Marija Peričić - The Lost Pages

PROMOLI BECAME MY GUIDE IN THE HOSPITAL. HE SEEMED TO know and be liked by everyone. He showed me around and introduced me everywhere, to people I had seen a hundred times: the nurses; the silent guards whose stony faces Promoli transformed as if by magic into smiling ones; and also to other patients in rooms behind that row of closed doors in the corridor.

Promoli was on close terms with Professor Pick and claimed to be his assistant, which I did not quite believe. Yet from time to time I would see him from the long windows walking out on the lawns with Pick, their heads bent together in conversation. And at other times I saw him standing with the little group of medical students as they discussed something with Pick. It seemed inconceivable that he could be doing these things and at the same time be here in the ward with me, wearing a robe and being ordered about by the nurses.

I started to become suspicious of Promoli, worried that he was a spy of Pick’s, sent to observe the patients when Pick himself was not in the ward and then report back to him. What else would they be discussing on their rambles over the grounds? But I felt guilty about these suspicious thoughts; despite the grain of mistrust, I had immediately felt a strong sense of kinship with Promoli. Nevertheless, I observed Promoli closely for signs of illness, but could never discern any. He was always happy and energetic and never lay all day silent in the bed, brooding, as I still sometimes did.

What was he doing here in the hospital if he was not ill? I considered challenging him about it, and intended to do so many times, but at the last moment my resolve always failed me; it seemed rude and ungrateful. I had learned that the code of politeness of that place dictated that prying into the illnesses of others was taboo, and it was a topic only discussed when first raised by the sufferer himself.

There was a vast array of illness to be found in the hospital, which seemed to be populated only by men. There were those who were mute and watchful, who had retreated behind their eyes and hid themselves from you, deep in their bodies. There was a man known as The Owl, whose every second word was a hoot. Other men laughed and sang, or there were those who gave off an electrical charge of violence. There were also among the patients several holy men, who tolerated each other benevolently in their various holinesses, even those who were, or claimed to be, the same man.

There was a man who believed himself to be Saint Methodius, and was called this by other patients. When I first met him, he bowed down before me and insisted on walking backwards around me, facing me all the time as though I were a pagan king. Promoli explained to me that Methodius could see into the future and was living out his two years of imprisonment in Ellwangen, waiting for the arrival of the bishop whom he knew was coming to free him under orders of the pope.

Methodius was convinced that I was the bishop, and it took me a long time to prove to his satisfaction that I was not. I later saw him doing the same with each new arrival at the hospital and I tried to explain to him that the bishop, when he came, would not be dressed like we patients; surely he would be instantly recognisable in his robes.

‘Well of course the bishop must travel in disguise, to protect himself from his enemies,’ Methodius said. He then pulled me aside and whispered, ‘Just like I am in disguise here as a patient in a madhouse. How did you recognise me?’

One night, a commotion in the ward filtered through the heavy veil of my sleep and became absorbed into my dreams. When I woke in the morning, I looked over and saw that Promoli’s bed was empty. The bedclothes were stripped away and the mattress and pillows were folded and stacked neatly. The name-card was gone from the little holder on the bedframe. I asked the nurses about it, and the patients in the other wards, but no one could tell me. Some of the patients told me, with grisly relish, tales about experiments or operations done on the patients. Methodius gave dark hints about certain orders given by the pope, to which only he was privy. I decided to wait for Pick’s next visit and ask him about it, but days passed and he never appeared.

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.

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.