DOCTOR MABUSE
A Short Story 

 

 

1|
It wasn’t the smell itself that made me recoil. Not the missing flowers in my hand either. Not even the grayness of that summer day — a sluggish, heavy gray settling onto my shoulders like my grandfather’s old coat, weighing tons.

 

Cold reception.

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The cold, the emptiness, the silence sparkling gliding on the linoleum floor. Here I was, in a hospital, overlooking one of the prettiest cemeteries in town — that should’ve lifted my spirits right away. Irony, the last refuge of the slowly desperate.

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I had come to see E. But first I had to find him. Why does visiting someone in hospital feels like being on a search mission? You check in, somebody barely looks up, gives directions, and suddenly you’re expected to memorize a route more complicated than an aerobic routine from Jane Fonda.

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You get lost.

At least I do.

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Searching was hardly the right word for what I was looking for. And actually I wasn’t even looking. Everything I was about to find would amount to one thing only: a man dying. 

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Finally. I arrived. I knocked. No answer. I am waiting for an encouraging voice to call me in — but silence. Pushing the door open — slowly, ever so slowly. I stopped.

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White room. Four beds. Two on each side. Three large windows opposite them, and again that miraculous view. Far beyond the city haze, the mountains floated pale against the sky. Below them, green parkland and somewhere underneath it all, graves. You sensed them more than you saw them. The trees cast dark shadows and sealed the whole scene shut like a thick theater curtain.

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Curtain raise.

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Three of the beds were occupied. Machines hummed. Breathing came hard in here. The room, it all seemed like a nursing home, seemed like the last resort for eighty-year-old men. But nobody here was old — one died young here.

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I investigated their faces. Expressionless masks stared back at me. A year earlier, in a club downtown, any one of those faces might have meant the beginning of something promising. But now — estrangement. Likely from a distance. But who was who? Which one of them was E? Panic hit me. No one seemed familiar. No one. But E had to be here. Still, behind those death masks they all resembled one another. I felt blind. I wanted to run. Wanted out. Wanted to disappear. Instead, I kept moving.

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At the first bed I stopped, hesitant: “E?”

“Oh, I had to see this, my Darling” a voice said.

“I wondered if you’d still recognize me. Or maybe you’d forgotten me already?”

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E stood half-hidden in the shadow beside a cabinet near the door. Dressed in white linen – for sure no Dior The linen showed of his best asset, but no one took notice of that once famous ass of his. 

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He looked at me with deliberate provocation. Then he burst out laughing. Loudly. Oh, so loudly. He doubled over, holding his stomach. His little performance had worked so very well. He had won, end of battle before it even started. We both knew I had chosen wrong. Wrong bed, wrong face, probably wrong for life too.

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“I… I…” I simply had nothing to say. Nothing at all. My mouth was dry. No sound came out, though everything inside me was screaming.  If only I had screamed, bemoaned or whined. That would at least have given some shape to this very moment. But I stayed silent. Helpless, exhausted — I looked at E.

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He pulled me into an embrace as best he could around the IV lines and tubes, he carried like rhinestones around his collar. He regretted his stunt. I could see it in his face. But even then, I understood the game. The why of it. The performance. Glamorous death was his destination. Doctor Mabuse, prophet to us all.

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“Don’t look so sad,” E had told me a year earlier. We were drinking cold beer while his eyes followed a cute boy he intended to take down tonight. Yet for one brief moment he stayed with me — shortly before the curtain to the darkroom would open again.

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For that moment he was simply a friend trying to leave something behind for his younger self. Back then I still owned the things he now desired and once possessed: youth, innocence, life. Devine life — we all knew his status.

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E looked away from the curtain and fixed me with a stern gaze. “For havens sake start living your life. Follow your own desires.” Then after a pause: “Do you even have desires?” My passivity irritated him. Impatiently he pushed me to think harder, to look inward, to find answers — and above all never let anyone talk me out of who I was. E had a vision for himself. And one for me too. E demanded life.

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E always said exactly what he thought, exactly the way he thought it. Around him nobody had to wonder or hide. Everybody could speak freely.

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But me — I chose to stay stayed silent.

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I was seventeen years old.

 

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2|

Years later, my answers carried weight. I had answers for loads of people. One of them was M from Macedonia. He arrived on my second night in Berlin and took charge, almost immediately.

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I can still see him.

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It feels like now.

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The final breeze of evening moves the flimsy curtains in my hotel room. Below my window, in this hustling area of Berlin, I hear noises drifting up from the bars. “Cheers, babe!” People flirt beneath, letting the night gather momentum. Up here, it’s dark except for the glow of my phone. Promises are made to keep.

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I’m waiting.

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I said yes.

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“I need fifteen minutes! Please wait for me!” He’s on his way. A second ago, he has been not more than one of the voices in the night. He can’t be far.

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Now! The unlocked door swings wide open. Drastic, strong, without hesitation M appears in the doorway. Taking space. Walks toward me.

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This time there’s only one bed in the room, pushed against the wall to the right. Only one man on it — that’s me. Without any wavering, he finds his way immediately. Lights on or off, he couldn’t care less.  

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Before I can properly see him, see him against the hallway glare, I sense him. Smell him. He carries the scent of a field worker gathering olives, in some place close to the Mediterranean Sea. My self is filling up with romantic fantasies. Only later do I begin to notice the darker side of him: his thick black hair, his sinewy legs, his broad shoulders — stronger than he first appears — and above all the warmth of his skin.

As a man of laborer, he knows how to negotiate. Once we’ve settled in, things begin to move, efficient.

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Soon the air fills with the smell of leather, stale smoke, dusted chemicals. The voices beneath our window begin to fade as the night pushes forward. 

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All hands-on deck. It seems as though the last sailors have finally left their harbor too. Lines untied. Engines running. The river of men is heavily drifting toward dawn.

And we are high. 

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High above the city, in our own little cabin. But not high enough. We have ambitious destinations, and M knows the route. Methodically he proceeds. The crystals dissolve in a water like matter collapsing into a supernova. Everything now moves in reverse. This star doesn’t want to give birth — his ambition is to consume. Like some inverted creation story, dopamine and serotonin now implode simultaneously, causing a cosmic force.

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I feel illuminated.

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Lifted above the world. Free from worry. Beyond pain. All matter, all longing now rushes toward a single center. I drift. Reality slips away. Desires materialize. The image of the sailors and the harbor take on a life of their own. Part of the crew — the merry sailors downstairs — catches wind of the cosmic event happening one floor above them. The door flies open, again, and again. M has invited them aboard our merry little party. 

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There isn’t much dancing, and merry is a flexible state of mind. I no longer know names around here. And we don’t bother to hand out numbers either. There is a violent sameness to it all. Everything keeps moving toward the same destination. My supernova burns red now, like a dying sun — lighting up the men, lighting up the room. M stands naked. Acts as captain of the bridge, wearing my sneakers, only. He swings his scepter and rules over all of us. Conducts his psychedelic command.

The room sways now, but the sailors are holding course. And so, do I. Many of them still wear clothes. Uniforms matter. Undressing is time wasting. With their jeans hanging around their knees they stumble through the finite space of the moment. Together we remain among ourselves. We create this. We are the moment!

 

As is proper —

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as demanded,

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the crew now stands as one.

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All in, against the wind of events,

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offering everything,

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offering up

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all they must give —

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and soon

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they are giving, 

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more than they dreamed to thought,

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beyond their own believes —

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and surrendering,

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surrendering to this very moment.

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Until everything stops,

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still,

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and comes to rest.

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Exhausted breathing

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fills the room,

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in,

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out,

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in,

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out,

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in.

 

When the first reach for their phones, step back ashore, the wind dies down — with that the soft summer night, now morning, finally has a chance to be noticed again — and it is time for the final recall.

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Oxytocin spreads its warm blanket over us and invites us to stay. M and I look into each other’s eyes. Touch softly. One last time, carefully, he slips into me.

Even the supernova has found its place now — in the rising sun above Berlin.

 

 

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3|
E’s star had shone brightly.

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It went dark far too soon. E blazed with light, seemed to know things. Sensed things – while wearing a perfectly groomed mustache. He was a true clone of his era: an eighties denim boy in plaid shirts. Whore and saint, same time. Leather when he felt like it. His joy of barns and parks, the reckless hunger for life.

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Back then, when E followed that other man from the bar into the darkroom and the hunt came to its predictable end, a friend leaned toward me and whispered:

“He has slept with over a thousand men. Over a thousand. Can you imagine that?” I had no answer for him. Probably no real imagination for it either. Back then in that bar I didn’t yet understand that a number is only a number, and a life only a life.

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What remained in my memory for years, the harmless bar talk, now feels — more than forty years after the beginning of the AIDS pandemic — like a message held up to the mirror of a lost future.

 

E still speaks to me, still demands an answer — echoing through space and time.

It seems only days ago, a door slammed shut behind me — olive groves on the horizon.

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And the sailors too, sailing now beneath a different flag — far out at sea.

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And here with me, everything is quiet.

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Tonight I stand on deck, night perfectly clear — I see a star.

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Who are you, tell me, are you out there —  who not seeks for an answer?

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Frankfurt Mai 2026