Dalldorf Asylum, Berlin
June 1920
Anna has not seen the Clerk since being admitted to the asylum, but he is waiting for her when she and the Duck enter his office. He has brought two of the larger orderlies with him and they stand quietly, hands folded at their waists, on either side of the file cabinet. They watch cautiously as she enters, then stops abruptly just inside the door.
“What is this about?” Anna asks. “I’ve done nothing wrong. I’ve done nothing at all, actually. They barely let me out of my room.”
“Dr. Reiche sent for the police. It’s time we learn your name,” the Clerk says. He sits behind the desk and runs a hand across the top of Anna’s closed file.
The police don’t know it either, you fool. Anna doesn’t speak the words aloud but wishes she could.
The doctor comes in a few minutes later, followed by the Sergeant who arrested Anna in February. If anything he looks more incensed than he did at their first meeting. “I see she hasn’t changed much,” he says.
Anna decides to address him directly. “I don’t get out much. There’s little chance to get sun on my face, if that’s what you mean.”
“I mean,” he says, placing two boxes— one large and one small— on the Clerk’s desk, “that you still look defiant and ungrateful.”
“You seem to have the misguided notion that the natural response to imprisonment is gratitude.”
“And you continue in your misguided notion that I care how you feel.” He opens the smaller of the two boxes and takes out a rectangular inkpad and notebook. “I am here because the good doctor wants answers once and for all about your identity. I assured him that the moment you become too great a burden, I’d be happy to take you off his hands and place you in custody. You are lucky to have found such sympathetic doctors.” The Sergeant looks her up and down slowly, intentionally, as though suspicious that she has offered carnal incentive to be kept from arrest. “Let’s begin with your fingerprints, shall we?”
Anna doesn’t move, and when the Duck sets a hand on her elbow to usher her forward, she jerks it away. “No.”
The Sergeant doesn’t bother to argue or cajole. He simply waves a hand at the orderlies and says, “Take her arms.”
And then Anna is dragged to the desk, elbows locked and arms extended. The Sergeant is quick and adept. He folds out her clenched fingers one at a time to press them against the ink and then the paper. Anna remains stiff and uncooperative through this ordeal, but she doesn’t struggle until she sees him begin to unload a camera from the large wooden box on the table.
“No photos! I don’t want my photo taken. You can’t. I do not give my consent.”
“I can. I will. And your consent is not required. Once this photo has been developed, it will be sent to police stations and newspapers in Stuttgart, Brunswick, Hamburg, Munich, and Dresden. I’m going to make sure your face is published in every newspaper in every corner of the Weimar Republic. We’ll see if we don’t learn your name then, won’t we?”
Anna can feel all the little threads that tether her together begin to grow taut and fray at the ends. She can feel the rebellion boil and begin to spill over into rage. What right does he have to violate her privacy like this? She has hurt no one. She has done nothing but keep her own council and guard her secrets closely. Her only crime was trying to end her life in a broken, desperate moment. Had she succeeded, no one would have even cared. They would have buried her in a cemetery for indigents outside the city without a tombstone or marker. Yet as punishment for surviving, her secrets will spill out, one after another, like buttons from a jar.
When the orderlies lift her from the desk and press her back against the wall, Anna wishes for an episode to come crashing in. She would love to lose control and thrash herself into oblivion. There’s no way he could get a photo then. But her mind is oddly, infuriatingly clear. She is angry but not afraid. There is no darkness, only searing, righteous indignation, so the best she can do is scrunch up her face and twist her head to the side, to obscure her face with her hair. But the officer is more cunning than she gives him credit for. The flashbulb goes off with a blinding snap and Anna knows that whatever picture he’s taken will do him no good with her face lowered and partly in shadow. But when she lifts her face to him triumphantly, he snaps another photo, this one clear, her expression almost joyful.
“That will do,” the officer says. “I have what I need.”
Dalldorf Asylum, Berlin
March 30, 1920
Later Dr. Arschloch describes what happened to her in the exam room as an episode. Whatever he may call it, Anna thinks of it only as darkness and nightmare and memory. She thinks of it as tangible despair. It feels like cotton in her lungs and snakes on her skin. When she wakes again fully, she is alone, strapped to a bed by her wrists and ankles, in a large, dim room. There are windows high on the wall but they are only eight inches tall and barred on the outside. It takes her a moment to remember who she is and even longer to remember where she is, but she comforts herself with the fact that until today, she hasn’t had one of these episodes in three months. This is progress. They came daily at first. And she’s never known what to call them until now.
Anna can lift her head only a few inches, but she sees that the room is filled with empty beds, each of them covered with worn quilts in different colors and patterns. She counts seven from where she lies but guesses there are more out of sight. When she turns her head to look, she sees that she isn’t alone after all. A young woman stands to her left, staring at her.
Anna flinches. “Who are you?”
The girl blinks at her, curious.
“Why are you here?”
“I’m so sorry,” she stutters in a soft, lilting voice. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
The girl is older than Anna but not by much, and appears to be unbearably nervous. She sits on the bed, then stands again. Smooths her skirt. Wrings her hands.
Anna says nothing, She simply watches, but the silence seems to rattle this strange young woman even more. She begins to chatter like a squirrel.
“I am Clara. I live here.” She sits down on the bed beside Anna’s. Pats the mattress. “Right here. I live right here.” She is pretty in the way that dolls are pretty, with pale skin, a small red mouth, and eyes so large they’re almost disturbing. “Welcome. I mean…Scheiße…I’m sorry you’re here. No one wants to be here. But they put you in the best place. It’s quiet in this ward. For the most part. The others are awful. Those poor women are crazy. The ones here just have a nervous disposition. Like me. I’m nervous. Do I make you nervous? I’m really sorry if I do. Dr. Reiche says I make people nervous. You’re lucky to be in this ward.”
Anna tries to sit up but can’t. Her heart begins to tick a little faster. “Will you unbind these restraints? I’d like to sit up.”
“Oh!” Clara presses a hand to her mouth. “They don’t know you’re awake! I’ll go tell them.”
“No! No.” She clears her throat. It’s an effort not to shriek. She can’t move. She feels trapped. “Don’t bring them back. Just unbuckle my wrists.” Clara is, in fact, making her nervous. Anna doesn’t want anyone else to come and prod her again with questions or needles. She wants to be left alone, to plan her escape. Anna takes a shaky breath and lifts her hands, palms up, as far as she can from where they lie at her side. “Help me. Please?”
Guileless. Absolutely guileless. Clara probably wouldn’t survive five minutes outside this institution. She smiles at Anna as though they have been friends for years.
“Of course.” Her fingers hover just above the restraint binding Anna’s wrist. Clara’s large, gray eyes are bright with interest. “You look very familiar,” she says.
Dalldorf Asylum, Berlin
March 29, 1920
Anna refuses to give her name when asked by the admittance clerk at Dalldorf Asylum. He sits behind a metal desk that is bolted to the floor, as is his chair and the file cabinet behind him. The Clerk is not amused with Anna, despite the fact that he has been warned—Dr. Winicke told him not two minutes ago that she consistently balks at this—but he still takes it as a personal offense.
“I cannot admit you without a name.” He taps the folder in front of him with his pen, but Anna only crosses her arms and presses her lips together. There is a single painting on the wall behind him—a murky green abstract that matches his eyes—and she looks at it instead of at him. The painting is supposed to be a landscape but it’s mottled and juvenile. She wonders if he painted it himself. He seems like the sort of man who would celebrate feeble attempts. The Clerk turns to Dr. Winicke, who is seated beside her. “I can’t admit her without a name.”
“You’ll just have to figure something out then, won’t you?”
“It’s against policy.”
“Hospitals do it all the time. She’s been in my care for weeks and I still don’t know her name.”
“What did you call her, then?”
“A pain in the Arsch.”
“Funny.”
“If you’re looking for sympathy you won’t find it here. I’ve done what I can. Now it’s your turn.” Dr. Winicke lifts his fedora from where it rests on his knee and places it back on his head. He is ready to be gone from this stark institution.
Anna watches Dr. Winicke prepare to leave and feels a twinge of sadness. His kindness has been purely professional in all things except one: rather than handing her over to the Berlin police he has sent her here in the hopes that she will get better. He wants her to have a chance. Even though he doesn’t understand what drove her to jump from that bridge, he doesn’t want her to attempt it again. That is what he said on the drive to Dalldorf this morning, his hands gripping the steering wheel and his eyes locked on the winding road ahead. Anna did not answer; she simply stared out the window and tried to loosen the restraints at her wrists without success.
The Clerk looks at the file again and sighs. “What kind of diagnosis is ‘melancholia’?”
Dr. Winicke offers an exasperated sigh. “It is a mental illness of a depressive character. Like I’ve written in the chart. As you can plainly see.”
“But what of her sanity? This is an asylum for the mentally insane.”
Dr. Winicke appraises Anna with his keen, dark eyes—she has seen him change his mind about whether or not she is mad at least a dozen times in the last few weeks—but if he has come to a conclusion he does not share it with the Clerk. “As you will note, in the chart, I have offered no opinion about her sanity. That is for your doctors to determine.” He rises from his chair and lays his coat across his arm. “But do let me know if you ever learn her name. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious.”
“If she won’t declare her name then I will give her one.” The Clerk scratches two words on the front of Anna’s file: Fräulein Unbekannt.
Miss Unknown.
“I don’t need another examination.” Anna stops abruptly in front of a door labeled infirmary. After Dr. Winicke left, Anna thought she was being taken to her room. But as the Clerk lifts a key ring from the loop at his waist and unlocks the door, Anna realizes she was mistaken. He holds it open and motions for her to walk through. “All new patients are required to undergo a physical examination. It’s policy, Fräulein Unbekannt.”
“Do I have a choice in this?”
“Of course you do. If you choose not to cooperate I will call the orderlies and you will be placed in restraints. The examination will happen regardless.”
Anna has a sneaking suspicion that the Clerk would like nothing more than to call the orderlies. And to observe her exam. For administrative purposes no doubt. He seems like the sort of man who likes to watch.
She is then turned over to another physician and his attending nurse to be subjected to another invasive exam. She can feel the muscles in her arms and legs begin to coil in defiance. The nurse is short and squat and stands beside the exam table, her hands folded behind her back. She looks strong and capable, but Anna can’t tell from the expression on her face whether or not she is compassionate as well. Her nametag reads “Thea Malinovsky” and her demeanor reads indifferent.
“Please,” Anna begs, turning to the nurse, “look at my chart. Tell him I don’t need another exam.” The nurses at Elisabeth Hospital were efficient and kind and there is a chance this woman might sympathize with her as well. Anna offers her most hopeful, pleading expression. “Dr. Winicke took thorough records. Nothing new has happened to me in the last two hours. Look at his notes. Tell this doctor what you think.”
“I think you should do exactly what Dr. Reiche tells you,” she says.
Duckmäuser, Anna thinks. Coward.
“It would be best if you cooperated with this exam, Fräulein”— the doctor looks at the chart—“Unbekannt? Don’t you have a name?”
Anna is so tired of that stupid question.
Dr. Reiche lifts the stethoscope from where it hangs around his neck. “I assure you the exam will go quickly and will be painless if you cooperate.”
“I don’t need an exam,” she says.
His lip curls in irritation. “Very well. If that’s how you want to proceed.”
She decides then and there that the man is an utter Arschloch. Asshole.
He has not threatened her with the orderlies, but she knows they linger nearby. They always do in places like this. Anna doesn’t fight him, not at first, but she does record the details of this new indignity with clinical precision, listing them in her mind as though writing in a chart of her own. She labels it: Dr. Arschloch and Nurse Duckmäuser. The Duck, for short. There, she has nicknames for them now. Easy enough to remember.
Dr. Arschloch’s hands are freezing. His voice is too high for a man of such advanced age. It rises at the end of each sentence as though he’s asking a question. He is immediately curious about the scar at her temple.
“How did you get this?” He looks to her file for details.
Anna says nothing.
He rattles off her physical details like she is a specimen in some lab that must be catalogued. He hands her file to the Duck to record his findings. “Weight one hundred and ten pounds. Height, exactly five foot one…” he looks at his tape measure, “…and one half inches.
“The patient is reticent and refuses to give a name or any details about her age, occupation, and family history. The patient is impossibly stubborn.” He pauses to make sure the Duck has gotten all of this information. When she concurs he looks to Anna and asks, “Do you hear voices or have hallucinations?”
Anna shakes her head. “Of course not.”
“You know, I wasn’t sure that you could speak when Dr. Winicke called yesterday to warn us about you. Did you know he called?” he asks.
“How would I possibly know that?”
“He told me, off the record, that he does not think you are insane. He believes you are unspeakably frightened, though he does not know of what. Are you frightened, Fräulein Unbekannt?”
“Not of you.”
“Who then?”
Anna says nothing.
“Dr. Winicke also said that when you feel threatened you use the silent treatment. Do you feel threatened now, Fräulein Unbekannt?”
“I feel angry.”
“At what?”
“At being asked stupid questions.”
Dr. Arschloch looks to her file again. “It says here that you are not a virgin. How did you lose your virginity?”
Anna hates that she cannot hide the feral note to her voice or the rage that rolls across her face like a wave. “That is none of your business.”
“It is, actually.”
Anna says nothing.
“Dr. Winicke believes you are a prostitute and that the shame you carry over this drove you off that bridge. But I don’t agree with him. I see a lot of prostitutes in this facility. They’re often here because they’ve been beaten or abused to the point of insanity. You, however, are too clean and well spoken and demure for that profession. You have all your teeth—nice, pretty, straight ones at that. Your skin is unwrinkled, and that leads me to believe that you neither smoke nor drink in excess. Your German is perfect but you have a Russian accent. There’s crispness to your speech that I can’t quite identify. Your diction is strong. No, I believe you are something else.”
“And what is that?”
If the corner of his mouth wasn’t twitching in a victorious grin he would seem disinterested as he answers, “Jilted.”
“You know nothing about me.”
“I’m an educated man. I make educated guesses.” He pushes his glasses a little farther up his nose. “If I had to guess, I’d say that you are— or at least you were— engaged to be married. Perhaps your fiancé called off the wedding? Perhaps he found another woman? One who is not prone to manic episodes? How close is that to the truth, Fräulein Unbekannt? Should we call your fiancé? Or should we simply continue your physical examination and you can tell us where these appalling scars came from?”
The shaking starts in Anna’s hands. She isn’t sure whether its source is rage or terror, but it spreads across her body regardless, and in a matter of seconds she has to clench her jaw to stop her teeth from rattling.
Dr. Arschloch lifts a thin cotton hospital gown from the shelf at her side and holds it out to her. “You can change into this,” he says. “You can remove your clothing or I can have the orderlies remove it for you.”
Anna feels the panic clawing up her throat and she grips the edge of the exam table. Her fingertips begin to throb. “You already know what you will find. It’s all written there in Dr. Winicke’s file.”
“I must confirm it for myself.”
“You want to confirm it!”
He laughs at this. “You foolish young women always think that I enjoy looking at the ways you’ve damaged yourselves. Let me assure you, Fräulein Unbekannt, I am not attracted to suicidal madwomen who mutilate their own bodies.”
“I will tell you nothing. I will show you nothing. You can go to hell!” Anna spits the words at him and scrambles backward on the table. The edges of her vision begin to darken, and Anna can feel that old, hated memory pressing in on her, demanding her attention, demanding to be replayed for the thousandth time.
“Have it your way,” he says. And then he turns to the nurse. “Call the orderlies.”