by Morris West
“Then Ilse came and whisked him away; but I treasured every word as if it were a diamond. He wasn’t lost to me yet; not until they were married. Please God, not even then!
“When at last the ball was over, and the pre-dawn breakfast was served and the two lovers had exchanged their last chaste kisses, Ilse came to my room. She was too excited to sleep. She crept into bed with me and talked and talked, while I listened with most loving interest, filing everything away for future reference. I wanted to know as much as she did about this paragon from Gamsfeld. When she tired at last and snuggled into the crook of my arm, I began to make love to her as we had done in the old days in Geneva. After a night of waltzes and frustrated love, she was too excited to resist. She protested weakly that though she still loved me she wanted to save herself for Johann. I didn’t know what there was worth saving; but I told her the same sweet lies Lily and Papa had told me: that she was robbing Johann of nothing, only enriching him with a ready and experienced body. She fell asleep with her lips against my breast and her leg thrown over mine and her hair brushing my cheek. I was still awake when the sun came up and farmboys began bringing in the herds for milking. I could hear the sound of the cowbells, clear across the valley. I looked down at Ilse and thought how wonderful it would be if she just disappeared – blew away like an autumn leaf.”
As I look at that pale, beautiful face and those lustrous eyes, peering backwards into a landscape that only they can perceive, I feel a sudden terror, as if an icy finger is probing at my heart. I understand perfectly what she tells me. This is the death wish that we all make, some time in our lives. I have made it lying beside Emma, while my mind and my body are engorged with another woman. I have made it against my father. I have made it against Freud – and Toni, relentless inquisitor of my secret heart, claims that I am determined to fulfil it in Munich.
Then, in the deep recesses of my unconscious, an iron door opens and a thousand strange creatures rush out to besiege me: a hideous dwarf with Freud’s face, a hopping bird with the face of a little girl, the clanking skeleton of some prehistoric monster, a Siegfried, surpassingly beautiful, with a gory wound in his breast, who cries, “You have killed me, you, you, you!” The siege seems to last an eternity; but when I look at my patient she has noticed nothing. She is still caught in the enchanted moment of the love wish and the death wish, the moment of corruption which must precede the moment of possession.
Once again I am aware of the strange concordance of our psychic experiences. The dissociation which I have just experienced, the sensation of being out of my own control and under the influence of alien forces, is exactly the same as that which she experiences in her orgiac moments. No, wait! It is not exactly the same. I am constantly besieged. She is always the aggressor. Suddenly I am aware that she is no longer seated but standing before me, with hands outstretched. I ask defensively:
“Yes. What is it?”
She begs me, humbly, like a little girl:
“Please! I’m very frightened; will you hold my hands for a moment?”
I look into her eyes. I see no guile, no malice. I am not sure that she perceives me at all. She is staring into the kaleidoscope of her own self and not into my confused brain-box. I take her hands. I stand up. I draw her to me and hold her close against my body. I feel a prickle of lust for her. She does not respond. She does not resist. She accepts my warmth with a kind of despairing gratitude. My lust subsides quickly. After a few moments she withdraws from my embrace and thanks me with the quaint formality of childhood.
“Thank you. I needed that. You’re not displeased with me, are you?”
“Why should I be displeased? I’m happy that you trust me – and I have much respect for your courage. Are you ready to go on?”
MAGDA
Zurich
I go on, because I must. It is late afternoon. My time is running out. I have promised to complete my biography by the end of this session. Immediately after that, a decision must be made. Can this Carl Jung help me or not? More important still, will he help me once he knows the whole story?
If he cannot or will not, then I leave Zurich immediately. There is an overnight wagon-lit to Milan and Rome. I shall be on it. Whether I shall ever get off it is another matter. There is a certain irony in the notion of beginning a journey among the puritans in Zurich and ending it, a pilgrim of eternity, some where on the road to Rome, the eternal city. I hear Jung’s voice asking me:
“Something funny? Do you want to share the joke?”
It is easier to lie than to explain the humour of death on the wagon-lit. I tell him:
“I was just remembering our journey back to Silbersee after the ball. Papa was nodding in the corner seat, making little grunting noises as his head tapped against the carriage window on each curve. Lily was wide-awake, but slightly dishevelled after a long night and a hasty toilette. I was red-eyed and weary; but my head was full of little dancing devils. Lily pointed to Papa and grumbled: ‘I don’t know where he got to last night. He disappeared after the last waltz and the next I saw of him was when he walked into breakfast saying he’d just paid a visit to the barber. I don’t know whom he picked up at bedtime; but, give the old devil his due, he’s as quick as greased lightning. And what about you, Miss? I saw you dancing with Dietrich. You’d better get those stars out of your eyes; because nobody is going to break up that engagement. I got the whole story last night from Frau Hellman’s widowed sister. Now there’s a pantomime character for you! She looks like one of the ugly sisters from Cinderella! Anyway, Dietrich’s mother died five years ago. His father died last year. Johann gets the title, of course; but the estate does not revert to him absolutely until he’s married. Until then he gets only the revenues. Apparently the old man didn’t want the property pledged for gambling debts or dissipated on fancy ladies. However, there are other legacies to be paid – to relatives and retainers and one quite hefty amount to the woman Daddy was keeping when he died. So, young Johann needs ready cash. What quicker way to get it than a money marriage? I’d say he’s got it both ways, love and money. Ilse dotes on him; and he seems to be very fond of her. But you see what I mean: if you’d been around, you could have been in the market, too!’ I was very tempted to tell her that I was already in it and I intended to stay in it until the last bids were called. But I was too tired for argument. I simply told her that Johann Dietrich wanted to talk with us about a joint breeding operation and perhaps another hunt club at Gamsfeld.
“Lily thought about that for a few minutes and then decided it made sense. With larger capital we could bid for the best bloodstock. Gamsfeld had certain advantages over Silbersee for training. There was more flat land. It was nearer to the railhead junction for Vienna, Munich, Carinthia and Italy. We could mate and breed and raise the young stock at Silbersee, then ship them to Gamsfeld for training. Hans Hemeling was excellent at his job. I could doctor animals as well as I could humans. All in all, a splendid idea – provided I kept my hands in the pockets of my hacking jacket, at least when Ilse Hellman was around the place. That’s what I was smiling at; you had to get up very early in the morning to trick Lily Mostyn!
“Papa had a comment to make, too, when he was jolted awake on a particularly sharp curve. Apropos of nothing at all, he announced: ‘I’m very impressed with young Dietrich, very impressed. Much more brains than you’d expect from a cavalry officer. He’s got a widowed aunt who keeps house for him at Gamsfeld. Her name is Sibilla. Good-looking woman, soft tongued and light on her feet. I’ve in vited her to visit us at Silbersee.’ I didn’t comment. I thought, why not before? Why the devil couldn’t you have spent a few thoughts on your daughter’s marriage prospects?”
Suddenly I am aware of Jung’s scrutiny. His eyes never leave my face. He is not writing notes, just tapping the end of his pencil against his lips. I know what he is thinking. He is as bored as I with this gossipy nonsense. I throw out my arms in a gesture of surrender.
“All right! I’ll say it plain! I want
ed Johann Dietrich. From that very first moment I was hell bent to get him. I had no plan. I had a big place in Ilse’s heart, a small handhold on Johann’s life. I had to start from there – and I did as soon as we got back to Silbersee.”
“Tell me what you did.” Jung grins at me with mischievous amusement. “I have a lot to learn about women in love.”
“I wrote letters. To Papa Hellman and his wife, many and fulsome thank-yous for their hospitality, which I hoped they would permit me to return at Silbersee. To Ilse, a veritable book of loving compliments: how beautiful she looked; what a splendid man she had found; how happy I was to know she was happy; how Johann had mentioned he would like to see our farms at Silbersee and perhaps set up a joint venture with us; how delighted we’d be to have him visit, with Ilse of course – with his aunt and her Papa and Mamma and the cat and the dog if they felt like it! And how soon would they like to suggest? In Johann’s letter I was very formal and well bred. Ilse was my dear, dear friend. I was happy for her and for him. As for his visit to Silbersee, please, any time! We were making some interesting changes from cold bloods to warm bloods. I talked about Hanoverians and Holsteins and English Thoroughbreds and experiments I had heard of with cross-breeding Connemara ponies. I told him of my forthcoming visit to England, and planted the thought that we might invest together in a good English sire.”
“As a matter of interest,” Jung quizzes me amiably, “how much time did you have before the marriage was to be sealed?”
“From autumn to Easter. True to form, little Ilse had to be an Easter bride and Johann had to complete two more months of duty with his regiment before he resigned his commission.”
“Not much time to break up a betrothal as solid as that one.”
“I know. It would have been easier to rob the Landesbank! However, I was ready for any gamble at all.”
“But you had no idea, surely, how Johann Dietrich felt about you.”
“That didn’t matter. I knew that whatever Ilse had I had more; whatever she did for a man, I could do twenty times better.”
“Such confidence!”
He laughs in my face. I burst out laughing too.
“It’s a form of madness. You’re absolutely convinced that the world outside works by the same rules as the world inside your head. In my case it seemed to do just that. A few weeks after the betrothal, Johann and Ilse came to visit us at Silbersee. They were chaperoned by Johann’s aunt, the one who had made such an impression on Papa and who seemed to be equally taken with him. As part of the changes at Silbersee and to provide for our hunt club guests, I had converted two of the nearer cottages into guest lodges. This was where we put Ilse, Johann and Aunt Sibilla. We rode around the estate together with Hans Hemeling as guide. Hemeling made an excellent impression on Johann, who was by no means the idle heir. He talked frankly about his problems.
“His father had run the estate very efficiently; but he had never allowed Johann to take part in the management. In the latter years of his life there was a certain estrangement, because the old man had moved his mistress into the manor. So, Johann stayed away with his regiment on full-time service. Now, there was a lot of ground to make up. He was eager to hear how we had reorganised ourselves at Silbersee, and how we had succeeded in restoring morale among our tenants. Then, he said something that rekindled my hopes like a wind blowing through hot coals: ‘I hope you can pass some of this on to Ilse. She’s a dear girl and I love her very much, but she’s never had to fend for herself; and once we’re married I’m going to need a lot of help at Gamsfeld. You’re different. You’ve had a professional education. You’re tremendously self-reliant. I admire that so much. Then of course you’ve got Lily. I love that woman, she’s got salt on her tongue and the devil in her heart! I like your Papa too. He’s got a lot of style.’”
“So much for compliments; but was there no holding of hands, no kisses, no little moments of revelation?”
“None. I was as prudent as a nun.”
“And Ilse?”
“Was overwhelmed. Now I must play little mother as well as all the other roles and teach her the elements of running an establishment. Johann’s Aunt Sibilla was a very managing woman, and Ilse didn’t want her taking over as mistress of the house. I promised that Lily and I would do all we could to have her ready for installation as chatelaine.
“At the end of the day, we fed them a country style supper at the Schloss, and packed them off to the guest cottage. Papa intervened at this stage and offered to drive them into the village for zither music and Schuhplattler. I knew he wanted to cultivate Aunt Sibilla; the lovers wanted to be alone. Lily and I opted for an early bedtime.
“When they left next morning, Johann Dietrich handed me a promissory note for three thousand gold crowns as a half share in an English Thoroughbred stallion, if I could find the right one. So, a few weeks later I was off to England with Hans Hemeling to attend the yearling sales at Newmarket. Hans would bring the animals back home. I would stay on for two months’ post-graduate study at Saint Mark’s Hospital in the East End, where good work was being done on the study of fistulas and malignant growths.
“It seemed a proper move. Papa had promised to stay at home and look after Lily and the estate. I saw no sense at all in waiting for Johann Dietrich to work up a grand passion for me. The sooner we settled down to trade together, the more we’d see of each other. Absence might not make his heart grow fonder – but at least we would be in partnership for three thousand gold crowns apiece. Many a great romance had flowered out of smaller seeds than that. I had another idea.”
“Stop a moment!” Jung holds up a peremptory hand. “You were going to London. You were going to be there alone, for two months. Was there no mention of your mother? No discussion with your Papa or with Lily?”
“There was discussion, yes.”
“And?”
“As always, it led to a dead end.”
“Please explain how.”
“Papa took the line he always did: no information, no discussion. So far as he was concerned, my mother was dead, buried and forgotten. My need of information was like a summer colic; I would get over it.”
“And Lily?”
“Lily took a different tack this time. She understood my feelings, always had. She herself was an adopted child. It was the first time she had ever admitted that; and I’m still not sure it was true. However, she claimed to have felt the same pangs of curiosity about her parents as I had about Mamma. But, she said, it was like the locked room in Bluebeard’s castle; once you opened the door, you might find things you didn’t like and couldn’t forget ever after. She said something else, too, which has stuck in my mind. There’s a cold streak in the English, luv, especially in their aristocracy. They can be very cruel and very clannish when their interest is threatened. I’d rather not have you risk that. I was a nanny, remember, a cut above the housemaid and the cook; but I never got to sit down to dinner with the gentry. You’re gentry yourself now. Why have some hoity-toity madam look at you through her lorgnette as if you were a slug on a lettuce leaf.’ Does that explain it?”
“It will suffice. How did you get into Saint Mark’s Hospital?”
“The way I did everything else, those days. I wrote and sent copies of my qualifications and letters from my professors in Padua and Vienna.”
“And so, leaving romance simmering on the stove in Gamsfeld, you arrived in London . . .”
“With a letter of credit to Coutts bank and an introduction to His Imperial Majesty’s ambassador at the Court of Saint James. Since I had no patent of nobility there was no danger of my being taken up by society; but my professional credentials made me a respectable, if exotic, name in the embassy guest book. I went to Newmarket with Hans and bought our first important sire. We named him Macedon, because we hoped he would father a world winner like Alexander the Great. When Hans came back to Austria, I signed in at Saint Mark’s, took lodgings in Baker Street – and rode back and forth from work every day in
a hansom cab. It was the most miserable period of my life. The only thing that kept me going was pride. I couldn’t let Papa or Johann see me coming home like a whipped puppy.”
“What was the problem?”
“Everything! The weather was vile: pea-soup fog or drizzling rain for weeks on end. My lodgings were a frozen wasteland. The Englishmen I met seemed anchored in a sexual Sea of Sargasso, between masturbation, masochism and Greek love in the Turkish baths. And Ilse Hellman married Johann Dietrich, by special dispensation, a week before Christmas.”
“Good God!” Even Jung was startled by that piece of history. “What happened? Don’t tell me she got pregnant at Silbersee. That would be too much!”
“No. Her mother fell very ill. It was thought she might die before Christmas. She wanted to see her little Ilse married before she departed this life. Johann didn’t raise any objections. It meant he was confirmed earlier in his estate. Papa Hellman was happy to have everything neatly buttoned up. Ilse’s Mamma died on New Year’s Eve – while I was peering through a microscope at a sarcoma section in Saint Mark’s Hospital!”
The next instant Jung and I are both spluttering with laughter. It really is too much for credibility. And yet, that was exactly how it happened. Except I wasn’t laughing in London when Lily’s telegram arrived. I was crying my eyes out in rage and disappointment.
“There was snow ankle deep in the streets, but I walked all the way to Piccadilly and talked my way into the Cafe Royal, where I watched a fat lipped fellow making epigrams for a table full of young men who hung on his every secondhand word. No, that isn’t true! I thought he was giving a rather good performance. I remember walking over to the table with a glass of champagne in my hand to tell him so. When I introduced myself by name and profession – and with reasonable sobriety! – he took me by the hand and announced with a flourish: ‘Madame, you are magnificent! A physician indeed and a surgeon! Gentlemen, there is hope for us yet, if – Heaven forbid – we are stricken with the pox! Do you dance, Madame? Splendid! I have just written a play about a dancer with an interest in surgery. Her name is Salome. She dances for King Herod who presents her with John the Baptist’s head on a dish. Do you think you could play the part?’”