by Morris West
“You’ve had a rough day; but you’ve come through it very well. I know my last remark sounded harsh and brutal. In analysis, one uses this technique sometimes, to force an abrupt change of direction. You were being flippant about a quite serious question. That indicated an opposite attitude. You were under great stress. You might attempt to avoid or conceal something important. I had to remind you, sharply, that we were not playing games.”
She gives me a long searching look and a doubter’s smile.
“You called me a liar. You said I was wedded to death, not to life. Both are ugly accusations. If I’m a liar, I’m wasting time and money here. If I’m wedded to death, I have a first class ticket to the honeymoon. In short, you were being gratuitously cruel. That’s my vice. I recognise it quickly. You owe me an apology and an explanation.”
Her attack takes me by surprise. I have no choice but to apologise.
“I’m sorry. This has been a long day for both of us. Let me write in another appointment for you tomorrow.”
“Before you do that. . .”
“Yes?”
“I’d like to have the explanation.”
“Of what?”
“Your accusations. Do you really think I’m a liar?”
“No; but as a prudent professional I have to consider the possibility. I have to test your story before I can accept it as a basis for diagnosis. So far I haven’t had time to do that. Don’t be offended. I deal all the time with the most elaborate fabrications. People wander into police stations and confess to murders they couldn’t possibly have committed. Women in menopause report rape attempts. Elderly spinsters are visited by angels in their beds.”
She laughs lightly and throws out her arms in surrender.
“No rape. No angels. More’s the pity! Now another question: am I insane?”
“No.”
“What’s the matter with me?”
“Exactly what you’ve told me. Whatever name I give it won’t change the fact: you indulge obsessively and with increasing frequency in sado-masochistic encounters alternating with lesbian adventures. That’s fact. The whys and wherefores will emerge during analysis. If we work well together, they will emerge quickly and a psychic adjustment will be that much easier to make. All we’ve done so far is set down a case history in outline and established a sketch of symptomatology.’’
“And the prognosis?”
“It’s too early to make one. There’s a lot more work to be done.”
“Is the work worth doing?”
“You have to answer that. How much do you value your life, your self?”
“Not very highly.”
“Then what do you expect of me?”
“I’m not sure.” She frowns over the question for a little while and then in piecemeal fashion sets down her answer. “Papa and Lily reared me in a private paradise; but they turned me into an exotic animal unfit to live anywhere else – not only unfit but dangerous, because all I think about is myself and my own survival. So, now I suppose I’m looking for someone like Papa – no, like Johann really! – to show me how to find a place in the everyday world. I can’t go back to the womb and be born again, so I need a guide, a mentor. You’re not the only candidate, of course.”
She says it with a little secret smile that irritates me again. I am too tired for teasing. I demand to know.
“Who is the other fortunate fellow?”
“Basil Zaharoff. He’s reputed to be the biggest arms dealer in the world. He sells everything you need to run a war. He does a lot of his selling by bribery and through women. He’s offered me a job – as madam of all his houses of appointment and controller of his women agents. His opinion of me is the same as Papa’s – and again I quote verbatim – ‘If you turned professional, my dear Magda, you’d be the greatest in the game!’”
“And you’re seriously interested in that?”
“I have to be. The pay is large and protection is guaranteed.”
“But you haven’t accepted yet?”
“No. Gianni di Malvasia suggested I see you first.”
“Why me?”
“He said – and again I quote – ‘Jung embraces religious experience; even though he does not always define it in orthodox terms.’”
“He’s right. I embrace it in this sense: I accept that it exists, and that for many people – millions all over the world – it modifies life most profoundly. But let me be very clear, Madame. I cannot give you religious experience. I cannot endow you with any faith. I will not argue any system of belief with you. You come to me Christian; you go out Christian. You come atheist; you go home atheist. I don’t peddle absolutions either, like the Roman Catholics!”
“But you have a promise, carved over your door: ‘Whether he is called or not, the god will be present.’ Where is he? We haven’t heard from him yet.”
“You don’t believe in him. I haven’t discovered him. So we have to get on without him.”
Our brief debate seems to have exhausted her. She gives a dry little laugh and a shrug of resignation.
“If Lily were here now, she’d say it was Humpty Dumpty time.”
“Please? I’ve never heard the expression.”
She explains that Humpty Dumpty is a character in an English nursery rhyme. She recites it to me, slowly, so that I will not miss any of the words:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the King’s horses, and all the King’s men,
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
It is an amusing jingle; but, to a bullet-headed Swiss from Basel, it doesn’t mean very much. I ask:
“Who was Humpty Dumpty?”
“He was an egg!”
“Oh, I see! And then he fell from the wall. Oh, of course! You cannot put a squashed egg back together again. Very amusing!”
It is obviously not amusing for her. In a tone of mortal sadness she puts the question I have been dreading.
“I’ve killed a dog and a horse and a woman. I’ve ruined the life of a child. Can you put me back together again? Can you make me whole?”
I am touched almost to tears. I, too, wish the god were present to teach me the healing words. I reach out and draw her to her feet and hold her at arm’s length and tell her, as gently as I can, the only truth I know:
“I can’t change what’s done. There’s no cure for murder. It isn’t a disease. It’s an act that carries condign penalties. They can never be enforced against you. You’re like the soldier, home safe from the killing ground. You’re lucky; because with help – the kind of help an analyst can offer – you can still change yourself.”
“Into what?”
“Whatever you want to be. Habits can be altered. Obsessional syndromes can be modified. You’re a doctor; you know that much! For the rest, you can always find a tolerant corner of the world to indulge your sexual preferences.”
“But don’t you see? It’s the reason I need, the motive, the urge.”
“You don’t like what you are. Isn’t that reason enough?”
“Strangely, it isn’t. I can stop being what I am, at any moment. One dose, one pistol shot and everything’s over. But if there were something else, if I could believe I had a soul that would be saved by repentance, admitted to some eternal paradise, that would be a very good reason to change. I watched Johann during his illness. He had something that made all the rest of us, all our love, all our care, totally dispensable. He believed absolutely in an afterlife. But for me, sadly, an afterlife is a myth.”
“Even so, why waste the good years? You’ve got a lot of living still ahead of you.”
“What sort of living?” She tries to wrench herself away from me. I hold her until she relaxes again. “Don’t you listen? I’ve had it all! Love, passion, childbirth, money. Even the ultimate thrill of snuffing out a human life like a candle flame and knowing that I was safe, free! What else are you offering, doctor?”
I release her. She tur
ns away and walks to the window that overlooks the lake where the thunder clouds are banking and the water is slate-grey and ominous. Nothing will serve now but total honesty and what I can command of wisdom and what I can share of love that has been too widely and too cheaply dispensed. I go closer, but do not touch her. I choose the words as carefully as if they were jewels on a golden tray:
“Dear colleague, dear woman! I don’t know any way to answer you, other than by trying to share with you the experience I’m going through now. I beg you to be patient with me. It isn’t easy to put into words. I am – I have been for a long time – in a state very much like yours. I have monstrous dreams. I am obsessed by fantasies of lust and criminal violence. I am, I think, in a worse condition than you, because often I lose grip on reality and find myself in dialogue with emanations from my own unconscious. But I do know, from my own experience and from long contact with the mentally ill at the Burgholzli, that the barrier between fantasy and act is a paper wall, easily breached. So I understand your crime. I understand all your excesses. I understand your fears. I could be very happy playing the same games on the same circuit as you. I would fit very easily into the freak show, believe me! I have suicide impulses as you have – and murder dreams. Often I lock myself in this very room to wrestle with my dark Doppelgänger.
“But something else is happening to me also – something strange and good and beautiful. I’m learning more and more about how the human psyche works, how the past weaves itself into the tapestry of our dreams, how the future grows to reality out of our wildest imaginings. I have to battle to make sense of it. Often I am scared to death; but sometimes – just sometimes – the vision is almost blinding, like seeing the sunshine after a week of storms. You ask what’s next for you. I tell you, an infinity of new experiences, new visions, new hopes, new loves too perhaps – but you’ll never see them from a brothel bedroom or the inside of a coffin!”
I can say no more. She stands head bowed, face averted from me. I wait, empty and immobile like Omar Khayyam’s goblet, downturned upon the grass. When finally she turns to face me, I am shocked to the marrow. Her face is a mask of hate, her tongue a lash of contempt.
“Words, my dear doctor! Rhetoric, all of it! Convert me if you can! Turn the cannibal into a Christian like the missionaries; but don’t sell me smoke!”
I am with her in a stride. I grasp her wrists and swing her round to face me. I pull her close so that she can take my words – anger instead of kisses – mouth to mouth!
“How dare you patronise me, you stupid bitch! How dare you bring your brothel tricks into this place! You come begging for help. When it’s offered, you reject it! There are tears in what I’ve told you – tears and blood and hurts to me and my family. I’ve tried to turn them into coinage that might buy you and other patients a respite from the nightmares that plague you. But no! You don’t want that! You want the freak show and the dance of death. Enjoy it then! But don’t stage it in my house!”
I release her and turn away in disgust. She stands rubbing her bruised wrists. I am still in rage; so I round on her again.
“You’ve got debts to pay, Madame! You can’t resurrect the dead. You can’t give your daughter the childhood she missed. But you can still make some amends. You’re trained in the healing arts. There are places and people crying for good doctors. How much do you pay for the privileges of debasing a human being in a house of appointment? There are charities that could put those monies to good use and . . .”
She rejects the whole idea with a gesture of disgust and a new burst of venom.
“Oh Christ! Here it comes again – the same old cliché! Purify yourself with good works. Pay dole money to join the good folk. My husband did that. My own father castrated him, and he offered up his balls and his life and his suffering to buy himself and me and my daughter a place in heaven. And who’ll be there when I open the door? Nobody! Nobody!”
It is a cry of pure desperation and I make the mistake of answering it. Gently now, I try to reason with her.
“Please! You’ve got it all wrong. I’m not offering tickets to heaven. I don’t know where heaven is; but I do know where hell is – right inside our skulls! And we create it for ourselves!”
For one brief moment it seems that she will bend to me. The next, she launches herself at me in a fierce physical attack, pummelling my chest, trying to rake my face with her nails, snarling like a tigress over and over.
“God damn you! God damn you for a bloody Swiss hypocrite! God . . . damn . . . you!”
I am an old hand at this from the clinic, where, with two thousand patients, you had to have strong arms and eyes in the back of your head. I grasp her wrists and lock them in a cross so that she cries out in pain. She is terribly strong; but I force her slowly down, while a fierce sexual urge sweeps over me and I give her insult for insult.
“Two can play at that game, my girl! This is what you wanted all along, wasn’t it? Salvation in the hayloft with Papa or Rudi or maybe even the stallion in the stall!”
She struggles still, but now she joins the game of abuse.
“You see! You’re more mixed up than I am. You like hurting people too. You’re a fraud! Your God’s a confidence trick. At least I can admit what I am.”
I force her down on her knees. She cries out that she has had enough. I release her. She clasps one hand round my thighs and with the other tries to unbutton my trousers. Before I can thrust her away, before she can take hold of my erection, I come to climax and I stand there trapped like a fool, pumping out seed that stains my trousers while she still kneels like some disappointed worshipper, groping at the shrine of the blind god who is turning into a worm before her eyes.
When the sorry little moment is over, I lift her to her feet and tell her curtly to tidy herself up. I inspect the damage to my trousers. Not too bad. The smock will cover the worst of it. While Emma is seeing my patient to the door, I can slip upstairs and change. It is an embarrassing event; but nothing new in the history of many a hurried congress. While Magda Hirschfeld is tidying herself, I sit down at the desk and put down the last notes. She seats herself in the patient’s chair and says, demurely:
“Well, at least you’ve seen how it happens – rage, violence, surrender. I climaxed at the same time as you did. I’m sorry it wasn’t fun. It seems to work better with professionals. Where do we go from here?”
“Nowhere, I’m afraid.”
“Why? Because I’ve embarrassed you? Because I’ve damaged your self-esteem, your authority?”
“All that, yes; but that’s my fault and not yours. I knew the game. I didn’t have to play it. No, there’s another reason. You and I are dangerous to each other.”
“Because we’d end up in bed?”
“No, we’d end in a double madness, folie à deux, and you’d be the one to survive, not I.”
“You don’t have a very high opinion of yourself either, doctor!”
“No, I don’t; and that’s another point of resemblance between us. We are both possessed by daimons – of rage, of destruction. You’re the caged bird let loose among the predators; so you become the strongest and the cruellest of all. Love makes you vulnerable, so you have to kill it. Do you remember the end of the Snow Queen story? The only thing that melted her icy heart was a tear drop.”
“And who, pray, will weep tears for me? Will you, Carl Jung?”
“I did – and you tried to kill me as you killed the horse and the dog and the woman.”
“Can I ever be changed?”
“Only if you want it enough.”
She ponders that for a moment, then shakes her head.
“As a physician in Italy, I re-made a few virgins in time for the wedding night; but there’s no surgery that will turn a Messalina into a Sister of Charity or a murderer into a Mother Abbess. Even the great Carl Jung can’t pull God out of a conjuror’s hat. Don’t bother with the notes. I’ll save you the trouble and write the summation for you. The patient’s condition is ir
reversible. Prognosis negative.’ But I’d still like to have dinner with your wife. I hope you’ll allow her to come?”
“She’s a free agent. How could I prevent her?”
“Very easily. So, thank you.”
“May I ask for your discretion about what happened here?”
“What did happen? Words were said. A man and a woman wrestled a little. Seed was spilt that might have been spent more happily. What does it signify? How much talk can one spend on it? I must go.”
She stands and offers her hand. I take it and raise it to my lips. I should like to kiss her on the mouth – but that moment is lost long since. She takes my hands and turns them palms-up, palms-down, as my mother used to do to see whether my nails were clean and whether I had scrubbed my knuckles. She tells me:
“You’d make a good horseman. You have the hands for it, very strong.”
“I need them. People are harder to handle than horses.”
She picks up her reticule, takes out the envelope full of Swiss francs and hands it to me.
“The fee, doctor – with my thanks.”
“There is no fee.”
Her manner changes instantly. She is brusque and imperious.
“Nonsense! Of course there’s a fee. I’ve taken up your whole day. I’m a doctor, too, remember. I expect to be paid whether the patient lives or dies. Take it!”
“It’s too much!”
“I have no use for it. Spend it on your wife.”
She tosses the envelope on the desk. I leave it there. I have earned it. We do need it. She reminds me:
“Your wife mentioned you’d like to be driven to Miss Wolff’s house. I’ll talk to her while you change your trousers. Mistresses are much less tolerant than wives.”
“For a woman with little to be proud of, you’re most impertinent, Madame!”