The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story

Wojnicz visits Thilo’s room. Thilo’s condition seems to be worsening, though Dr. Semperweiss has stopped seeing him. He talks to Wojnicz about his doctoral thesis, which concerns “the significance of landscape in art, with particular reference to the Flemish painter Herri met de Bles” (176). Thilo introduces Wojnicz to “another kind of looking” (177), teaching him to examine art in a new and thrilling way. 

With Thilo’s encouragement, Wojnicz stares at the landscape paintings until the subjects and landscapes begin to move. Wojnicz is shocked and Thilo insists that the matter is “deadly serious” (178). As he shows Wojnicz other paintings, he admits that he stole one of the landscapes from his family. He has no intention of returning to them, he explains, as he shows Wojnicz a painting that depicts the Biblical story in which Abraham is commanded to kill his son Isaac. Thilo believes that Abraham really did kill Isaac and, furthermore, that “a landscape is capable of killing a person” (181). Thilo’s fevered ravings are interrupted by Opitz, who summons Raimund to fetch ice for Thilo’s brow.

That night, Wojnicz dreams of visiting Dr. Semperweiss, who declares that he must have been dead for three days. He wakes up to the strange sound from the rooms above. He wants to visit Frau Opitz’s room or whichever one is located directly above his own. Venturing through the dark, he comes across August, who is sneaking around. August’s worried, anxious form changes as soon as Wojnicz announces his presence. He becomes his usual outgoing self and insists that he was simply venturing downstairs “for a glass of Schwärmerei” (184). Wojnicz accepts August’s invitation to join him. Downstairs, they find Frommer already pouring himself a drink. Frommer talks about geometry, which Wojnicz relates to his recent discussions with Thilo. They all sip Schwärmerei together. Frommer plays the piano, singing “an old Silesian counting song” (187). They sip more from the seemingly “inexhaustible” Schwärmerei.

Wojnicz asks Frommer about the strange deaths in the forest. Frommer’s disposition changes. His voice and accent change as he lets Wojnicz in on his secret: He is an undercover investigator who happens to suffer from tuberculosis. He is combining his own treatment with an official investigation into why “people are constantly perishing here” (189). In the coming weeks, he explains, a person is routinely found dead. Their bodies are torn apart and their limbs are scattered around. This traditionally plagued the local men but, in recent times, the sanatorium visitors have been targeted. He warns Wojnicz that the “bloodletting season” (190) will soon begin, then changes the subject as August returns to the room.

Frommer talks instead about geometry, urgently sharing a theory about four-dimensional beings from a four-dimensional world. He refuses to stop talking about the subject, even though no one else seems interested. The conversation wanders into philosophy and theology, at which point Thilo arrives. He cannot sleep, he claims, so he joins them for a glass of Schwärmerei. With nothing to say, Wojnicz simply sits and listens to the conversation.

As Thilo speaks with conviction about art, Wojnicz finds him to be “beautiful, despite the dark, feverish flush in his cheeks” (194). The guests then discuss Christianity and the decline of the Western world. Lukas, in particular, is critical of the soft, indulgent social order. Feeling inebriated, Wojnicz leaves them. August walks with him upstairs, where they pause briefly for a glass of water. He begins to recount his life’s story to Wojnicz, then they embrace “in a surge of drunken familiarity” (197). 

August is brought to tears as he returns to his room. The narrator follows August through the house where August has spent nearly a year of his life. August gets into bed and masturbates; he is only able to achieve completion by jabbing the sharp end of a safety pin into his buttocks. Wojnicz, meanwhile, lays in bed and drunkenly thinks about the alcohol’s effect on him. He asks the candles whether he is going to die, then he weeps. His father, he believes, “would have preferred [him] to die” (202). He pities his father.

Each day, August and Lukas repeat the same joking routine about allowing each other to enter the door first. Soon after their mock display of manners, they sit down for another of their lengthy debates. Frommer watches, sometimes acting as moderator. 

Both August and Lukas are always sure that they are the winners of these debates. They talk about democracy, polytheism, socialism, the matriarchy, and the poor quality of literary criticism by female critics. Since there are no women present, their prejudicial theories about women cannot be tested. These debates continue through dinner, into the evening’s ritual consumption of Schwärmerei. They debate until they are “slowed by the effect of Schwärmerei and once again they [are] all overcome by a sort of thickening feeling, which [makes] it hard to move because of weakness or disinclination” (208).

One day, as autumn begins in earnest, Wojnicz runs into Lukas in the town. He invites Wojnicz into the small annex of the guesthouse where he lives, and places a glass of beer in Wojnicz’s hand. Wojnicz studies the small disordered space as Lukas criticizes Dr. Semperweiss and August, accusing both of being Jewish. Wojnicz is unable to pick up on Lukas’s criticism of Freudian psychoanalysis; he has no sexual desires himself, he realizes, though he expects that such desires are “bound to appear one day” (210). Lukas offers to procure a woman for him, prompting Wojnicz to politely excuse himself. He pities Lukas.

The guests take an expedition to a tavern beside a lake, famous for a particular dish. They set off without Thilo, who is too sick to travel. They drink a shot of Schwärmerei as they set off in the dark; Wojnicz feels the “pleasant mist descending on his mind” due to the drink (211). As they walk, the men talk about Wojnicz, much to Wojnicz’s embarrassment. They presume that he has far more interest in women than he does, which leads them into a broader discussion of women and their lack of depth. They wonder whether women in the village might be witches, as well as local folk stories about women who ran away into the forest and became “completely feral” (214). Lukas shares his belief that women who do not have their sexual needs met are prone to becoming mentally ill. He talks about the phenomenon of female “hysteria,” causing Wojnicz to blush deeply. The conversation ends as the men arrive at the tavern.

Inside the tavern, the men drink the local beer as well as a local liqueur which is “possibly similar to Schwärmerei” (217). As the main course is served, the men hungrily devour the local delicacy while discussing the situation in the Balkans. The local delicacy, Wojnicz learns, is made from white ribbons (the sperm produced during the fertilization process of a parasite of freshwater fish). The reality of the meal makes Wojnicz feel nauseous. 

The next day, Wojnicz walks alone through the town. He sees another of the chairs with the strappings, just like the one in Opitz’s house. He runs into Frommer, who smokes heavily while talking about the “mystery” that he is investigating in Görbersdorf. He is a policeman who is investigating the annual murders. Now, he is afraid for Wojnicz, who is an outsider with no local relations. Frommer says that he cannot “exclude supernatural causes” (222).

The narrator passes over the “monotonous autumn days that consisted of nothing but therapy, rest cures and examinations” (223). Boredom is ubiquitous in the town, as are geese. The geese are not aware that the time of their slaughter is rapidly approaching. They are “destined to die” (224), whereupon their flesh will be eaten and their feathers turned into bedding. Opitz is sharpening his knife in preparation, while Frau Weber and Frau Brecht are already stitching together pillowcases to hold the goose feathers. By this time, Wojnicz visits Frau Opitz’s room so often that it has become “a sort of addiction” (225). Whenever the house is empty, he enters the dead woman’s room and studies her possessions. Only when he exits the room does he become Wojnicz again.

Wojnicz sees Dr. Semperweiss in the town. He shows off his big Mercedes and talks about hunting, though rarely seems to shoot any birds. Wojnicz is reminded of his own “pheasant distance.” One day, Wojnicz asks the doctor about the pattern of autumn deaths. Dr. Semperweiss dismisses Wojnicz’s concerns; he visits his mother during November, he says, so he is rarely present for the strange deaths. This is just one example of the very generous contract which Dr. Semperweiss enjoys. 

Dr. Semperweiss warns that Thilo’s condition is worsening. He mentions Thilo’s “friend and guardian” (228), an older philosopher who is well-known for his writing. Wojnicz himself is hoping to be pronounced healthy but, instead, Dr. Semperweiss seems more interested in discussing Opitz. He claims that Opitz is “civilized only on the surface” (229). Many of the locals are uneducated and rough, he says. They drink heavily and fight. They lust after women, while also being afraid of women. As such, their heads are filled with “fanciful stories” (229). Dr. Semperweiss dismisses Frommer’s investigation, claiming that Frommer “sees the world as a system of conspiracies” (230), hinting that Frommer has syphilis. Once more, Dr. Semperweiss asks to examine Wojnicz’s body, but Wojnicz refuses. When Wojnicz is offended, the doctor insists that he is just “teasing” his patient.

Later, Wojnicz passes by a café in the town. He sits and thinks about doctors. During his short life, he has met “a very large number of them” (233). His father would take him on long train rides to see specialist doctors. Wojnicz still remembers the packed lunches they ate together on these train rides. He invented a special game to be played while staring through the train window, imagining a “small, dark figure whom he called Mister Jig” (234). In the game, he bounced Mister Jig from landscape feature to landscape feature without letting him touch the ground. If he successfully managed to keep Mister Jig in the air for the entire journey, he would be saved from “the usual emotions—shame and a sense of guilt” (234) that accompanied his trips to the doctor. 

Each appointment was the same. He was always asked to strip naked to be examined. His body was always examined by doctors as “an object of wonder” (235). The doctors asked for permission to touch Wojnicz’s body; they did not ask Wojnicz. When the time came for Wojnicz to remove his underwear, his father would always look away. There was no cure for the issue that affected Wojnicz; there was no operation that could “cut everything into the right shape” (236). Wojnicz remembers the increasingly violent examinations, when doctors smeared their fingers in Vaseline and painfully penetrated “the hole down there” (236). Wojnicz is implied to be an intersex person; he remembers thinking that he could not help the way he looked nor the way he was.