Telegrams of the Soul

Sanatorium for the Mentally Imbalanced

(but not the one in which I wiled!)

Morning consultation.

The doctor is seated, like a district attorney, behind a massive desk, with a serious, searching look on his face.

The delinquent (patient) enters.

“Please, have a seat—.”

Pause, during which the district attorney (doctor) studies the criminal to ascertain any sign of paralysis or simulation—.

“Now then, my dear Peter Altenberg, seeing as I’ve known you for quite some time now through your interesting books, I take the liberty of dispensing with the conventional title ‘Sir’ in the case of a famous person like yourself. Apropos of which, I understand your female admirers address you directly with the initials ‘P.A’!? I dare not as of yet permit myself that honorific abbreviation—.

“But let’s get down to business! So, my dear Peter Altenberg, what are we going to have for breakfast?!”

“We?! That I can’t tell you. But I myself take coffee, a light coffee with plenty of milk—.”

“Coffee?! Is that so?! Coffee be it then, light coffee with plenty of milk—?!? Coffee, if you please—!”

“Yes, please, it’s my regular morning drink, to which I’ve been accustomed for thirty years now—.”

“Very well then. But you are here, in fact, to disabuse yourself of your previous lifestyle, which does not appear to have done you much good, and, more importantly, you are here to acquire the necessary energy to at least attempt to gradually undertake such salubrious changes in your heretofore accustomed, indeed perhaps all too accustomed, lifestyle!?! So, for the moment at least, let’s stick with coffee with milk. But why such a pronounced aversion to tea?! One can also sip one’s tea diluted with milk—?!”

“Yes, but I prefer to drink coffee with milk—.”

“Do you, Mr. Altenberg, have a particular reason for deeming the satisfaction of a morning tea as insufficiently bracing for your nerves?!?”

“Yes, because I don’t like the taste of it—.”

“Aha, that’s just what I wanted to establish. Now then, my dear sir, what do you have with your beloved and seemingly indispensable morning coffee with milk?!?”

“With it?! Nothing!”

“But you must have something solid with it! Coffee on an empty stomach doesn’t taste good—.”

“No, I have nothing with it; all I like is coffee with milk plain and simple—.”

“Well, my dear Sir, with all due respect, that just won’t do here. I’m afraid you’ll have to concede two rolls with butter—.”

“I loathe butter, I loathe rolls, but even more so I loathe buttered rolls!”

“We’ll neutralize that aversion in due time! I’ve brought off far more difficult feats, I assure you, my friend—. So, and now you will be so good as to quietly betake yourself to your breakfast on the veranda. One more thing: Do you customarily rest after breakfast?”

“That depends—.”

“That depends won’t do. Either you rest or you take a constitutional.”

“Alright, so I’ll rest—.”

“No, you will take a half-hour stroll—!”

The delinquent staggers out of the consultation room and presents himself for a punitive breakfast on the veranda, the punishment sharpened with two buttered rolls.

Several days later. The district attorney: “You see now, my dear famous poet, your facial expression is already much freer, I dare say, more human, not so preoccupied with set ideas—. Did the two buttered rolls do you any harm?! There now!”

No, they did him no harm, since he tore them up daily and scattered the crumbs in the chicken yard—.

Afternoon consultation.

“Mr. Peter Altenberg, to the director’s office, on the double—.”

“Please be seated.

I strictly forbade the consumption of alcohol—.”

“Indeed you did, Mr. Director, Sir—.”

“Do you recognize that stack of empty slivovitz bottles?!?”

“Indeed I do, they’re mine—.”

“They were found today under your bed—.”

“Where else should they have been found?! I put them there myself—.”

“How did you manage to procure that poison in my asylum?!”

“I bribed someone. Two Crowns were not enough to corrupt his honest conscience. So I offered him three Crowns.”

“You’re innocent then in this entire matter, but that two-faced orderly is the guilty party! I’ll make him answer for this, despite his twenty-five years of service in this institution, in the course of which, as far as I can tell, his conduct was unimpeachable.”

“Mr. Director, Sir, just yesterday you remarked to me that, as a consequence of the constancy of my solid lifestyle here in your institution, I looked a good twenty years younger and was hardly recognizable!”

“I made the remark for pedagogical reasons, to fortify your self-confidence—.”

“Mr. Director, Sir, may I have the empty slivovitz bottles picked up at your office later?!? I get six Heller a bottle deposit, see—.”

Director to the underhanded employee: “Say, Anton, whatever prompted you after twenty-five years of unimpeachable service to allow yourself to be bribed by a patient, even by such a famous quirky poet, and to procure for him such a large quantity of brandy?!?”

“But Mr. Director, Sir, if I hadn’t already been doing that for years for hundreds of alcoholics every one of them would’ve flown the coop after three days and we’d have had an empty asylum!”

“Very well then, Anton, but please make sure from now on that the empty bottles not be found—.”

“Mr. Director, Sir, that low-down orderly Franz pulled one on me, he’s jealous of all I earn on the side—.”

Director to the orderly Franz: “Say, Franz, mind your own business! You make enough already by letting our alcoholics ‘have a little go’ with our hysterical Misses—. To each his own. In a proper institution like ours order must be maintained!”