Authors: Keith Korman
Nurse Bosch's face flushed,- her chest swelled as though to protest. She struggled against herself for a moment. Then blurted:
“May I speak plainly, sir?”
Here it cameâ¦.
“Yes, of course, Nurse.”
Emboldened, she thrust her soft chin out and plowed on: “You're wrong, sir. It won't do the little fellow any good. They might as well cut it off like a harem guard's and be done with it!”
“I see,” Herr Doktor said quietly “But what if it does do him some good?”
“I don't see how it can do anything but make him worse. It'll come off sooner or later, mark my words. And what if the jelly got out of his hands? What if one of the Sisters swallowed some and got sick? What would you say then?”
He looked dumbfounded. The
Sisters?
Two nights of sleeping curled up like a hunchback with his neck broken, two nights of waking up cotton-mouthed in a rumpled shirt, two nights of eating cold food at four in the morning. And now this â- the pinhead sisters spooning petroleum jelly into their gummy mouths. Did this stupid woman really think little Herr Thumb would ever let the precious stuff out of his sight? He heard himself barking:
“Oh, just give the dwarf his goddamned grease, will you, Nurse? If one of the idiot sisters swallows some, she'll have the first normal bowel movement of her life!”
For a long moment Nurse Bosch said nothing. Her happy pig face had fallen to frowns. She folded the prescription slip, tucking it into the pocket over her breast.
“Very well, Herr Doktor.”
She left him sitting in the hallway. They did not speak again for over a week.
He gave himself a limit of three days. But when no one on the staff seemed to care whether the patient starved to death or not, he let it go another day. And then another. Room 401 had a small sink in one corner, and once late at night he heard the tap going â- so she was drinking at least.
The fifth day came. Again, he had fallen asleep around midnight and awoke at four. But he had Sunday off. Ah, to be home with Emma. A bath. A bed. A clean shirt â¦
The plate was gone.
Gone!
He wanted to shout, Look! Look, everyone! She's feeding herself. Feeding herself! He dashed off, trying to find someone, a witness, anyone. He found Orderly Zeik sound asleep outside the Incurable Men's ward. Wonderful Zeik, snoozing away on a high backless three-legged stool, supported on no sides whatsoever. Amazing!
But he didn't pause long to admire Zeik's knack for comfort; he nearly tugged the orderly off the stool. The poor man first thought he was being punished for sleeping on duty. He fell plaintively to his knees and began to grovel for his job, mumbling, “Please, Herr Doktor, don't get rid of Zeik. Zeik won't fall asleep again. I promise to be good. Promise to stay awake ⦔ And so on.
But after some sharp words, Zeik tucked in his shirt and groggily followed Herr Doktor back to the fourth floor. He had heard about the junior physician's new “therapy”,- he wasn't stupid like everyone thought. The two of them stood in the stairwell a moment. Herr Doktor smoothed back the bristles of his crew cut, polished his glasses, and put them on again. At last he led the orderly into the hall.
The plate was in its usual place by the door.
“Oh, yes, I see,” Zeik said, not seeing at all.
Herr Doktor almost rushed down the hall to throw the plate back into room 401. The orderly looked dumbly at him, pouting a little for being yanked off his stool. Herr Doktor didn't trust himself to speak without screaming. But he did manage to utter quietly, “Wait here a minute, please.”
With every bone in his body screeching at him to bolt down the hall, he took his deliberate time and calmly walked to the plate before her door. Was it all a hallucination? Him, wanting to see the plate gone? Simply
overlooking
it when he woke? In his heart burned a little flame of hope. Maybe he wasn't wrong. Maybe â¦
He stooped and picked the cover off the plate. Then stifled a sob. But he knew he must show absolutely nothing â to anyone â or everything might collapse. There on the plate lay the scattered remains of a meal. It had been thoroughly wolfed down, with only little shreds of this or that left behind. He couldn't even tell what the meal had been. He swallowed several times before he spokeâ¦.
“Zeik?”
“Yes, Herr Doktor.”
“You are my witness. On the thirteenth of October, 1905, Fräulein Schanderein consumed her first meal in five and half days, between the hours of one and four in the morning.”
“Yes, Herr Doktor.”
From the tone of Zeik's voice, he knew the orderly was missing the significance of this. He may not have been aware that the victim had been refusing food. Or had taken the incredibly bold step of drawing the plate inside her room, eating it, and then putting it out for collection.
Zeik started for the stairwell in a hurry, obviously thinking him a little cracked. “Oh, and Zeik
â”
The orderly ground to a halt.
“Sorry for waking you.”
Zeik brightened, magnanimously. “Think nothing of it, Herr Doktor. Feel free, anytime.”
For the first time in five days, Herr Doktor curled up in the puritan chair and really slept. Still sound asleep when the day shift arrived, but no one dared to wake him. Orderlies and nurses tiptoed around his spot. At last Nurse Bosch decided to do something about it. But since she was not on speaking terms with Herr Junior Physician, she found Zeik to do the job, sending him up to the fourth floor with the words: “Maybe we should get a double bed for the both of you.”
Zeik chewed this over as he thumped upstairs. Could there be a conspiracy somewhere, its sole object the undoing of Orderly Zeik? Doctors and nurses in it together ⦠?
After much tugging and calling of his name, Herr Doktor finally came awake, smiling into Zeik's face as if it were the loveliest face in the world. Then he shot a worried glance down the hall. Ja, the plate sat just where he left itâ¦. Herr Doktor rose from the chair, dragging the orderly by the wrist: just to be sure, just to be safe. They uncovered the lid from the plate. The meal had been eaten. Devoured. He peered closely into the orderly's soft apple eyes, asking:
“Well, I didn't eat it. Did you, Orderly Zeik?”
“Certainly not, Herr Doktor!” said the orderly in protest. “As I distinctly recall, you found me asleep!”
Zeik caught his breath, shocked at his own frankness.
Herr Doktor ignored the lapse. “Well, that settles it then. The girl ate it.” He drew himself up proudly in front of her door and exclaimed, “Fräulein! I hope you enjoyed your dinner last night. I must admit I was getting worried. I shall return this evening as usual, but if you wish me to collect your chamber pot right now, I would be happy to do so.”
He waited ten minutes. As no chamber pot emerged, he took the empty plate back to the kitchen. On the way past the orderlies' table, one of them turned to another and whispered something inaudible. The table rattled with laughter. The sound following him across the cafeteria all the way to the used-plate slotâ¦. He had an image of himself hurling the empty plate back at them. But then he looked at the bare china in his hands. Carefully, he placed the girl's ravaged plate as the precious thing it was, upon a heap of soiled dishes.
For many days the ritual of fetching the victim's meals remained the same. Herr Doktor Jung set up permanent residency at the end of the fourth-floor hallway. How he managed his married life no one knew, but clearly he did manage it, for he always appeared in fresh clothes when he did rounds with Direktor Bleuler and company later in the morning.
“Nekken tells me young Fräulein has begun eating again. à good sign, no? When do you think you'll be able to examine her?” This as Direktor Bleuler tugged wearily at his beard, gazing at him from under heavy eyelids, a weary gaze that said, Come, come, don't waste our time with a lot of poppycock now.
"If God knows, he hasn't told me, Herr Direktor. And if he knows, he hasn't told her either. I wish he'd tell one of us.”
Direktor Bleuler ran a thumb and forefinger into the crease of his beard. A dour smile. “Well, don't look at me, young fellow âthe Almighty hasn't been to my office all week.”
But suddenly the ritual did change. He noticed it immediately and was at a loss to account for it. Where once no plates went into the room while the girl refused to eat â now plate after plate vanished into 401 and none came out.
A casebook entry from that week: Fifth day since the change. Fräulein S has collected at least a dozen plates already. And while I can clearly see her chamber pot from the viewing slit, it appears virtually empty. I checked the garden below her window on the off chance she dropped her stools into the bushes. No luck. My guess is that a person eating sparingly would have perhaps one elimination every three or four days. Maybe once in five. But if she kept them in her room, we'd be smelling them in the hallway by now. The patient must be forcing her feces down the drain in the sink. I suppose this is possible to do a little at a time using your fingers. I have not had the heart to try it myself â [Entry broken off.]
Entry a day later:
à tried
it
With my own, naturally, and at home. Emma was not as put out about it as she might have been, though a considerable amount of explanation proved necessary. The explanations proved beneficial, however, for they completely took my mind off the revolting nature of the task and I found the whole business of messing about with the stuff had a calming effect, like modeling clay. One stops noticing the smell, especially as the water rinses it off your fingers. Cold water is essential, as warm water only cooks it.
The ritual remained the same for about another week and then changed again. During this period Herr Doktor had actually indulged in the luxury of going home to bed. Then, on the night of the change, Zeik, who was on duty, sent a message to his home at 3 A.M. The message ran: “Fräulein is giving back her plates. What should I do with them?” Herr Doktor was too confused to stumble back upstairs to bed again. So Fräulein gave them back â what the hell
should
he do with them?
He appeared on the fourth-floor hallway an hour later in a savage state of mind. “Did they come out one at a time, or did she push them out all at once?
Describe
how they came out the door, Zeik.”
Zeik wrung his meaty paws, avoiding his eyes, then looked down the hall. He licked his lips as he stared at the plates outside 401 for some time.
“Well, Herr Doktor â¦,” he faltered. “Well, Herr Doktor ⦔Zeik seemed to want to make this his whole statement.
“You were asleep, then, were you, Zeik?”
“Yes and no, Herr Doktor,” he said, fidgeting. Then, pleadingly, “You won't tell Nurse Bosch, sir? Will you, sir?”
“Out with it!”
Zeik began to fret, shifting from foot to foot. Then, “Herr Doktor, I know this may sound strange, but I might have dreamt it after all. I was dozing pretty lightly, sir, you know, with my eyes half open. I mean, sir, I
am
supposed to keep watch on things, even if I do steal a wink now and then. So I'd swear I saw her put the plates out first, sir, one by one. And then she put out the” â he began to search for the right wordâ- “the presents. And then she put her presents out afterward, one on each plate.”
He almost laughed out loud.
“Why do you call them presents, Zeik?”
“Well, they're wrapped, sir. Like presents, you know.”
They were: just like gifts. From the score of plates Fräulein had collected in the last weeks, she had pushed thirteen outside the door of 401. Precisely the number of days from the moment the girl had begun to keep the things inside. And on each plate Fräulein S had made a deposit of feces, individually wrapped in a strip of bedsheet! He now saw the reason the room and hall had not smelled in all this time: Fräulein had avoided the meat and vegetables, eating only the potatoes. What she eliminated was not particularly full of waste products: toxins, acids, alkalines, half-digested fats â all the elements that produce a smell. But what made the gifts horrible was
how
they were wrapped.
Fräulein S had gone to some trouble molding her business: she gave each of the feces the shape of a little papoose, an infant, wider where the head would be and narrowing toward the toes. Wrapping each one as though in swaddling clothes, leaving an opening for the face. Even the swaddlings were wound to scale, with a tiny strip about the neck to bring out the slope of the shoulders. But oddest of all, she had contrived to make a bonnet or cowl over the face, cleverly pushing the fecal matter back with her finger. The result: an empty-hooded darkness. Thirteen wrapped phantoms. No wonder Zeik wished it were a dream. The orderly had plenty of time to contemplate their strangeness while waiting for Herr Doktor. Little infants made of feces, each wrapped in a cotton bedsheet, with a cowl making a shadowy void where the face should be.
“I guess she got them all ready beforehand, then put them out pretty quick,” Zeik said. “Why do you think she'd give you dolls?”
Ah, clever question ⦠But first, how
did
she make them? Had she done it under the mummy covers, in the stifling dark, by touch and feel? Timing her bowel movements until the very moment they were needed? Molding them in a strip of sheet, then wrapping the exact length of swaddling around that ⦠All in secret in the thirteen days it took to make them?
Personal artifacts.
What else could you call them?
He was reminded of preserved bogmen found in English peat bogs, the brown leathery remains of druid sacrifice, the blank eyes staring up through a thousand years of mud. Thirteen meals and thirteen dead bodies, the product of her own insides. Food, dead babies, and her own feces.
Why assume they were dead?
No reason to.