Rolling on...
The Question
Yesterday I met my father. I had returned to our town after many years, not for any particular reason, as I assumed, but out of a vague impulse that I didn’t want to explain to myself. It was towards evening when I came across him in front of a hat store in one of the narrow, gloomy streets of the old town that lead down to the river. An elderly, sprightly man who was carefully studying the store window. He had placed his arms behind his back and was leaning forward – presumably because of his short-sightedness, and also because it was his way of looking at things, if at all, really closely. His face was pale, almost wrinkle-free, his lips thin.
“Father,” I said, looking at him with big eyes, ”how did you get here?” I held out my smiling hand in a welcoming manner, to him who, in the last few years before his disappearance, had only experienced my threatening and furiously raised fist, so much I had hated him. He didn’t seem to find it strange at all that we were now running into each other here, and when I caught his shy look, I knew that he had secretly been waiting for me.
Peacefully, suffering, he let me have his hand. “I’d like to buy a new hat,” he said in a weak, almost whispering voice, ”but it seems they don’t have what I’m looking for, just these new-fangled little hats with no edging on the brim. And I don’t feel comfortable the colors either, it should be anthracite, darker than this one and not as drab as that one,” and with that he pointed to two hats in the shop window. Only now did I realize what a strange thing he had on his head, a crumpled, greasy, formerly white leather hat with a huge, adventurously bent brim, like the ones cowboys sometimes wear in westerns, heaven forbid, that looked really weird on his well-bred, Central European skull. I grew worried about him, afraid that one of his acquaintances might come by and think he wasn’t quite right in the head because of that hat. But only three young, hairy men were traipsing along the gutter on the other side of the street, one behind the other, and I realized that since his withdrawal seven years ago, many of his acquaintances had also disappeared, or had crawled into their apartments.
“Father,” I asked, ”where did you get this colossal hat?” Caught and unsure, he began fingering it and said softly with a puzzled, confused look: “Why, I have to wear a hat because of my sensitive scalp,” and I realized that he didn’t even grasp how ridiculous he looked, the stern Herr Director under a battered cowboy hat! And I didn’t say anything any more so as not to offend him, and actually, on second thought, I personally relished the hat, yes – I mean, it was absolutely original…..
A warm feeling of closeness ran through me when I noticed how meager my father had become, also his suit was slightly worn, not sloppy, no, but he looked a bit scrawny, just as people’s clothes appear to us today in the photos taken after the last great war.
And now I remembered that I hadn’t come to our town by chance, I had been searching for my father. Today I really wanted to t a l k to him and, in particular, ask him that one crucial question that had been torturing me for a long time – as long as I could remember. A question that was wafting through my nightmare and eating away at the cells of my brain, and which only he, if anyone at all, could ever answer. I had often started asking this question, but each time I was thrown off balance in my intention by an obviously long-planned, inexplicable intervention, whether it was because some everyday distraction intervened, or because my father suddenly, apparently unsuspectingly, gave our conversation a different turn, or – and this was the worst – that as soon as I opened my mouth to take advantage of the opportunity, my brain immediately didn’t want to remember anything and I just stammered out a few incoherent words so that my father looked at me uncomprehendingly and I was glad when he interrupted me.
This time, however, I wanted to proceed very deliberately and carefully and not let anything disturb me
“Come on, Father”, I said, trying to pull him away from the display, “let’s go for a coffee, I’d also like to talk to you about a few things that will be important for both of us.”
“That’s not possible at all,” he groaned loudly and stared at the large digits on his wristwatch in wild confusion, ”I still have work to do. Suddenly he fixed his Prussian-blue eyes on me with surprising and threatening firmness and his face turned into that of the early years, with the evil, terrifying stare that had haunted me all my life, leaving me without escape wherever I stood, walked or ran. Grim and punishing, this gaze struck me, ravaging down to the depths of my guts, causing me to flinch back, pale, frightened, devastated. “It’s my duty, you know that, you should have known that,” he hurled at me. Besides, I have to buy this new hat, at least I must try to find the right one.”
Without me being able to prevent him, he turned abruptly towards the store, hastily opened the door and disappeared. I wanted to rush after him, he couldn’t just run off and leave me destroyed! A tall, exquisitely dressed gentleman blocked my way. “I need to see my father,” I screamed.
“There’s no father here,” he said with emphasis and almost reassuringly, “this is a hat store and on top we have to close now,” while he pointed to the glass clock on the street corner, pulled the iron grille in front of the door until the lock snapped, slammed the door shut with a short bang, turned the key in the lock twice and left me standing outside – helpless, tongue gagged, lips dull.
© Maniwolf – German Original by Maniwolf. Translated with DeepL.com and edited by Maniwolf. To be reviewed by USAtranslations.org
The Sister, or Chickens and People
The sister had always been considered strange. She ran around the house singing and warbling, so the father scolded her: ”Stop that tootle, I need my peace and quiet”. When she laughed, he said: “Don’t laugh so much, it will give you a big mouth”, and when she started crying, she was told: “Stop crying, it will make you ugly”. When she leafed through magazines featuring movie stars, the mother would say, “Don’t you have anything else to do?” And when she retreated to the garden alone, she would hear, “Why don’t you have any friends?” She was indeed unpopular, and even I, her younger brother, avoided her. I roamed about with my friends all day and saw her as an incomprehensible creature that we couldn’t do anything with.
This was in the aftermath of the Grand War, when people were slowly picking themselves up after all the chaos, striving for a reasonably regular existence. The family lived in a suburb on the Rhine, actually a better neighborhood, but it had been badly destroyed by American bombers because it bordered a large tractor factory. Since there was a shortage of everything, people kept rabbits and chickens, and the family also had an enclosure with a flock of chickens in the garden behind the house. There were probably almost a dozen chickens at first, and I also vaguely remember a shrill rooster.
While we all regarded the chickens as creatures that were only in the world to lay eggs, the sister developed an unusual love for this flock of fowls. We saw her wandering around the chicken coop for hours. She gave each of her darlings a special pet name and treated them very tenderly, stroking them, talking to them, and singing and warbling her songs. The chickens clucked, scratched, and pecked at grains, and their empty eyes betrayed the patience of the timeless creature. On memorable days, the sister would take the whole flock on an outing in the garden, lovingly admonishing them to follow her and trying hard to keep them together like a mother hen with her chicks. Then she would gather her darlings around her and try to feed them supposed delicacies such as dandelions, buttercups, and forget-me-nots.
Since the family was accustomed to the sister exhibiting eccentric behavior, no one was particularly surprised by this latest quirk. However, the situation took a sinister turn when during the nights the sister began to be plagued by terrible nightmares. She stirred the whole family into action by screaming loudly in the middle of the night, running out of her room, rushing down the stairs, and storming to the chicken coop to check if her darlings were all still there. It was that in her recurring nightmares, wolves and foxes broke into the coop, or hawks and buzzards swooped down from the sky to devour the chickens.
The sister was particularly anxious about her favorite chicken, Schwärtzel (Blacky). Schwärtzel was smaller and slimmer than the other chickens, also she was the youngest chicken, having been acquired last. I never understood why she was called Schwärtzel, because her feathers were dark brown with light brown and white spots.
The sister spent lots of time with Schwärtzel and pampered her with abundance. When the temperatures were falling, she would drag the copper heating bottles filled with hot water from her own bed and slip a specially knitted pink wool loaf over Schwärtzel. Sometimes she would also shelter Schwärtzel in the laundry room next to the enclosure to protect her from the cold and wild animals. Only the determined resistance of the parents prevented her from taking Schwärtzel into her room, into her bed.
I didn’t think that Schwärtzel was an unusual chicken, but the sister said she possessed supernatural powers. She took her on her lap, adorned her with golden collars around her neck, devotedly arranged her feathers, and spent hours consulting with her. Schwärtzel willingly absorbed everything, clucking away.
At the end of such a session, the sister would claim that she had looked into the future with Schwärtzel. I found that really exciting after all and asked curiously what she had seen there, in the future. Then her water-green eyes expressed boundless pity, she wrinkled her pointed nose, pursed her firm lips in displeasure, and let it be known with a condescending expression that it would all end badly with us.
As times improved, no new chickens were acquired, and their numbers gradually decreased through natural attrition. One day, on the father’s orders, a man from a chicken farm out in the country came to pick up the last three chickens, including Schwärtzel.
When the sister realized that the chickens were to be taken away from her, she burst into terrible screams and cries, writhing on the floor in despair. But the father could not be dissuaded from his decision by her tantrum. “You can visit your clucking hens on the farm at any time,” he barked. In fits of wailing and tears, the sister placed a medallion around Schwärtzel’s neck to protect her from any potential future misfortune. Then the cage was hoisted onto the truck and the chickens disappeared.
I remember that the sister then regularly took the bus to visit her beloved pets in the countryside until their lives came to an end. When Schwärtzel died, the sister brought the dead animal home in a plastic bag, arranged her into a wooden box, and buried her between the gooseberry and raspberry bushes in the garden. She ran around the house for days, lamenting and weeping, keeping the whole family on tenterhooks with death fantasies and suicide announcements. Then she sank into sheer endless grief.
Meanwhile, times in post-war Germany were becoming increasingly more orderly and modern. People had something meaningful to do again; almost everyone was busy with reconstruction. Their bitter faces gradually brightened. It didn’t seem to fit at all that, especially since the chickens were hauled off, there were nasty wrangles between the sister and the father every day. One evening, when the sister had just turned seventeen, there was a particularly evil argument. That’s when, in a fit of rage, she threw a chair from the upper floor down the stairwell, so that it landed with a loud crash in the entrance hall on the ground floor. That same evening, at the father’s instigation, the police came rushing to the house and fetched the sister. She was transported off until further handling. The next day, the father arranged for the family doctor to write a referral for the sister to be admitted to the state mental institution in the Swabian lands.
At the mental institution, the doctors and nurses fed her all kinds of medication on a daily basis and decided that there was no other way to help her. The medications had strict, imposing names, but the sister hated them. She said they gave her eye spasms, spine curvatures, shortness of breath, whooping cough, and speech paralyses, so that she was unable not speak up during the doctors’ visits and everyone got the wrong impression of her. Sometimes she refused to swallow the pills and resisted when the nurses forced them on her. Then she was put in the closed ward with strict supervision and discipline because of deterioration of her health condition.
After seven years in the mental institution, the sister was finally discharged. A small attic apartment was found for her in a massive building complex in a small, semi-rural village near the city, where rents were lower. She was unable to work, and social services took over the rental payments. She complained a lot about the ailments caused by the medication treatments and went from one doctor to another seeking relief. No doctor could find the causes of her suffering. The general opinion of the parents and neighbors was that she was slothful and work-shy, simulating symptoms.
When I came for visits to Germany, I always stopped by her habitation. I would suggest going for walks in the nearby forest, but the sister insisted on showing off her treasures. At that time, she had actually developed a particular love for exotic countries, and among them, Brazil had especially captured her imagination. Her room was crammed with all kinds of finds from indigenous cultures that she had unearthed during her trips to flea markets and rarity shops in the nearby city: grotesque masks doing shrill grimaces, yellowed photographs, brilliant bracelets and necklaces, nose rings, arrowheads, spears and shields; pipes, flutes, and drums; clay pots, food bowls, and drinking vessels; headbands, belts, and ponchos; scarves, feathers, and wigs in all shapes and colors.
The gathered artifacts piled up on the floor, filled the shelves, hung on the walls, and dangled down from the ceiling, so that we had to move around the room bent over and could only reach her best treasures by crawling on the floor. Each of those rarities had its own special characteristics, which she recounted to me with the devotion of a child and the intensity of a compulsive hoarder in an ever-increasing torrent of words and gestures, while I struggled for my breath under her overwhelming cascades of phrases and nearly collapsed under the crushing weight of the hodgepodge of relics. At last she drove me into a corner of the room near the window, pulled aside a veil, and, sobbing and groaning, presented me with an oversized, cheerfully colored photo in a golden frame, showing her favorite chicken, Schwärtzel, in better days. The picture was decorated with artificial yellow and red roses and stood on a pedestal covered with green cloth, as if on an altar.
The family generally assumed that the sister was doing better now that she had been released from the institution. But when I visited Germany again last July and was staying at the mother’s place, a policeman rang the doorbell urgently on the very first afternoon and wanted to speak to me immediately. He came up the stairs panting, sank heavily into a chair, and then declared: “Your sister was found dead in her apartment yesterday.” He handed me a tiny numbered official note on which my sister’s name was carefully entered and next to “cause of death” was written: “unknown.” He was visibly relieved to have delivered his message and then wanted swiftly to move on to light conversation about America. “Yes,” he asked, “I hear you live in Los Angeles. What’s it like there? Must be really interesting. I have a nephew in that area,” he continued, while I tried to hold on to the pathetic form in horror.
When I arrived at the sister’s attic that same evening, the property owner was already waiting there. I immediately noticed the strange resemblance to the father, the same stern gaze, the thin, bloodless lips, the watery eyes, the meager, joyless official’s voice. He revealed to me that, according to the ambulance report, the sister had killed herself with an overdose of sleeping pills. Her dwelling had been unlocked on the morning of my arrival after the neighbors had finally complained about the strangely sweet smell. The corpse must have been lying there for weeks without anyone noticing anything before. Thousands of blowflies had descended on the corpse, and the stench was unbearable. The men who had carried the sister outside that afternoon, had to down several shots of schnapps first, he said, otherwise they would not have been able to bear the pungent smell of the corpse and the gruesome sight.
The homeowner then invited me, under abundant condolences and with surprising friendliness, to his nearby bungalow, where his family had gathered. The family advocate had also happened to arrive. They all welcomed me as the heir and new tenant of the sister’s apartment and treated me with exquisite kindness. The lawyer pressed a set of keys into my hands and declared, “The apartment is now yours,” and I thanked him for his generosity. Everyone kept on at me, and the advocate pulled up a chair and asked me to sit down. With widely sweeping, inviting gestures, he urged me to sign a prepared statement. “It’s just a formality,” he said, “and in the best interests of your lady sister.” I did not sign. In retrospect, on closer inspection, it turned out that as heir I would have been held liable for all consequential damages, including the fact that the apartment would be unusable for months or even years as a result of the stench of the dead body.
The next morning, it was a Saturday, I made my way back to the sister’s dwelling. Since I had renounced the inheritance because of the lawyer’s insinuation, I could only take a few personal items with me. Among them were piles of papers and pads with notes in her diligent, childlike handwriting. I also came across a thick Leitz folder with letters. Later, I found a neatly typed letter to the German Bundestag in which the sister described her suffering and urgently pleaded for help.
In the meantime, a tractor-trailer had arrived and maneuvered a huge garbage container under the window of the attic. A special garbage collection team had been assigned to the task, and I arrived just as several muscular men were rolling up the stairs, hurling curses. They began to dump the entire contents of the dwelling, with all its oddities out of the window. Neighbors appeared, talking and gesticulating, making curious and concerned faces. Their glances followed with astonishment as the peculiar finds were pouring down. These were obviously serious people with tidy homes, and their amazement at what a strange creature had been living in their midst knew no bounds. Children came running, stopped breathlessly to watch the spectacle with awe and delight. A veritable crowd had gathered by noon, while the mood became more relaxed and downright cheerful. After all, this was a harmless village, and this mixture of carnival and funeral was definitely a unique event that had to be celebrated properly.
The children clung to each other holding hands and screamed with excitement whenever a particularly curious item sailed past them, as if watching New Year’s Eve fireworks. After a few smaller pieces, the magnificent specimens came raining down, an indigenous shrunken head, a colorful death mask, a stuffed bull skull with horns, and all the way at the end, Schwärtzel’s large, colorful painting flew out of the window and landed in the trash container. Then a few old pieces of furniture were carried down, and the performance was over. The container was towed away and the people dispersed.
Just as I was about to leave, the property owner happened to drive by in a black Mercedes limousine. He stared at me through the car window with a mad look, deep hatred leaping out of his eyes. He kept the window closed and not a single word would escape from his gaping mouth, yes, I had the impression that he wanted to scream and yell at me but was choking on the words. I could see in his evil eyes that he thirsted for pouncing on me and destroying me. “Just like the father! “ I thought. I turned away in shock, took a deep breath, and then got out of there as fast as I could! I realized that there was nothing more to be gained here.
My sister’s remains were processed in a crematorium, and the urn was delivered to me a few days later for further disposal. The relatives were strongly opposed to placing the sister’s urn on one side of the family grave. I had the impression that these good people were afraid that the sister’s sinister spirits might infect the other dead in the grave.
What to do with an abandoned urn?
I drove around with the urn until I found a cemetery with an urn section in a village very close to the chicken farm. When I arrived at the cemetery administration office, the clerk was just engrossed in eating his lunch. He had spread out greasy wrapping paper with a delicious roasted chicken and French fries on his desk, next to which lay a few gnawed bones. Only reluctantly and with a sour face, he completed the formalities. He didn’t want to bother getting up and locking the urn himself, thus delaying his chicken feast even further. Instead, contrary to official regulations, he simply handed me the key to the urn compartment and asked me to return it.
The burial took place in silence. I inserted the urn into the compartment, lit the candle I had brought with me, and placed it in front of the urn compartment. I was the only person present. Being reluctant to return the key to the clerk, I decided to take it with me and disappeared.
I soon moved to South America. The urn compartment I never should see again. The key I carried around with me for years until one day it was lost during a move in the South of Brazil.
© Maniwolf – German Original by Maniwolf. Translated with DeepL.com and edited by Maniwolf. To be reviewed by USAtranslations.org
Cautionary Note: This story may be disturbing to some people. Proceed at your own discretion.
The Unlikely Assassination of Adolf Hitler
The day I murdered Adolf Hitler was an ordinary day. The murder was not really planned after all. I would like to take this opportunity to point out that I advise anyone who has a tyrant murder in mind to plan as little as possible. The less you plan, the less can go wrong. Much more important than a plan is the ability to observe the circumstances keenly; to adapt to them selflessly and gracefully; to recognize the right opportunity with a sleepwalker’s instinct; to seize this opportunity unconditionally and radically. And the recipe for survival afterwards? Run for your life as long as no eyes see you, but if you feel that gazes are following you, leave as you came, equanimous, preferably with your hands in your pockets, whistling a tune, and above all, no false rush. As an undeniably successful assassin, I could offer a lot more advice here, but I don’t want to get distracted from my report, and I also believe that this report speaks for itself: an attentive reader will find valuable clues for a successful tyrannicide between the lines.
I was standing near the gate to the government offices on the second floor of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin; some might say I was hanging around there, lying in wait for my victim. I must add, however, that I was no more lying in wait for him than on any other day. Adolf Hitler was used to seeing me around him; as his preferred interpreter for the North Germanic languages, I had, so to speak, intimate contact with him.
Late in the morning, I saw him, as usual with a firm step and a determined look, the brilliant performer of his own choreography, appear in the Grand Colonnade in front of the official offices, with a swarm of black-clad people in tow, who turned out to be catholic dignitaries. When he dismissed that group in front of the entrance in a conciliatory manner, and also after turning away, with an imperious gesture, a line of supplicants who were pushing their way toward him obliquely from the right like a sunray between the columns and hasted alone toward the gate opening, a dark feeling in my stomach told me that the opportune time had now come. I had meanwhile moved imperceptibly toward the gate and positioned myself there, seemingly by chance, toward one side, giving myself an air of accidental presence and unobtrusive modesty. I knew that he particularly appreciated this docile restraint in me. When his gaze fell on me, I felt that he was not averse to a brief exchange. I pretended to have come with a few questions concerning the modalities of the next round of council meetings with the North Germanic envoys, and while we stepped through the gates and doors, I began to illustrate the details.
I knew Hitler was a very impulsive person, as predictable in his unpredictability as a stray prairie wolf, and I noticed that he became increasingly restless when I followed him into his inner office quarters. I could tell the suspicious animal began to feel defenseless and naked. Did he sense that he was being cornered, perhaps pushed into a trap? When my gaze met his flickering eyes, I knew that in the next second he would expel me from his den. Now I had to act quickly, immediately, from animal to animal!
As soon as the last door closed and I realized that there were no bodyguards standing around, I pushed him into his personal wardrobe room with a quick, rough grip, kicked the door locked at the same moment, grabbed him by the neck and put him in a headlock, a stranglehold that I had been a master of since my childhood days. I will never forget his eyes; the usually sharp, piercing gaze had dissolved into a watery blur of dull, yet knowing cow eyes, which, in a mixture of stunned, boundless bewilderment and summoning up a final, all-encompassing lucidity, possible only in the face of slaughter, experience the true character of their supposed good shepherd, who, in a horrific exposure of his hateful, insidious atrocity, has transformed himself into a vile butcher.
The situation might not have ended well if I hadn’t been helped by an empty soda bottle that literally jumped off the shelf at me, which I snatched with a quick grasp of my left hand, I sharpened it with a firm blow of the bottle neck on his head as I had seen sailors doing it on the iron ship railing, and then drove it into his neck and drilled and twisted it, just like a butcher cutting up a piece of raw meat, until my victim slid to the floor covered in blood. Oh, it was a gruesome feast of blows and stabs and blood and screams, worse than when a pig is slaughtered in a Mexican village on an outdoor scene, mixed with involuntary guttural wolf-like sounds of unmistakably Hitlerian nature, which were secretly and strangely connected to the staccato of his speeches, bursting out of the depths of his guts in the same arrhythmic way, piercing through the room as if they had a life of their own.
Only the thought of doing a good deed helped me keep a clear head in this carnage. At the same second, however, I knew that only a complete murder was a proper murder, and although everything in me screamed to flee, I took the time, in cold blood, to take out the pocket knife I had brought with me and carefully severed his head from the torso. Yes, in retrospect, that was perhaps the most memorable moment, as I knelt down beside him and, with almost loving care, as a final gift on his way to afterlife, delivered the coup de grace, just the way the ugly executioners with their sickle-shaped daggers put the toro out of its misery after the wild dance of the bullfight. “An act as gruesome as the murder of Caesar, Trotsky, only more glorious because it was without any doubt good, just, earth-shattering,” flashed through my mind, then I tore the blood stained jacket and pants from my body, rinsed myself swiftly in the adjoining bathroom, covered myself with a few suitable items of clothing from his wardrobe closet, hastily, quickly, took one last look at the bloody still life, fleeing out the back door, and while the henchmen were already bursting into the front doors, howling, I slipped through two or three street corners, strolled through the alleys with my hands in my pockets, with practiced restraint, innocent as growing grass, as a snail crawling without anyone noticing, calm, quiet, slow, smooth now.
Accelerating slightly, I jumped onto a passing tram, yes, a tram, no treacherous haste, be an ant in an anthill! But then, forward-striving as a human fugitive, picking up speed, driven, breathless, fighting, racing, express train, border, Switzerland, airplane, Mexico, media spectacle, turning point, Zeitenwende.
Much has happened since then, but whatever it was, “The Improbable Assassination of Adolf Hitler”: it is tattooed a thousand times in my guts, my heart, my brain, and my skin: “ACCOMPLISHED.”
© Maniwolf – German Original by Maniwolf. Translated with DeepL.com and edited by Maniwolf. To be reviewed by USAtranslations.org
Doctor Kasper Wohlgemut’s Life and Death
A true story based on the local news pages of the Los Angeles Times:
Dr. Wohlgemut’s posh psychiatric practice was on the 17th floor of a slick office building on Wilshire Blvd. in Beverly Hills. The large window front gave him a panoramic view of the Hollywood Hills on one side and the skyline of downtown Los Angeles on the other side, a view that evoked a feeling in him of being elevated way above human trials and tribulations.
At the peak of his life, he was a middle-aged man of average height and build, with a pale face and short salt and pepper hair. He came across as soft-spoken, with a sometimes barely audible voice, which together with his smooth, apparently egoless personality, used to have a calming effect on his patients.
Even though he was an accomplished, well-respected psychiatrist, nobody who saw him outside of his office, would have attributed any outstanding features to his personality. An unremarkable, so to say normal man, as you find them everywhere in our cities. He didn’t strike anybody’s attention when he walked down the streets on Wilshire Blvd. and Rodeo Drive or entered his favorite Delicatessen on Camden Drive to buy an exquisite vegetarian lunch snack. And to tell the truth, he preferred to keep it that way – unnoticeable, anonymous in the human crowd.
Even when he saw his clients he was sheer imperceptible, a ghost in the background or even a saint? Endless patience, no judgment. Each workday, a stream of patients poured through his door, looking for help, mostly desperately. People with any imaginable mental disorders and human aberrations paraded through his medical chambers. Depressed, panicky, hyperactive, fatigued, lethargic, dysfunctional, autistic, workaholic, self-destructive, bored to death, abused and abusive, angry and violent, addicted to alcohol and drugs, lost in all kinds of sexual perversions. This may sound dramatic or even entertaining for an outsider, for him it was just business as usual. He had heard and seen it all, and no mental affliction was unknown to him. His motto was to be patient with patients!
His clients usually needed to complete a pre-session questionnaire online each time before their visit. When they appeared in his office, Dr. Wohlgemut already had his laptop on his knees, glanced quickly at them and greeted them politely, just lifting his eyes slightly from his laptop. “How are you doing today”, he usually asked, while being glued to his computer.
He used to look at the pre-visit questionnaire, and asked his patients about their condition today, last week, last month. How often have you felt worthless, how often did you feel like you would be better off dead, have you felt like harming yourself or somebody else lately? And so on. While the patients tried to elaborate on their answers, Dr. Wohlgemut tended to respond calmly, expertly. He used to throw in his favorite word “indeed” in expressions like “I can see that indeed”, or “I understand indeed” or “indeed, this must be troubling you”. This word had been used abundantly by his faculty professor, whom he had admired with devotion. He felt that the word “indeed” conveyed respectability and shined on his academic achievements. While uttering his favorite phrases, he continued looking at the screen, keeping track of his patients’ answers diligently and meticulously.
Then came the moment of prescription. Does the dose need to be increased, decreased or stay the same? Or is a different, more effective medication indicated? This wasn’t always an easy decision, but for a long time he was sure that his expertise helped him find the best possible solutions. Hadn’t he learnt that the curative effects of modern psychotropics were miraculous? Weren’t they praised as the latest results of scientific research, at last capable of treating any type of mental disease, predestined to ultimately end human suffering?
But over the years, doubts had been crawling into his mind. Was he just burnt-out, tired of the repetitive scenarios of mental suffering? Reluctantly he had to admit that his patients didn’t really get better, no matter what he prescribed. Wasn’t it always the same story, an endless merry-go-round, populated by grotesque characters, but with no true improvements? When had he seen the last happy patient? When had it occurred that a person praised him for his successful treatment? When did somebody report that they left their suffering behind and that they are now enjoying life to its fullest? It just did not happen!
More and more often he asked himself if his professional life was meaningful. But he continued prescribing the medications anyway, because that was in line with his profession and he didn’t know what else to do.
Here it must be disclosed that Dr. Wohlgemut began suffering from depression. At times, he just wanted to curl up in his bed and not deal with anything anymore. That made him feel desperate. What should he do now? Wasn’t he supposed to be the all-knowing specialist who helped his patients to leave their afflictions behind? He developed a habit of “pill-rolling”, a repetitive involuntary rolling movement of thumb and index finger that some experts associated with beginning Parkinson. He panicked. In total despair, he secretly prescribed psychotropics to himself. He experimented, over a period of numerous months, with the most prominent medications for depression first, Prozac and Zoloft, Lexapro and Wellbutrin and then he proceeded to the less common ones. To his dismay, none of them helped! Quite the contrary, they made him even more fatigued, apathic, listless, overwhelmed to a point where he lost his energy, dragged himself to his office without motivation and had a hard time performing his daily professional duties. Luckily, his patients did not notice, because they were so enslaved with their own problems. But the more they were focused on themselves, the more he was aware of his own dysfunctionality.
Dr. Wohlgemut was in trouble. What should he do? This had become a nightmare. He kept his situation secret for a long time. How could he confide in anybody? How could a psychiatrist seek help for depression? With whom? Colleagues? Besides appearing ridiculous, they wouldn’t know what to do either. Wasn’t he an expert on depression? Anxiety? Dysfunctionality? Finally, he talked to an old friend from college days. She advised him to see a psychotherapist. A psychotherapist? A psychiatrist seeking help from a psychotherapist? Haah, he was a proud man and seeing, as an accomplished psychiatrist, a psychotherapist would be considered the ultimate humiliation. An absurdity! No way!
Seen from outside, Dr. Wohlgemut’s life was still not too bad. He had a great income and was a well-respected member of the psychiatric industry. If just that annoying depression would evaporate!
After all, Dr. Wohlgemut had come a long way. Considering his cruel childhood and tough early years, he had been astonishingly successful. Now it may be helpful to look into his life history.
He was born in World War II, a war baby. His father’s job was to kill people on the Eastern warfront. His mother was alone with him and his older sister. A few years into the war, bombs were raining from the sky. The family home was hit and destroyed by fire. The children were pulled out from under the rubble, excavated from the cellars that had been converted into bomb shelters. Swiftly they were evacuated to the countryside, all alone, no mom, mutterseelenallein. Little Kasper fell ill with larynx diphtheria, was rushed to a war hospital, rattled in agony for weeks and survived miraculously – with lifelong hospitalization traumas. His father came back, emotionally bankrupted from the war, beat up the children with whips, a thinner one for lighter crimes, a thick one with fat straps for more severe crimes.
One day when he was already in his early teens, Kasper, in a fit of uncontrollable rage, pushed and kicked the precious Louis XV commode through the staircase of the home from the second floor into the foyer downstairs, where it burst into pieces. Police and ambulance were called. Kasper was confined to the locked ward of a federal psychiatric institution. For years he was fed with drugs, mainly tranquilizers and sleeping pills. By the time he was 16, he realized that he had become an emotional cripple for the rest of his life.
That was the point when he needed to break out. Homelessly and aimlessly, he roamed about the world for years, sustaining himself with odd jobs, hitch-hiking, enlisting on merchant ships, finally ending up in Southern California. A friend from his home country helped him to give his life path a new direction. He thought Kasper was intelligent and persuaded him to apply to UCLA. Kasper received a grant, studied medicine and psychiatry and became a reputable psychiatrist. Everything indicated that, miraculously, he had left his rotten past behind.
A few years after he had built up his career, established himself as a well-recognized psychiatrist and struggled with his depression, his life should take a decisive turn. One day a new patient came in. He was about Dr. Wohlgemut’s age, but as opposed to him he was a strong, tall man with a square head, a red face, loud voice, shiny incisors, powerful personality and big ego. “I am also a licensed psychiatrist”, he claimed with confidence. Dr. Wohlgemut’s hopes went up. He had a lot in common with that man, yes, he seemed to be an alter ego, but with lots of strength and energy. Should he be the man he could confide in, the man who could understand him? Help him?
Unfortunately, it turned out that the man, in a threatening voice, continued “I am a psychiatrist, Doctor Wohlgemut, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have problems. I have come a long way and I need to tell you my life story, so you can cure me. Don’t interrupt me!”
Dr. Wohlgemut moved uncomfortably back and forth on his chair, staring at his laptop.
“I was born in World War II, a war baby”, the man said. “My father’s job was to kill people on the Eastern warfront. My mother was alone with me and my older sister.”
Dr. Wohlgemut gasped, his laptop sliding.
“Bombs were raining from the sky. The house was hit and destroyed by fire.”
Dr. Wohlgemut screamed, “hold it!” His laptop fell to the floor.
“The children were excavated from under the rubble and evacuated to the countryside, alone, no mom, mutterseelenallein. I fell ill with larynx diphtheria. I ended up in the hospital, rattled in agony for weeks, survived miraculously.”
The man’s words penetrated Dr. Wohlgemut’s chest like burning arrows. Mobilizing his ultimate survival energy he screamed: “No, No, No, Stop it! You liar, you are stealing my life, destroying my career, murdering me. You are a con artist, mocking my past, simulating alien scenarios. I will have you kicked out of my office.”
“I have been an emotional cripple all my life and you are condemned to cure me!” finalized the man.
That’s when Dr. Wohlgemut broke down, fell to the floor, writhing, convulsing, choking, rattling in agony.
The medical personnel heard the commotion and came running in. In vain they tried to calm Dr. Wohlgemut and lift him. Blood was running out of his head and mouth. Emergency doctors came to the scene. It turned out that he had suffered an epileptic seizure and hurt his head badly when he fell off his chair. His last patient took advantage of the confusion, grabbed Dr. Wohlgemut’s laptop and slipped unnoticeably out the door.
An ambulance was called and Dr. Wohlgemut was admitted to a psychiatric clinic. Over the following days, weeks and months, he suffered a series of epileptic grand mal episodes. They diagnosed a chemical imbalance, probably with genetic origins. He was given all kinds of the latest psychotropics and epileptic drugs. One day they found him, his body cramped up and contorted in his hospital bed, his breath was gone – dead.
© Maniwolf – English Original
Carina, la leonita bailarina
Carina was born on the last day of August in the Sasan Gir wildlife sanctuary in the state of Gujarat in Northwestern India, which is nowadays the only remaining refuge of the Asiatic lion. This is a stretch of rugged land, where the green plains and sloping hills extend from the Arabian Sea in the South to the towering mountains in the North. It was a hot summer night during the monsoon season, and incessant heavy tropical rains had been inundating the savannahs and forests. This made them inaccessible to tourists and restored, for a few months, some of nature’s virgin freshness.
The full moon threw a pale shimmer on the newborn lioness cub, bathing her in a soft, milky shine. She was the last one of a litter of three and definitely the most luxuriant one, with her light, buff skin on her underbody, lustrous yellowish fur, and long, slim torso covered with brown rosettes. Her mother was a large, good-natured lioness with a majestic ruff, a tufted tail, and a prominent fold of skin running the length of her abdomen. She patiently suckled her baby, who looked so peaceful and harmless, with her closed eyes and smooth body really resembling more a lamb than a wild lioness. From the start her mom took a special liking to Carina and pampered her with affection, constantly licking her entire body from head to toe with tender strokes, while the cub welcomed the warm air with deep, eager breaths.
After six and a half days Carina opened her eyes, and exactly at this moment the sun had broken through the dark clouds so as to greet her and shower her with light and warmth. Carina blinked into the sunrays and uttered a long happy lazy growl….then she rolled on her back to enjoy even more the pleasure of the newly discovered light soothing her body, and the sweet licks of her mom traveling over her head and neck. Eventually she decided to go back to sleep. As we all know, lions love to rest and Carina was no exception.
It soon turned out that Carina was quite different from the lions of her age, or any other lions for that matter. For one she loved her mom and became attached to her much more than lion cubs usually do. She always tried to stay close to her and often approached her to seek her attention, to be nursed and licked and caressed. After six months of suckling, sometimes her mom became impatient or even slightly irritated, and began to turn her away. Then Carina strolled down the grassland and was a bit sad, but at the end of the day she always sought her mom, who welcomed her back with joy. They spent cozy times nuzzling their foreheads, faces and necks, and usually ended up purring together happily before the night set in.
This was Carina’s least unusual behavior, though. More peculiar were her hunting instincts or, rather, the absence thereof. At a few months of age, the other lions started displaying stalking urges, and eventually developed hunting skills. Under the guidance of the older lionesses, they went out into the jungle under the cover of the night, searching for prey — cattle, nilgai, boar, deer, monkeys, foxes, and large gazelles. They learnt how to encircle the herds from different points, and sneak up to the victims before starting the attack, chasing the kill, and bringing it down. Carina, however, could not get excited about these hunting expeditions…they really bored her to death, and after a while she did not want to take part any more. Instead, she preferred to run and frolic with the other cubs at dusk, joining them in playful teasing or getting drawn into good-natured wrestling matches, interspersed with snarling, hissing, meowing, and woofing. At other times, she just explored the vast areas of the savannahs or retreated into the thicket in order to rest.
The most striking difference, however, came to be Carina’s feeding habits. After the grown-up lions brought in the kill and devoured it until they were full, the cubs were usually allowed to feed on what was left. At the beginning Carina tried to take part in the wild competitive fights to get the best junks of raw meat. But progressively she shied away from these fights and it so happened that when she got a piece of meat in front of her claws she even refused to eat, just sniffing at it suspiciously and snubbing it with disdain. She just decided that it made her feel better inside to stay away from that kind of nourishment.
So what did Carina feed on after she was weaned?? The lions of the pride stared at her in disbelief when they saw her strolling down the hills and grazing the grasslands! Yes, by an unusual twist of nature, Carina had become a vegetarian lioness! She was only feeding on grass and leaves and flowers and twigs…that’s all she ever wanted.
While the males looked on with consternation, the females, especially her mom, were quite worried. How could Carina grow and become a healthy lioness if she only ate plants? Her mom sometimes looked after her and wondered how Carina could have turned out so different. “Why don’t you join in on the fighting of the lion pride,” she said. “Why don’t you take part in the hunting?” “Why don’t you devour the raw meat in order to grow and become strong and fierce?” She thought that her favorite cub might be lonely or unhappy or sick, wandering around all by herself and rejecting any of the common food.
Carina, in turn, did not worry at all… she only followed her inner voice. She meowed joyfully and purred with pleasure, moving around slowly, exploring her surroundings with wide-open eyes, marveling at the variety of plants and feeding on them with the appetite of a healthy young creature. Peacefully she went about her day, and most of her time she rested …but even in her dreams she continued chewing fresh plants.
Her favorite place was an area where the grass graded into the woods, a spot with coarse vegetation and scattered trees that provided both shelter against the heavy rains and the occasional burning sun. There she spent her time grazing and when she was full she licked herself contentedly, and lied down to sleep and pursue her dreams.
As time passed, Carina grew larger and smarter than all the other lion cubs. She outshined all of them with her lustrous fur and outlived them by staying away from the dangerous fighting and hunting endeavors. Many of the cubs perished before they completed their first year. They either died from starvation, not being able to prevail against other stronger or older lions in the fight for meat, or from the onslaughts by jackals, hyenas and leopards when they were out there on the hunting trips. Carina, in contrast, became happier and healthier every day.
After the monsoon season ended it was tourist time. First appeared the rangers, spotting the lions with binoculars, trying to watch and count them, and to take stock of their health and well-being. Then the first jeeps came roaring through the park and minibuses full of tourists appeared in the distance. While the minibuses stayed on the main dirt road, the jeeps squeezed their way into the small trails in search of photo opportunities. By the time the holidays came, a constant stream of tourists traveled through the park every day. While the lions got accustomed to this invasion, they also naturally resented it. The three male lions of the pride herded them together and made them retreat into the undergrowth. They patrolled their territory and warned the other lions when the humans came close.
The humans were the only creatures the lions ran away from, and while they were not necessarily afraid of them, their instinct told them they could not be trusted, so they avoided them whenever possible. The humans did not hunt them, instead, they just gawked and took pictures, but the constant influx of the human invaders was an annoyance that made the lions angry. It was not unusual that they snarled and roared ferociously for hours, which of course made for an especially thrilling experience for the humans, sending shivers of fright down their spines.
Carina, however, did not flee. She could not see why the humans with their rolling cages and strange, agitated behavior should disturb or even threaten her…after all this was her land, and the moon and the sun, the sky and the clouds, the plants and the animals were just the same with or without humans. As Carina was a patient and serene lioness, she just greeted the human crowds like any other creatures of her world…with no intention to attack them, but also no fear to be attacked. Actually, after a while she found them quite entertaining.
The rangers and tourists soon became aware of the peculiar lioness, who not only welcomed them, but also was eating plants instead of hunting prey with the other lions. This lioness was truly anything but ferocious! They were intrigued by her, as she looked so healthy and radiant, nearly extraterrestrial. She allowed them to come really close, and soon she was not only the main attraction of the park but within a few more months became also the most photographed lioness in the world.
Crowds of tourists accumulated around her to witness the vegetarian lioness. Soon film crews from foreign countries were hauled in and peaceful Carina became what could be called a celebrity. One group of cinematographers from Andalusia, Spain produced a film and published a short clip on YouTube. They called it Carina, La Leonita Bailarina and scored it with classical flamenco music of Paco de Lucia. There you can see her moving graciously through the savannah towards the hills, while the moon is illuminating the scene. And it looks like the glorious lioness is dancing in the moonlight, melting into the horizon…fading away into eternity in a glow of pale pastel colors.
© Maniwolf – English Original