Save the Last Bullet for God (2 page)

At the moment, I’m in the session room in my
clinic. The window is on my left and I’m facing the wall. The door
is directly opposite and the patient couch is to my back as I wait
for the session to begin.

With a squeak, the door opens slightly, and
the sequence of decisions begins, along with all of the
implications they entail.

The door opened. a) It is a fellow employee
b) It is a patient

If the answer is (b): The gender of the
person is

a) Woman

b) Man

c) None of the above

If the answer is (a): What kind of woman?

a) Very young

b) Young

c) Middle-aged

d) Other

If the answer is (b): Her features are

a) Average and not attractive

b) Average and moderately attractive

c) Beautiful but not attractive

d) Beautiful and attractive

e) Nondescript

If the answer is (d): Why don’t you sleep
with her right away?

a) Because she is my patient

b) She is married

c) I have too much to lose due to my
status

d) She talks too much

e) If it turns out badly, I have to suffer
the torture of further sessions

The answer is (d).

The patient who enters the room is Mrs.
Hellen Schumann. She has sessions every two weeks and for months,
I’ve had to make the same decisions and rethink them every time she
comes to my office.

On this day, I took a good look at her
fashionable, bobbed, jet-black hair, prominent blue eyes, tiny
nose, full lips (always dark red), and her face, and how it
combined harmoniously with her porcelain white skin. Her dress
hugged her slim waist revealing her womanly curves and a pleasant
scent of bergamot wafted through the room.

“Berlin is increasingly becoming an
interesting place,” she said. “I saw more than a hundred Buddhist
monks wandering the streets. Can you believe it? ”

Without expecting an answer, Hellen put her
fur wrap on the armchair with gentle movements. Taking a white silk
handkerchief out of her bag, she laid it on the pillow with grace,
then sat on the edge of the leather couch before laying down.

She’d been coming to the sessions from Munich
every other Thursday at 3 or 4 p.m. As a well-educated, young woman
from a wealthy family, she was married to the head of the Technical
University of Munich, Winfried Otto Schumann, an intelligent,
promising, middle-aged scientist. Hellen’s only problem, she said,
was the shallow minds of those around her, people of different ages
and disciplines, and the disturbances she caused by candidly saying
everything she thought about them. She did this without
thinking.

I thought her treatment was very easy. At any
point I could have told her: “Just talk less, and, if you manage to
talk one-third of the time that your conversation partner talks,
you can get rid of all your problems.” But a quick, easy treatment
would weaken my reputation as a doctor. Besides, I had financial
concerns. To be honest, she was a nice woman, too.

She would come into town on the morning
before each session and stay the night at the house of her cousin.
She had a difficult relationship with her cousin due to her
cousin’s crisis with jealousy.

How did I know this?

“I feel stressed when I even think about
going to the house of that fat, hung-up idiot and staying there.
I’ve been stressed about it all day. Please don’t misunderstand,
it’s nice to see you and benefit from your treatment, but it’s not
something I can endure. Don’t you agree? I can’t turn my life into
a nightmare of always trying to compensate for my idiot relatives.
. .”

Now you know how I knew, and you have an idea
of how much she talked. If you can imagine this repeated in every
session and covering the same topics, you can understand my
distress, at least a bit.

Hellen respected her husband. She found him
very intelligent, but his tendency to have sexual encounters with
the young assistants at his institute was a slight problem. Another
problem was that he didn’t come from an aristocratic family, so he
didn’t know the important social rules.

“Actually, I love my husband. Maybe I didn’t
when we got married, but over time, I came to. He’s at the head of
a very important department, and he has a prestigious job. I
sometimes want to make him tell me more about his job, but I just
lose interest at some point. Really, it might not be so difficult.
My husband might just be unable to describe it well. You might say
that he’s an academician. You’re right, maybe I can’t devote myself
to him. He educates many students, and he has young, elite
students. I mean, they’re above a specific level. I’m young too,
and elite as well, but the problem might not be this. I might be
too young to understand what he’s been working on. Somehow, he
finds young female assistants there but they probably don’t
understand his job either. They might only be successful at
pretending to understand so that they’re able to charm my
husband.”

“
We might have arrived at different
shores of understanding due to a different education and different
starting points. I grew up in an aristocratic family, and I spent
my childhood learning all the rules that are a compulsory part of
that status. I learned to apply them and care for them. My husband,
though, grew up in a simple peasant family. He might have tended
toward mathematics, because, with their simple rules, he had plenty
of time…”

The sequence, topics, and even the specific
content were the same, thus, I could get back to my usual work:
reviewing my next article and revising it. Occasionally, I would
add, “Hmmm, yes, possible,” and move slightly in my chair.

So I buried myself in my research as Hellen
moved onto her mother-in-law’s vulgarity, the diminishing quality
of her social environment, and fortune tellers.

“My mother-in-law is actually…”

“Hmmm,” I said, moving in my chair a little
bit.

“…
social environment…”

“Yes,” I nodded my head.

“Vril means ‘I love God’ in Sumerian.”

“Hmmm?” I surprised myself by asking. I
looked up from my article and listened more closely.

“Sumerian,” she continued, “The language that
the Vril community uses to get in touch with the aliens is
Sumerian. The background of the German language is also Sumerian;
it’s actually easy to understand. I’m interested in fortune telling
and supernatural activities. I’ve attended almost all their
meetings and participated in their activities. Of course, like some
others, I disagreed at first with dear Winfried about this issue.
His strict mathematical doctrines and his manly and peasant
intelligence prevent him from flexible thinking, so I can’t blame
him for it. When his strict attitude began to constrain me in my
activities, I naturally wanted to get rid of him and prove to him
how right it was what I’ve been doing. During the Vril sessions, I
asked for some piece of technology or other example as proof for my
husband from the Arian scientists on Alpha Tauri. I was given a lot
of pages with many convoluted mathematical formulas and
incomprehensible texts and explanations. I studied them a lot, but
I didn’t understand what they were and, in my despair, tentatively
gave them to my husband. He threw them on the floor when he learned
where they came from. I collected the scattered papers from the
floor, wanting him to look through them, at least. As far as I
understand, resonance vacillates at seven different frequencies
between a layer around the Earth called the ionosphere and the
Earth’s surface. It is something like the Earth’s heartbeat. He
asked me a lot of questions. I couldn’t answer them as I didn’t
know, but finally he’s gained some respect for the Vril
community…”

Hellen was talking too much again, but she
had my interest. “What is the Vril community?” I asked.

“You would like them, Doctor. The Vril girls
are so beautiful. They purposely don’t cut their hair because they
make ponytails with their hair that go past their waists. They
actually use their ponytails to communicate with aliens. When the
government learned about their relationship with the aliens and
their superior technology, Adolf Hitler appointed Heinrich Himmler,
whom he trusts the most, to inspect this community. Himmler took
their headquarters to Berlin and organized a lot of scientists,
like my husband, to work with them. It is such a secret that my
Winfried doesn’t even tell me anything. I have been harmed the most
by this, actually. Before, I used to attend the community’s
activities twice or three times a week. Now, I can only attend them
when I visit you. This might be the main reason for my depression.
What do you think, Doctor?”

“It’s possible…,” I confirmed, a little bit
late. Hellen was beginning to ramble on and I was beginning to bury
my head in my work again.

“The pure race of Arians is in touch with the
Earth from a planet in a faraway galaxy, and they talk to us via
Maria Orsic.”

At that, I jolted upright. “Maria Orsic? Did
you just say Maria Orsic?” This was the first time I’d asked my
beautiful patient a question I cared to know the answer to.

“Yes, yes, Doctor. Maria Orsic is the head of
the Vril community, and we owe her a lot.”

“With long blonde hair?”

“Yes. How did you know? I must confess she’s
more beautiful than any other woman I’ve seen up to now. Her every
move is graceful. I think she came to Munich from Vienna long ago
and, before that, from somewhere in the Balkans.”

“Croatia?” I asked, my heart now
pounding.

“I’m not sure,” Hellen responded. “Might be
Croatia. As you know, it’s a very complicated territory, and its
map is always changing.”

“Is she in Berlin now—I mean, with the Vril
community?”

“Yes, don’t you read the papers? They always
appear on the agenda; they’ve increased their prestige by making
their young, beautiful girls get married to military officers. Are
you sure you live here, Doctor?”

“Well, I have a busy and challenging
profession,” I muttered as memories attacked my mind. Was she as
beautiful as before? Would she remember me? Could I see her
again?

“Oh, the session is over,” said Hellen. “Time
passes so quickly and smoothly with you, Dr. Reich.” She stood up
slowly and stretched her lower back slightly, enough to push her
heavy breasts against the top two buttons of her blouse.

She was leaving and I had to do
something.

“Actually, I really enjoy spending time with
patients like you,” I lied desperately.

Hellen turned to look at me.

“I’m even doing a study about whether the
treatment process can be supported by seeing patients outside of
the clinic,” I continued.

Hellen’s prominent blue eyes looked me over
as if they saw me for the first time, and a little smile greeted
me.

“I’m open to any kind of offer that prevents
me from going to my cousin, especially if you’re a part of it,
Doctor.” Her tone had changed, and she sounded distracted. “What do
you have in mind?”

“Dinner?”

“When?”

. . .

We met at sunset, far away from the chaos of
the city, in a spacious restaurant with high ceilings and tables
adorned with purple orchids, all faintly lit by the playful flicker
of candlelight.

The river was visible through ceiling-high
windows set between brocade-covered columns. I thought that it was
an unnecessarily romantic atmosphere. But Hellen seemed
pleased.

“Dr. Reich, an excellent choice. You must be
experienced in charming your patients outside of the clinic.” She
shaped the words without taking her eyes off of me. Her big blue
eyes were enhanced by the dark blue and green sheen of her
dress.

“Coincidence,” I explained. “This is the
first time I’ve come, and, well…just a coincidence.” I was playing
shy for reasons I didn’t understand myself.

Hellen took a drink of her wine. It was red
as rubies and it accentuated the dark red of her lips. “I may be
young,” she said, “but I know when to believe in coincidences.” She
smiled.

I played with my napkin and turned the glass
in my hand before taking a gulp of cognac.

“You’re very different than other men. You’re
a person who listens to others without getting bored.”

I thought back to my office and how often I
retreated to my articles during my patients’ long, senseless
talks.

“Of course, what makes you
interesting…no…attractive,” she corrected herself. “What makes you
attractive is not only this characteristic of yours. A man must
behave consistently well, but he also must take care of his woman.
He must protect her and respect her thoughts. That’s what I look
for in a partner, but I haven’t found it.”

She studied me and I met her eyes.

“Okay, sexuality is important at some point,”
she said, “and one must have it, but to have it with someone who
respects you is well…more…”

“Mrs. Schumann,” I interrupted. “It’s so nice
that you have the same relaxed attitude you have in our therapy
sessions, but isn’t this your main problem, being too relaxed while
talking to others? As you know, being so honest out in society can
leave you defenseless.”

“See? You’ve just supported my point.” Hellen
said, lighting up. “You’re being protective, being so careful not
to hurt me, listening to whatever I say attentively and thinking
about it. This is what makes you attractive.”

It was clear Hellen understood only what she
wanted to understand. I tried to test her awareness by disturbing
her a bit.

“Are you that explicit when you’re intimate
with your husband?”

She paused and took a deep breath. “It’s like
always, I mean, of course I go on talking to express myself. Is
that strange? I always think that when two people are that close to
each other, what’s talked about is more enjoyable.”