He had heard about it.
The governor added: “But up to now he’s been quite a quiet orderly man. I don’t think you’ll need to handcuff him.”
“No, no!” said the warder sharply. “I’m responsible for him. If he runs away.…”
“Do as you think fit, officer,” said the governor, “I was merely giving my opinion. Listen, Sommer,” he now turned to me, “sign this receipt, that you’ve had all your things back from us. We’ll send your money on to you by post …”
“Please send it to my wife,” I said, on a sudden impulse. “I shan’t need money any more.”
“Very well,” said the governor impassively, and with that, I was released.
The warder put the handcuffs on my wrist and so I was led through my home town to the station, but that did not worry me. I still had the bandage on my nose; even Magda would not have recognised me.
Like my own ghost I walked through the town in which I was born, along the streets I had played in as a child; on that bench over there I once sat with Magda, she had plaits then, and we both carried school satchels under our arms.… Now we passed my own business, “Erwin Sommer, Market Produce, Wholesale and Retail” it still said on the ground-glass panes—for how much longer? And led along by a little chain, a suitcase in his free hand, this same Erwin Sommer went by, living yet dead for all that; traces of his life still remained—for how much longer?
“I’m only forty-one,” I said to the officer.
“What do you mean by that?” asked the young man. “What are you getting at?”
“Oh, nothing, officer,” I answered. “But when a man’s already dead to the outside world at forty-one.…”
“Ah, come on, don’t fret so,” said the warder placidly, “you’ll be much better off in the place I’m taking you to than you would be in clink, and if you make a sensible impression, maybe you’ll get out again some time. D’you know what?” he continued, more and more humanly, “later on, when we get on the train, I’ll take the handcuffs off, and I won’t put ’em on again outside either. It’s just here in town, one never knows what you fellows suddenly get into your heads.”
I was silent. He meant well, but he did not know how unimportant the little handcuffs were to me. But with his clumsy efforts to console me, he had uttered a phrase that struck me like a thunderbolt, in my depressed mood. “Maybe you’ll get out again some time,” he had said! Maybe … some time.… And I had been counting on a six weeks’ observation period, that’s what Mordhorst had told me.
Maybe … some time.…
Was it just a random remark of the sergeant’s, or did he really know something? He had my papers! Of course, he knew something: I was going to be locked up for life! Really dead to the outside world, as I had imagined just now. A mist rose before my eyes, and the sun that shone for everybody, shone no more for me. Never again would it shine for me.
36
We are walking together along a beautiful country road, the warder and I. I am free of the handcuffs, which has the advantage that I can carry the suitcase, which is none too light, now in my right hand, now in my left. The warder has lit a short pipe, and has graciously given me permission to smoke. This permission does not help me in the least. In any case it would probably go ill with my bitten nose.
Along the road stand tall old chestnut trees, which have finished blossoming. The sun is sinking. Now and then, a belated cartload of hay creaks passed us. The people hardly turn their heads after us, they are long accustomed to such a sight around here, in the near vicinity of the asylum. The most that happened was that once a woman threw an inquisitive look at my bandaged face. The warder had tried to question me about my “crime” and my former life, but I had only answered him in monosyllables. But since he has decided to shorten the journey with a little conversation, he now tells me about himself, or rather about a garden which he works with his young wife. He would so much like to rent the neighbouring plot of land, and, weighing the matter up at his ease, he sets out before me all the reasons for and against it—his low salary and the high rent, the soil full of weeds, the doubtful yield—oh, there were only reasons against. The warder breathes out a cloud of blueish-white smoke and says finally: “Well, I’ll rent that plot at all costs. A plot of land—that’s better than a thousand marks in the savings bank!”
I only half-listen to his chatter, and now when he comes to his surprising conclusion I smile bitterly. “It’s with such empty-heads as this that I’m to keep company from now on, and they simply call me ‘Sommer’ without ‘Herr’ and graciously admit that ‘so far I make quite a sensible impression’!”
But aloud I ask: “Is that the institution?”
“That’s it,” replied the warder. “And now we’d better put a bit of a spurt on; it’s nearly office closing-time, and the governor will complain if I bring you in late.”
Seen from the road, the asylum does not make a bad impression. My heart starts to beat easier. Situated on a slight rise, surrounded by tall thick-leaved old trees, it lies as stately as a great manor-house or some old castle. Great windows blink in the light of the evening sun. But as we come nearer, I see the high red walls all round, with iron spikes and barbed-wire along the top, I see the bars in front of the flashing windows, and my companion has no need whatever to explain: “This used to be a convict prison.”
No, I can see for myself this does not look like a hospital but a convict prison. A real moat, quite wide, encircles the whole group of buildings, ducks and geese swim peacefully on it, but on the bridge we are crossing stands an armed guard in a green uniform, and the office to which I am taken is no whit different from the prison office I left an hour and a half ago. Even the officials in it seem to be of the same kind, the same bored, uninterested yet searching glance is thrown at the new inmate, the same slow formality is gone through by which my escort is relieved of me and my personal details are entered.
This evening affords me only one ray of light; I was arrested on a charge of attempted murder, the magistrate had ordered my transfer to an institution on the grounds of homicidal intent, now I am being handed over here with the entry “uttering menaces”. Without my doing anything about it, the seriousness of the charge against me has been considerably reduced; for a moment I tell myself that it is impossible for them to keep me here for any length of time, and to destroy my whole life for such a slight offence.
But then, as I followed my green-uniformed guide with his fattish melancholy face, through all the wretched stone courtyards on which only barred windows looked down, as I was admitted into a gigantic stone building through double iron doors, and mounted the gloomy staircase, as I realised that the so-called hospital differed in no respect from a prison, that here, too, were bars and warders and iron discipline and blind obedience, I thought no more about the great step I had taken from attempted murder to uttering menaces, I believed no more in the slightness of my offence—I felt that anything was possible, I realised how helplessly I stood at the mercy of gigantic and pitiless powers, powers without heart, without compassion, without human qualities. I was caught in a great machine and nothing that I did or felt was of any more consequence, the machine would run its unalterable course, I might laugh or cry, the machine would take no notice.
37
One iron grill and then another iron grill, and now we enter a long gloomy corridor full of pale figures. It stinks here, it stinks piercingly of latrines, cabbage and bad tobacco. Outside the corridor window is the last glow of sunset, above the high iron-spiked wall I see the peaceful evening countryside with its meadows and slowly-ripening cornfields, right across to the low strips of woodland on the horizon. Around me, pale figures are standing, leaning against the walls. Sometimes I see something of their faces, when the glow of their pipes momentarily becomes brighter. A man, a short sturdy man in a white jacket, takes me behind a partition at the end of the corridor. It is his sanctum, the “glass box” as it is called. From this “glass box” the stocky man, who turns out to be the head-nurse, watches everything that happens along the corridor, and he watches very keenly, as I was to discover. He even sees things that he cannot see at all, he knows what happens in the cells, he knows everything that happens at work—he is the stern conscience of Block 3, and the doctor’s information service.