The World Is Made of Glass

by Morris West

  “Regret it? No. I think it was the best solution for us both. I am a very passionate woman; but I don’t believe I have any real talent for maternity.”

  JUNG

  Zurich

  We are hardly twenty minutes into the session and already I am deeply disturbed by what I have heard. The most impressive – no, the most frightening – thing about this woman is her total lucidity, her wholly rational grasp of what she is and the story she is unfolding to me. I am not deceived by her answers about the dream, which is the clearest possible projection of an enormous guilt about some matter still to be revealed.

  She is as clear about the sex of the dead fox as I was about the sex of the stallion in my chaos dream The glass ball is clearly a womb as well as a prison. She wakes in a foetal position, unprepared to face a hostile dawn. It has not occurred to her, or she is concealing her knowledge, that infants are born with very little hair. She has also dealt very summarily with the mother who abandoned her, and her own child whom she has abandoned in her turn.

  She describes herself as very passionate. I am aware of her as a quite explosive personality, capable at one moment of a singular self-control and at another of a devastating outburst of energy. She is like a stick of dynamite, inert and apparently harmless in the hand, but capable of demolishing a whole building. In my own unstable state, I feel threatened by her; but the threat is ambivalent. On the one hand, there is a powerful sexual attraction. On the other, I sense a latent hostility as strong as that of the invisible archetypes in the garden. Her death wishes correspond in sinister fashion with my own. She admits to having hastened her husband’s demise – albeit for compassionate reasons. She admits to moments of murderous resentment against her own child. Most certainly there are other love-hate relationships hidden behind the symbols of the dream.

  Therefore, I do not want to extend this analysis a moment longer than is necessary. Having begun it, I cannot ethically terminate it in a brutal and dangerous fashion. I must at least be able to recommend her for treatment to someone else. For this, I need to see how far her lucidity extends, how swiftly her reason will take us to the root of her problem. To ease the tension that has already built up, I suggest we take a stroll by the lakeshore while we continue our talk.

  On the way out we have to pass by the kitchen My patient goes ahead of me into the garden, while I pause to ask Emma if she will send some coffee up to the study. My hand is already on the door handle when I hear Emma’s voice and Toni’s raised in anger. I stand very still and shamelessly eavesdrop on the altercation. It is Emma who seems to be in control of the argument.

  “Don’t you understand that we have a very sick man on our hands?”

  “Of course I do. I spend more time with him than you do – eight hours a day in that study, sometimes more.”

  “If he gets worse, do you think you can cope with him?”

  “Why ask me? You’re his wife.”

  “And you’re his mistress!”

  “I love him.”

  “I love him too. So, we should at least try to be honest with each other. You’re not the first rival I’ve had. You probably won’t be the last.”

  “Don’t patronise me!”

  “I’m asking you to help me.”

  “My God! You’re an extraordinary woman!”

  “Look, I’ve got four children. I’m carrying our fifth. Carl’s rages terrify us all. The little ones don’t understand their father’s problem. He’s blind to theirs. I have to protect them and hold the family together as long as I can. I can’t fight you. I’m not sure I want to. I see Carl manipulating you as he does everyone else. All I ask is that the pair of you play outside – not in my house! Well?”

  “Why do you put up with him?”

  “Why do you?”

  “I love him.”

  “So do I. And that’s the only reason I put up with you, my dear.”

  “It can’t go on like this.”

  “So long as he wants it, it will go on!”

  I have heard enough. I am shamed and saddened – and fool enough to find a scrap of comfort in the fact that two women love me enough to fight over me. This is, in any case, hardly the moment to ask for coffee. I creep away and join my patient down by the boathouse, where she is inspecting the toytown I am building with stones from the lakeshore. I use it as a text for what I have to tell her.

  “I began it as a therapy. I, like most people in their middle years, am passing through a psychic crisis. I have put myself into analysis with Miss Wolff, whom you met. All analysis involves a journey backwards to pick up the signposts we have passed. This is a model of the village where I was born. The man you see before you was shaped here, not merely by his parents, by everything and everybody around him, but by everybody who had gone before: the men who built the church, the masons who hewed the stones, the women who baked the bread and passed down the folk remedies for people’s ills. We are all reflectors of a past which we have forgotten, but which is buried deep in our subconscious. Our dreams recall that long and ancient inheritance. Do you see that street there, the one leading down from the church?”

  “Yes. What about it?”

  “One day I saw the devil walking down it.”

  She laughs. The laughter has an open innocent sound.

  “You’re joking.”

  “No, I mean it. What I saw was a Roman Catholic priest in a black cassock and a black shovel hat, which looked like a pair of horns. But to my little Swiss Lutheran mind, he was the devil. It was years before I could enter a Catholic church without a shiver of terror.”

  “How strange!”

  “And yet not so strange. The same thing happened to your little daughter, when she began to identify you as a witch. I still struggle with the memory of my own mother, who most of the time was a warm, simple, talkative countrywoman, but who had a strange gypsy side to her nature that used to terrify me.”

  She bends and picks up an elongated stone and lays it like a lintel over the doorway of an unfinished cottage. In a small, quiet voice she says:

  “I know what you are trying to do. It does help to know that other people have problems not unlike one’s own. But you have to understand that I’ve lived a very strange life – and met some very odd characters. I find it extremely difficult to trust people – even in our medical profession. Last week in Paris, my own bankers, the men who manage my estate, tried to push me into a compromising situation with a very wealthy man whom they wanted as a client.”

  “And you think I’m capable of something like that?”

  “We all are, Doctor Jung. We all are.” “What would you accept as proof that you can trust me?”

  “What can you offer?”

  She says it quite baldly, like a countrywoman haggling in a market; but I sense that she means it. I reflect for a moment. I ask myself why the hell I have to trade at all. She’s a grown woman; clearly sane. Why should I put myself in jeopardy for her cure? For once I am prepared to be honest: because I desire her, because I want to have her in my debt. So I propose the bargain.

  “If you are prepared to trust me with your secrets, I am prepared to reveal to you two pieces of information about myself: the one very personal; the other professional. Either one could damage me greatly if it were bruited abroad. That way each of us holds the other’s surety. Equal threat, equal fidelity. It seems like a reasonable bargain.”

  “It is. But why should you care so much? I wouldn’t cut off my finger to persuade one of my patients to have an appendectomy.”

  I am angry now at her manipulation and I snap at her:

  “Perhaps because I have a different view of my patients.”

  “How do you view me, doctor?”

  “That’s just the point, Frau Hirschfeld. It’s not you! It’s all of us: we do not live alone. We live together. We depend on each other. The moment we forget that, we are lost – like fiery particles flung off from the solar system to be quenched and lost for ever in the outer darkness of sp
ace. When you came into my house, did you notice an inscription over the door?”

  Much to my surprise she quotes it back to me, verbatim:

  “‘Vocatus atque non vocatus deus aderit.’” She also translates it in its original sense. “‘Whether he is called or not, the god will be present.’ I wonder what that signifies to you, doctor?”

  “It signifies the reverse of what you say you believe: that human life is a pointless trip to nowhere. I’m not an orthodox Christian any more. I can’t even set a meaning to the word God; but I know that I am groping towards a truth about who He is and what we are. I know that however many mistakes I make in my life – and God knows I’ve made plenty – I cannot abdicate the search for a meaning. You’re someone I’ve met on the pilgrim road. If only for that reason, you’re important to me. I can’t pass you by and let you die in a ditch!”

  I am surprised at my own vehemence. I am even more surprised when she reaches out and takes my hand like a child and says meekly:

  “I’m sorry. I believe what you’re telling me. I want to trust you, truly! I accept your bargain.”

  I point once more to the village, to the very cottage on which she has just laid the lintel stone. I tell her:

  “Here’s the first fact, which I’ve told only to one other person in my life. That cottage was the house of a man, a friend of the family, whom in my boyhood I loved and trusted. One day he raped me. It was an experience which festered in my mind for a long time and coloured many relationships in my adult life.” She opens her mouth to speak. I silence her instantly. “Please! I don’t want to discuss it. The second fact is that somewhere in this country there is a woman walking around free, whom I know positively to be a murderess. She was in confinement at the Burgholzli for an acute depressive illness. The prognosis was negative. I managed after much labour to identify the cause of the malady. In deep distress over an unsuitable marriage, she had murdered one of her children. The fact that she could share the knowledge brought her a long way towards a full cure. I altered the record, suppressed the incriminating evidence and discharged her. My signature is on the document; so I am technically guilty of a criminal act. Again I don’t want to discuss the details. Now I’ve given you my surety; are you prepared to trust me?”

  “First, you have to explain what you want of me.”

  I am appalled. I am committed; but she is still trying to avoid any contract. I take her roughly by the arms and force her to face me.

  “Very well. I’ll tell you! You must take me by the hand and lead me into the desert country of your dreams; into that glass ball where you are curled up, shaven, not like a nun, but like a criminal, with all your private parts showing. You have to show me what the red eye of the sun sees, what your little daughter saw and fled from. I want to know the secret that drove you to my door and is now driving you again to destroy yourself.”

  She thrusts herself free and retreats from me. It is an act of bitter rejection. She shakes her head vigorously from side to side. She spits the words at me.

  “No! No! No! It’s still a bad bargain.”

  I am furious now and I mince no words with her.

  “What are you afraid of, woman? Dirty stories? I know all the words in the book. I know men and women who eat shit to get their orgasms. Murder? I know about that, too. I’ve been attacked by a patient with a kitchen knife. What else can’t you bring yourself to talk about? Rape? Mutilation? Incest? Your life is on the block, Madame! Don’t let a few rough words stand in the way of saving it!”

  Her reaction is strange. Instead of being shocked, as I have hoped, into submission or hysteria, she becomes suddenly icy calm. Her tone is almost one of compassion for my stupidity.

  “You still don’t see it, do you, doctor?”

  “See what, Madame?”

  “It’s not the questions I’m afraid of; it’s the answer you may give me at the end. If that answer is the wrong one, I’m finished.”

  She fumbles in her reticule and brings out a small blue bottle sealed with red wax. She holds it out towards me. I have to make a step forward to take it from her hand. The label is that of a pharmacy in Paris. It is inscribed in a careful open script: “Prussic Acid, Poison, Not To Be Taken”. The woman watches me as I read it. She is expecting some violent reaction from me. She does not know I have played this scene before. Neither does she know that I am not opposed to suicide when life becomes intolerable. I shrug and hand the bottle back to her.

  “It’s not what I would choose to make an end of myself. Still, it’s your life, Madame. Don’t try to blackmail me with it.”

  “You still miss the point. I’m not blackmailing you. I’m stating a fact. You’re the one loading the pistol. I’m the one playing Russian roulette. If you fail me, I’m out of the game. I make a swift and final painful exit. All you lose, my dear doctor, is a patient you didn’t want in the first place.”

  “Not true, Madame! I have offered you the only surety I have: the last of my rather tattered reputation. As for a cure, you know damned well there are no guarantees! Your father was a surgeon. He never knew what he was going to find when he opened up some poor devil on the operating table. It’s kill or cure for all of us. A bad bargain? Yes, but it’s the only one we’re offered – any of us! If you don’t like it, too bad! Pull down the shutters and put yourself to sleep for ever!”

  I turn on my heel and leave her. I do not look back. She can follow me or not as she chooses. I approach the kitchen on tiptoe and pause to eavesdrop again. The argument is over. My two women appear to be engaged in a quite peaceable discussion about how to bake an apple cake. I put my head round the door and enquire meekly whether we may have coffee served in the study.

  MAGDA

  Zurich

  I am fascinated by this man. I sense his weaknesses. He is obviously a skirt chaser and his lust is as transparent as a farmboy’s. He has a coarse tongue and a quick temper. I think if anyone, man or woman, pushed him too hard, he would hit back. I was goading him, deliberately, because the manager at the Baur au Lac had suggested that it was only the prospect of a fat fee that had induced him to see me.

  He probably is venal. Medicine is a profession that deals in costly magic; this medicine of the mind is an expensive novelty, but I have no doubt about this man’s sincerity. When he talked about the search and the pilgrim road, that wasn’t just rhetoric. He meant it. He cares – and he’s furious because he thinks I’m trying to cheat on our agreement.

  So what now? Do I play out the game, or pick up my hat and parasol and go home? Jung will not bend to me. Either I tell my story or he will show me the door. Conclusion? I swallow my pride, put another stone on the toy village, follow the master back to his study and hold out both hands for the thumbscrews!

  “So . . .” he announces, as he dips a biscuit into his coffee, “we go back to the things which trouble you, the things that drive you to seek help. First, there is the recurrent nightmare. We’ll return to that. What are the other problems?”

  I take the plunge – not the big one from the high board, but the small one into the shallow end of the pool.

  “I have trouble on my estate, a kind of peasants’ revolt. My people think I’m a witch. My studmaster tells me that unless I stay away for a long time, the whole staff will quit. If I try to run the place with foreigners, they’ll burn me out.”

  “Is your studmaster telling the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why do your people think you’re a witch?”

  I tell him about the horse and the hound and the roses. He stabs the tip of his pencil at me and snaps:

  “Tell me the rest of it.”

  “What do you mean, the rest of it?”

  “Please, don’t play games! Why did you ride the stallion past the mares?”

  “For curiosity, I suppose.”

  “The hell, you suppose! You breed animals. What is there to be curious about? You know what happens when stallion smells mare. Were you in heat yourself?”
>
  “Don’t be vulgar, doctor!”

  “Don’t lie to me then! What time of the month was it for you?”

  “All right, I was in heat, too!”

  “And you knew that riding the stallion would bring you to climax. Yes or no?”

  “God, you’ve got a dirty mind!”

  “It gets dirtier. It had happened before, hadn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And always there was cruelty. You had to hurt somebody, break something.”

  “Not. . . not always. In the past, it happened only rarely. Now it’s happening frequently, and I’m afraid. Once upon a time, it never happened at all. You have to believe that.”

  “I do believe it; but that doesn’t close the matter. We’ll come back to it again.” He is gentle now. He is like me. When people submit, he is calm and pleasant. He makes a note or two and then says: “Tell me about the once-upon-a-time, when these nasty things never happened.”

  He dips another biscuit in his coffee. I laugh and tell him that Lily used to do that. She called it “dunking”. He asks was Lily part of the “good times”?

  “Oh, yes. She was the biggest part and the best – after Papa, of course. Funny! One of my earliest memories is of Lily bouncing me on her knee and saying the English nursery rhyme:

  Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross

  To see a fine lady upon a white horse

  I used to feel all shimmery and shivery with pleasure at the motion and the smell of her perfume and the rustle of her clothes against her skin. Strange how things like that stay with you and excite you.”

  I wonder if he knows that I am excited now – and if he does, why doesn’t he respond a little? He looks a sturdy enough stallion. I ask him:

  “Do you have sexual memories?”

  “Everyone does; but at this moment I’m interested in yours. Tell me more about you and Lily.”