by Morris West
“Johann was grim and pale. He said simply: ‘Do what you can, please, gentlemen.’ Then he bent and kissed Ilse on the forehead, shepherded Sibilla and Lily out of the room and left us to our work. The physician from the village proved both competent and judicious. In his opinion the cranial damage was major and irreparable. The spinal fracture would probably mean permanent paralysis. All in all, it would be a mercy if she did not survive. Papa nodded agreement. I, being in the presence of my seniors, had no opinion to offer. Papa suggested that we deal first with the cranial depression and see what sort of mess we had inside. It was a mess, too. After an hour of useless work we simply sewed back the flaps, bandaged the skull, composed her in the bed and called in Johann.
“It was Papa who delivered the verdict. She was not going to survive. The most merciful thing was to let her die quietly with no more butcher’s work. Johann broke down completely. He knelt by the bed, his face buried in his hands, sobbing like a stricken child. The physician asked tactfully whether we should not have the priest in to give her the last sacraments. Aunt Sibilla had already sent for him. I, who had never seen this service before, stood with the rest and listened to the words of dismissal, and felt – would you believe? – joyful that it would soon be over.
“But the end was not yet. The vigil was longer than any of us expected. About eight in the evening, I was sitting in the bedroom with Johann and Aunt Sibilla. I was longing to take him in my arms; but dared not give so much as a hint of what I felt for him. I was keeping watch with Ilse, my dearest friend, companion of my woman’s heart.
“Suddenly she began to roll her head on the pillow and utter strange animal cries. Sibilla and Johann looked at me and asked what was happening. I explained as best I could that the synapses in the brain were all askew and that these were reflex actions only. Then Johann cried out: ‘But she’s hurting can’t you see? She’s hurting! Please help her! Please!’ I told him I would do what I could. I asked them both to leave the room. I poured a little chloroform on a pad and waved it under Ilse’s nose. The smell would make it appear – to all but Papa – that I had administered more anaesthetic. Then I killed her with an injection of air into the femoral artery, where the pinprick would not be noticed.
“Ten minutes later I called in Papa and the local man. They pronounced her dead. There was the usual bedside grief. The local man signed a death certificate. My father witnessed it. The priest gave the last blessing, offered his condolences to the family and took his leave. Johann, frozen in a terrible grief, refused to leave the room until the women came in to wash the body and prepare it for the undertaker.
“The rest of it is a sequence of rituals, unreal as the scenes painted on an ancient vase. Aunt Sibilla begged us to stay at Gamsfeld until after the funeral. For the first time, I began to be wary. It was no part of my plan to be talked of as a possible consort for the widowed Ritter von Gamsfeld. So I made the excuse that I had things to do at Silbersee and would take the same train as Hans, who was taking the horses back home. I promised faithfully that I would be back in time for the funeral.
“Lily was less than happy. She was jealous of Aunt Sibilla’s attentions to Papa, and had some sour words to say about the gentry being always gentry and settling their own affairs without care for anyone else. I suggested she come home with me and Hans and let Papa work out his own destiny. On the train journey she sprang a surprise. She had decided to take a vacation in England, very soon, while the spring flowers were out and the gardens at their best. She hadn’t been home for so long. She was getting a kind of hunger to see the old place again.
“I told her it was a marvellous idea, just what she needed. I knew Papa was getting to be a trial; and I was always busy. ‘So busy, luv!’ Lily told me sadly. ‘So very busy! And so clever that I wonder where you learned it all!’ There was a barb in that bait too, but I ignored it. I was sure a holiday in England was just what Lily needed. I promised a gift of fifty crowns to help her on her way.
“The funeral at Gamsfeld was a big affair, very feudal, full of strange local protocols that made no sense at all to us Ausländers. On one side of the grave, Johann stood with Aunt Sibilla and other members of his family. Facing them were Papa Hellman and his sons. I stood with the Hellmans – a mute and mourning witness to my own sad loss. Papa Hellman held my hand and put his arm around my shoulder, and told me he would always look on me as his second daughter.
“As we moved out of the churchyard, Johann caught up with me. With a humility that moved me to tears, he begged: ‘Please, would you be willing to go on working as we planned? I need desperately to keep busy, and Ilse was so wrapped up in the project, I’m sure she’d want it to go on. Aunt Sibilla wants it, too. She thinks you’re one of the bravest and most complete women she’s met – and she loves having you around. I want to come to Silbersee sometimes; if you’ll have me. Gamsfeld is going to be a very lonely place now.” If I could have moved in then and there, I would have done it; but that little colony at Gamsfeld was full of sharp peasant eyes and clacking tongues. If I had learned nothing else in life I had learned to sit patiently behind my defences and wait for the time to strike.”
“Tell me! Through all this, did you feel no guilt, no doubt, no fear?”
“I felt nothing but triumph.”
It is an extraordinary statement; yet I believe it absolutely. All my own death dreams have prepared me to understand it. She is telling of a moment when the shadow, the dark element of the self, is in complete control, when all guilt is suppressed, and one feels like a conqueror marching into a vanquished city over a carpet of corpses, without even a twinge of remorse. Only later, a long time later perhaps, does the conqueror discover that he has taken possession of a plague town, where the bodies of the dead pollute the wells and the scavenging rats are carriers of the Black Death.
Her dream makes sense now. All its elements are contained in the macabre story I have just heard: the hunt, the fall, the dead vixen, she herself locked in the globe of glass, naked under the accusing eye of the sun – the primal God symbol. It is the glass ball itself which interests me now. It is at once a prison, a place of exhibition, a womb, a capsule in which she can maintain herself alive and safe, beyond the touch of hostile hands. I mention all these matters briefly. She does not contend with them. The dream has served its purpose. It has brought her safely to me, exposed but still untouchable. I remind her that we have a time limit and we must press on. I ask:
“After the funeral did you go back to Silbersee?”
“We went back, yes; but it wasn’t the same. It would never be the same again.”
“Why not?”
“Because my heart was with Johann in Gamsfeld and a strange, dark alchemy had begun to work between Papa and Lily and me. It began with the complicated chemistry of age. Papa – handsome, charming, agreeable, utterly selfish Papa! – was now a rather portly gentleman in his late fifties, with a well trained eye for young girls and an increasing dependence on the company and the ministrations of women long past their first youth. He needed to be coddled. He needed to be reassured that all his male parts were in working order and that his musk could raise all the females in the vicinity. What he didn’t need, what he fled like the plague, was marriage. So when someone like Aunt Sibilla, practised, persuasive and persistently urbane began stalking him, he tended to indulge himself first, then flee in panic – only to find himself hunted by other predatory ladies with money on their minds.
“What he could never see was that the only person with whom he could possibly be happy in marriage was Lily. She would have indulged him to the limit, forgiven him all his infidelities and still had love and body warmth to share when he came home. I tried a hundred times to persuade him; but no! He could not, would not see it. All his education was against the notion. A gentleman never married beneath him. He could tumble the common folk to his heart’s content, but he never raised them to his own high estate. Charge him with these ancient snobberies, and he would huff and puff
and tell you ‘Nonsense! Nonsense!’ but he clung to them just the same.
“So, Lily, ten years younger but trapped in the shoals of the spinster forties, became more and more bitter. She was still a good-looking woman; she still exercised every day; but there was grey in her hair and a certain matronly look and fewer smiles in her eyes – and, after we came back from Gamsfeld, a strange, furtive withdrawal from me. For a while I pretended not to notice. I was busy all the time, with Silbersee, with the Gamsfeld project, and with a clinic which I had opened in the village to take some of the weight off our ageing medico. However, one day she irritated me so much that I attacked. I told her I was sick of her childish sulks and if she had something on her mind, now was the time to say it.
“She said it. She said it loud and long in purest Lancashire. She had given the best years of her life to Papa, to me, to Silbersee. She had finished in a dead end street. She was nothing but a glorified housekeeper. She had no respect, no love. Papa preened himself like an old turkey whenever that Sibilla woman was around – and then expected Lily to rub his back and warm his front and wind him up for his next big affair. It was all too much! ‘And as for you, young Miss, I’ve loved you as if you were my own flesh and blood; but I don’t know you any more. You frighten me now. Oh, I know you say you love me! You probably do, in your own weird way. But if you wanted something badly enough, you’d walk all over me to get it. There’s a devil in you, lass! I’ve seen him looking out of those beautiful eyes. I know what you’ve done. I know what you’re doing now. I don’t want to be around to see what comes of it!’ Then she burst into tears and ran to lock herself in her room.
“My first reaction was a cold rage – too cold for words, thank God! I said nothing to defend myself, nothing to answer the veiled accusation. As I calmed down, I realised that silence was the only armour I needed. With Johann’s family and Papa Hellman on my side, any accusations that Lily might make would only be interpreted as the vagaries of a spinster lady in menopause.
“Later in the day she came to me, pale and penitent, and begged me to forgive her. She hadn’t meant half the things she’d said. She wasn’t well. The affair at Gamsfeld had upset her terribly. Much as she loved him, Papa was sometimes a monster. I took her in my arms and kissed her and told her it was just a bad moment, best forgotten. The sooner she could get away on her holiday, the better.
“Then she sprang another surprise. While she was in England she might – just might – look around for a little cottage in the country, a place where she could retire and live quietly when the time seemed right. She had some capital saved and Papa had always said she had a pension coming. I assured her she had; but was it necessary to think so far ahead? I had always hoped she would stay with me and help me to bring up my own children.
“She gave me a long searching look. Her eyes filled up with tears. She shook her head. ‘I’ve thought of that too, luv; but it wouldn’t work. The kind of life we’ve lived – you don’t want to pass that on to your children. My guess is that Johann Dietrich will ask you to marry him, and you’ll do it and he’ll want a son, and you’ll probably give him one. If you can keep everything clean after that, you’re home and happy; but it’s not easy, as I have good reason to know!’
“A few days later, she left for London. Papa was operating in Vienna. Hans Hemeling drove her to the station. I was glad to be rid of her for a while. Johann Dietrich was coming to Silbersee.”
MAGDA
Zurich
It is very strange. I have confessed, without restraint, to a whole catalogue of crimes and, finally, to premeditated murder; yet I have not been too much at a loss for words. I have even, at times, been carried away by the vividness of my own recollection and the unbidden eloquence of an actress. Now, when I am come to talk of love and marriage, I find myself stammering with embarrassment.
Jung, who is beginning to look as tired as I am feeling, fidgets in his chair and asks testily what the hell is blocking me. I try to make a joke. I tell him this is a love story and I haven’t been loved in a long time. Jung snaps at me:
“Nonsense! What have you got to hide? The seventh veil fell off long ago! Get on with the story. Johann was coming to visit you. What was he coming for? Business, pleasure, to propose marriage? Well?”
“I told myself it was business. I wasn’t building any dream castles yet. Presumably he wanted the pleasure of my company as well. That he could have; but he would have to jump a lot of hurdles before he got anything more. I was a girl with a defective birth certificate. I had learned from Lily that the mistress rarely arrived at the marriage bed. So, much as I loved him, much as I wanted him, Johann would have to play by the rules.
“Lily had departed for London; Papa was in Vienna. Therefore, discretion was demanded. Johann would be lodged in the guest house. Hans Hemeling would appoint one of the young grooms as his valet. If Johann pined for me in the night, so much the better. He had only to confess his love, offer me a marriage contract, and I would melt into his arms – after the ceremony!
“There was another reason for my caution. I was head over heels and gone for him; but I didn’t really know him intimately. Ilse had waxed ecstatic over her honeymoon experience; but then Ilse had been ecstatic with me long, long before the honeymoon. I had worked with him, yes. I liked the presence of the man, the impression he gave of strength and solidity, even of rectitude. I had also seen him shattered and weeping at Ilse’s bedside. I had to know how much room she still occupied in his heart and how hard it might be to have her vacate the premises. There was a lot to learn, you see; and he had to learn something too: that here in Silbersee I was the Meisterin, the Frau Doktor, and it was I who sat at the head of the table and rang the bell for service.”
“Bravo!” Jung claps his hands in mocking applause. “This is a real love story! I know I’m going to cry into my handkerchief! Strength, solidity, rectitude! Woo me with love, not diamonds! I will be wife not mistress! Christ! What’s got into you? You committed murder because you had a fire in your belly and you thought this was the only man in the world who could put it out. But he had to prove it. True or false?”
“True!”
“Then get on with it, for God’s sake! What happened when Johann Dietrich arrived?”
“Why, Doctor Jung, do you have to be such a bastard?”
“Because I’m tired and you’re still playing stupid games.”
“I’m sorry but I’m tired, too! The instant I saw Johann, my heart bled. He had lost weight. He was so tight, so controlled, that you felt one touch would set him twanging like a fiddle string. Yet he was very calm, very considerate, grateful for the least service. He came on the morning train; so lunch was our first meal together. That was a kind of fencing match: tentative questions, polite answers, some careful skating around painful areas. After lunch I suggested we ride up, through the timber lands, to the top of the Silberberg, where there was a magnificent vista of the countryside – three lakes and a view across the cols to the peaks of the Tauern Alps.
“It was a slow, ambling ride. We picked our way along the loggers’ paths until we broke out at the snowline, on to rocky ledges and patches of sodden tussocks. Up here the air was like wine – Greek wine with the taste of pine sap – and the space was like a silent explosion that blew open every door in the mind.
“At the top of the Silberberg there are twin peaks: high needles of rock that the locals call the Cuckold’s Horns. Between them lies a small, deep tarn, black water, reflecting the horns and the clouds and the stars at night. We tethered the horses at the pool’s edge and sat, side by side, on a rock ledge looking southward towards the sun.
“Johann, who had been very quiet on the ride, said with sudden vehemence: ‘Christ! I’d forgotten what it was like to be free! These last weeks I’ve been living like a troll in an underground cave.’ I wanted to reach out and take him in my arms. Instead I sat, pitching pebbles into the water and saying all the usual sympathetic nothings: it was still early day
s; time was the great healer; thus and thus. He gave me an odd lopsided smile and laid a fingertip against my lips. I had it all wrong, he told me. The last thing he needed was time. The less of it he had to brood in, the better. And please! No sympathy. That was the worst possible prescription. If you were a Dietrich you bit the bullet, soldiered on like the old man, like Aunt Sibilla.
“What was plaguing him more than Ilse’s death was his own responsibility for it. His responsibility? I could hardly believe what I was hearing! No, he assured me, he felt guilty – sometimes suicidally guilty – about the whole terrible business. It was difficult to explain, but he had to talk it out. He had loved Ilse very much. Their marriage, brief though it was, had been very happy. However, deep down, he knew that it was a mistake. Ilse was a child, a loving beautiful child with a rich dowry – a perfect match in the old style. She adored her husband, would go on adoring him, growing up like a young tree in the shadow of the great oak. The trouble was he didn’t want a child bride. He wanted a companion, a lover, a friend. If Ilse had lived – he would probably, in the end, have gone out and found a mistress as his father had. Ilse had been spared that unhappiness; but if he hadn’t married her, she would still be alive. The last scenes in that bedchamber at Gamsfeld haunted his dreams and his waking moments. There! At last it was out. He was sorry to burden me with his problems; but he felt better for telling me.”
“And you?” Jung is still testy and teasing. “You must have felt a whole lot better, too. No suspicion, no rival in the memory room! What happened then?”
“The way you are now, doctor, I’m not going to play you the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. We dined and sat up late, as we used to do at Gamsfeld. I was wild for him. By bedtime, I could hardly contain myself; but I managed it. I sent him off to the guest cottage and spent a miserable, solitary night in my own suite. The next day, we worked in the morning and rode in the afternoon. As we were having a drink before dinner, he proposed, very formally.”