by Morris West
“I’ll try; but please, be patient with me. I have to take it one step at a time. You must know what I mean about the futility. Didn’t you ever get depressed when you looked down at all those rows of beds and realised how much the patients expected of you and how little you could really give them. It did me a little good. It taught me to be kinder. On the other hand, it did me a lot of harm.”
“What sort of harm?”
For the first time she seems embarrassed. Then she makes a big effort and blurts out:
“For quite a long while it played hell with my sex life. I’d wake up beside some beautiful young body and wonder what terrible things were going on inside it. Gianni said the same thing happened to all medical students. You just had to get over it. He made a joke. ‘They say justice is a blind goddess. I think love has to be blind, too.’ My trouble was that, in the end, the blindfold fell off, just at the wrong time.”
I note that phrase, too. I underline it several times; but, mindful that she is prepared only for one step at a time, I let her go on.
“One result was, of course, that in our free time we played hard, just to forget the tragedy; but it still shoved itself under our noses. My introduction to the underside of Vienna came very early. One winter’s night, just about eleven, I was curled up in front of the fire reading when Gianni knocked on my door. He had a carriage waiting. He wanted me to dress immediately, get my instruments and go with him. Why me? I wanted to know. I thought it might be a botched abortion. There were a lot of those and young interns were often called in to do the repair job. They had no licence to practise privately, so there was always an element of risk. Gianni told me the mistress of a friend of his was having a baby. It was a bad delivery and he needed help. He took me to a grimy block of apartments near the Burggasse. They’re still there. They call them Bassena-Wohnungen, basin apartments, because there’s one watertap on each floor and a single communal toilet. The place was as grim as a gaol; and the Hausmeister who peered at us from his little glass cabin looked like a snarling old mastiff. Gianni handed him a bank-note and he let us pass.
“The patient was a girl, no more than eighteen, thin and undernourished, far gone in a difficult labour. The lad with her was a student from the conservatory, who scraped up food and tuition money by playing the accordion in a wine cellar. The apartment was little better than a hovel; Gianni himself had brought the towels and the linen, a basket and blankets for the baby. It was a breech birth, difficult and messy. We had to use high forceps and finally cut to get the child out alive. It was a close call, and we sat until dawn coaxing the mother back from the edge of dying. As soon as the stores opened we sent the young father out to buy provisions. He was hardly out of the door when the Hausmeister came storming in, shouting scandal, threatening eviction, the usual performance of that very special breed.
“I was starting to shout back, but Gianni restrained me. He put on the most beautiful performance I have ever seen. We were, he explained, doctors on an errand of mercy. Surely a few hours’ disturbance was better than a death in the house. As for scandal, well, as an officer charged with public health, he had noticed a number of quite scandalous and dangerous infractions in this building – unsanitary toilet facilities, filthy wash-basins, accumulations of rubbish, rats which were known plague carriers. Then he broke off and with an air of great surprise and concern asked the Hausmeister to put out his tongue, cough, bend and touch his toes, a whole comedy of medical nonsense. Then he said, ‘My friend, you need help almost as much as this mother and child. Come and see me at the hospital. Ask for me in casualty between three and four. I can’t promise anything – one never can in cases like yours. But I’ll do the best I can for you – provided, of course, I can count on you to take care of my friends here!’
“The fellow was almost grovelling with panic. He begged to know what was the matter with him. Gianni suggested I should take a look at him too, and give a second opinion. I put him through the same routine. My opinion was that he was in a very bad way. He had an acute case of serpiginous scatology which, if left untreated, would develop into incurable proctalgia. By this time the wretch didn’t know whether he was shot or poisoned. Gianni assured him gravely that he would do his best, provided there was no more annoyance for the new mother and child. At the hospital Gianni treated him quite successfully, with a heavy purge and a week’s dose of placebos. I visited the mother and child every day until they were both out of danger.”
I tell her it’s a charming story. If she did it on the stage at the Burgtheater, there wouldn’t be a dry eye in the house; but please, I would like to know the point of it!
“The point, my dear doctor, is that the child died a month later. The couple split up shortly after. The girl went back on the streets and used to send her friends to me to make sure they were fit for inspection by the city health people. The father of the child is now a well known conductor. You asked me about burying successes and failures. There’s your answer.”
I am sure it’s not the whole answer; but for the present, it will suffice. I ask a simpler question.
“Affairs of the heart – anything important during this period?”
“No! It just wasn’t possible. I worked like a dog at the Krankenhaus. In spite of all the prejudices that festered in that place – against women, against Jews, against psychiatry, reforms in administration, socialism and Hungarians! – I was determined to prove myself first rate. So, playtime was only playtime. And I still had to have a place and a time that belonged only to me.”
“And when you were alone, what did you do?”
“I read; I played the piano; I cooked; I mended my clothes; I day dreamed.”
“About what?”
“About Silbersee mostly. What I would do when I next went home, the improvements I could make. I even planned a big hunt ball and worked out every detail in my head – except one.”
“What was that?”
“Who would be my escort. There was no man that special in my life.”
“Had there ever been?”
“No. Only Papa. The rest were friends, bed companions. I never really needed them enough to want to keep them.”
“So, really, in spite of your education, your travels, your training as a physician, a part of you had remained anchored in childhood, and the sexual experiences of adolescence. You tried to shut the door on the incest experience; but no man ever matched your Papa as a lover. Your attachment to Lily had all sorts of elements in it; she was mother, sister, confidante, lesbian companion. Yes?”
“I’ve never arranged it that way in my mind; but yes, it’s true.”
“And for each of these people, about whom you feel guilt and shame – or at least embarrassment – you have provided yourself with an idealised Doppelgänger. For Lily, you have the beautiful and devoted virgin, Sister Damiana, called untimely to God. She understands you as Lily does. She reads your mind; but the relationship is untainted by sex. Therefore, you cannot feel her breasts under the habit. In place of your Papa you have the noble voyager, Avram Kostykian. He is straight out of the Grail legend: the gentle knight, pure and beyond reproach, who shows you the mystery of the pearl, leaves you an almost perfect sapphire, but never wants sex with you.”
I expect her to be angry. I would be happier if she were. It would mean that we were coming close to the heart of the argument. But no! She is quiet, quizzical, even a mite patronising.
“Are you telling me, doctor, that I have invented these people?”
“Not at all. I am saying that, unconsciously, you have – how shall I put it – re-arranged them in your mind, the way a portraitist re-arranges his sitter as he sets her down on canvas. It’s a matter of editing, of emphasis, of light and shade. It’s an act of artistic creation.”
“Or to put it bluntly, a lie.”
“On the contrary! It is an act of truth. You are telling not only what these people were in themselves, but what they were to you, what they have become to you with the passage
of time. I could tell you the Kostykian story three different ways. The facts would be the same in each case, but the meaning would be quite different. Would you like me to try?”
“No thank you.” She laughs. “I take the point. What I should like to know is . . .”
We are interrupted by a domestic commotion. The children and their nurse have arrived home. There is much high pitched shouting and bidding for Mamma’s attention. A moment later, Emma knocks on the door and ushers in the nurse. Her hand is bound with a bloody scarf. She has torn it on a piece of barbed wire. The cut is deep. It runs from the base of the little finger down the fleshy heel of the hand. It will need stitches. I ask Emma to boil water, bring me gauze, cotton wool, disinfectant, and a needle and thread. My patient offers to help. I accept. She has told me she used to be very deft in surgery. So we can test that story at least. She wraps a towel round her middle, scrubs up at my wash basin, then with little fuss and a minimum of discomfort to the victim, she cleanses, disinfects, stitches and bandages the wound. The nursemaid is grateful. Emma is delighted; she knows I should have taken twice the time, grumbled all the way through it and left the nursemaid in tears. For my part, I am discreetly pleased. It is one more small intimacy. I save my compliment until we are alone:
“That was a very stylish demonstration, my dear colleague.”
“What else did you expect? A first year student could hardly have botched it. But I’m glad you approve. I have the feeling you think that half of what I’m telling you is fiction.”
I decide to be blunt with her. We are too far along now to be dealing in half-truths. Once again I invite her professional understanding of what we are about.
“. . . Let’s be frank with each other. In all diagnosis one has to be sceptical. You know that every alcoholic with cirrhosis of the liver will tell you he’s a moderate drinker. The ulcer sufferer confesses only to occasional indigestion. In our interview I asked you how your episodes of sadism began. You said – where is it now? ah here! – you said ‘whenever I feel ugly about myself. In other words, your view of yourself changes. Therefore, what you tell about yourself changes too. I cannot accept simply the persona, the mask, in which you present yourself to me at one moment. I have to discover all the other constituents of the self behind the mask. Our dreams and even our daydreams represent the dynamic elements in our lives. The simple facts – the colour of a house, the direction of a street, whether we drank tea or coffee at a given meal – these are the static elements. So please, please! It’s too late in the day to become self-conscious. Just tell me the tale as you remember it.”
“And you, my friend, please remember I need much help from here on.”
“I will. I promise. You finished your internship in Vienna. Presumably you were granted a licence to practise medicine and surgery.”
“I was offered more. A teaching post if I wanted it. There was an opening for an assistant in abdominal surgery. It was the first step on a high ladder. I wasn’t sure I wanted to make the climb. I used the excuse that I wanted to do a post-graduate year in Edinburgh or London. After that I would feel more confident of my capacity. I kissed hands again, bowed out, threw a wild, wild party for my friends in a Hungarian restaurant and then came back to Silbersee.
“Papa, I found, was in Munich. ‘In rut,’ Lily sniffed, ‘for the diva in Fledermaus.’ I wished him luck and settled down to check the accounts and the stud-book and ride the rounds of our domain and listen to Lily’s rehash of the local gossip. I had hardly been home a week when I got a letter from Ilse Hellman. Surprise! Miracle! Star-bursts all over the sky! She had fallen in love with a most wonderful, wonderful man, Prince Charming himself. His name was Johann Dietrich. He was titled, too, Ritter von Gamsfeld. He had proposed. She had accepted. Papa had consented. The betrothal would be announced at a grand supper dance, which was now being arranged. I would get a formal invitation very soon. All three of us must come, Papa and Tante Liliane and me. And, of course, everything we had planned could now happen: I would be bridesmaid, godmother, ever-loving companion in their wedded bliss. It sounded like purgatory in pink ribbons; but there it was!
“We looked up von Gamsfeld in the Almanach de Gotha. The title was minor but quite old. It was first given to one of the brothers of Wolf Dietrich, the warrior archbishop of Salzburg. The manor estate was located not far from Bad Ischl and was rated by our local informants as ‘considerable’. So, it seemed my little Ilse would have her dream come true, and Papa Hellman would achieve the financier’s dream, a wedding of agriculture, mining and good, gold Austrian crowns. It made Lily’s testy question not at all unreasonable: ‘If that little cottonhead can grab herself a catch like that, why not you? Think about it, luv. You’ve been working too hard, too long – and the night games don’t help your complexion either!’ To which, of course, I had no ready answer, except to tell her I was going to take a ride up to see the timber-cutters. If she wanted to come, she was welcome, but please, no more lectures on the holy estate of matrimony!”
“But obviously you thought about it.”
“Of course! Every girl does; and Lily had touched a tender spot. I was the bright one. I was beautiful, rich and capable – but little Miss Cottonhead was the one who got Prince Charming!”
“So what did you do about it?”
“The same as Lily. I started thinking about clothes. The engagement party was to be a lavish affair – a grand ball at the Hellman mansion near Bad Ischl. Guests would be accommodated overnight at the Hotel Drei Mohren which was rented from cellar to attic for the occasion. It was to be all opulence and old regime but in a country mode, to compliment the local dignitaries. Lily and I decided that we would go in Landestracht, and we made three trips to Salzburg to have the full-dress dirndls designed and fitted. By the time Papa showed up again, pale and frayed from his long waits in the diva’s dressing room and late, late suppers afterwards, the dresses were ready. He was so impressed with them that he decided that he too would go in local dress, and that – for the first time, mark you! – he would let me wear his mother’s jewels, beautiful, heavily worked pieces made in Hungarian style by goldsmiths in Vienna and Budapest. Grandmother must have been a big woman, because some of the pieces were far too heavy for me; but there were others that matched beautifully with my costume, a pendant necklace and a pair of bracelets. For a ring I wore the sapphire which Avram Kostykian had given me, and which I had had set in Vienna.”
Once again I am struck by the extraordinarily complex nature of this woman. What I am hearing now is all woman talk, guileless and natural: dress and jewellery and social chit-chat. I wait for the shadow figure to emerge, the dark spirit that prompts the anger in her eyes and her orgiac furies in the house of appointment. I try to coax the shadow out with an unkind question.
“Why didn’t your Papa just give you his mother’s jewellery? I don’t imagine he wore it himself. Why did he keep it locked away when he had a grown daughter to wear it?”
“I don’t know.” Her answer seems frank and open. “It wasn’t anything that bothered me. It was his property. He could do what he liked with it. Lily had the theory that he was keeping it in case he ever got married; so that he could pass it on to his wife. I know he bought jewels for his girl friends, but he never gave away grandmother’s.” She looks up at me and gives a little embarrassed laugh. “You’re a nice sober Swiss. You don’t know how crazy the Hungarians can be. They’re like quicksilver. You can never hold them steady enough to make sense of anything.”
“What happened to the jewels in the end?”
“He gave them to Lily.”
“What an extraordinary thing!”
“Perhaps not so extraordinary; but I’ll tell you about that, later. Where were we?”
“At the preparations for Ilse Hellman’s engagement ball.”
“Oh yes! The invitations arrived – wouldn’t you guess? – perfect autumn weather, clear and calm, the leaves, not fallen yet, still gold and russet and amber. There were sp
ecial arrangements for me. Papa and Lily were lodged at the Drei Mohren. I was taken to the Hellman mansion, lodged in a room next to Ilse so we could gossip together, dress together. I wondered if she would want us to spend the night in bed together after Prince Charming went chastely to his couch! Forgive me! This is all retrospect. I didn’t feel quite as bitchy at the time; but – oh dear! – it was a little hard to swallow all that sweetness!”
“And what about Prince Charming? Was he as hard to take?”
The change in her is startling. It is as if a light has been switched off. There is a terrible winter sadness in her voice that chills the heart. She does not look at me, she stares down at the backs of her hands which lie, slack and motionless, in her lap. She says simply: “Oh no! He wasn’t hard to take at all. He was the most beautiful man I had ever seen. I wanted him more than anything or anybody else in my whole life.”
I wait in silence for the rest of it. Slowly she lifts her head to face me. Her eyes are bleak. Her cheeks are bloodless, like white marble. I am reminded of her descriptions of her mother, the Snow Queen with a lump of ice where her heart should be. She needs no prompting, the words come pouring out in a steady, remorseless flow.
“It was the real coup de foudre. If you’ve never felt it, nobody can tell you what it’s like. Here was this beautiful creature, tall, blond, bright eyed, oozing maleness, decked out in the dress uniform of the Imperial Cavalry, bending over my hand and telling me how pleased he was to know me, how much Ilse had talked about our friendship, et patati et patata, und so weiter, for ever and ever. I could feel myself blushing from navel to forehead – me of all people! I kept praying I wouldn’t make a fool of myself and faint clean away at his feet. I see you smile. I don’t blame you. I’m forty-five years old and I still remember that moment as vividly as if it were happening now. We’ve talked about being reborn. Well, somebody was born in me that night, somebody so wild and passionate I’ve never been able to subdue her. I wanted Johann Dietrich with all my body and soul, and here he was betrothing himself to this melting little caramel cake! When I danced with him it was worse. I found he was intelligent, too. He had heard of what I was doing at Silbersee. He asked if he might visit one day and look over the brood stock. Perhaps I could advise him about something similar at Gams feld. We might even found a hunt there. We needn’t be in competition, we could perhaps set up a joint enterprise. As a cavalryman he was interested in . . .