Secret Dreams (24 page)

He wanted to believe she looked at him on the sly, that she noticed him. How he tried to make everything right for her, how he tried to anticipate her every need and whim. What needs? What whims? The girl never said. He was guessing.

All at once the putrescence of the room overwhelmed him, as though a hundred drowsy flies were settling on his bare skin. He had heard people got used to flies crawling over them — but refused to believe it. He stood, weak and pale all over “May I come tomorrow?” he asked.

The next day was worse….

A new nurse, one Fräulein Simson, came on duty. She had been with the Burghölzli a week, having recently come from one of the public wards in the city. On the public wards she had learned mostly how to ignore patients calling her names and making lewd suggestions. Tired of it at last, she had hoped to find a more refined position under the eminent Herr Direktor Bleuler. And so far young Nurse Simson had been lucky, tending mostly to the cooperative paying patients on the fourth floor. Easy patients, whose wealthy families preferred them not to languish at home, the kindly sad ones … And so Nurse Simson felt sorry for the “poor dears” having to sit alone every day in a tiny room in a big stone hospital.

And since fetching meals and making beds had been her business up till now, she extended that business to the poor Schanderein girl in 401, despite the standing orders given by the extremely odd Herr Doktor Jung. So Nurse Simson went herself to fetch poor Fräuleins meal, adding an extra covered dish to the stack of plates destined for the fourth floor. Back upstairs, she unloaded the dumbwaiter, piling the plates on a cart, and started her rounds with room 401, at the end of the hall.

Calmly, then, she fetched the meal for 401. Calmly she opened the door and entered. Calmly she tried to ignore the overpowering smell. Calmly she tried to ignore the patients gasps, which shortly turned to howling shrieks. Calmly she tried to set the place to rights, attempting to carry out a few dishes, make off with a brimming chamber pot. Calmly she even tried to make the bed. But in the screaming room, it appeared Nurse Simson had gone berserk. Completely rattled, like a mannikin imitating the movements of a real person. A puppet, jerked about — stooping and stopping, fetching and putting down — never finishing a task she set out to do.

In the end she managed one thing only, to collect a few of the dirty dishes. And she almost made off with them, but for the full plate of food thrown at her head as she opened the door. Nurse Simson saw a flicker of the patient's arm out of the corner of her eve — and then the plate exploded against the wall, covering her with splinters of glass and flecks of hot stew. She dropped the dishes and fled.

They called Herr Doktor to the nurses' lounge, a dingy room on the third floor. Nurse Simson was being comforted by Nurse Bosch. Nurse Bosch seemed to revel in this role, for she had taken young Fräulein Simson right into her arms and pressed her face to her bosom, stroking the back of the sobbing girl's head. She reminded Herr Doktor of a dowager cat mothering a bedraggled kitten. Nurse Bosch shot him a glance that said, See! See what you've done!

He noticed a dark-colored stain running down young Simson's white starched uniform — feces or food? The skin of Nurse Simson's neck was mottled bright red. When she tore her face away from the great mothering cleavage, she gulped air between sobs and spat, “She's the devil! The devil's in that room. The devil!” in a shrill, pointy voice —- and then went back to sobbing between Nurse Bosch's breasts.

Herr Doktor felt another protest coming…. As things turned out, Nurse Simson left the Burghölzli the very same day. But he still had to answer the business in writing.

“And why didn't anyone stop her?” Herr Doktor demanded.

Nurse Bosch and Orderly Bolzen stood in the hall outside 401. Echoes of the turmoil fled into the stairwell, escaping from the fourth floor. The patients along the corridor were still moaning and wailing, laughing and singing, calling for their doctors or arguing with longdead relatives. And underneath the din came the rising and falling “Ah —! Ahh —! Ahhh —!” of the sobbing young woman in 401. How many days till the girl returned to the way he had her before that idiot Nurse Simson barged into her room? How would they ruin it all next time?

Neither Bosch nor Bolzen replied. Herr Doktor tried to reason with them. “It's about treating the girl decently. Respecting all the little things we take for granted. That no one will disturb us on the toilet. That we can sit and eat at peace. You think her habits revolting? If you didn't, our good Doktor Nekken would slap you in room 402, next door. But that doesn't give anybody the right to barge into hers…. We can't help the girl and fight each other at the same time. Tell me, when will she realize we meant her no harm today?” He

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halted. Orderly Bolzen stared dumbly at the floor. Nurse Bosch's eyes had snuffed out like candles, the lines of her face darkening with resentment. He suddenly saw what she disliked about him. His fair good looks. His take-it-or-leave-it manner. The fact that he bossed her around. But most of all how he called her attitude into question. As though she didn't know the first thing about crazy people. This was going about it wrong.

He tried another approach.

“A physician's standing order regarding his patient was broken today/' he said. “Surely, Nurse Bosch, you know no one is allowed in Fräuleins room?” A short, irresolute silence elapsed as Nurse Bosch considered this. “Do you think we might have Orderly Zeik back on this floor during daytime hours?” Herr Doktor suggested mildly.

The dim lights in Bolzen's eyes flared to life like grimy lamps…. Asking Zeik back — what an unforgivable insult! Bringing Bolzen's own record and seniority into question. Somehow it had gotten around that Junior Orderly Zeik had rendered special “services” to Herr Doktor — i.e., gaining entry to the kitchen meat locker. Zeik was now spending six months on waste disposal in the bowels of the building. The Orderly Section sending out a message to all concerned: junior nobodies were in no position to do anyone favors.

Nurse Bosch gazed into Herr Doktors cool gray eyes. She must make him an answer: a standing order had been broken, a patient disturbed, and a Burghölzli physician's treatment temporarily halted due to the inattention of the staff. A price must be exacted. God … Bolzen was going to hate her for all eternity.

Slowly Nurse Bosch said: “Well, we'll see what we can do about your request, Herr Doktor. In the end Orderly Bolzen and Orderly Zeik may have to swap shifts. It can't be arranged all in a minute.”

“I understand,” Herr Doktor replied.

Done. Bolzen would leave the floor.

By the end of the day, the spot on the wall where Fräulein Schanderein threw the plate at Nurse Simson had dried, a long streak of decayed food smeared from shoulder height almost to the floor. In the coming days the streak would remind Herr Doktor of dried blood. Once again, five days passed since Fräulein S began refusing to yield up her meal plates and chamber pots. If the mummy wanted to keep them, fine, she could have them. Half a dozen plates lay scattered in their congealed grease about the floor. He had even stepped on one by mistake and nearly broken his ankle. But the mummy showed nothing, and he had difficulty during his visits not to stare continually at the chamber pots slowly filling up.

À few more days passed, and each day he inspected the condition of the receptacles on the floor of her room. Then going to the door and announcing, “Orderly Zeik! Another chamber pot, please!” Or whatever was needed. He no longer asked for permission to rise and go to the door — he just went ahead and did it. Perhaps a small omen of change.

On the eighth day, Nurse Bosch appeared personally with a clean chamber pot.

“Something wrong, Nurse. Bosch?”

“Nothing, Herr Doktor. Zeik was having some trouble finding fresh ones. Our supply is not unlimited, but Î knew where a few extras were kept.”

The gesture touched him, and he bowed to her. “Danke, Nurse Bosch.”

She handed him the polished brass chamber pot with a simple “Bitte.” Nothing showed in her face, though the sickly smell of the room flowed like a heavy fog in the hallway, almost liquid … Nurse Bosch nodded her head once in parting, then turned smartly on her heels as if to say, I am up to this — this and anything else. She might just as easily have appeared empty-handed, with excuses instead of a chamber pot: So sorry, Herr Doktor, we've run out. But she made it her business to find him one, gone out of her way. He had the feeling that if he asked Nurse Bosch into the room to sit with him that moment, she would have come. Even known enough to ask Fräulein for permission to enter. And known enough to wait for the silent answer. Something had changed between them.

She moved.

The mummy on the bed moved. Right in front of him. Ja, he was sure of it. Fräulein S was moving….

He froze to the chair, gripping the seat with both hands, as if someone had stuck an icy thumb up his behind. Even when she wanted her wrappings washed, he always found her standing in the corner by the window, with the blanket tucked around her, like a mannikinin a store waiting to be put in place.

But now her limbs were moving, rippling the sheets. She unwound like a snake…. First her foot came out. It reached over the bed to gently touch the floor. A grimy, dirt-streaked foot. The toenails almost black, long and curved, tremendously thick. Months had passed since anyone bothered to clip them —- long before Fräuleins entry into the Burghölzli. Her rough toes crept along the floor, wavering like insect antennae. The stubby faces of blind worms, sniffing ahead, searching. The big toe of the foot touched the smooth surface of a chamber pot. Sniffed along one side, then crept around the other … Her dirty toes found a point close to the middle and shoved the half-full pot a few inches in the direction of his chair.

The contents sloshed a little, threatening to spill. The foot disappeared into the folds of the covers. The mummy moved no more. Herr Doktor stared at the chamber pot. The toes said, Take it. Take it away. He picked the thing up, maggots waved in the sloppy stuff. Before leaving he paused in the door and said:

“Thank you, Fräulein.”

The next day she pushed another pot toward him with her toe,- and the day after that, another. Offering up the putrid contents of her room.

The dirty meal plates too … Nurse Bosch came to the door with-out his having to call, solemnly bearing off whatever he gave her. On the sixth day of Fräuleins change, Herr Doktor asked the girl:

“May I introduce Nurse Bosch and Orderly Zeik? They have helped us in this matter. Carrying chamber pots, washing sheets, and so forth. They are waiting outside.”

The long pause, the answer of silence.

When the door opened, Nurse Bosch tucked up her white skirt a fraction, crossing one leg behind the other in a smart little curtsy. She probably hadn't curtsied since she was ten.

“A pleasure to meet you, Fräulein. ! hope I have been of some ser-vice.

Then Orderly Zeik bowed gravely, clicking his heels. “Enchanted,” he said.

The mummy on the bed of course made no sign. Within four more days, Nurse Bosch and Orderly Zeik were allowed in the room for various purposes: to bring fresh chamber pots, to take away dirty dishes, to strip the bed, wash her sheets, and return them. The floor was scrubbed and the room aired. But when Orderly Zeik made to wash the crusty streak from the wall, the mummy gasped, “Ah —! Ahh —!” and Zeik left off. The crusty streak would stay.

In the week between Christmas and New Years, Herr Doktor bought her a present. A dozen sprigs of hothouse freesia, which he placed in a vase on her dresser. Some a royal shade of purple and others butter-cream yellow. They must have come from a very lusty hothouse, for they filled the room with a sugary-sweet smell like apricot jam. When Herr Doktor had seen them in the flowershop, he thought at once of Fräulein Schanderein. Their color glowed so violently and their smell was so mouth-watering — it must have taken the rankest dung to fertilize such a sweet, sugary flower. Their price stunned him, but he bought the buds anyway.

January came, and a brief week of January thaw, when the bleak winter sky warmed, the ice melted, and the earth breathed. People thought of spring and took off their heavy overcoats. Old wives said this was when the winter killed you: you ran outside without a coat, caught a cold, and died. But who lived his whole life listening to old wives? Herr Doktors coat came off, and he ran around like everybody else.

Nurse Bosch and Orderly Zeik were now regulars in room 401 and performed their duties with little effort and hardly a thought. They barely noticed Fräulein Schanderein, the girl being merely a mummy who sat on the bed. Insignificant and of no concern.

Herr Doktor caught a cold that lasted three weeks and almost killed him. At the start of his Old Wives' Revenge, he ignored his own ad-vice — “Stay home, you're getting sick” — and went to work anyway. What a wicked, vicious old wife of a cold which either stuffed his head and wouldn't let him breathe or sent mucus running out his nose so that he used a dozen handkerchiefs a day. The skin around his nostrils turned red and sore, his eyes puffy. And as the cold grew worse, he felt as if people shied away from him in the corridors, while a years worth of poison oozed from his system.

The girl's Christmas freesias had dried to sad tatters. Gone their lively scent, or was it his sense of smell? The distance between him-self and Fräulein S seemed to increase by the layers of cotton wool encasing his head. When he left 401 after his usual twenty minutes, Nurse Bosch waited for him at the end of the hall with a chamber pot in her hand, She showed him its contents, swirling a puddle of urine around. His ears were clogged; her voice seemed far away.

“No bowel movement,” she said evenly.

The empty chamber pot didn't bother him as much as the scratchiness in his throat, which no amount of honey tea seemed to help. “Well, do you go every day?”