The Berlin Connection (47 page)

"You bastard!"

"That's enough now!" the man at her table said, got up and slammed his fist into the trouble-maker's face. He laughed at that and kicked his opponent who fell to his knees and groaned. He had been kicked in the groin.

Now the friends of this man leapt at the fat man who laughed at that and kicked his opponent who fell to his fight the four men. The giris screamed. The bartender ran to the telephone. Goldstein had caught one of the shoes, the other was lying on the floor near me.

I picked it up while I heard the bartender call, "Police patrol.. . God Almighty, come quickly ..."

I held the shoe close to my eyes and stared at it. In faint golden letters the brand name was still visible:

BREITSPRECHER BERLIN.

Breitsprecher, Berlia.

I seemed to hear Wanda's voice. "My pretty shoes ... broke the heel... made for me ... by Breitsprecher ..."

The waitresses were screaming. Glasses broke. The bar was demolished. The brutal drunk seemed to have gone berserk. Men shrank back. The bartender hurried over.

"The police ... they'll be here in a moment!"

Guests grabbed their coats, threw money on the tables and hurried out.

Breitsprecher, Berlin.

I was still staring at the little shoe. Blind rage rose in me, overpowered me, robbed me of my senses.

Breitsprecher, Berlin.

Goldstein screamed. I looked up. The fat man had kicked him. Now h6 was beating him. "Judenschwein," he

said quietly. He had just beaten up four men but his breath was even. "You dirty, little Jew ..."

"No .. . don't . . . don't ..." Goldstein whimpered trying to protect his head with his hands. The fat man was hitting him, pushing back the men who were trying to restrain him,

"I sit here quietly and peaceful and somebody like you comes. They forgot to send you to the gas ovens."

By now all the people left in the bar were trying to help Goldstein but the fat man was invincible. He shook off his adversaries with ease. Again and again he hit Goldstein.

"Six million—don't make me laugh! Two million at the most!"

Everything began to revolve around me. I saw Wanda, Hintze-Schon, my mother, Kostasch, Seaton, directors I had worked with twenty-five years ago, Joan, Schauberg, Natasha, all of them revolving, confused, above and below each other; I heard voices, boisterous singing, shouting; a voice screamed, "Peter! Peter! Help me . .."

Faces. Flames. The sounds of breaking glass. The clanging of fire-engine bells.

"Die Fahne hoch, die Reihen fest geschlossen ..."

"Peter! Peter!" That was Goldstein.

"Scene 321. Take eleven!"

The voices grew louder and louder, the images turned faster and faster. Something narrow and long flashed, blinded me.. ."^

"Peter!"

A siren. Steps. Voices. Screams. Many screams.

Then I recognized the narrow, shiny object: an ice pick, on a wooden board behind the bar.

I grabbed it.

I lunged. *

Breitsprecher, Berlin.

Even the men who were trying to separate the fat man from Goldstein shrank back from me. This surprised him;

he lost his balance. He fell on Goldstein who groaned and I fell on the man's gross body. The images before my eyes moved quickly, out of focus.

I raised the arm holding the ice pick. I plunged it between the man's shoulder blades. The gray fabric of his suit quickly turned red. Somebody hit the back of my head with a heavy object and I lost consciousness.

19

**To the shelters! To the shelters! Enemy planes advancing on Berlin!" The voice jarred. Metal scraped on metal. A clamor of frantic voices.

"Get up! Rise and shine!"

"Get out of bed! To the washrooms! Hurry up!"

This is what I heard when I came to. Groaning, coughing, unintelligible sounds, shuffling feet, rattling of aluminum utensils, and again and again the beating of metal against metal and the jarring voice, "Enemy bombers above Mark Brandenburg. Full alert for Berlin!"

My head was splitting. Now I noticed the smell. Wherever I was, the stench was nauseating. I opened my eyes. I was lying on a hard bed enclosed in an iron cage. An old man in faded blue-gray pajamas rattled the cage and yelled, "Go to the shelter, man!"

At this point in my report it seems necessary to me to make one point clear so that you. Professor Pontevivo, and you, the judge at my future trial, will not interpret it as cowardice, evasion or concealment. Everything I reported up to now I remember clearly. After I awakened in the iron cage my memory was no longer perfect. It remained partially impaired for a time.

For instance: I said "cage." I remember a cage. Perhaps it was only an iron bed which reminded me of a cage. I lived in a shadowy world. A world which sep-

arates life from death, day from dream. What I am reporting now must have taken place this way. I have objective proof that it did; many people are my witnesses.

When I tried to sit up in the cage my head bumped into its roof. I sank back. I felt dizzy and nauseous. I looked around. The room held about forty beds crowded together. In the narrow gangways naked and half-dressed men were bustling about. I looked at myself. I was wearing pajamas too.

There was a closed door, three closed windows admitting a dim light. An adjacent room was also crowded with beds. Many had cages such as the one I was in. Men were lying motionless in some while in others men screamed and raged, rattUng the bars. Attendants in white coats were ordering everybody to hurry to the washrooms. The attendants were large and powerful. Two of them were dragging an old, incredibly dirty man past me. He was shouting, "I don't want a bath! I'm two hundred and fifty-seven years old! I was in eight wars! I don't need a bath!"

A man next to me had dirtied his bed and proceeded to smear the wall with feces.

A boy of about eighteen was kneeling by the window praying. The man who had rattled my cage and announced enemy bombers suddenly fell to the floor in a foaming convulsion. Two men came and carried him to his cot. One of the men told me, "Welcome, sir. Don't worry about this. He always has a fit in the morning." Then he held the epileptic down so he would not harm himself.

The door opened and two attendants entered. One of them locked the door which had no handle. The other opened my cage and said, "Get up."

"I can't."

"Come on!"

"I really cannot... I feel very sick..."

The attendants looked at each other, reached for my wrists and pulled me up. I cried out with pain.

Assisted by the two attendants I was swaying.

"Where am I?"

He gave me the name of a place I did not know.

"I... I'm not in Hamburg?"

"No. You're far away from Hamburg."

"How far away?"

"I told you, quite a way."

"And what is this here?"

"What do you think it is?"

"I... I've no idea."

"A mental institution."

"A mental..." I staggered. "How did I get here?"

"There is no time to talk. Put on the slippers and robe." The second attendant indicated a chair. On it were a pair of old slippers and a clean but shabby robe which strongly smelled of disinfectant. "Quick, now. To the washroom. Then you'll see the doctor."

"Doctor?"

"New admissions have to see the ward doctor before eight."

The washroom, thick with steam, was crowded with about sixty noisy men. I was given a toothbrush, a washcloth and a cake of soap. "Brush your teeth!"

I tried and promptly vomited.

"Goddanm! Qeanitup!"

I did, then washed myself. I had no recollection of the events of the most recent hours. I felt drunk and faint.

Near me, a man, one side of his face missing, was washing an idiot child. He was talking to the cretin with the intonation of telling a fairy story. "And then, you know, then I said to Eisenhower if you bomb Monte Cas-sino just once more you'll see what is going to happen! Then I'll get Stalin and we'll push you into the Atlantic."

"Atlantic! Atlantic! Atlantic!" cried the cretin.

"I want to get out of here," I told the attendant near

me. "I want to get out of here, right now! I can't be locked up with these crazy people! Fm perfectly sane!"

"Of course, you are," said the attendant. "It's also perfectly normal to want to stab somebody with an ice pick."

"Ice pick?"

"Come on now. Let's go!"

They held me, dressed me in the worn old pajamas and robe and took me back to the ward. The man who had rattled my cage was now running through the room, his arms extended sideways, loudly humming, imitating a bomber plane. A few patients were hiding under beds while others remained motionless.

The boy by the window was now doing exercises. This man who had restrained the epileptic said to me, "Going to be examined, eh? Be careful they don't poison you."

Suddenly a stark-naked dward, rags, broom and pail in hand, ran through the room and shouted, "Make way! Make way! Soraya is coming!"

One attendant opened the door, the other pushed me into a hallway with many doors and several benches. Some patients were sitting there, smoking. I saw only men. We passed a high, finely-meshed, grated door which closed off the stairs leading to an upper floor.

REFRACTORY WARD TO BE KEPT LOCKED AT ALL TIMES

Two idiot boys were undressing in the hall, touching each other and one of them recited a counting rhyme. "This is the thumb, it shakes down the plums ..."

I jumped as suddenly from the floor above came the most horrifying screaming.

"What. .. what's that?"

"Just one of the addicts," said one' attendant as he pushed me along. "You'll get used to it when you've been here a while."

"What is your name?"

The doctor, pale and fatigued, sat behind a desk. He made me stand even though I was swaying. The window behind him was also secured by iron bars. I saw a bleak, enclosed yard, a few bare trees and black, grotesquely fat birds waddling on the snow.

"Why are those birds so fat?" I asked Dr. Trotha. I read his name on a name plate on his desk.

"What—" turned. "Oh, the crows. Many of our patients throw their food out of the windows. The crows eat ever>1:hing. They are much too fat to fly; they can only waddle around. I asked you your name."

My head had cleared in the washroom and the mention of an ice pick had somewhat revived my memory.

Fleetingly I remembered the child's shoes. A bar. Goldstein. The fat man. Noises. Music. Screaming. "Police patrol will be here in a minute." A siren.

In the washroom I had touched the back of my head where I found a dressing. Now I could guess what had happened. Somebody had knocked me out. Then I had been brought here.

I had to be cautious now. If it became known that I, Peter Jordan, had been admitted to a mental institution—.

I needed time to think.

"Are you going to tell me your name?"

"You already know my name."

"If I did I wouldn't ask you."

"You took my suit. My passport was in the jacket." I hoped fervently that I was wrong. Often I changed suits and would sometimes forget to take my passport, even the car registration. If I was lucky now . . .

457

"We only found some money and car keys. Now, will you tell me your name!"

I was silent.

"You're not going to tell me your name?"

"Careful now. Think. Take your time, peter Jordan IN MENTAL INSTITUTION. Good God, if the newspapers were to find out!

"Fm not saying anything unless I have an attorney."

"You have no right to demand anything here. You were arrested by the police when you stabbed a man in a bar while you were completely drunk."

"Is he dead?"

"Severely injured. The blade glanced off the shoulder-blade."

"In that case I insist on an attorney. I'm not going to be locked up with these crazy people!"

He got up His voice was strident. **We have one doctor to every seventy patients. The institution is overcrowded. We cannot reserve a private room for each person brought here in an emergency."

"And you cannot lock me up with these mad people!"

"Why not?"

"Because I'm not crazy!"

"Are you quite certain?"

I was silent. I was exasperated.

"Why did you want to kiU this man?"

"I'm not going to tell you anything."

"Not even your name?"

"No!"

A door opened. An older doctor, looking every bit as tired as Dr. Trotha came in. He nodded to his colleague and sat down. Dr. Trotha continued questioning me.

"Now, you are not going to tell me your name."

"No!"

"But perhaps you will tell me how much two and two makes."

"Sixteen," I said, rage rising in me. It was a mistake. He froze.

"You are misjudging the situation you're in. Will you let me test you now? Yes or no?"

"Test what?"

"The state of your mind. Even without a test I can see that you are an alcoholic. You're babbhng."

What was he saying? I was talking rationally and distinctly!

"Your hands are trembling. Your body is shaking. I think you're verging on d.t.'s."

I looked down. He was right! "May . . . may I sit down?"

"Please, do. The test will determine whether you are only an alcoholic or the degree of irreversible brain damage, if any. It will also determine which ward you will be sent to. As you see, the test is also in your interest. When you were admitted—at five in the morning—you were in no condition to be examined. And ward three happened to have had a vacant bed."

"Test me," I said.

The tests took about a half hour. I had to draw a tree, fit triangles to form a square, walk a straight line. I answered many questions. I made a few ridiculous mistakes, probably because I was still somewhat drunk and fatigued. I could not fit the triangles to make a square and when I walked the line I fell. He gave me a few words with which I was to form a sentence. I did and then I realized I had omitted one word. I tried to re-form the sentence. By then I had forgotten the words and I was embarrassed to ask for them again and gave up.

After a few more tests he called the attendants. I was very weak. Fear rose in my again. I could not think and I was grateful to the attendants when they helped me walk. We had to wait a while before we went into another room. The doctor who had sat silently while Dr. Trotha had tested me sat behind a table. Dr. Trotha was on his