patient it is the pleasantest time. What follows is . .. less pleasant."

"So," I said, "what follows?"

"He dies by inches," said Dr. Kletterhohn.

Without knowing it, he had just given me my death sentence. He sat opposite me, tall, lean, friendly, and nodded. "Yes, Mr. Chandler, it is a sinister illness. We have reached a point where we can help in quite a few cases, but the others . . ." He raised his hands and let them fair again.

"And what is it like?" I asked. "Tliis death by inches."

"Why do you want to know that?" he protested. "That's really too dismal. You can't put that on the screen."

"We don't intend to," I said. "But I should know, if only to know the things I can't show."

"Does your hero have to live a long time after the examination?"

"I'm afraid, yes," I said. "You see, that's where the story opens."

"How long must he live?"

"As long as possible. And how long would you say that could be?"

"A year at the most," Kletterhohn said thoughtfully. "In most cases not that long. It depends on how successful the x-ray treatment is."

"And in the course of that year he is more or less presentable? I mean—does death come suddenly or does the patient gradually turn into an idiot, or what happens?"

"Sometimes death comes quickly, through a stroke. Then the man dies in seconds. In the middle of a sentence, in the middle of a word he is writing ..."

"Good," I said, relieved.

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"Then he is lucky."

"And if he isn't lucky?"

It was gradually growing dark in the room. The sun had set. Dr. Kletterhohn got up and turned on an electric heating lamp that began to glow like a huge red eye.

"If he is not lucky, he is in for a highly unpleasant spiritual and physical disintegration."

"In what form?"

"At first psychologically. The brain undergoes changes. The man develops characteristics*he didn't have before."

"For instance."

"For instance he becomes incurably suspicious. That is a typical symptom."

Suspicious! I started. A typical symptom ...

"He thinks everybody is lying to him. He trusts nobody, not even his own observations. This leads to a gradual destruction of his social behavior. He loses contact with the outside world; he becomes eccentric, introverted, sly."

"Aha," I said.

"The next change," said Dr. Kletterhohn, "comes as a result of the first. The patient becomes egoistic, asocial. He can think only of himself. He loses all sense of good and evil. He becomes amoral."

I wrote down: suspicious, egoistic, asocial, amoral. It looked Uke a timetable.

My timetable. My travel route.

The last station on the route was death.

"Amoral, not immoral," said the doctor. "He doesn't act against any moral code; he has no moral code. Such concepts as private property, responsibility, religion, personal relationships, lose all meaning. Our man will steal, cheat, lead an inmioderate sex life, commit murder— without thinking anything of it, without any feeling of guilt for what he is doing. A man with a tumor in its advanced stage is, in some circumstances, a menace who should be behind bars."

I felt nauseated. My hands were sweating. "Ghastly," I said. "Is it a frequent illness?'*

He looked at me quizzically. "You know, Mr. Chandler, I almost think it is the illness of our times, the explanation for all the insanity going on around us."

''What do you mean?"

"Wouldn't you say that our time has lost its senses? Can't all the suffering, the confusion, all the horror of our century be traced back to the fact that it has become impossible for us to think right? Our brains have changed. The bram can no longer grasp and understand simple human relationships and falsifies the simplest human truths. Sick minds—sick world. For me my patients are sometimes nothing more than living symbols."

"Hm," I said. Then I looked up. "This disintegration you just mentioned ... is it obhgatory?"

"Some of the things I mentioned are."

"And is the sick man aware of his condition? I mean—does he suffer because of what he is doing? Is he ashamed?"

"Sometimes. But in most cases he is not aware of what he is doing and finds it quite natural, for instance, to expose himself. To steal."

"But still you can imagine a man who, during this last year, behaves fairly normally?"

"It is within the realm of medical possibility.''

"Good," I said.

"But didn't you just tell me that the man is a criminal?"

"He is a criminal," I said. "But he is not insane. He commits crimes, but nobody is aware of them.- He has to be an extremely cunning criminal."

"Aha," said Dr. Kletterhohn.

"And what about pain?" This I had to know too.

"It increases, naturally."

"And is there anything he can do about it?"

"In the beginning—^yes. Later nothing but morphine is effective. And the sick man of course tries to get it in any way he can. And when he gets it, the drug robs him of his last inhibitions."

"But of the pain too?"

"Of the pain too," he said, and that was important.

"And how does your film end?"

"I haven't decided yet. What Td prefer is that the man realizes one day that he is rapidly approachmg the end in a most repulsive manner and takes his own life before he becomes a babbling idiot."

"I see."

"Would it suffice if he took an overdose of morphine?'*

"Of course."

"Well," I said, "then I guess I'll let him die like that."

The door opened and Frau Dr. Riittgenstein came in. She had a piece of paper in her hand. I rose. "Don't get up," she said pleasantly. "I'm going right out again."

"I think I've found out everything I need to know," I said. "Dr. Kletterhohn has been very kind."

"I hope I've been helpful."

"That you have."

I gathered my notes together and shook hands with Dr. Riittgenstein. "Do you think Alan Ladd would give me an autograph?"

"I'll write to him today. What's your first name?"

"Veronica."

"You'll get your picture and I'll have it sent to the hospital."

I said goodbye to Dr. Kletterhohn, put on my hat and walked to the door. "Riittgenstein with two 't's'," said Dr. Riittgenstein.

"With two 't's'," I repeated, smiling, and raised my hat again.

How it happened, I do not know, but in the next moment I felt that my head was bare. I looked into my hat. The wig was lying inside it. I had taken it off with my hat.

Dr. Kletterhohn jumped up. He stared at me with wide

unblinking eyes. "Mr. Chandler " whispered the Frau

Doktor. "You are . . ." whispered Dr. Kletterhohn.

"Yes," I said hoarsely. Then I wheeled and tore out into the corridor.

"Wait!" shouted Dr. Kletterhohn. "Stop!"

I heard his steps. As I rounded the first turn in the passage, I looked back. He was running after me. "Mr. Chandler!" he screamed. "Stop!"

I ran for my life. People—doctors, patients, appeared in doorways. "Stop him!" screamed Dr. Kletterhohn, "Stop that man!"

A nurse stood in my way. I ran into her; she staggered against the wall and let me go. Now several people were running after me. They came at me from all sides.

I slithered across the waxed floor. Hands were outstretched toward me, voices cried out. Then I saw the paternoster. An empty cage was on its way down. I let myself fall forward and shd into the rapidly narrowing aperture between the floor and the ceiling of the cage, and fell without hurting myself. The cage continued its way down. When it reached the ground floor, I jumped out. The corridor was empty. My pursuers hadn't caught up with me yet. I tore out into the twiUt park, in the direction of the gate house. Behind me I could hear agitated voices. A few people I passed stopped and stared after me.

The gatekeeper was telephoning; he didn't even see me. I ran down the street to the ruined area where I had left

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my car. Traffic was heavy in both directions. I was panting when I turned around once more. At the gate I could see Dr. Riittgenstein, a group of people around her. They were gesticulating, but they had given up the chase.

I waited until I could breathe evenly again, then I threw away my hat and put on my beret again. I felt lightheaded and calm. Now that I was as good as certain that I was doomed to die, I was filled with tremendous satisfaction over my cunning. By the time I had reached my car and got into the driver's seat, I was actually in a good mood. I gave the parking lot boy a mark. And as I drove the car out into the street I was whistUng the barcarole from The Tales of Hoffmann.

When we reached the Stachus, she spoke for the first time. She was in the back seat, and it was absolutely ridiculous that I hadn't noticed her before. The darkness that had fallen so suddenly may have been the reason. She sat perfectly still and I didn't see her face in the rear mirror until she spoke.

"Good evening," said Margaret

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"Good evening, Margaret," I said. Again I was beset by the desire to whistle, but I suppressed it.

"I was terribly upset this afternoon," she went on. "You were acting so strangely, so I asked Joe to follow you." I said nothing. I drove slowly, cautiously to the Lenbachplatz.

"You were in the hospital?"

"Yes."

"Because ... because of your head?"

"Yes, Margaret."

She laid her hand on my shoulder. "And ... did they tell you?"

That was the moment when I knew just how I was going to bring the thing to its conclusion. "Yes, they told me. I explained that I was a film writer who needed some information on brain surgery for what I was writing, and they gave it to me. So now I know."

I drove the car to the curb and stopped. We were in front of a movie house; the next performance was at six-thirty. A lot of people were waiting outside. They were playing Ninotchka.

J£ she was hstening attentively she'd recognize the trap I was leading her into; she would know that actually I couldn't really know anything for sure.

"Then you know . . ." she whispered duUy.

"Yes." And I risked it. "A gUoblastoma," I said. "They can't operate."

I looked at her in the mirror. Her face was white and stm. "You knew?"

She nodded.

"They told you?" '

She nodded again.

"Does anybody else know? The Baxters?"

"Of course not," she whispered. I expected her to burst into tears, but she didn't. She remained perfectly still and strangely calm. "Nobody knows. Only I know. I... I... I couldn't tell you, Roy."

So now I knew. Definitely. It had really been child's play to find out. I put my hand in my pocket. "Now I can put on my wig again," I said and did so. She looked at me wide-eyed. "Well," I said, turning to face her. "How do you hke it? Isn't it a great wig?"

Her lips parted; she wanted to say something but couldn't get the words out. Instead she suddenly burst out laughing. She laughed loudly, hysterically. She laughed and laughed and laughed.

"Stop it!" I told her.

But she didn't stop. She couldn't. Then I began to laugh too. The two of us laughed until we were crying and gaspmg for breath. Then, simultaneously, we stopped. Now her face betrayed panic. I knew why. She was afraid of what I was about to say. But she needn't have been afraid. Right then I was harmless, at peace with myself, cheerful.

"So," I said. "And now, after this shock, let's have dinner. I'm terribly hungry."

We went to Humpelmayr's and I ordered a huge dinner, one of the most lavish meals I've ever eaten. We drank—^first a pale dry sherry, with the entree a Heid-sieck Monopole brut, and with the dessert, Courvoisier and mocca. The service was marvelous. I bought Margaret a long-stemmed white rose from the flower girl and helped myself twice to the lobster. At first Margaret stared at me as if petrified, as if she expected my final collapse at any moment. When this didn't happen and I behaved quite normally, she calmed down. With the filet mignon, her appetite picked up, and she helped herself twice to the asparagus. It was a dinner that couldn't have been more beautiful and peaceful. We never mentioned the fact of my inexorable death. I hadn't had such a pleasant dinner with Margaret in years. I thought she looked very pretty. Her hairdresser had talent. I complimented her on her hair and she returned the compliment as regarded my wig. As for the praline torte—^we were d'accord: it was the best dessert of its kind we'd ever had.