Physician and murderer. The two are difficult to reconcile. Inevitably I will stumble. But will I be able to record my errors faithfully? Or will I be content simply to record the events as I see them? The rules of art are foreign to me too, I have no art at all. As I write this, at the age of more than forty, I know little of aesthetic laws, notwithstanding the odd love I have for the beautiful and the perfected–for the perfect. My hand is not clumsy and is fairly steady when doing experiments, but it lacks such art.

I set to work without great faith, without optimism. But where there is no optimism, is realism possible, can there be a work at all? I will try nonetheless. I will hold up a mirror to myself. With a steady hand. With the exacting eye of a scientist. Without mercy toward myself, just as I showed none toward others. What is man, that he shows mercy toward his own kind?

This is the best I can do. Perhaps someone else will be able to create a realistic novel out of my report on these “experiments on living souls.”

ONE

I

How could I, Georg Letham, a physician, a man of scientific training, of certain philosophical aspirations, let myself be so far carried away as to commit an offense of the gravest sort, the murder of my wife? And to commit this crime chiefly for financial reasons? Or so it would appear to the outsider. For money was in fact the one thing I could never get from that woman, who was doglike in her attachment to me. Am I reviling her with this word “doglike”? No. I am only attempting to explain, and so far I have not succeeded. There is a gaping internal contradiction here, and yet that is how it was.

There was astonishment in legal circles and among the general public, as represented by opinions in the metropolitan press, that during my trial, when it was a matter of life and death to me, I yawned. It was the third day of the trial, the heat was oppressive, the oral arguments were telling me nothing new, and yet–how could a person accused of such a crime be so blatantly uninterested in the outcome of his trial? But this contradiction is only apparent, unlike the many true contradictions in my character. It may have interested others what became of me. But it could not interest me what others thought of my crime or by what “punishment,” under what section of the law, they exacted redress for the purpose of “retribution and deterrence.” I could not have gone through all I had gone through and still acknowledged the logical connection between crime and punishment. What law would apply to me? Common law and traditional law do not do me justice. And natural law? Too often I had seen the innocent suffer, while the guilty–vile and despicable creatures–attained happiness. They could sentence me. But they could not force me to recognize this sentence, execution or exile to C., where yellow fever and other tropical scourges were at that moment raging, as punishment.

Or were these arguments supposed to be enlightening me about my antisocial nature, about my “morbid character,” about my unfitness to live as a respectable citizen in a well-ordered state? My own experience of this “well-ordered state,” as whose moral exponent the court presented itself, had shown me that it was anything but a healthy, moral organism of orderly character.

But I had done the deed. Indeed I had, and nothing else mattered. And if a human being has on his conscience a crime so irrefutable that it can never be denied or glossed over or excused–if I had actually been driven to extinguish a human life, what is the good of talk, of lengthy oratory and presentations of evidence? The one who committed the crime cannot save himself now. But then he never could, not even before his crime. Even if he had foreseen everything, would not the internal forces that drove him still have been stronger than the counsel of reason?

His outward fate may be decided now. There is hardly anything left to hope for. If my skin is thick, I will survive a good deal.