Mark found himself standing in a vast, bright room. His dislocated mind reeled at the sudden overpowering change. The room was full of people dancing and talking. It stretched away on all sides of him under a heavy beamed ceiling into dark shadows. In the centre an open fireplace, as big as a small room, threw out gusts of naked warmth. Columns of clear flame devoured whole roots of trees and cast a flickering light over the heads of innumerable deer, the tapering black spikes of chamois horns and the spread antlers of ancient stags hung against all the walls. Everywhere about the room there were counterparts of animals and birds, picturesquely arranged in glass cases – foxes and owls, squirrels and weasels – as if the life of the woods had pressed itself through the grey stones of the Schloss, to cling about its very heart. The walls were wood-panelled above a shining parquet floor.
The younger people were dancing to a gramophone, while older ones were playing bridge. Solitary people sat in corners reading. No one took much notice of their arrival. One or two near the door looked up and smiled at Ida, but most of them seemed unaware of anything but themselves. Had they all crashed together into a knight’s banqueting hall out of one century into another, Mark asked himself 97helplessly. Or were they all part of some ancient nightmare and would they and their unsubstantial persons and habits all vanish when the drunken knight came to his senses again to plan the next day’s hunt?
‘We won’t disturb them,’ Ida said in a low voice. ‘This is the best hour in their day – after supper before they go to bed when they are – or pretend to be – a little happy. This is the way, Dr. Lauterbach.’ The sustained cheerful public look died out. They were in a dimly lit, long passage stretching away into darkness.
Mark felt himself stumbling back into reality again. They passed a dining-room nearly as large as the banqueting hall; then a kitchen, swept clean and garnished, then endless shut doors of offices; lastly they came to a sound-proof doorway and when they had passed through it, the atmosphere changed again. They were in a place that belonged to an individual, perhaps to Ida herself. Mark was too exhausted to ask himself if the room they entered was beautiful or not. He only saw that it was a library lined with books. He sank into a seat close to another great open fireplace, and let its warmth sink into him.
For a long time he heard the sound of Ida’s voice and Lauterbach’s; perhaps he slept for their actual words escaped him. Someone brought in a tray of sandwiches and hot Glühwein. Ida came over to the fireplace and begged Mark to eat and drink. ‘It will soon be over,’ she told him. ‘Dr. Lauterbach is going to make a physical examination – he must do that to-night before you sleep, because he has to go back early to-morrow to Innsbruck.’
Mark stared at her – a physical examination? What was that for? Then he remembered – he was mad – he was in a hospital. They told madmen what was going to happen to them. They couldn’t choose. 98
Ida raised her eyebrows a little as if she could have wished the situation a little different, but knew that nevertheless it must be put up with. For a time she said nothing more, but she stood there as if to give Mark time to eat and drink and become accustomed to the room and the strange necessities of the hour, before she left him.
It was unfortunate but from the first moment Mark had disliked Dr. Lauterbach – the grey middle-aged man, broad-shouldered, bull-necked with eyes that were like jellied grapes, bulging a little out of their sockets, made a wholly disagreeable impression on him. Dr. Lauterbach was not an ugly man, but ugliness seemed to have crept through his face, and taken advantage of his features. He stood with his back to the fireplace under a portrait that commanded the whole room. When Mark’s eyes turned from Lauterbach and raised themselves to the life-sized figure above the mantelpiece, he found himself looking into the fierce eyes of the handsomest man he had ever seen. It was a most speaking and emphatic portrait. The man was very tall, thin and elegant; he was dressed in a moss-green hunting costume with a fur collar which set off the almost incredible beauty of his features. His eyes were dark, luminous and fierce; they seemed to command the room and everything in it. Even his painted semblance was full of life. It was the same life as that of the wild things in the forest creeping through the long preserved, stuffed animals, into the heart of the Schloss. The man in the portrait made Lauterbach look like a lump of shapeless clay.
Lauterbach, licking his thin, small lips, and staring down a little superciliously at his patient, was unaware of the contrast. ‘I suppose it is all right,’ he said a little uneasily to Ida, ‘to see him like this – here, alone?’
Ida shrugged her shoulders. ‘Herr Pirschl,’ she said 99addressing Mark, as much as she addressed the doctor, ‘is, I am sure, very tired already – it would certainly be better to leave his physical examination till to-morrow, but since that is impossible for you, and since you think it must be done by you, before the necessary papers are signed, we have no alternative. I will therefore leave you to get on with the job.’
‘But – alone?’ Lauterbach protested.
‘I always see my patients alone,’ Ida told him, with an undercurrent of contempt in her voice, ‘but of course if you wish for an attendant – –?’
Lauterbach shook his head. ‘Naturally,’ he said, ‘naturally you take the usual precautions?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Ida with a crooked twist to her mouth that might have passed for a smile. ‘Naturally, we do everything here that is usual – as well perhaps here and there – as modern science should – something a little unusual!’ She turned her wintry eyes full on Mark. ‘You will have to undress,’ she told him ‘and do what Dr. Lauterbach tells you; then you can go to bed, and get the rest you need.’ She turned and left the room.
‘Now that the lady has gone,’ Lauterbach said half to Mark and half to himself, ‘we can get to business. Stand up, my man.’ Mark rose slowly to his feet. He wondered if he were as tall as the man in the portrait. Mark was six feet tall, the man in the portrait, though his proportions were so perfect that he did not look excessively tall, might have topped him by an inch or two. Both of them looked down, quite a long way down, on Dr. Lauterbach.
The doctor approached Mark rubbing his plump short hands. Perhaps he thought it did not matter poking a lunatic, he may even have wanted to reassure Mark as to his genial intentions, but Mark happened to be a man with a curious dislike to being poked. Physical contacts were his 100aversion – even the involuntary one of being pressed against in a crowd was a dangerous trial to his temper. This hard and violent punch from a stranger filled him with resentment. He pushed Dr. Lauterbach’s hand briskly away from his chest. ‘When I have got my clothes off you can start examining me,’ he told him. ‘Till then kindly keep your hands away from me.’
Dr. Lauterbach’s green, grape-like eyes became more prominent than ever. ‘Why, you idiot, how dare you speak to me like that!’ he said sharply. ‘You are under orders. What infernal impertinence! I shall do what I choose with my hands.’
‘Not to me, you won’t,’ Mark replied grimly, ‘at least not often!’
Dr. Lauterbach leaned forward and gave his patient’s cheek a ringing slap on the jaw. ‘You can’t behave like that under my charge!’ he shouted. Promptly he found himself sitting on the floor with a nerve-shattering pain at the base of his spine.
Mark suddenly felt a great deal better. The mist of his fatigue lifted.
Lauterbach scrambled to his feet and flung himself, sure of his own sobriety and with a trained ability, to make violence tell, upon his patient. What he had not counted on, was that the apparently inert, exhausted patient was a trained athlete. He did not even get to grips with Mark, for Mark held him off with methodical skill. He was instinctively aware that the man attacking him both feared and despised him; and this gave Mark an advantage, for he neither feared nor despised his adversary. Mark was merely very angry; and he became angrier. For he found that Lauterbach fought with no rules whatever – using the whole of his strength and all the intelligence he had to knock his opponent out in 101as quick and complete a way as possible. Lauterbach kicked, scratched, and would have bitten any part of Mark he could have fixed his teeth in. In fact, as Mark with a flicker of amusement felt, Lauterbach fought less like a sane man than a lunatic. Mark evaded the flail-like blows, he countered Lauterbach’s vicious kicks and as each bull-rush of his adversary spent its force, Mark got in a smart tap of his own. Slowly but surely Mark pushed Lauterbach away from the fireplace towards the wall of books which lined the room. Lauterbach fought more wildly. He overturned a table, he hurled a standard lamp across his adversary’s path and nearly fell over it himself. He found his breath going. The door opened without either of them being aware of it. Ida came in and shut it quietly behind her. She should of course have called for help or herself intervened; but for a moment she did neither. She simply walked behind the two swaying interlocked figures, for they had, at Mark’s instance, at last come to grips, to the fireplace; lit a cigarette, and poured herself out a glass of Glühwein, which she sipped slowly, while she looked on at the fight.
Mark became suddenly aware of her. He had fought at first from sheer temper; now he added a touch of vanity to his anger. Before, he could have stopped the fight at any time, but now he fought to a finish. Let her see – if she thought him a weakling, if she really thought he had meant to cry out for Lisa in the café – what kind of a man he really was! Mark gave her a very pretty exhibition of first-class wrestling, and laid Dr. Lauterbach out stiff on the floor, but almost before he heard the thud of the doctor’s head against the bookcase, he felt his hands caught by the wrist and pulled viciously backwards. A short shrill whistle sounded in his ear. He had no time to free himself, before two white-clad attendants flung themselves upon him. Mark’s 102theories, his skill, his self-control all automatically vanished. He became a mere fighting, threshing, wildly exhilarated madman. For a while what he felt was ecstasy; a red light wavered before his eyes – all the anger he had ever felt was released in him. In spite of blows, twists and cracks, he was using every muscle he had, and giving wherever he could place a blow, as good as he got. He had full use of one of his arms, although the other still remained at the mercy of an iron grip; and then suddenly a blow from behind – a neatly planned and expert blow on the side of his head – turned everything black before him. The last thing he heard was a low, musical and quite delighted laugh.
When he came to himself Mark was in a brilliantly lit white room, without furniture. The floor was firm and resilient rather than soft, so were the walls. He was in a padded cell; but he was not alone in it. Sitting on the floor, her legs crossed under her, her back against the wall, was Ida. She was still smoking, and looking at him with an amused, if not kindly, smile. He saw with intense distaste that her long slim fingers were indelibly stained with nicotine. ‘Well,’ she said, gently blowing a difficult series of smoke rings into the air between them, ‘you have established your reputation. Would you like a cigarette?’ Mark stretched out his hand to take one, and was amazed to see that it trembled. ‘What else can you expect?’ she demanded. ‘I had to send for two more men – to get you in here. Lauterbach will not be able to keep his appointment in Innsbruck to-morrow. Why did you make an enemy of him? He is an outside doctor – a well-known Austrian Nazi – a criminal, of course, as most of our Austrian Nazis are. We have very few respectable ones like the Germans – though I must warn you my father is one of the few respectable ones. A deluded monarchist with his mind still in the ark with Noah. But 103this Lauterbach – it was a little bit foolish of you! We want no outside complications. Still you have convinced him, it seems, that you are a dangerous maniac. Perhaps that is as well. I have seen more convincing Manic Depressives but not a better all-round homicidal incident. I believe that you went on fighting even after you were unconscious. It relieves me at least of one anxiety – none of the attendants will ever attempt to bully you!’
‘I didn’t like Lauterbach’s face,’ Mark conceded rather shamefacedly, ‘and after you’d gone he poked me. I’ve always disliked being poked.’
Ida laughed again. ‘You see how easy it is to go mad now!’ she told him. ‘Or did you plan the whole thing simply in order to impress me?’
Mark blushed as he had not done since he was an oversensitive little boy at prep. school. ‘I can’t say that it was a plan,’ he said truthfully. ‘I acted impulsively to start with, and then you came in – and set those thugs on me – and, well – I felt the whole thing was unfair.’
Ida laughed again. ‘When an Englishman feels a thing is unfair,’ she said, ‘and only then – he gets angry – and then I suppose – he begins to fight? You must admit that your country watched the Nazis rise to power through a good many unfair incidents before you acted. But I forgive you your part in it since you are here to help us now! What we must remember, Herr Pirschl, however, is that you are on a mission. You must do nothing whatever to spoil or hinder that mission nor must I. There must be no more impulses. It is quite in order that I am here now, since it is my custom never to keep a patient in a padded cell for more than an hour or two, and always to visit him before releasing him, when I try to instil in him a little of the common sense I am supposed to possess! 104
‘Herr Lauterbach is deep in an assisted sleep. Had I not – as you so gracefully express it, “set those thugs on you”, have you thought what would have happened? You would have beaten Dr. Lauterbach in a fair fight, and I should have been held an accessory during the act. Lunatics do not fight fair, they fight as you fought when those men set on you – and I held your wrist. If you had not fought like this, Dr. Lauterbach would lose face. But no one loses face who has been momentarily overpowered before help came, by a man in a frenzy. You must put it out of your mind that you are any longer a model Englishman out to impress every woman with your strength and the virtues with which you subdue your inferior brother man! You are a sodden, trampish, savage, unscrupulous, homicidal maniac whom I shall very slowly lick into a sort of semi-shape.’
‘Oh, it was you who dragged back one of my wrists, was it?’ asked Mark incredulously. ‘I must say you have a pretty hefty grip!’
‘Thank you, I have,’ Ida agreed. ‘On more than one occasion I have owed my life to my muscles. I keep them in pretty good order. But at present we need brains rather than muscles. I want you to remember that although I am a highly privileged person, and this is a highly privileged mental hospital, still it is run under Nazi authority.
‘If I were to shield you from too much discipline I should be suspected, and if you give too much trouble you will be liquidated.
‘Now, for what is left of the night – and there is very little left of it – I must have you placed in what is termed the fractious ward. This is a disagreeable place inhabited by disagreeable people but I can do no better for you at the moment. I shall give you a sleeping draught so that you 105will soon be unaware of your surroundings. No one will be likely to hurt you if you leave them alone.
‘It is a pity. I should have wished your first night to give you a good impression of our home, but perhaps it is better to see the worst first and to gain your good impressions later.’
A feeling of unutterable horror swept over Mark. ‘But – but,’ he stammered, ‘can’t I even sleep alone?’
Ida’s eyebrows raised themselves ominously. ‘It is what we all do,’ she told him. ‘We sleep alone – and die alone – not only in this hospital. The walls of our mind are the only privacy any of us really gets. You must learn to make yourself at home there. Believe me, that is sanity. No man is truly sane who is not content to be himself and does not make himself free in his own consciousness. In Europe there is nowhere else where he can be free!’
Mark was silent. At times he felt the waves of his antagonism recede. She and she alone was aware, and gave him the sense, of his own sanity. He did not wholly understand what she had just said, but he knew that he would remember it.
‘I suppose you have brought useful information with you,’ Ida said after a pause, ‘for our underground workers? Yes – well, this information must not be handed on to me. No one does anyone else’s work in our group except in a dire emergency – nor must we know anything about anyone else’s activities. I protect and shelter you. Pirschl collects news for you – but the person who must know and carry on all that your country can send us through you is Father Martin. He visits sick patients here regularly. His next visit is due the end of the week. He will be able to talk to you freely in the confessional. This room is also soundproof, so I have been able to talk to you here openly. It will be better from now on that I choose the opportunities 106I think safe. When we talk at other times it should only be as patient and doctor.
‘To-morrow you will see my father, who is the titular head of our institution. But you will remember he is a convinced Nazi. This cannot be helped – it is the mould of his mind. We are a deeply attached father and daughter. But we think in different worlds. In his world I cannot breathe; in mine – he would not. But I do not trouble him with my ideas. I do not say that he thinks me a firmly convinced Nazi – that would not be possible – but he knows nothing of my activities – nor, indeed, of my theories. “She is young, poor little thing,” he says to himself – though I am no longer young. “And he is old,” I say to myself. Although at times, I must admit, I feel myself considerably older than he is!’ Ida sighed. She rose, looking a little uncertainly at Mark. It was as if there were still more she would have liked to say to him – perhaps to warn him about, but felt that he was not ripe for it – or that the moment was not opportune. Perhaps she thought the man before her was too dazed and weary to take in anything more.
She had found time to change her clothes, and wore a neat short black skirt and Russian blouse. Mark was not too dazed to notice one new thing about her: although she had no beauty in her harsh pale face, her body might have been made by a fourth-century Greek sculptor. Her feet and ankles, the shapely slim legs and well-set head, were exquisitely modelled. Her woman’s clothes made her look younger, only her eyes – cold and indifferent – were old. They were older, Mark thought, than any eyes he had ever seen. They never changed even when she laughed.
Ida had a key fastened to her wrist. Giving Mark a little nod, she turned the key in the soft padded wall and pushed open an invisible door. A few minutes later the door swung 107backwards and the attendants beckoned Mark to come out and go with them. They did not touch him, but they walked on each side of him, down a long passage, and into a room that they carefully locked behind them.
The room was lit by faint blue lights, high up on the walls. Mark was conscious of a curious, rather an unpleasant smell. There were ten other beds, besides the one the men told him was his. ‘Undress,’ one of them said to Mark briefly.
One of the figures talked interminably to himself in a low monotone, the others lay rolled up like caterpillars fast asleep, but even in their sleep they were restless and every now and then one shouted out loud.
When Mark stretched himself on a narrow soldier’s cot and counted the ten men between him and the door, he thought he would never be able to sleep, but almost as soon as his head touched the pillow sleep caught him, and flung him deep into the short mercy of oblivion.