Part: 2/4 read part one
Wordcount: 1,203
Synopsis: The two doctors clash over the patient’s strange behavior.
Camille glanced back at the doctors, and Falke tried to catch his eyes, smiling. “Seems the housekeeper didn’t bring her sewing-box to Portugal.” Camille closed the box and sat down in an armchair near the window. He opened his hand and looked down at the spool of thread he had for some reason taken from the box. For a while he stared at it, meditatively unwinding and re-winding several inches if string. After a long time, he rose and returned the spool to the box.
The next morning Metzdorff and his young college breakfasted on coffee and cigars. There wasn’t word between them until Falke slumped back into his armchair and said,“You know, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with him at all.” Metzdorff looked over at him as he gazed out the window into the still morning. “He simply lives in a different realm and doesn’t care to mingle with anyone else. I believe he’s silent by choice.”
“Dr. Falke,” said Metzdorf, “there are silent men in this world, but surely you know that living one’s entire life refusing to communicate with other people is a symptom of a disease.”
“But there’s nothing wrong with him,” he burst out.
The German sighed. “He doesn’t speak.”
The discussion ended.
For a while there was nothing but the whispering sound of the willow branches against the window. Falke’s clear, dark eyes roved for a minute, and then settled on the jackdaw on the windowsill. He rose from his chair, scowling, and approached it as if it might fly away. “What is it, Falke?” he heard Metzdorf ask behind him. Shifting his cigar to his left hand, he reached down and ran his index finger along the thread that was wound around the bird’s bill. From there the string trailed downward through the air and over to where it connected by another loop to the mahogany stand of a globe several feet away. The thread doubled back from there and returned to the jackdaw, then back to the globe, and later on in the process it interwove with itself, looking every bit like an enormous triangle section of an orb web.
The two psychiatrists scowled at the thread. “It must be Camille’s work,” said Falke. “I watched him discovering the thread last night.” There was a long silence and Falke walked around the web, viewing it from different perspectives. “Did the doctors at the asylum mention anything like this?”
“No,” said Metzdorff. “Very strange.”
Falke rose from his crouched position and his scowl lightened. “Yes. Very curious.”
The web may have only been of passing interest if it had been an isolated event. Yet, as the time progressed, more and more such creations appeared in various corners of the house. One morning, Falke emerged from his room to find Camille in the hall, running thread to and fro between a table and the splintering window frame. Falke stood leaning on the doorframe, watching him. Camille didn’t glance at him once. He kept weaving. “This hallway is going to be impassible, little spider,” said Falke. “You’ll have to start taking these down, or we’ll be trapped in this house.”
Camille’s eyes flitted back to him for a second, but he didn’t stop. After about five more minutes, he cut the thread between his teeth, and went downstairs. Falke stood silently gazing at the web. He was able to duck under it and go the the other side. This was the largest yet. Metzdoff appeared beside him. He shook his head in dismay.The two went downstairs without comment.
Day after day, Falke watched the patient spinning his webs. He spoke to him all the while, asking him questions, teasing him about his unusual hobby. The webs began to fill the house: on the stairway rails and banisters, in the corners of the study, all across windows, and the tops of doorways. They strung between walls, furniture, and woodwork. Falke studied each one as they appeared. What he found to be the strangest part was that the only room that still didn’t contain one was Camille’s room. In fact, the more Metzdorff and Falke trafficed an area, the more Camille spun webs of thread there. As doorways became ever more the sites of knew weavings, moving about in the house, as Falke had been warning the spinner, became quite difficult.
“I’m going to be as mad as anyone in the Paris asylum if this doesn’t subside,” said Metzdorff, tapping his fingers on his coffee cup. “I didn’t think he would keep doing it for so long.”
“Perhaps we’re already mad,” said Falke, laughing. “All along, we’ve mistaken a spider for a man.”
“You don’t suppose it would upset him if we were to take a few of them down?” suggested Metzdorff.
“You might try it. It might be interesting to see if it does. But really, I think things are progressing quite favorably at the time. It might not be good to disrupt the situation.”
“How do you mean? What’s gotten better?”
“At least now we have positive symptoms. The webs—they’re easier to study than the words he doesn’t say.”
Metzdorf sighed. “Maybe you’re right, but the webs only confuse me. What do you think about them?”
Falke smiled, staring at the spiraling funnel-web between two bookcases across the room. “I’m only speculating just now. But I think they mean something.”
“Mean something?”
“Just wait. We’ll see what else he does.”
Time passed, and one day Falke observed that there had been no new webs lately. “I hid the thread from him,” said Metzdorf. Falke raised his eyebrows. “I can’t stand it anymore, Eugene. I had to do it. They do something to me, psychologically.”
“What will he do?”
“I don’t know. I almost hope he’ll forget about the whole ridiculous obsession entirely. Listen, I want you to help me clear away these awful things.”
Falke looked around the cobwebby parlor. “But, Metzdorf–”
“They’re driving me mad.”
For a while, the circumstances at the Metzdorf house seemed to ameliorate, but time progressed, and Falke sensed something else was afoot. There was a problem with Camille. He wandered through the house, pacing, and sighing and knocking things down with obvious intention. His condition worsened every day and it was easy to see that he was going into a black humor. Falke didn’t tell Metzdorf, but both silently knew it was because he couldn’t find the thread.
In five days, the last remnants of Camille’s webs were cleared from the house. By this time, the patient didn’t eat or sleep. Neither did Metzdorf. Camille had upset an entire table at three in the morning like an angry poltergeist, rousting the German doctor from his room after his first hour of rest all night. At dawn Metzdorf set out on a weekend trip to a neighboring city. He left Falke alone to manage Camille’s ever-intensifying fits of melancholy.
The front door closed, and Falke stood alone in the parlor. Rain tapped at the blurred window panes, and the light glowed dim and gray from outside. Falke sighed. He turned and looked up at the balcony at the top of the stairs. “Camille?” he called. “Camille?”
There wasn’t a sound.