I never thought of him as the helpful doctor, only as the ally of the Public Prosecutor who in a confused and difficult moment had charged me with the attempted murder of my wife, and who would do anything to keep me inside these walls.
Whenever I really managed to overcome my feelings, and to tell the doctor what moved my heart, it unfailingly ended in disappointment. For instance, one day I told him quite freely about my changed plans for the future, how I was going to retire to some quiet village and just live by brush-making. I had expected to get the doctor’s approval of this plan, his praise even, and I was astonished and disappointed beyond measure when he vigorously shook his head and said: “Those are just fantasies, you’re pulling the wool over your own eyes. You can’t live like that, and you don’t want to. You need your fellow-men, and above all, Sommer, you need a helping and guiding hand. No, that only comes from that quite unwarranted aversion of yours to your wife. Get the idea out of your head that your wife wants to harm you. You are the one who has wronged her and if your wife weren’t such a decent sort she would have every reason for being a bit spiteful towards you. But she hasn’t given a single unfavourable word of evidence against you, she tries to excuse you all the time! And here you tell me you don’t want to live and work with her any longer! What a fellow you are, Sommer! Can’t you see anything as it really is? Must you always invent some rigmarole?”
Naturally I was bewildered and indignant at this unwarranted attack; as Magda had not written me a line and never made any attempt to see me, I quite justifiably assumed that I was irksome to her, that she considered me dead and buried. And, as is the custom, she spoke no ill of the dead. But it was decent of me to keep quietly out of her way, to make no trouble for her, to leave her in full possession of my property. That the doctor refused to acknowledge my generosity, and instead assailed me with hard spiteful words, proved to me how prejudiced he was against me, and that made me keep my mouth shut all the tighter in future, made me still more reticent and shy. Really he was nothing but my enemy, a pitiless enemy who tried by all the means at his disposal to outwit me and who unscrupulously used his weight as head of the institution against me. The other prisoners had been right when they constantly warned me of him.
“Don’t trust that Stiebing! He’s friendly to your face, but behind your back he makes a report about you so you never get out of this hole alive!”
They were right.
During these few weeks, the doctor did not often send for me, and his demands on me did not become more frequent after he informed me that he had now been asked to prepare my report. Quite the reverse, in fact, another proof that he had a preconceived opinion about me, and did not want to find out anything further. In general, unless there was something specially urgent, the medical officer visited the institution twice a week, every Tuesday and Thursday evening. But I was sent for much more rarely, hardly once a week. Of course I rather welcomed this, since every visit was, as I have said, a torture that took me days to recover from. But these rare summonses showed me, too, how lightly he took this report on which the fate of my whole life depended. Yet in itself, my case was a particularly interesting one for a psychiatrist. In education, I was head and shoulders above the other inmates, I had achieved something in my lifetime, I was a respected man—and now I was in this death-house. The medical officer must have been able to see there was more in me than in the others, I had more to lose, I was more sensitive, too, and more prone to suffering than these utterly dull, stupid fellows. But no, he treated me like any Tom, Dick or Harry, he was often quite rude to me, called me an incorrigible liar and romancer! I had every reason to mistrust him and to be on my guard. When he upbraided me for my lack of frankness, that was just one of his baseless charges, to which I remained completely silent.
53
A change in my relations to the doctor only came when he visited me in my cell one day at an unusual hour—early in the afternoon, in fact. I had just been smoking, which is forbidden in the work-cells, but he made no comment on the tobacco-laden atmosphere, even although he usually insisted on a strict observance of the regulations. That day, he was not wearing his light doctor’s overall, and was without his eternal shadow, the head-nurse. For a moment Dr Stiebing looked at my work and then asked absently: “Well, how are you getting on with the brush-making, Sommer?”
“Quite well, doctor,” I answered. “I think the work-inspector is pleased with me.”
He nodded, still rather absently, my good work did not seem to interest him much. He reached in his pocket, took out a silver cigarette case, and then he did something that completely astonished me, that almost bowled me over: he offered me the case.
I looked at him disbelievingly, and a thin smile lay on his face as he said: “You can quite safely take one, Sommer, if your doctor offers it to you.”
He even gave me a light first, and then stood for a moment calmly smoking under the high-set cell-window, in silence.
Then he said: “I had a long talk about you yesterday with your wife, Herr Sommer. I had asked her to come in and see me some time, and yesterday she came.”
I did not answer, I only looked at him, my heart hammered; it moved me, it shook me that this man had been with Magda just yesterday. I could not speak, I think I was trembling in every limb.
“Yes,” said the doctor thoughtfully. “I got your wife to go over everything again, from the very beginning of your marriage, up to that unfortunate evening. A psychiatrist hears much more from relatives than they themselves would guess.”
A wave of furious indignation began to rise in me. “So you’ve been trying to trick Magda too, and very likely have tricked her,” I thought. “Magda is so innocent, she has no notion what sort of man you are!”
But the wave ebbed away again.
He said: “On the whole, I have a not unfavourable impression from this account of your wife’s. I really think it is possible we may be able to do something with you, Sommer. You have a very brave and efficient wife.…”
Again I felt on the defensive: I would have preferred that the doctor had used some other word than “efficient” in connection with Magda.
“Yes, Sommer, of course I can’t say anything definite just yet, I’ll have to keep you here under observation for a few weeks more. But if you go on behaving quietly and working hard, and if nothing special happens …”
“Nothing special will happen, doctor,” I cried excitedly, “I’ll go on behaving quietly and working hard …”
The doctor smiled again, and in that very moment when he was being so kind to me, I did not like his superior smile at all.
“Well,” he said, “we keep all temptations away from you here, Sommer! To behave yourself here means nothing much. You have to be sure that you can resist every temptation outside, particularly alcohol …”
“I’ll never touch alcohol again,” I assured him. “I decided that long ago. Not even a glass of beer. I’m going to be a total abstainer, I give you my firm promise on that, doctor.”
“Oh Sommer,” he said sadly, “you’d better not promise me anything, what sort of promises do you think I get to hear, when people want to get out of this place? And three months outside, one month even, and one man’s stealing again, the other drinking. No, I don’t think anything of promises—I’ve been disappointed too often.”
“But I really have changed,” I said and for the first time I could speak quite frankly to the doctor. “I would never have believed that it could happen to me. I thought I could do anything I liked, and Magda spoilt me, too, in that respect. But now that I’ve seen what has come from my drinking, this is going to be a lesson to me for ever. When I am tempted, and I look back on the weeks and months in this place …”