Certified Insane, page 1
Heinz G. Konsalik
Certified Insane
Translated by Anthea Bell
Saga
Certified Insane
Translated by Anthea Bell
Original title: Entmündigt
Original language: German
Heinz G. Konsalik: Entmündigt
Copyright © 2022 by Dagmar Konsalik (www.konsalik.de), represented by AVA international GmbH, Germany (www.ava-international.de)
Originally published 1963 by Lichtenberg Verlag, Germany
Copyright ©1963, 2024 Heinz G. Konsalik and SAGA Egmont
All rights reserved
ISBN: 9788728400296
1st ebook edition
Format: EPUB 3.0
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1
Silently, the gates slid open. Two black cars passed the porter’s lodge and drove on through the grounds. It was a fine day: the trees were bathed in golden sunlight, and there was a scent of earth and freshly-mown grass. The white building resembling a castle which came into view among the trees and bushes was a dazzling sight. Rosebeds stood on either side of the drive.
Gisela Peltzner stared through the window of the first car at the Doric columns of the porch. Two men in white doctors’ coats stood there, hands in their pockets. They appeared to be waiting for the two cars now driving slowly through the grounds.
Inside the second car, Anna Fellgrub leaned forward to speak to the chauffeur. “We’ll stay in here and wait till it’s all over,” she said quietly, as if the occupants of the other car could hear her. “Such a dreadful thing . . . I don’t want to watch!”
The first car stopped. The two white-coated men came forward and opened its back door. The face raised to them was a girl’s face surrounded by thick fair hair, the blue eyes unnaturally wide and lifeless, shining like the artificial eyes of a toy, no emotion in them.
“I’m Dr Pade, senior consultant here,” one of the men introduced himself. “How do you do, Fräulein Peltzner?”
He offered Gisela Peltzner both his hands. Automatically, she took them, and he gently helped her out of the car. She stood there like a doll, her fair hair shining in the bright sun.
The other doors of the car opened, and Gisela’s uncle, Ewald Peltzner, her cousin Heinrich Fellgrub, Dr Vrobel and Mr Adenkoven got out. Vrobel was a specialist in nervous disorders; Adenkoven was a solicitor.
Meanwhile, the second car had come to a halt too, and was standing in the shade of a huge chestnut tree. Its doors remained closed, but faces were pressed to its windows, curious eyes gazing out at the blonde head of the girl standing there surrounded by the men.
What would she do? Would she start shouting again and become violent? Would she clutch at the doctors, crying, “I’m not ill! I’m not mad, I’m as sane as you are, can’t you see that?” Or would she do nothing, just go with them in the same way as she had got into the car, her eyes empty, her will-power gone, moving with the mindless obedience of a robot? What would she do?
Dr Pade looked at the little gathering. “Are all of you family?”
“No, only my nephew here and myself. I am Fräulein Peltzner’s uncle.” Ewald Peltzner buttoned the jacket of his light silk suit over his paunch. He was sweating profusely, as a result of having drunk three whiskies to fortify himself for this journey. “This is Dr Vrobel.”
Dr Pade shook hands with his medical colleague. “How do you do, Dr Vrobel? Please come inside. The Professor will be with you directly.” He failed to notice that Adenkoven was still waiting to be introduced.
As the men moved into the shadow of the porch, Dr Pade turned to Gisela Peltzner again. Dr Ebert, the ward physician in whose charge she would be, was standing beside her, scrutinizing her in silence. Her glance went past him as if she did not even see him, wandering over the white walls of the building, the shining, clean windows, all of them closed, back to the door, and then settled on Pade, who was coming towards her.
“Did you have a pleasant journey?” he asked in friendly tones.
“Yes.” Her own voice was light, clear and firm.
“Well, do come in, Fräulein Peltzner. You must be tired. I’ll get them to bring you a cold drink. It’s cooler indoors; we have good air conditioning here.”
Mechanically, as she had done everything during this last hour, she took the doctor’s arm. “No, I’m not tired,” she said calmly. “I am a little thirsty—but I’d really like to see the Professor, at once.”
“And so you shall, Fräulein Peltzner. The Professor will always be at your disposal.”
“At once!” she repeated, a sudden gleam in her bright, fixed eyes. “You see, I am perfectly sane, and I don’t know why I’m here.”
“Yes, of course you’re sane!” Dr Pade smiled at her.
The light in her eyes went out again. Pade recognized the phenomenon from hundreds of similar cases: patients sedated by drugs walked, talked, saw and ate, but it was as if they were living behind a layer of cotton wool.
Gisela was led through a large hall, and found herself in a big, light room with a flowered couch, plain pale blue wallpaper, some pretty little French chairs, and lilac curtains.
“I should lie down and have a rest,” said Dr Pade, indicating the couch. “They’ll bring you a glass of iced orange juice immediately, and I’ll be back myself very soon.”
Gisela Peltzner sat down on the couch. Smiling, Dr Pade left the pleasant, sunlit room. The door closed almost soundlessly behind him.
A door without a handle.
Gisela stared at the flat, bare spot just above the keyhole.
It’s happened, she thought. The door has closed on me. A door without a handle. I’m in a mental hospital, and I’m sane—perfectly sane . . .
She did not have the strength to jump up and shout, hammer on the door or fling the window open. The drug was paralyzing her nervous system, sapping the last of her strength. She let herself lie back on the couch and closed her eyes.
When a nurse brought her the glass of orange juice, Gisela was asleep on the couch, her head hanging down, its flowing golden hair framing a pale, fine-boned face.
The Professor had opened Gisela Peltzner’s file, and was taking another look at the diagnoses that had persuaded him to admit the girl to his hospital. It was some time before he looked up again; then, turning to Dr Vrobel, he put his first question quietly but firmly.
“So you consider it a matter of urgency to have Fräulein Peltzner admitted, doctor?”
“Yes,” said Vrobel, quickly. “I was going on Mr Adenkoven’s report: as legal adviser to the Peltzner Works, he could give me a comprehensive account of everything that’s happened over the last few months.”
“Ah, yes: Mr Adenkoven?” The Professor looked at the solicitor without expression, as if demonstrating that he did not think much of lay opinions. Adenkoven looked weary, with dark rings under his eyes, and sounded nervous when he spoke.
“I really have no choice but to suggest Fräulein Peltzner be declared legally incapacitated. The report you have there describes everything which led us to take this step. It’s really tragic that matters should have come to this. She needs to be examined here in your hospital, Professor; her symptoms are severe psychosis, a state of excitability, refusal of food, suicidal tendencies . . . well, Fräulein Peltzner simply is not in command of her faculties. In fact, she could ruin the Peltzner Works. As you know, after her father’s tragic accidental death out hunting, she inherited his entire fortune, and all his factories and other properties. The will is perfectly legal. Only a few months later, however, she showed such alarming signs of derangement that we were obliged to place her under medical supervision, in the interests of the Works and their twenty thousand employees. Since then, her condition has deteriorated so much that we decided it was urgently necessary for her to be examined in a psychiatric hospital. We see no alternative but to have her certified insane—that will depend, above all, on your diagnosis, Professor.”
Ewald Peltzner nodded. Adenkoven wiped his mouth with a handkerchief.
Professor von Maggfeldt bit his lower lip. “Hm—and you’re the patient’s uncle?” he asked Ewald Peltzner.
“Yes. My brother was devoted to his only daughter, but as managing director of the Works, I could see the whole thing coming. Really, it’s a mercy Bruno isn’t alive to see it too. A terrible thing, my brother’s child ending up here . . .”
Ewald Peltzner fell silent, obviously much moved. He was sweating even more profusely, though he thought that Adenkoven had said his piece perfectly, not forgetting to include concern for the welfare of the twenty thousand employees.
“You’ve been managing the business since your brother’s death?” asked the Professor.
“Yes, along with my nephew here, Herr Heinrich Fellgrub.”
The Professor glanc
Maggfeldt slowly closed the file, and said, “Well, if your diagnosis proves correct, Dr Vrobel, we shall do everything in our power to . . .”
Here he raised his scholarly, white-haired head in surprise and some displeasure: Ewald Peltzner had interrupted him! Peltzner was saying, “Yes, Professor, and when shall we know—I mean, when do we hear whether . . .” He glanced at his solicitor. “As we were saying, there’s the welfare of twenty thousand employees to be considered. Until my niece is certified insane, the Works can’t dispose freely of . . . that is . . .”
Ewald Peltzner had run out of words. Adenkoven came to his rescue.
“Just to give you one example, the last thing the poor girl did was to donate quarter of a million marks to a Children’s Home.”
Professor von Maggfeldt made a note of the sum. “But surely that was a very philanthropic act,” he said thoughtfully. “And people have a right to do what they like with their money, don’t they, Herr Adenkoven?”
“I’m afraid it’s just not possible to withdraw so large a sum while the Peltzner Works are involved in the development of new production methods. Pursuing such a course would mean ruin—and Fräulein Peltzner has had sole and full rights of disposal over all the bank accounts!”
“We shall examine Fräulein Peltzner, and keep her under close observation,” said the Professor, a dismissive tone in his voice.
“But when,” Ewald Peltzner persisted, “shall we know whether . . .?”
“In about six weeks’ time. At the earliest.”
Peltzner thought: as long as that? But he did not put his thoughts into words. They had brought off the trickiest and most important part of the business: the doors of the mental hospital had closed on Gisela.
Professor von Maggfeldt accompanied his visitors to the door of his office, shook hands, and then watched them leave, with a nurse to escort them to the front door.
Dr Pade came along the corridor, carrying a new file, its pages still blank. Soon they would contain a case history: the history of a human being laid bare, her mind stripped of all its mysteries.
“I’ve put her in Room 3,” said Dr Pade, in reply to Professor von Maggfeldt’s glance of inquiry.
“Is she quiet?”
“She’s asleep. Dr Vrobel had her well sedated. But she wanted to speak to you, Professor. She was insisting that she was perfectly sane.”
Maggfeldt nodded, almost tempted to sigh wearily. The old, old story, he thought: they shouldn’t be here at all, they don’t feel ill, they’re quite normal, it’s everyone else who’s crazy. They all say so, all the patients here in the wards situated in separate buildings around our grounds. A strange little world inhabited by people like animals, stammering idiots, raving maniacs, the weak-minded, and laughing, screaming madmen.
“Let’s go and see her,” said Maggfeldt. “I think we should be there when she wakes up.”
By the time the party of men, led by Ewald Peltzner, came out of the main hospital building, the occupants of the second car had got out of it: Anna Fellgrub, Gisela Peltzner’s aunt and her dead father’s sister, and Monique Peltzner, Ewald’s flighty young daughter. Monique was looking around her with distinct boredom; she hated family expeditions of any kind.
Unable to contain her excitement and curiosity any longer, Anna Fellgrub ran to her brother and grasped the lapels of his jacket. “Well?” she asked. “How did it go, Ewald?”
“She’s staying there.”
Anna Fellgrub let go of him. “You mean that’s all? What about having her certified?”
“That won’t be for another six weeks at the earliest. It seems they want to go into her case very thoroughly.”
“But why, Ewald? I thought the medical recommendations of Dr Vrobel and Dr Oldenberg would be quite enough?”
Ewald Peltzner shrugged his shoulders. “Apparently not.”
Anna Fellgrub looked at the big white building. An elderly man was standing at a window in one of its side wings, catching imaginary flies. His cupped hand described perfect circular movements in the empty air, snapping shut time and time again. As he did this, he grinned broadly at Anna Fellgrub, standing there below, and stuck out his tongue.
“Let’s go—quick!” she said to Ewald Peltzner, and hurried back to her car. Monique was powdering her nose. Her pretty, vacant face with its saucer eyes was a daring composition of colours.
“Has Daddy done what he wanted to do, Aunt Anna?” she asked, licking her full, red-painted lips. Her black hair was sleek and shiny.
“Get in the car—let’s get away from here!”
Slowly, just as they had come, the two black cars drove back through the grounds. The gates automatically slid aside to let them out again.
Once they were out in the road, Ewald Peltzner loosened his tie, opened the neck of his shirt, and reached for a cigarette with fingers that trembled slightly. “Well, we managed that all right,” he said hoarsely. Dr Vrobel and Mr Adenkoven were sitting one in front of him, one beside him; he patted them both on the back. “We’ll drop in at home, gentlemen, and you can pick up your cheques straight away.”
When Gisela woke, the sun was still shining on the French chairs, the pale blue wallpaper, the flowered couch and the door without a handle. She sat up abruptly, seeing the faces of Professor von Maggfeldt and Dr Pade, and put both hands up to her long fair hair to tidy it. The fixed look had left her eyes. There was life in them now, life and the will to fight, grief, horror and hope—they were the eyes of a human being again.
“So you think I’m mad?” she asked. She hardly remembered meeting Dr Pade, tall, very correct and well-groomed, dark-eyed and thin-faced; he was as much a stranger to her as the white-haired Professor with the kindly face.
“No, not at all,” said Professor von Maggfeldt.
“Still, my uncle’s managed to get me put away here! On account of false diagnoses made by doctors bribed to give them! That’s a criminal offence.”
“It certainly would be,” said Professor von Maggfeldt.
“But you’re going to keep me prisoner here?”
“My dear Fräulein Peltzner, no one is keeping you prisoner. You are here so that we can find out the facts, that’s all.”
“What facts?”
“Whether the diagnosis of— of those two doctors is true or false.”
“It’s false, Professor.”
“Well, now that you’re here, wouldn’t it be better for you to trust us and leave all that in our hands? Whatever happens, you’re safe with us.”
Maggfeldt’s kindly, paternal voice had a hypnotic effect. Gisela Peltzner leaned back on the flowered couch again. Her slim hands were trembling as she picked up the glass of orange juice and took a small sip.
“Thank you, Professor,” she said almost inaudibly. “All right, I trust you. I’m ready to undergo the necessary examinations. I’ll stay.”
Professor von Maggfeldt went over to Gisela, sat down beside her and patted her clasped hands. “Good,” he said. “I’m delighted!”
Gisela looked thoughtfully at the Professor, as if, in spite of his words, she was by no means sure about him. “Professor,” she said firmly, “I don’t want to start out with any more misunderstandings. I’m not after protection of any kind, or a cure; all I want is my rights!” And she went on, passionately, “My father left me the Peltzner Works! Me, no one else. My uncle and aunt thought I was just a silly little girl who liked pretty clothes, fast cars and expensive furs, travel and love affairs. Well, I could certainly have spent my time that way—but instead I began looking through the firm’s books. I had the accounts audited, and within three months we were checking up on all the expense accounts too. Then we got to the research budget—and there were two hundred thousand marks missing there alone! Money my uncle had gambled away at casinos.”
She rose, and stood in front of Professor von Maggfeldt, her face flushed with anger. “And that is why I’m here! I was making myself a nuisance; I’d suddenly found too many of the skeletons in the family cupboard. I was also planning to marry, and that would have meant a final goodbye to the Peltzner fortune for the rest of the family. That’s why I’m here—the one and only reason I’m here. I think they did away with my father first . . .”
