The Berlin Connection (36 page)

"Pianist, ma'am," said Schauberg, smiling even more ingratiatingly. And to me, "If you would come to the garage now, Mr. Jordan. There are some papers you are required to sign."

I walked out to the hall with him.

"What's the matter?"

"Do you have your checkbook with you?"

"Yes, why?"

"I found another student."

"Does that mean you can operate tomorrow after all?"

"Yes. Come to my room."

He opened a door which read, "Personnel Only." Behind it was a spiral staircase. The door separated two worlds. The luxurious one of the guests and the messy one of the staff. Plaster falling off the walls, staircase badly rusted, halls low-ceilinged, dark and dilapidated. Some doors were open. The rooms were obviously lived in, some had several beds. This was where maids, apprentice waiters, and extra help lived.

Schauberg had a room to himself. A sloping wall, with a half-round window that started from the floor. One had to bend down to look out. An iron bedstead, a cupboard and a shaky table completed the scene. I sat on the bed and wrote a check for one thousand marks.

"You might as well write out my weekly check," said Schauberg. Something in his voice made me look up. He was white. His lips trembled. He swayed and fell on the bed next to me. He stammered, "Cupboard . . . case . . . quickly. . ."

I tore open the cupboard, found a case containine a syringe and several ampoules. I broke one open, filled the syringe and handed it to Schauberg.

He jabbed the needle through his trousers into his thigh and depressed the plunger. Then he sighed deeply and fell back. He was resting quietly now. Only his shm, beautiful hands still twitched; the hands Joan had admired; the hands which in a few hours were to touch Shirley's body...

19

Rome, May third, nine-thirty p.m.

The Uttle white cat is sleeping, curled up in a chair next to my bed. It is a warm, lovely night. Through the open window I can hear the steps of the carabinier who is guarding me. Behind the old trees I can see the illuminated fa9ade of the Colosseum. The fragrance of the flowers in the park fills my room.

Professor Pontevivo came to see me after dinner. We discussed what he had told me about the functions of the min d and he continued, "I can explain the functions of the mind to a drinker. I can explain the reason of an inferiority complex, the problem he beUeves himself not able to handle. One thing I cannot do. Do you know what?"

"Yes. You can point out the difficulties in his life which made him a drinker but you cannot remove this difficulty. I thought about that. I imagine that is also the reason why—I once read this—about ninety percent of so-called cured drinkers sufl^er relapses and are actually incurable."

"You are perfectly right. If a man of forty drinks because he cannot progress in his profession, n6 longer loves his wife, desires another woman, is convinced that his talent wUl never be recognized—I cannot obtain for him the woman he dreams of or release him from the one he hates. Neither can I suddenly make him a successful businessman or a Nobel prize winner. I cannot change his basic circumstances."

"Well, then! Hl-bred children. A bad marriage. A wasted life. Enough to drive a man to drink! No matter how well you explain it to him: All he knows then is why he drinks. You are not able to do any more for him.'*

"Yes, I can."

"You can?"

"I can—" The slight professor interrupted himself. From below we heard noises and men's voices, muffled but still audible in the stillness of the night.

"Non cosi lentamente!"

"Attenzione, idiota! £ sul mio piede!"

"What is on hi« foot?" I asked.

"The coffin probably," Pontevivo guessed. From the window we watched two men in shirtsleeves struggling to haul a coffin up the steps from the basement of the clinic to a waiting hearse. The coffin swayed dangerously.

"Who died?"

"Our composer. Yesterday morning."

It upset me to hear that.

"We usually remove our—hm—departed ones late at night. Many patients would be shocked to witness such a transfer. Do you possibly belong with these people, too?"

I was silent.

"Mr. Jordan, people are dying all over the world. In a hospital death ought to be a regularly expected event. Don't you agree? Why are you sad?"

"That he died without having completed his concerto."

"All of us are saddened by that," said Pontevivo.*

Apparently not all. From below we heard this dialogue.

"£ un compositore. Dicono che ha fatto una si bella musica!"

"Musica, merda! H mio piede!"

Finally the coffin was placed in the hearse and they drove away. We watched until it disappeared in the darkness, in the void, where all of us would disappear one day.

"By the way, toward the end he also became very pious," said Pontevivo. "It happens frequently. He felt iU

and almost daily demanded the priest and extreme unction. All in all he received it seven times. Yesterday morning he told the masseuse to come back at eleven since he had just received extreme unction. By eleven he had already died . . ." Pontevivo led me away from the window. "Where were we?"

"I said you could do very little for a drinker because you could not change his circumstances."

"Right. And I said that I could!"

"How can you do that?"

"I can change his attitude to life. I can—improbable as it may sound—correct his engrams; his experiences as it were. I can effect changes in his subconscious stemming from early, unpleasant experiences with mother, father, poverty, wealth, sickness and so on. I can transform his inferiority complex into a normal emotion. There would then be no more reason for him to drink."

"Then you can change a person?"

"A person, yes. But I can only do that if the patient is agreeable. The patient must cooperate. He must agree to my treatment."

"Which is?"

"Hypnosis," said Pontevivo.

"You can cure alcoholism through hypnosis?"

"In the last two years I have had many successful cures, only a few setbacks. Please consider if you are prepared for this kind of treatment. Good night, Mr. Jordan."

This had been the fourth lecture.

20

On Sunday, the twenty-ninth of November 1959, at exactly four p.m., a pale young man with close-cropped black hair and dark-framed glasses entered the office of

the foreman of the hotel garage and asked for Walter Schauberg.

"He just got back from Essen," answered the foreman. "He's driving for a movie company now," he added genially while he looked at the seemingly nervous young man carrying a heavy attache case. "He's supposed to drive back there tonight."

"Yes, I know," answered the young man. "We were going to see a movie."

The foreman sent a mechanic to fetch Schauberg from the sub-basement. Schauberg was wearing a dark gray chauffeur's uniform. Together with the young man he left the garage and went to a nearby cinema. He bought two tickets for the four o'clock performance. He aroused the cashier's anger by insisting that he had given her a fifty-mark biU and not a twenty she insisted he had given her. After a lengthy argument Schauberg "discovered" his mistake, apologized and entered the movie theater accompanied by the cashier's, "That's a new trick, is it? I'm going to remember your face!"

"I hope so," said Schauberg softly. They waited until the newsreel was shown and left the movie theater, whose only usher had left, by a side exit. At the hotel they used the delivery entrance and service elevator. Shirley, very pale in a black robe opened the door as soon as they knocked. They entered in silence. While the young man took off his shabby coat and pulled up the sleeves of his blue turtleneck sweater Schauberg hung a card on the outside of the door. In four languages it said: do not disturb!

Schauberg now locked the door from the inside. Still not a word had been said. Rain beat against the windows. The young man's hair was damp. He put on a white surgeon's cap. Schauberg did the same after he had removed his beret and Shirley had gasped at the sight of the horrible scar.

All I have described and will describe I know from Schauberg's report.

Both men moved the large table to the window. Schau-berg spoke for the first time, "Where is the pail?"

"In the bathroom," answered Shiriey.

"Get it." Shirley brougli the pail she had bought t^e day before at Schauberg's request.

"The sheets and the other things?"

Shirley pointed to the bed. On it were three new white sheets, sterile cotton wool, sterile gauze, and sanitary napkins. The men spread two sheets over the table and Schauberg took off his jacket and also rolled up his sleeves. He said to Shirley, "You can get undressed now."

"I'm only wearing the robe."

The young man meanwhile had spread the contents of his attache case on another smaller table. He lit a kerosene burner held in a tripod. On it he placed a chromium bowl he had filled with water. He placed a number of surgical instruments in the bowl. Now he spoke for the first time. "Has to boil ten minutes." He couldn't have been more than three years older than Shirley. He looked •undernourished, sad and nervous.

Schauberg said, "Now you can call the operator." He went to the bathroom where he began methodically to scrub his hands and arms.

Shirley instructed the operator. "This is Shirley Brom-field in six-eighteen. I don't feel very well and I'm going to take a sleeping pill. Please don't accept any calls for me until I call you again."

Schauberg returned and threw a razor and shaving brush into the boiling water.

"What's that for?" The young man's watery eyes blinked fearfully behind his glasses.

"I'll take care of it. Wash your hands."

"Why shave her? Iodine will do."

"You shut up."

"That's crazy! Shaving too! As if we have that much time!"

Schauberg looked threatening. His voice was low, "I worked ethically for twenty years like any decent doctor, and I'm going to work properly today too. You understand me?"

The young man shrugged and went to scrub his hands. Schauberg told me later, "Naturally, iodine would have done as well. But—ridiculous I know—just then I remembered that I had no license to practice any more. I did it out of stubbornness. Stubbornness and . . . and longing for my profession, probably. Ridiculous, isn't it?"

Shirley lay on the towel on the bed and he shaved her carefully. "Now you can take off your robe and lie on the table. Feet to the window. We need light."

"Can I have a pillow for my head? The table is so hard."

"No. You have to lie flat. You'll be sleepy in a moment and you won't feel anything." Schauberg injected Shirley's vein.

"What's that?"

"Evipal. By the way, your stepfather sends his best regards. Move forward. Farther, to the edge of the table." Shirley obeyed apathetically. The injection was taking effect. "Let your legs hang down." Schauberg pushed the pail close to her legs. He turned on the radio.

"Music drowns out noises. Spread out your arms."

Schauberg tore a long, wide strip off the sheet. He tied one end around Shirley's right wrist, pulled the strip underneath the table to the other side and secured Shirley's other wrist. Her stretched out arms were now fixed as those of a crucified person.

"Pull your knees up. Higher!" he said louder. Shirley was mumbling, not reacting to his request. He pushed her legs up against her body. He placed a wide long strip of the sheet underneath the backs of her knees and fastened the strip tightly behind the girl's neck. He went to the

bathroom where the student was still brushing his hands and began to scrub again. The instruments were rattling in the boiling water and melodies of a Lehar operetta came from the radio.

"How is her heart?" asked the student.

"It's okay. You have Cardiazol?"

"Yes."

"Good."

"Why should you need it if her heart is okay?"

"One never knows. It's always good to have handy." Both men went over to Shirley. The student placed the mask on her face.

"Count, please."

Indistinctly Shirley began to count, "One, two, three . . ."

"Breathe deeply," said the student. He slowly dropped ether onto the cotton wool of the mask. Schauberg bent over Shirley.

". . . four ... five . . ."

"She's out," reported the student.

"All right," said Schauberg. "The rings, please."

As he inserted the first the telephone began to ring.

21

The music emanating from the radio was sweet and sticky as honey.

Schauberg straightened up.

The telephone shrilled.

"It wiU stop in a moment," said Schauberg.

The telephone stopped ringing.

"You see," said Schauberg. "The next ring, please."

The telephone started up again.

The student dropped the ring.

"Stupid," said Schauberg. The student picked up the

ring and threw it back into the boiling water. The telephone continued to ring. i

"I can't stand that," groaned the student. His face was green.

"If she doesn't answer they'll stop ringing. She said she didn't want to be disturbed.*'

The telephone stopped.

"There you are," said Schauberg.

The telephone began again.

Schauberg said, "It must be something important."

"If it is they'll send someone up here."

"The sign is on the door."

"That won't stop them if it is important," the student cried hysterically. Schauberg shrugged his shoulders and walked toward the telephone.

"You can't answer that!"

"Why not?" asked Schauberg, supremely confident. "After all, I am her stepfather's chauffeur. I could have brought her something from him." He turned off the radio, Shirley moaned and moved her head.

"God . .. forgive .. ."

"Give her a little more."

The student dropped a little more ether onto the mask.

Shirley quietened.

Schauberg lifted the receiver. He did not say anything. A woman's voice said, "Miss Bromfield, I'm terribly sorry to disturb you. You said you did not wish to be called. But an inspector from the police is here and he says it is urgent. Just one moment I'll connect you ..."