The Metronome of Dr. Nathan Nauendorf

Berlin 1880

When I arrived in Berlin to visit my old friend, Doctor Nathan Nauendorf, he had failed to warn me of the particulars of his work. Work which I quietly disdained. It was his fervor that vexed me. In his many insistent letters, he had informed me that Germany would be cold during that season. This, at least, had borne no exaggeration.

The December frost had settled so deeply that even the carriages slowed to a grind. Though I had been warned, it had lodged within my marrow. The night train had left my legs stiff, and I was quite tired. 

His townhouse was modest, packed tightly between rows. The frost clung to the door like a thin membrane, and I pondered how long it had been left shut. The door opened almost at once.

“Guten Abend.”

“Good evening…” The words escaped me as a shaky mist, and I trembled violently. He smiled as he took my cane.

“You’re here,” he said, with a strange softness. A gauntness clung to his face, and dark circles lined just above his pallid cheekbones. Still, the warmth of his home pulled me unrelentingly.

“I feared you had forgotten me,” I replied. 

“Forgotten you?” He laughed lightly. “How could I forget my first friend?”

He guided me to the chaise near the fire, and exhaustion left me no room to argue. The mantel held few books, mostly historical works. De humani corporis fabrica sat bookmarked adjacent to a metronome. Worn, browned, and the ticking hand jammed. We shared brief conversations, chiefly on myself. He asked me about my marriage, my children; I found it all so laborious, and I nearly dozed. 

“Whiskey?” My mouth twitched into a smile.

“Please.” He offered me the drink in a tumbler, and the scent struck me- sharp, oak. The tingle was immediate. There was an oddness to it I could not name. Due to my time abroad, whiskey was a drink I rarely had the fortune of sampling, a fact he was certainly aware of. A warmth bloomed in the back of my throat. And though not at once, I noticed a distinct lighter feeling…

“You must forgive me.” He poured himself some whiskey and turned the glass slowly in his hand. 

“But I required your presence immediately.” He took a sip before continuing.

“What I have discovered…” He paused, staring at me, and his shadow grew over mine. I shifted on the leather but still felt quite stiff.

“It cannot leave the walls of this home.”

“A poor moment for pleasantries, no?” I straightened on the chaise and tried for levity. His chest heaved slightly, as if to feign laughter, before he straightened.

“You recall my studies, yes?"

My nose wrinkled slightly as I recalled the obsessiveness of his work. He referred to our time as colleagues in Vienna. A time that seemed irrelevant to my business.

“Faintly.”

I groaned as I took another sip; the taste was distinctly more bitter, almond. I swallowed, trying to ignore the lingering medicinal taste in my throat.

“You were obsessed with diagnosing the purposes of sleep,” I added. A faint tingling in my extremities rose. I leaned to place the glass on the table, but the edges of my vision began to wobble. The glass slipped forward.

He caught my wrist before the whiskey spilled, and my vision refocused.

“Exhausted, you must be?” He chuckled.

“It was my travels…” I whispered.

“Or… the pressures of my business.” My fingers tightened against the arm of the chaise and the leather groaned. His gaze loomed with an uncomfortable intensity.

“I…

 I expected the dullness to lurch forward. Instead, the fog simply lifted. I moved my fingers, but they felt disembodied, as if pulling each one with an invisible thread. At once, I understood: this was not fatigue.

“I… no longer feel myself.” The words floated distantly like the ticking of a metronome, and an alarm began to rise in me. 

“I don’t suppose you would.” I went to stand, and his hand rose immediately to my shoulder.

I strained slightly against his hold, but the gaze in his expression resembled that of some wounded creature. I forced myself to return to the chaise. His hand remained on my shoulder as he smiled at me, though not warmly.

 “Alfred…do you believe I would truly hurt my dear friend?” The question gave pause. Despite his obsessiveness, it never tipped into violent delusion. My shoulders remained tense.

“No… I suppose not.” I muttered. He sighed in relief and released my shoulder.

“You remain my friend, after all…” He said more to himself as his fingers strained through his hair. 

By degrees, I became aware of every small sound in the room. The ticking of the metronome, the howl of the wind, my own heartbeat thumping insistently. 

“Sleep.” He took another sip of whiskey before explaining himself as he began to pace about the room. 

“For years we have supported its necessity…what if that is nothing but a fiction?” He placed the drink on the mantel and walked beside my chaise. Before I could interrupt him, he continued. 

“I am certain you felt it upon your arrival. That familiar ache in your muscles, that insistent voice demanding you close your eyes if only for a moment.” It was then I realized what this was. 

“You’re…experimenting upon me?” His expression turned sour. 

“No…” He leaned closer and reached for my hand, which I did not reciprocate. 

I should have struck him then, but the formality of our friendship prevented it. 

“You could not experiment with some other…subject? A cadaver perhaps?” I said in bitterness. 

“Alfred... you misunderstand.”

“It is because you are my friend…” He knelt before me and smiled gently. 

“The first to experience my fortune. The first man, aside from myself, of course, to transcend the boundaries of the resting mind.”

“To my misfortune,” I grumbled as I brushed him aside and sat upright. 

My vision wavered slightly before settling into something altogether sharper and precise. Yes, everything was so clear now. 

“You have drugged me,” I said as I finally stood. The words sounded distant, as if they were in an echo chamber. My feet shuffled forward as my voice rose.

“Yes,” he said simply. 

“I have.” He swallowed before straightening himself. 

“But nothing irreversible, Alfred.” He gestured vaguely to himself.

 “Nothing damaging. Nothing I wouldn’t be willing to subject my own self.”

I found myself pondering how long it had been since he last slept. His words plucked an unfamiliar chord in me. This violation. This degradation. At once I seized him by the collar. 

“Have you gone mad?” I raved.

“You wound me, Alfred.” He cleared his throat.

“My mind has never been more sound.” He insisted. And indeed, there was a sort of clarity that unveiled itself even within my own mind. Nathan reached into his pocket and produced a small vial.

“It is stronger through intravenous injection, I have found…” The elixir was not of the fancy variety. A translucent, bubbly liquid that seemed harmless; more like a carbonated solution than anything intended for medical use. I observed his forearms. Without pattern, his arms were covered in pinpricks. Needle injections of various ages. 

“You’ve injected yourself?” As I grasped the horror of what he had done, my grip loosened. 

“Yes…” He pulled his sleeves up as he straightened himself in dismissal. “Oral administration is not as effective.” 

“Taken orally, it incurs only mild stimulation. Clarity. Heightened vigor. All in all, the effect is regrettably temporary.” 

The metronome became more apparent to me then. A light breath at the back of my ear. An insistent tick that made my hairs spike. 

“But taken intravenously…” He revealed the bruises along his arms; a green vein jutted out from repeated abuse. 

“The effect… removes the need for sleep entirely.” I looked at the whiskey on the mantel—brightly illuminating liquid fire. 

“What have you done to yourself?” I gaped in horror, but my words bore no effect. 

“Think of how much of life we spent indisposed? It’s comical we have let it progress this far.” My scientific mind began to gnaw at me. What if the body without sleep was possible? The thought seemed absurd. Blasphemous.  

“What of dreams?” 

“Dreams?” He chuckled to himself and waved his hand. “Nothing but fictions. All of it. An unamused mind crafting its own amusement!” 

I felt a thread in my mind being pulled taut. A migraine, surely. And that dreadful ticking of the metronome became far more pronounced. Like a drum banging on the back of my skull. 

Through his terrible insistence, he had convinced me to stay two nights with him—a request I was greatly inconvenienced by. I found myself reminded of our time in Vienna. Even then he would lay tasks upon me I had no wish to receive. It was only when I wed that I was free of him. Free of his occasional lingering touches and glances. A time he recalled with such fondness, such joy; it unsettled me. 

“Remain here as my friend and confidant.” He implored. For a moment, I saw not the doctor but the young man I had once known fondly. And begrudgingly I agreed to be his ward.

Nightly, for an hour or more, I would watch closely as he lay still. We would discourse on trivial matters, and as the nights drew deeper, I found myself quite irritated. I’d tap the pen to the tick of the metronome and contemplate the purpose of it all. It was the second night, and only then did I have a peculiar observation. Without prior warning, his speech faltered. His shoulders slumped, and he twitched faintly. Beneath shut lids, they began a series of rapid movements, and his breath slowed as if in the throes of sleep.  

I thought to wake him then. To laugh at the hilarity of his failure. But the metronome's ticking became debilitating. I could think of nothing else but that terrible noise. 

“Silence!” I shrieked. 

Yet he still hadn’t stirred from his stupor, and I pondered how easily it would have been to be rid of him. To light him ablaze, or remove him quietly with cloth. He would be none the wiser. I wished this clarity would cease. This mortifying demonic vision. My horror: I realized it was perhaps I who was the dreamer. 

Do not mistake, I did not wish him dead. I only wished he were gone. But he lay so peacefully that the thought itself aroused discomfort.

To my horror, his eyes opened only a moment after the observation, alert as if nothing had occurred at all. That hideous look of triumph aroused my fury. 

I would take this humiliation no longer! 

I smashed the cursed machine, stomping it until only pieces remained. Still, this tick filled the room; no, it filled me! My limbs rose as if pulled by thread. The beating of that dreadful metronome rang clearer. Even in its pitiful state, its ticking arm still swung side to side, and I swayed along with it as if I were its poppet. 

Nathan remained seated, watching me stumble with amusement. Smiled at me as if I were the fool. And I knew with certainty he was the puppeteer. It was not merely an instrument but his heart! It was his very breath. The agony! A blazing beat that deafened all else, and I knew, with clarity, what must be done. 

I found myself later near the hearth. I remember I had done something terrible, though I could not recall what. The metronome was gone. Sweat, midnight, immobile. I had slept. I had dreamt. I was at rest. And what a pleasant dream it was.