Dream Story (10 page)

Fridolin thanked the concierge for the information and left quickly, for one of the hotel managers had just come up and looked him over with unpleasant curiosity. He got back into the cab and told the cabman to take him to the hospital. A few minutes later, in the outside office, he learned that the alleged Baroness Dubieski had been taken to the second clinic for internal medicine. In spite of all the efforts of the doctors, she had died at five in the afternoon— without having regained consciousness.

Fridolin breathed a sigh of relief that sounded now like a deep groan. The official on duty looked up, startled, and Fridolin pulled himself together and courteously took his leave. A minute later he stood again out-doors. The hospital park was empty except where a nurse, in her blue and white uniform and cap, was walking along a near-by path. "She is dead," Fridolin said to himself.—If it is she. And if it is not? If she still lives, how can I find her? Only too easily could Fridolin answer the question as to where at that moment he could find the body of the unknown woman. As she had died so recently, she was undoubtedly lying in the hospital morgue, a few hundred paces away. As a doctor, there would, of course, be no difficulty in gaining admittance there, even at such a late hour. But—what did he want there? He had never seen her face, only her body. He had only snatched a hasty glance at the former when he had been driven out. Up to this moment he hadn't thought of that fact. During the time since he had read the account in the paper he had pictured the suicide, whose face he didn't know, as having the features of Albertina. In fact, he now shuddered to realize that his wife had constantly been in his mind's eye as the woman he was seeking. He asked himself again why he really wanted to go to the morgue. He was sure that if he had met her again alive—whether days or years later, whatever the circumstances—he would unquestionably have recognized her by her gait, her bearing, and above all by her voice. But now he was to see only the body again, the dead body of a woman, and a face of which he remembered only the eyes, now lifeless. Yes—he knew those eyes, and the hair which had suddenly become untied and had enveloped her naked body as they had driven him from the room. Would that be enough to tell him if it were unmistakably she?

With slow and hesitating steps he crossed the familiar courtyards to the Institute of Pathological Anatomy. Finding the door unlocked, it was unnecessary to ring the bell. The stone floor resounded under his footsteps as he walked through the dimly lighted hall. A familiar, and to a certain extent homelike, smell of all kinds of chemicals pervaded the place. He knocked on the door of the Histological Room where he expected to find some assistant still at work. A rather gruff voice called "Come in." Fridolin entered the high-ceilinged room which seemed almost festively illuminated. As he half expected, Doctor Adler, an assistant in the Institute and an old fellow-student of his, was in the center of the room. He raised his eyes from the microscope and arose from his chair.

"Oh, it's you," he said to Fridolin, a little annoyed, but also surprised, "to what do I owe the honor of your visit at such an unaccustomed hour?"

"Forgive me for disturbing you," said Fridolin. "I see you are just in the midst of some work."

"Yes, I am," replied Alder in the sharp voice which he retained from his student days. He added in a lighter tone: "What else could one be doing in these sacred halls at midnight? But, of course, you're not disturbing me in the least. What can I do for you?"

When Fridolin did not answer, he continued: "That Addison case you sent down to us today is still lying over there, lovely and inviolate. Dissection tomorrow morning at eight-thirty."

With a gesture Fridolin indicated that that was not the reason of his visit. Doctor Adler went on: "Oh, then it's the pleural tumor. Well, the histological examination has unmistakably shown sarcoma. So you needn't worry about that either."

Fridolin again shook his head. "My visit has nothing to do with—official matters."

"Well, so much the better," said Adler. "I was beginning to think that your bad conscience brought you down here when all good people should be sleeping."

"It has something to do with a bad conscience, or at least with conscience in general," Fridolin replied.

"Oh!"

"Briefly, and to the point,"—he spoke in a dry, off-hand tone—"I should like to have some information about a woman who died of morphine poisoning in the second clinic this evening. She is likely to be down here now, a certain Baroness Dubieski." He continued more hurriedly: "I have a feeling that this so called Baroness is a person I knew casually years ago, and I am interested to know if I am right——." "Suicidium?" asked Adler. Fridolin nodded. "Yes, suicide," he translated, as though he wished to restore the matter to a personal plane.

Adler jokingly pointed his finger at him. "Was she unhappily in love with your Excellency?"

Fridolin was a little annoyed and answered, "The suicide of the Baroness Dubieski has nothing whatever to do with me personally."

"I beg your pardon, I didn't mean to be indiscreet. We can see for ourselves at once. As far as I know, no request from the coroner has come tonight. Very likely———"

Post-mortem examination—flashed across Fridolin's mind. That might easily be the case. Who knows whether her suicide was in any sense voluntary? He thought again of the two men who had so suddenly disappeared from the hotel after learning of her attempt at suicide. The affair might still develop into a criminal case of great importance. And mightn't he—Fridolin—perhaps be summoned as a witness?—In fact, wasn't it really his duty to report to the police?

He followed Doctor Adler across the hallway to the door opposite, which was ajar. The bare high room was dimly lighted by the low, unshaded flames of a two-armed gas-fixture. Less than half of the twelve or fourteen morgue tables were occupied by corpses. A few bodies were lying there naked. Others were covered with linen sheets. Fridolin stepped up to the first table by the door and carefully drew back the covering from the head of the corpse. A glare from Doctor Adler's flashlight suddenly fell upon it and Fridolin saw the yellow face of a gray-bearded man. He immediately covered it again with the shroud. On the next table was the naked, emaciated body of a young man, and Doctor Adler called out from farther down: "Here's a woman between sixty and seventy, so I suppose she isn't the one either."

Fridolin suddenly felt irresistibly drawn to the end of the room where the sallow body of a woman faintly glowed in the darkness. The head was hanging to one side and the long dark hair almost touched the floor. He instinctively stretched out his hand to put the head in its proper position, but feeling a certain dread which, as a doctor, was otherwise unknown to him he drew back his hand. Doctor Adler oame up and, pointing to the corpses behind him, remarked : "All those are out of the question, so it's probably this one?" He pointed his flashlight at the woman's head. Overcoming his dread, Fridolin raised it a little with his hands. A white face with halfclosed eyelids stared at him. The lower jaw hung down limply, the narrow upper lip was drawn up, revealing the bluish gums and a number of white teeth. Fridolin could not tell whether this face had ever been beautiful, even as lately as the day before. It was a face without any expression or character. It was dead. It could just as easily have been the face of a woman of eighteen, as of thirty-eight.

"Is it she?" asked Doctor Adler.

Fridolin bent lower, as though he could, with his piercing look, wrest an answer from the rigid features. Yet at the same time he knew that if it were her face, and her eyes, the eyes that had shone at him the day before with so much passion, he would not, could not—and in reality did not, want to know. He gently laid the head back on the table. His eyes followed the moving flashlight, passing along the dead body. Was it her body?—the wonderful alluring body for which, only yesterday, he had felt such agonizing desire? Fridolin touched the forehead, the cheeks, the shoulders and arms of the dead woman, doing so as if compelled and directed by an invisible power. He twined his fingers about those of the corpse, and rigid as they were, they seemed to him to make an effort to move, to seize his hand. Indeed, he almost felt that a vague and distant look from underneath her eyelids was searching his face. He bent over her, as if magically attracted.

Suddenly he heard a voice behind him whispering: "What on earth are you doing?"

Fridolin regained his senses instantly. He freed his fingers from those of the corpse, and taking her thin wrists, placed the ice-cold arms alongside of the body very carefully, even a little scrupulously. It seemed to him that she had just at that moment died. He turned away, directed his steps to the door and across the resounding hallway back into the room which they had left a little while before. Doctor Adler followed in silence and locked the door behind them.

Fridolin stepped up to the wash-basin. "With your permission," he said and carefully washed his hands with disinfectant. Doctor Adler seemed anxious to continue his interrupted work without further ceremony. He switched on his microscope lamp, turned the micrometer screw and looked into the microscope. When Fridolin went up to him to say good-bye he was already completely absorbed.

"Would you like to have a look at this preparation?" he asked.

"Why?" asked Fridolin absent-mindedly.

"Well, to quiet your conscience," replied Doctor Adler—as if he assumed that, after all, the purpose of Fridolin's visit had been a medical-scientific one.

"Can you make it out?" he asked, as Fridolin looked into the microscope. "It's a fairly new staining method."

Fridolin nodded, without raising his eyes from the glass. "Perfectly ideal," he said, "a colorful picture, one might say."

And he inquired about various details of the new technique.

Doctor Adler gave him the desired explanations. Fridolin told him that the new method would most probably be very useful to him in some work he was planning for the next few months, and asked permission to come again to get more information.

"I'm always at your service," said Doctor Adler. He accompanied Fridolin over the resounding flagstones to the locked outer door, and opened it with his own key.

"You're not going yet?" asked Fridolin.

"Of course not," replied Doctor Adler. "These are the very best hours for work— from about midnight until morning. Then one is at least fairly certain not to be disturbed."

"Well"—said Fridolin, smiling slightly, as if he had a guilty conscience.

Doctor Adler placed his hand on Fridolin's arm reassuringly, and then asked, with some reserve: "Well—was it she?"

Fridolin hesitated for a moment, and then nodded, without saying a word. He was hardly aware that by this action he might be guilty of untruthfulness. It did not matter to him whether the woman—now lying in the hospital morgue—was the same one he had held naked in his arms twenty-four hours before, to the wild tunes of Nachtigall's playing. It was immaterial whether this corpse was some other unknown woman, a perfect stranger whom he had never seen before. Even if the woman he had sought, desired and perhaps loved for an hour were still alive, he knew that the body lying in the arched room—in the light of flickering gas-flames, a shadow among shadows, dark, without meaning or mystery as the shadows themselves—could only be to him the pale corpse of the preceding night, doomed to irrevocable decay.

FRIDOLIN hurried home through the dark and empty streets. After undressing in the consultation room, as he had done twenty-four hours before, he entered the bedroom as silently as possible.

He heard Albertina breathing quietly and regularly and saw the outlines of her head on the soft pillow. Unexpectedly, his heart was filled with a feeling of tenderness and even of security. He decided to tell her the story of the preceding night very soon— perhaps even the next day—but to tell it as though everything he had experienced had been a dream. Then, when she had fully realized the utter futility of his adventures, he would confess to her that they had been real. Real? he asked himself—and at this moment he noticed something dark quite

near Albertina's face. It had definite outlines like the shadowy features of a human face, and it was lying on his pillow. For a moment his heart stopped beating, but an instant later he saw what it was, and stretching out his hand, picked up the mask he had worn the night before. He must have lost it in the morning when making up his bundle, and the maid or Albertina herself had found it. Undoubtedly Albertina, after making this find, suspected something—presumably, more and worse things than had actually happened. And she intimated this, by placing the mask on the pillow beside her, as though it signified his face, the face of her husband who had become an enigma to her. This playful, almost joking action seemed to express both a gentle warning and her readiness to forgive. Fridolin confidently hoped that, remembering her own dream, she would not be inclined to take his too seriously, no matter what might have happened. All at once, however, he reached the end of his strength. He dropped the mask, uttered a loud and painful sob—quite unexpectedly—sank down beside the bed, buried his head in the pillows, and wept.

A few minutes later he felt a soft hand caressing his hair. He looked up and from the depths of his heart he cried: "I will tell you everything."

She raised her hand, as if to stop him, but he took it and held it, and looked at her both questioningly and beseechingly. She encouraged him with a nod and he began his story.

The gray dawn was creeping in through the curtains when Fridolin finished. Albertina hadn't once interrupted him with a curious or impatient question. She probably felt that he could not, and would not, keep anything from her. She lay there quietly, with her arms folded under her head, and remained silent long after Fridolin had finished. He was lying by her side and finally bent over her, and looking into her immobile face with the large, bright eyes in which morning seemed to have dawned, he asked, in a voice of both doubt and hope: "What shall we do now, Albertina?"