Part 3 (1/2)

Just then the officer with whom I had talked the day before came up. He stopped before us and scowled at the soldier who saluted in hasty confusion.

”I wish, Captain,” said the officer addressing me, ”that you would not take advantage of these absurd hospital conditions to disrupt discipline by fraternizing with a private.”

At this the soldier looked up and saluted again.

”Well?” said the officer.

”He's not to blame, sir,” said the soldier, ”he's off his head.”

CHAPTER III

IN A BLACK UTOPIA THE BLOND BROOD BREEDS AND SWARMS

~1~

It was with a strange mixture of eagerness and fear that I received the head physician's decision that I would henceforth recover my faculties more rapidly in the familiar environment of my own home.

A wooden-faced male nurse accompanied me in a closed vehicle that ran noiselessly through the vaulted interior streets of the completely roofed-in city. Once our vehicle entered an elevator and was let down a brief distance. We finally alighted in a street very like the one on which the hospital was located, and filed down a narrow pa.s.sage-way. My companion asked for my keys, which I found in my clothing. I stood by with a palpitating heart as he turned the lock and opened the door.

The place we entered was a comfortably furnished bachelor's apartment.

Books and papers were littered about giving evidence of no disturbance since the sudden leaving of the occupant. Immensely relieved I sat down in an upholstered chair while the nurse scurried about and put the place in order.

”You feel quite at home?” he asked as he finished his task.

”Quite,” I replied, ”things are coming back to me now.”

”You should have been sent home sooner,” he said. ”I wished to tell the chief as much, but I am only a second year interne and it is forbidden me to express an original opinion to him.”

”I am sure I will be all right now,” I replied.

He turned to go and then paused. ”I think,” he said, ”that you should have some notice on you that when you do go out, if you become confused and make mistakes, the guards will understand. I will speak to Lieut.

Forrester, the Third a.s.sistant, and ask that such a card be sent you.”

With that he took his departure.

When he had gone I breathed joyfully and freely. The rigid face and staring eye that I had cultivated relaxed into a natural smile and then I broke into a laugh. Here I was in the heart of Berlin, unsuspected of being other than a loyal German and free, for the time at least, from problems of personal relations.

I now made an elaborate inspection of my surroundings. I found a wardrobe full of men's clothing, all of a single shade of mauve like the suit I wore. Some suits I guessed to be work clothes from their cheaper texture and some, much finer, were evidently dress apparel.

Having rea.s.sured myself that Armstadt had been the only occupant of the apartment, I turned to a pile of papers that the hospital attendant had picked up from the floor where they had dropped from a mail chute. Most of these proved to be the acc.u.mulated copies of a daily chemical news bulletin. Others were technical chemical journals. Among the letters I found an invitation to a meeting of a chemical society, and a note from my tailor asking me to call; the third letter was written on a typewriter, an instrument the like of which I had already discovered in my study. This sheet bore a neatly engraved head reading ”Katrina, Permit 843 LX, Apartment 57, K Street, Level of the Free Women.” The letter ran:

”Dear Karl: For three weeks now you have failed to keep your appointments and sent no explanation. You surely know that I will not tolerate such rude neglect. I have reported to the Supervisor that you are dropped from my list.”

So this was Katrina! Here at last was the end of the fears that had haunted me.

~2~

As I was scanning the chemical journal I heard a bell ring and turning about I saw that a metal box had slid forth upon a side board from an opening in the wall. In this box I found my dinner which I proceeded to enjoy in solitude. The food was more varied than in the hospital. Some was liquid and some gelatinous, and some firm like bread or biscuit. But of natural food products there was nothing save a dish of mushrooms and a single sprig of green no longer than my finger, and which, like a feather in a boy's cap, was inserted conspicuously in the top of a synthetic pudding. There was one food that puzzled me, for it was sausage-like in form and sausage-like in flavour, and I was sure contained some real substance of animal origin. Presuming, as I did at that moment, that no animal life existed in Berlin, I ate this sausage with doubts and misgivings.

The dinner finished, I looked for a way to dispose of the dishes.