'And where do you stand?'
'In the matter of treatment? I am a senior consultant here but my staff are permitted considerable freedom to choose what is best for their patients. We have mostly depressives and schizophrenics, some of them catatonics demanding a lot of skill and close attention. However it is in the nature of our function, as a garbage can into which patients are discarded, that we treat a wide variety of illness. After many years of practice I have become reluctant to forbid any kind of treatment that a doctor, after a proper study of a patient, thinks will be beneficial.'
'You forbid nothing?'
'That is my stated position.'
'Including lobotomy?'
'A seriously disturbed patient who becomes violent can sometimes be returned to something approaching normal Life.' He got up. 'Let me show you the wards.'
The clinic was hushed but not entirely silent. Most of the patients were in bed, sleeping with that impassive calm that medicine provides. One small ward was in semi-darkness. It held six sleepers who had been sedated for a week. It was, explained Doktor Wieczorek, the preliminary part of the treatment for most new arrivals. Underlying the smell of disinfectant there were all the disagreeable odours that warm bodies provide when crowded together in a closed room. He went to the window and raised the blind a fraction so that they could see the sleeping patients. Outside, she saw that the snow was falling much more heavily, the trees were rimed with it and passing cars left black Lines in the road. Doktor Wieczorek adjusted the disarranged bedclothes. Sometimes, he joked, it took a week or two for their documentation to catch up with them.
The rooms were all lined with white tiles from floor to ceiling. There was something pitiless about the shiny hardness as it reflected the grey blankets. An ashen-faced patient stared at her but didn't register any emotion. Fiona had that guilty feeling of intrusion that afflicts all fit people in the presence of the sick. Wieczorek pulled down the blind and it was dark. As if in response to the darkness, one of the patients gave a muffled cry but then went quiet again.
Downstairs there was a large 'association room' where half a dozen patients were sitting in metal chairs with blankets over their knees. Two of them, both middle-aged men, were wearing woolly hats. There was no sign of books or newspapers and the patients were either asleep or staring into space. A TV set in the corner was showing a cartoon film, in which a hatchet-wielding mouse was chasing a cat, but the sound was switched off and no one was watching it.
'There is one patient you must meet,' said Doktor Wieczorek. 'Franz: he is our oldest inhabitant. When we got him, in 1978, his memory had completely gone but we are proud to have made a little progress.' He showed her into a bare room with a big square-shaped sink equipped for washing bed-pans. There was a man sitting there in a wheelchair. His body had run to fat as a consequence of his confinement. His complexion was yellowish and his lips were pressed tightly together as if he was trying not to yell. 'Come along, Franz. What about a cup of coffee?'
The man in the wheelchair said nothing, and made no move, except that he rolled his eyes as if trying to see the doctor's face without moving his head. 'I've brought a lady to see you, Franz. It's a long time since you had a visitor, isn't it?' To Fiona Doktor Wieczorek said, 'With patients of this sort the condition varies greatly from day to day.'
'Hello, Franz,' said Fiona, uncertain of what was expected of her.
'Say, hello, Franz,' said Doktor Wieczorek, and added, 'He hears everything but perhaps today he doesn't want to talk to us.' He took the wheelchair and tipped it back to lift the front wheels clear over the step.
Wieczorek took Franz in his wheelchair along the corridor, continuing his small talk and seeming not to notice that Franz didn't answer. Fiona followed. When the chair was positioned in a small room with 'Treatment Room No. 2' on its door it was placed so that Fiona and the doctor could sit down and face the patient. Although he still hadn't moved his head Franz had become agitated at coming into the room. He was looking at a small grey enamel cabinet in the corner. Its dial was calibrated in volts and there was a mechanical timer and wires ending in what looked like headphones. Franz stared at the machine and then at Doktor Wieczorek and then back at the machine again.
'He doesn't like the electric shock treatment,' said the doctor. 'No one does.' He put out a hand and touched Franz in a reassuring gesture. 'It's all right, Franz. No treatment today, old friend. Coffee, just coffee.'
As if by prearrangement a woman in a blue overall came in carrying a tray with cups, saucers and a jug of coffee. The chinaware was thick and clumsy: the sort which didn't readily break if dropped. 'I'll change my mind, if I may?' said Fiona as the doctor began pouring the coffee.
'Good. Changing people's minds is our speciality here. Isn't that right, Franz?' Doktor Wieczorek chuckled.
Franz moved his eyes and stared at Fiona. It seemed as if he could hear and understand everything that was said. Looking into his face, she wondered if there was something faintly familiar about him, but then she dismissed the thought.
'Poor Franz Blum was a hard-working young third secretary working in the attaché's office in London. Then one day he had a complete breakdown. I suppose it was the strain of being without his family in a strange country for the first time. Some people find it very difficult to adapt. The Embassy shipped him back to Moscow as soon as it was realized that he was sick. Everything was tried and although there were times when he seemed to get better, in the long term he just got worse and worse. It's a sad case. In a way he provides us with a constant reminder of the limitations of our science.'
Fiona watched Blum as he reached for his coffee, extending two hands and picking it up with very great care.
'One confidential KGB report from London said that Franz was a spy for the British,' said Doktor Wieczorek. 'But apparently there is no hard evidence to support the allegation. There was never any question of him going on trial but we were told the background, in case it could help in diagnosis. There was an inquiry, but even your Stasi interrogators got nothing out of him.'
She kept calm, very calm, but she turned her eyes away from Franz. 'But you did?' Then this was the man she had reported to Martin Pryce-Hughes, the one she had betrayed and consigned to a living death. Was Doktor Wieczorek in on that whole story, or was it all just need-to-know?
'We have that sort of patient sometimes. Franz wasn't easy to deal with. It's a long time ago now but I remember it all so clearly. When he didn't respond to the pills and injections it became clear that electric shock would be the only way to help him. Not just the little sessions that are given to help depressed patients; we tried a new idea, really massive shocks.'
Franz spilled a dribble of coffee down his chin. Wieczorek took a handkerchief and wiped it. Then he gently removed Franz's woollen hat and indicated for Fiona the shaved patches where the electrodes were applied.