He looked at me with a friendly expression of regret.
Then: “And you’ll do everything you can to lighten our task, too, won’t you, Herr Sommer?”
I assured the doctor of this, and asked whether he had to make a report on me.
“No, not yet,” he said quickly. “I suppose they will ask me for one, but for the time being you have just been assigned here for a stay, Herr Sommer.”
“But then everything will take so long!” I wailed. “Why can’t you make out your report immediately? It’s quite a clear affair. It’s only a slight case of uttering threats, and I’m convinced that Magda, that my wife will testify that she had not really felt herself menaced by me at all. For such a small matter as that, they can’t keep me here for weeks!”
I had been speaking more and more seriously and emphatically. I wanted to make it clear right away what an enormous disparity existed between my slip and my stay here.
“But, but,” cried the doctor, and laid a soothing hand on my arm. “Why are you in such a hurry! First you must have a thorough rest and get quite well again …”
“But I am quite well,” I assured him.
“No dizziness?” asked the doctor. “No sweating? No loss of appetite and then sudden hunger? No longing for alcohol?”
“I simply never think of alcohol!” I cried, shocked at such a dangerous suspicion. “I feel absolutely well!”
“Really no symptoms of de-alcoholisation then?” asked the doctor doubtfully. “Well, how is it, head-nurse? Have you noticed anything?”
I looked expectantly into the hard dark face of the head-nurse. He could not have noticed the slightest thing, of that I was sure.
“Yesterday evening,” he reported, “Sommer felt an urgent hunger and demanded supper, but he only ate four or five spoonfuls of it. Lexer swore today that Sommer had a razor-blade in his pocket; we couldn’t find it, but still—as a rule Lexer’s information has been reliable up to now. Then, too, Sommer is very restless, he can’t stay in one place for five minutes, can’t occupy himself with anything, hasn’t touched a newspaper …”
“But,” I cried, indignant and shocked at such misleading information, “there’s quite other reasons for all that. That has nothing to do with alcohol or the symptoms of de-alcoholisation either. Really, doctor, I never think of schnaps …”
The doctor and the head-nurse both smiled thinly.
“But really,” I cried still more emphatically. “I have had such a shock, with my arrest and all its consequences; I’ll never touch another drop of alcohol as long as I live!”
“That sounds better,” said Dr Stiebing amiably, and he nodded.
“And if I only ate a little of my cabbage soup yesterday, it’s merely because I’m not used to this kind of food. Certainly,” I added hastily, “the cabbage soup was very good, but at home I just eat different things …”
They both looked at me watchfully.
“And if I’ve been walking up and down a bit and haven’t been able to rest, it is quite explicable, in my position. Anyone who is uncertain about his whole future is bound to be restless. Anyway, everybody paces about if they have to wait a long time, you can see that in any dentist’s waiting-room or police-court corridor …”
“All right, all right,” the doctor interrupted, but I had the feeling that I had not convinced him, and that he did not find it “all right” in the least.
“And what about the razor-blade? You’ve quite omitted that!”
I tried not to blush—and yet.… No, perhaps I did not blush at all, I only imagined it. In any case I said with great firmness, “I didn’t omit the razor-blade. I just didn’t think any more of it. I’ve never had a razor-blade here. Why should I? I’ve got no razor.…”
Perhaps I pretended to be too simple, perhaps the doctor had it in mind that an accused person always protests most vigorously against a false charge. In any event, I found this preliminary discussion, in which my case was not even mentioned, full of snares and subterfuges.
I could not guess what the doctor thought of my words. Quite kindly, he said:
“In any case, I hear that it’s not long ago since you first started to drink, so the effects of de-alcoholisation shouldn’t be so drastic. You were previously in remand prison too …”
“Yes,” I said, “and I worked every day in the wood-yard there—I volunteered for it—and you can ask any warder whether I didn’t do as much work as anyone else, though I’m not really used to this kind of work.”
“You drank quite heavily then?” asked the doctor, and he seemed disinclined to pursue enquiries about the quality of my wood-cutting. “One might say, very heavily?”
“Never more than I could stand!” I assured him. “I never staggered, sir, and I never fell about.”
For a moment I was obliged to recall that scene when I tried again and again to pull myself up on to the roof-edge below Elinor’s window, and kept falling back into the bushes. And immediately another scene came to mind, a scene which the medical officer himself had witnessed, when more than half-seas over, I had sat at the inn table kicking up a din with a villager just as drunk as myself, and I had nearly fallen over as I went out, and Dr Mansfeld had to help me to the car.…
“I shouldn’t have said that,” I thought desperately. “That was wrong. It detracts from my other absolutely true remarks.”
I wanted to prevent the health officer from turning this over in his mind, so I continued quickly: “In any case, in that scene with my wife which they first put down as attempted murder, I was in full possession of my mental faculties. I knew perfectly well what I was doing, and I did not do a bit more than I intended. And I had had comparatively little to drink before it.”
“Yes, my dear fellow,” said the doctor, suddenly smiling almost sarcastically, “our two views of what constitutes a little to drink seem somewhat far removed from each other. Reckon up for me how much you had to drink every day, on an average, as far as you can remember.”
I thought of Mordhorst and how he had reproved me for my foolish truthfulness in giving the magistrate such a detailed account of my consumption of liquor. I reflected whether the doctor would already have received these documents for perusal and decided that was hardly likely, since he had not yet been asked for a report. Nevertheless I decided to be very careful, not to deceive him too much, and to try to make as good an impression as possible. Till now, I had had little success with my statements, that much was clear. But everything depended on making a good impression on the doctor at the outset; once you’ve won a man over, it is difficult for any subsequent reports, even if quite unfavourable, to shake this good first impression. So I reflected, and arranged my testimony accordingly. I had hardly ever drunk more than a bottle a day, and mostly less.… What I had had to drink in the inn, I really couldn’t say for sure, because I had been drinking out of small glasses, and had mixed my drinks, and also I had paid for other people, I declared. The doctor listened to my rather rambling discourse with his head in his hand, almost in silence, just occasionally throwing in a question. Finally, when I had no more to say, he said: “As I told you, no report about you has been asked for yet. We’ve just had this little preliminary chat, so as to get to know each other. But get the idea out of your head, Sommer (Sommer! no more ‘Herr’ Sommer), that your account of things can decisively influence your stay in this place. The only thing that can influence your future is your will to be strong and to resist the sort of temptations you had before.…”
He looked at me seriously. I am not very quick-witted, indeed I am a rather slow thinker, so I nodded eagerly in token of my will to be better. (Only ten minutes later, when I was in bed, did it become clear to me that with this phrase, the doctor had branded my statements as lies—of course he had already been handed the documents and had seen there how I had accounted for my consumption of alcohol for pretty well every day, and had put the amount much higher than I had tonight. So it was already definitely too late to make that “good first impression”.)