The Spaces in Between

by Collin Van Reenan

  ‘How much evil there is in the world, Nico! I will pray for you now and, if you wish it, I will stay with you – always. How to explain to you, my Nicholas? Try to understand. There is Truth and there are Lies; there is fiction and there is fact; there is Life and there is Death; and then there are the spaces in between.’

  I felt that I had just been told something of momentous importance, a revelation of some sort, but was unable to understand it. Now that I felt safe, my mind seemed to let go and started to drift away, as if leaving my body in Tatiana’s safe keeping and seeking rest elsewhere. A great feeling of relief swept over me, and the soft warmth of her hand on my cheek was the last thing I can remember.

  The sunshine streaming through the great windows of the hall warmed my cold, stiff body and, when it reached my face, woke me up. The hall was now a kaleidoscope of colours from the stained glass panels reflected from the black and white tiled floor.

  I tried to sit up and failed, but realised at the same time that I could move my arms, and my legs too – after a clumsy, leaden fashion. I lay back and explored the movement of each muscle in turn and, when satisfied that they were no longer paralysed, I tried again to sit up. This time it worked, and from my new position I was able to look around me. I was quite alone, with no sign of Tatiana or, indeed, any other presence in the House.

  My only thought now was to get out, and I concentrated all my efforts on standing up. Unable to do so from a sitting position, I rolled over on to my front, pushed up with my arms and drew my knees up under me. I stayed like that for a long time, waiting for the dizziness to clear. Then, with a great effort, stood up. I staggered a bit but, with my feet further apart than usual, I regained my balance. The first step was a lurch forward, then another, heading towards the front doors and stopping to fight the giddiness after each movement. My legs seemed to be following a plan of their own and only reluctantly obeyed my directions. With their eventual compliance, I reached the doors.

  To my great relief, the door handle turned in my trembling hand and the doors swung inward, allowing a great shaft of sunlight to fall upon the chequered floor. With the sunshine came the soft warm breeze of a perfect summer’s day. I stood there for a long time, breathing deeply and looking out across the drive and lawns towards the gates.

  When I thought I felt strong enough, I lurched through the doorway and, thinking that I would fall, staggered quickly across the gravel towards the grass, and fell there. Though down on my knees, I fancied that I felt strong enough to continue. Closing my eyes, I waited for the giddiness to clear before rising and slowly moving off towards the huge green-painted portal that contained the smaller grille door reserved for pedestrians.

  It seemed to take an age to cross the lawn, but every halting step was a step away from that House – a step towards freedom.

  There was no one about. I sensed that the House was now deserted, but I expected to see people in the lane outside the railings. Again, to my relief, the small gate was not locked and I was out on to the drive leading to the main road.

  I was warmer by then and beginning to feel very tired but I needed to go on, to reach the main boulevard. What I intended to do then had not yet come to me… I just knew a desperate need to find someone to help me get away from that place.

  I heard the main road before I saw it, a glorious low roar of traffic, and when at last it came into view I blinked at the speeding cars, the sun flashing off their windscreens, gliding onwards as if in another world. A dark green public bench stood nearby and I collapsed on to it, unable to go further. I slumped back and the warm sunshine fell upon my face. I closed my eyes and listened to the hum of the traffic.

  When I woke up in hospital, I couldn’t remember anything at first and just lay back dozing and watching the nurses occasionally walk by. Later, as my memory returned, I started to feel very anxious. If, as it would seem, I had been found unconscious beside the road, the police would surely have been informed, and once they started to interview me they would find out that I had no papers and I would surely go to prison – either for that or for vagrancy. I began to consider ways to escape, except that my clothes had been taken away and I knew that I couldn’t walk very far.

  As much as I dared, I confided in the young doctor who attended me. It seemed that, since the student riots, the police were far too busy to concern themselves with vagrants and toxicomanes (druggies), and that was apparently what the doctor thought I was.

  A counsellor came to see me and I made up some story about some friends tricking me into ‘doing’ some drugs and that I wasn’t really an addict. I think I was saved by giving the address of the House as my fixed abode. Anyway, after a couple more days they released me into the care of the British Embassy, who, grudgingly, advanced me a small sum of money under the guarantee of reimbursement by funds from my family, which happily had been released during my stay in the House. After that, I was left in peace; except that ‘peace’ was far from describing my state of mind.

  Dénouement

  Dr Gröller’s Conclusions

  ‘For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part.’

  1 CORINTHIANS 13:12

  Reading Nicholas’s account had a profound effect on me. For the first time, I realised that I might be out of my depth in taking on his case so confidently. Frankly, I did not know how to begin to treat him.

  The first step was to obtain a second opinion. My father had recently retired from his job as a commissaire in the Judicial Police and I valued his layman’s opinion. His immediate reaction was that we were dealing with a crime – a conclusion not wholly unexpected, and a valid point of view. His contention was simply that Nicholas was the victim of a horrendous deception practised on him by the whole household over the period of his six-week stay in that House. He pointed out that hallucinogenic drugs had been detected in Nicholas’s system when he was hospitalised, and that he had apparently been blackmailed into marrying Natalya.

  The problem with that was the lack of evidence in the hospital report and the fact that Nicholas actually wanted to marry Natalya anyway.

  Nicholas himself had arrived at similar conclusions and, as soon as he could afford it, had hired a firm of private detectives to make enquiries. My father immediately offered to open an investigation of his own, and Nicholas enthusiastically accepted.

  It was, however, soon apparent that the perpetrators of this ‘scam’, if that was what it was, had covered their tracks extremely well. All transactions relating to the rental and running of the House were made either in cash or through an overseas bank account which was closed just before the House was vacated. The references for the tenants were false. Local tradesmen were likewise paid in cash. Attempts to trace individuals also came to nothing. No Dr Voikin was listed as licensed to practise medicine in France, nor was any Chermakov certified to practise law. The Russian Orthodox Church in Paris had never heard of a Father Feodor, and none of the servants could be traced.

  Madame Lili, Natalya and the Grand Duchess were not known to the extensive Russian exile community in Paris, nor could they be traced historically.

  In short, to his total exasperation, my father drew a complete blank. Nor did the private detectives fare any better, in spite of an exhaustive search for Anya both in France and Belgium (because Nicholas thought he had detected a Belgian accent in her French).

  All this careful subterfuge only reinforced my father’s contention that Nicholas was the victim of a very clever deception carried out by consummate professionals. But the motive completely escaped him. And, without proof that a crime had been committed, the magistrate would not open a dossier and pursue the enquiries further.

  None of this helped me decide how to treat my patient. Fortunately, writing down his own account of the ‘incident’ did seem to help Nicholas to some extent, and he appeared a little less intense and obsessive. But he was far from well, and his mental state worried me. Finally, I consulted with more experienced coll
eagues. The unanimous conclusion was that Nicholas’s condition would not improve until he could be confronted with the truth – the ‘explanation’ of what happened to him and why.

  So we were back to square one. My father continued to plug away at his enquiries and I and Dr David did our best to care for Nicholas, but none of us with much success.

  The publication of this book* was intended as a last attempt – a somewhat desperate appeal to those who might know some answers. With Nicholas’s full consent and co-operation, I wrote it as an appeal for help, asking any readers who might know something to come forward to help solve this mystery.

  This was a most unusual step for any psychiatrist to take, and some would see it as highly unorthodox. I justify it, however, by my professional opinion that only by removing the uncertainty and mystery surrounding Nicholas’s ‘unsettling experience’ could we halt his slow decline into clinical depression.

  * refers to the original French edition

  Breakthrough

  ‘The case is one where we have been compelled to reason backwards from effects to causes.’

  SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

  The previous text was the conclusion of the original French edition, but it so happened that, before the English translation of this book could go to press, a sudden breakthrough changed the whole course of events.

  My father called me in a state of great excitement, unusual for him, and almost shouted, ‘It’s all about the suits!’

  Confused, I repeated, ‘The suits?’

  ‘All the clothes,’ he said with exultation, and abruptly hung up.

  We met a short time later in a local café, and I could see from the smug look on his face that he had something momentous to tell me.

  ‘It was the suits, you see, the clothes they gave Nicholas at that house.’

  He paused for effect and for me to ask, ‘What about them?’

  ‘They fitted him perfectly, didn’t they? Even the shirt collars and the shoes!’

  In his excitement he was almost shouting, and several customers looked up. I could only agree, wondering where he was going with this.

  ‘Well, don’t you see? They were for him, Nicholas, and him alone. They were expecting him!’ he shouted, emphasising the words by banging the table with the flat of his hand, oblivious to the annoyed looks from the other coffee-drinkers.

  I let the words sink in, but failed to see the significance.

  ‘They were expecting him and only him,’ my father said again, lowering his tone to normal levels. The other customers resumed their conversations. ‘They knew he was coming and that nobody else would answer their advertisement. And how could that be?’ he asked rhetorically. ‘Because he was the only one who saw that job listed. I checked the papers for that whole week. There were no advertisements at all for that position. He was “the chosen one”, so to speak.’

  ‘But, Papa, Nicholas saw the ad. His friend Bruno showed it to him…’ I protested.

  But my father was already shaking his head. ‘He saw a photocopy of what he took to be a newspaper advertisement, a quarter of a page, not the paper itself. Don’t you see what this means, Marie-Claire? It means that we must find Bruno and ask him where he got the ad.’

  And find him we did, coming out of a class at the Ecole Polytechnique.

  We pounced on him, our intensity startling him, and took him with us to a café to question him. He was quick to explain that he had been given the photocopy of the advertisement by Nicholas’s tutor, Professor S.– H.–, the one Nicholas didn’t take to overmuch but who had been kind enough to let him stay at his flat for a few days, an ideal opportunity to ascertain the sizes of all his clothes. He would certainly have known of Nicholas’s predicament, his isolation and his lack of family contacts in Paris.

  Unfortunately, Professor Robert S.– H.– had disappeared from Paris a few months previously, having resigned his post shortly after Nicholas entered the House. Apparently his East European political leanings were a little too much for an establishment reeling from a student revolt.

  My father was lost in thought, avidly studying Nicholas’s account, which he’d had typed and carried with him. Poor Bruno seemed completely lost, left out of our blinding revelations, yet the cause, indirectly, of most of them. I felt so sorry for him. He appeared to believe that he was the initial author of all Nicholas’s woes but he was just as much of an innocent dupe as Nico himself. What could I possibly say to enlighten him without hours of explanation? My father saved the day by paying for our drinks, heartily shaking hands with Bruno and thanking him profusely.

  My father was like a bloodhound on the scent of a trail, and, though our quarry had gone to ground, the logic of his theory was gradually coming together. For my part, I was groping for my own leads; something about the Professor’s name was ringing bells in the depth of my mind. Then suddenly it came to me: S.– H.– was the surname of Dr Ulrika S.– H.–, whose theories and experiments had caused outrage in psychiatric circles a few years previously in the mid-sixties, and who had disappeared into East Germany before she could be formally struck off. Nowadays, Dr Ulrika S.– H.– was East Germany’s foremost authority on mind control. She spent the early part of the sixties experimenting with the use of new drugs at that time called, collectively, hallucinogens, the best known being LSD. These drugs were also being investigated by the CIA with a view to using them for mind control, previously known as ‘brainwashing’ when they were used by the Chinese during the war in Korea. Considered highly unethical by the psychiatric profession, S.– H.– fought back against the establishment with several well-researched papers expounding her theories before disappearing behind the Iron Curtain, presumably to the East German Stasi – their secret police – and other Soviet Bloc secret services.

  Unfortunately, our further research into Dr Ulrika drew a blank, except for two things – which my father fastened upon triumphantly. She was young, dark-haired and very beautiful, and she apparently had a younger sister who, when last heard of, was studying acting in Vienna. Both sisters, though German, had been educated in Switzerland and were known to be bilingual in French. Here then, according to my father’s theory, were ‘Madame Lili’ and ‘Natalya’.

  I had not seen my father so animated since before his retirement, and he hastened to fit more parts of his jigsaw together. Although his ideas were still only a proposition, the clincher for me was the mention of hallucinogenic drugs. Such chemicals are known to produce the sorts of symptoms or ‘trips’ that would fit many of the experiences described by Nicholas. I was certain that drugs had, on occasion, been administered to him orally, in his tea or wine, and we knew that, towards the end, he had been injected, but the real revelation came from something Nicholas had mentioned on several occasions: that Madame Lili always wore gloves and these often felt damp when she held him tightly either by his hands or wrists or, at least once, with her gloved hands inside his shirt and round his waist.

  Now, hallucinogens are readily absorbed through the skin; by wearing waterproof surgical gloves under her long dress gloves, Madame Lili could easily moisten the material – probably silk – with the drug and administer it to Nicholas by touching his bare skin for just a few moments; the longer the contact, the greater the dose, but nonetheless difficult to control precisely, and therefore dangerous to the recipient.

  The more I thought about it, the more certain I became. Nicholas could have been drugged at will and not been aware that it was happening.

  Equally obvious to me was that some form of hypnosis had frequently been used on Nicholas, and I determined to find out what skills the good doctor had in that department.

  Back at my practice rooms, I decided not to contact Nicholas until our theory had been further tested. My next step was to research Dr Ulrika, and particularly to try to find a photograph of her.

  In this, I was unsuccessful as she proved to be very camera-shy. In fact, there was very little information on public record concerning her except for an
old CV, listing where she had been educated and what qualifications she held. Even this information had not been updated for several years. It seemed that she had been completely ostracised by the medical profession.

  My father hoped for better results, and yet he too was frustrated; it was true that both the DST and SDECE – the French internal and external security services – apparently held files on her, but these could not be made available to the police, and certainly not to a retired commissaire. By calling in all sorts of favours, however, he was able to glean at least some negative information. Dr S.– H.– was not of any ‘active’ interest and her current whereabouts were unknown, believed to be in the Soviet Bloc.

  My father even thought about calling in a retired police artist to draw portraits from Nicholas’s descriptions but, with no photographs to compare them with and no witnesses to show them to, it seemed a pointless exercise. He then widened his searches to include the others at the House. Enquiries were made concerning both Anya and Serge. My father and his friends were most thorough, even checking Parisian theatrical costumiers to see if anyone answering Serge’s description had hired a Cossack uniform.

  Without specifically telling Nicholas why, we decided we would, after all, get him together with a retired police artist to produce portraits of Serge and Anya, and then we showed them around in the Russian community in the vicinity of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, where expats gather to go to services, drink tea and browse the Russian language bookshop. None of it did any good. Nobody knew them, knew of them or had even seen anyone like them.

  My father’s retirement took on a new lease of life; he felt he was useful again and, as he told my long-suffering mother, he felt this case was more baffling than anything he’d done before. He had been a senior officer for so long that I don’t think my father could even remember the last time he had done any of the ‘routine legwork’ that he set so much store by, and he loved every minute of it, even though his ‘robust’ and ‘direct methods’ were, even then, barely acceptable to modern policing.