Without Promoli I was alone a lot more during the days; alone with my thoughts. The last few months before I had been admitted were a confusing mass of time for me. There were many things from those months that were lost from my memory, and I knew that something dark was buried there, something that caused a wild, guilty grief to rise up in my breast. I tried not to think too much about it—it was too painful—but at night-time this half-memory would appear to me unbidden, but only for a moment, like a bolt of lightning, long enough to illuminate the sleek, dark shape of the thing, but too short for me to grasp at the details.
I also had other worries. I often thought that I might have fabricated Anja, that she had sprung into the world from a fragment of myself, a form of parthenogenesis, and that she was an illusion only I could see. I feared that when I returned home I would find no trace of her. On my walks I began to favour the slope that looked out towards Prague and I would prowl along it for hours, my gaze trained on the smudged mass of the distant city. My eyes searched for landmarks that would allow me to orient myself towards the position of Anja’s house. This was an easier task in the evening, when the lamps were lit and winked out at me, and then I would tell myself that one particularly bright or friendly-looking pinpoint of light was coming from her house, from her room, or the lamp in the street outside her window. I knew that this was a fairy tale I told myself, but it comforted me all the same.
27.
I WAS STILL REQUIRED TO FOLLOW A BATHING REGIMEN, AND ONE day I was interrupted during a bath by an orderly.
‘Hurry up and get dressed,’ he said. ‘You have a visitor.’ He reached down to pull out the plug from the bath while I still sat there. ‘Move,’ he said.
The water began to shriek down the drain. I clambered out of the bath and hurriedly dried and dressed. It was a strange thing for the bathing schedule to be disrupted. This had never happened before. I felt nervous. I had had visitors before of course—my mother, Sophie and Kurt—but they were required to keep to the strict visiting hours of Sunday afternoons, between two and five. This was a Wednesday morning. It could only be bad news, I decided: a death in the family, maybe, or a serious illness. Perhaps my mother. The half-remembered sinister memory that haunted me at night appeared again, and I felt the chill of fear, the source of which I still could not identify. I hurried down the corridor in my bare feet, my gown flapping about my still-damp legs, anxious now and my heart pounding through me.
Visitors were received in an elegant little parlour at the front of the hospital, which was kept locked except during visiting hours. The orderly was waiting for me at the door with his ring of keys ready in his hand.
‘Who is it?’ I asked him, but he just ignored me, as I had known he would. He unlocked the door and pushed me through into the parlour. It felt strange to be there at such an unaccustomed hour, sacrilegious almost. I heard the door close and lock behind me. The room was very beautiful and I still remember it vividly today. It was a calm island, sequestered from all the pain and confusion that the asylum building housed. It had high ceilings and two bow windows that looked out onto a little wild park. The windows faced east, and on this morning I could see none of the view, owing to the strength of the early sun that came blazing into the room, dazzling me.
‘Hello, Max,’ said a vaguely familiar voice. I could make out the dark shape of a man outlined against the window, but I could not place the voice. The shape moved over to sit on one of the small sofas. The details of the room were still taking shape as my eyes adjusted to the light. I came around to sit on the other sofa and saw a bald man in a suit: Theodor. My heart gave a jolt. I had not given Theodor a single thought for months. I felt pleased to see him and my mind flooded with happy memories of my first publication, which seemed so long ago.
‘Theodor,’ I said, extending my hand to him. We shook hands, but at his touch that familiar foreboding feeling came over me again, a guilty stain that seeped into my heart. It occurred to me to wonder why he was here at this irregular time. Then all at once everything came rushing back to me: Alexandr and Gustav, and the cheque, and Franz’s dead-looking eyes staring up at me from that room in Berlin. All the blood dropped out of my face and my arms hung limp at my sides.
Franz. What had I done? I wondered why the police had not come for me before now, and my eyes darted around the room in case they were standing hidden in the corners, unseen, ready to leap out and arrest me. And then there was Theodor, dear Theodor, whom I had deceived and stolen from.
‘Look, Max…’ said Theodor.
I knew what he was going to say. I wanted to apologise to him, but I found that I could not speak.
‘Max, I know you’re not well,’ said Theodor. ‘I’ve spoken to your doctors, to Professor Pick.’
I opened my mouth, but only some stammering noises came out.
Theodor silenced me with an upraised hand. ‘No, don’t try to explain. I wanted to come and tell you what I know.’
‘Theodor,’ I managed to get out. ‘Theodor, I’m sorry. The last months were… I don’t know what happened. I lost myself somehow. I’m sorry for the harm I did you.’ Perhaps the police were waiting outside, I thought.
He was looking at me uncomprehendingly.
‘No,’ said Theodor. ‘It is I who am sorry. I knew something was wrong, but I did nothing to help you.’
‘Help me? Why would you help me? I was deceiving you.’ I spoke in spite of myself. It was surely better for me to remain silent and admit nothing.
‘I knew it was you,’ said Theodor. ‘I knew you were Franz.’ His words made no sense, and for a confused moment I was thrown back to my first week in hospital, when I too had thought I was Franz. It occurred to me that this interview might be a kind of test devised by Pick.
‘No,’ I said firmly, as though Pick were listening, ‘I am Max. Max Brod.’
‘Yes, yes.’ Theodor waved a hand impatiently. ‘I know that. And I know too, or at least I think I understand, why you needed Franz. You had me fooled for a while, but after that party I smelled a rat. That fellow you hired—Gustav? Not a very good double, my friend. And then there was that matter of the cheque, that little test I arranged for you. You failed that test, Max. It was most unlike you to steal money from a fellow writer. So then I had Franz investigated, and everything kept leading back to you.’
‘Investigated?’
‘I hired a detective,’ he said. Detectives. Now I knew that the police were a certainty. I stood up, thinking they must be outside. I saw no point in delaying the inevitable. I rushed to the door leading back to the wards, but it was locked. The police would in any case be more likely be waiting in the entrance hall, I reasoned. I crossed the room and tried that door, but it too was locked.
‘Where are they?’ I asked, rattling at the handle. ‘Do you have the key, or do they?’
‘Who?’
‘The police. I’m ready to go now, if I am to go.’ I banged on the door with the flat of my hand. ‘You can come in now,’ I called through the door.
Theodor gave a little laugh. ‘Police? Of course there are no police. Over a couple of hundred crowns?’ He laughed again. He stood and came over to me, and pulled me away from the door and back to the sofa.
‘No, no. Not because of the money. Of course I’ll pay you that. You can ask my father; he will give it to you immediately. No, because of Franz. In Berlin.’ I did not know how to put that night into words. I tried to get up again, but Theodor took both of my hands in his, and kept me sitting.
‘Max…’ He stared into my eyes. ‘Listen to me. There is no Franz. You are Franz. It was you. You wrote those stories. You just became ill.’