The Royal Physician's Visit

by Per Olov Enquist

  “They say,” Diderot continued,”that the King is … ill?”

  Struensee didn’t answer.

  “Unstable?”

  “A most gifted but sensitive young man.”

  “Yes. I am very well informed. A peculiar situation. But you seem to have his full confidence.”

  “I am His Majesty’s physician.”

  “Yes,” replied Monsieur Diderot.”I have received many letters from London telling me that you are His Majesty’s physician.”

  It was a moment of extraordinary tension. The horses strained impatiently at their harnesses, a light rain was falling, but Monsieur Diderot seemed to want to say something he was hesitant to mention.

  At last he spoke.

  “The situation is unique,” Monsieur Diderot said in a low voice. “Power is formally in the hands of a gifted, very gifted, but mentally unstable King. Some people claim—I hesitate to say it—that he is mad. You have his trust. That gives you a great responsibility. Very seldom does the opportunity exist, as it does here, for an enlightened monarch to break through the reactionary darkness. We have Catherine in Russia, but Russia is a sea of darkness in the East. In Denmark the opportunity exists. Not through the revolt of the mob or the masses from below. But through the power that has been vested in him by the Almighty.”

  Struensee then began to laugh and gave him an inquiring look.

  “The Almighty? I didn’t think you would embrace the belief in the Almighty so warmly.”

  “King Christian VII of Denmark has been given the power, Doctor Struensee. Has been given. No matter who gave it to him, it is his. Is that not true?”

  “He’s not mad,” said Struensee after a brief silence.

  “That may well be. That may well be. I don’t know. You don’t know. But if he is … then his illness leaves a void at the center of power. Whoever enters there has a fantastic opportunity.”

  They both stood in silence.

  “And who,” asked Struensee at last,”would be likely to enter?”

  “The usual. The government officials. The nobles. Those who usually enter.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Or someone else,” Monsieur Diderot then said.

  He shook Struensee’s hand, climbed into the carriage, then leaned out and said:

  “My friend Voltaire is in the habit of saying that sometimes, by chance, history opens up a unique … aperture to the future.”

  “Is that so?”

  “And then one should step through.”

  6.

  That was on November 20, 1768.

  It was Christian’s greatest moment, and afterward the tributes and receptions continued, and slowly he sank back into the grayness that exists right before the dark.

  Everything seemed to revert back. Paris was actually much more ghastly than London. But now his fits of rage seemed less violent. He appeared to be quite interested in the theater, and on every evening not dedicated to receptions, special theater performances were staged.

  Most often he fell asleep.

  He was supposed to have traveled much farther, to Prague, Vienna, and St. Petersburg, but in the end the situation became untenable. To prevent a greater catastrophe, it was decided to cut short the tour.

  On January 6, 1769, King Christian VII once again set foot on Danish soil.

  During the last days of the journey he would allow only Struensee to sit with him in the royal coach.

  It was understood that something had happened. The young German doctor with the blond hair, the quick but wary smile, and the kindly eyes had become somebody. Since he had no title and could not be placed within a precise hierarchy, this caused uneasiness.

  Attempts were made to decipher him. He was not easy to decipher. He was friendly, discreet, and refused to make use of his power, or at least what was considered to be power.

  People didn’t understand him.

  The journey home was dreadful.

  A weeklong snowstorm, the entire route bitterly cold. The coaches were ice cold. Everyone wrapped themselves up in blankets. It was like an army in retreat from a campaign through the Russian wilderness: there was nothing splendid or dazzling about the Danish court in retreat. No thought was given any longer to how much the expedition had cost; it was much too appalling, but taxes could always be levied.

  There would have to be taxes. That was a matter for the future. Right now it was time to return.

  Struensee sat alone with the sleeping, imploring, or whimpering boy who was said to be a King, and he had plenty of time to think.

  Since he didn’t believe in an afterlife, he had always harbored a great fear of the risk of wasting the only life he had. Medicine had given his life a mission. He had convinced himself that the medical calling was a form of worship, that it was the only possible sacrament of sacred life. Human life, after all, was the only thing sacred; sanctity distinguished humans from animals, otherwise there was no difference. And those who said that he believed the human being was a machine had not understood.

  The sanctity of life was his secular belief. He had taught anatomy in Altona: the bodies of suicides and the executed were the subject of his teaching. The executed were easy to recognize;they often lacked their right hand or their head. The suicides, however, looked no different from those who died in good faith, those who were buried in hallowed ground; in this sense they were alike. The human machine, which lay there beneath his knife, was now truly a machine. That which was sacred, life, had fled. What then was meant by the sacred?

  It was what a person did while the sacred was present.

  The sacred was what the one who was sacred did. That was the conclusion he had reached. There was some discussion of this in Holberg, but in his 101st epigram in Moral Thoughts, Holberg was quite vague; it was the animals who were the machines, according to Holberg, and it was the sanctity of human beings that made them non-animals.

  Struensee had read this as a possible guide. Sometimes it seemed to him that everything he thought was an echo of what others had thought. Then it was a matter of culling so that he didn’t become merely an echo chamber, and occasionally he seemed to have an idea that was all his own. Then he would feel dizzy, as if standing on a precipice, and he might think:This is the sacred.

  This idea is perhaps all my own, no one else’s, and that’s what is sacred, what sets me apart from an animal.

  He used to try testing himself against Holberg. Nearly everything could be found in Holberg, and so Holberg had to be tested, since it was the birthright of every individual to think for himself. Holberg was almost always right; but then, occasionally, an idea would arise that was all his own, that did not exist in Holberg, that was his alone.

  And then he would feel dizzy, and he would think: This is what’s sacred.

  I am not a machine.

  From Holberg it was also possible to choose what you wanted: to use one part while excluding others. Thus he had excluded Holberg’s rather confused metaphysical submissiveness and retained what was essential.

  In the end it seemed to him very simple and obvious.

  The sacred is what the one who is sacred does. And that is a great responsibility.

  The responsibility was indeed tremendous.

  He was actually supposed to leave the royal entourage on the return route, at Altona. He had already been paid a thousand rikdaler, on which he could live for a long time. Yet he stayed on. Perhaps it was … the responsibility. He had grown fond of the mad, intelligent, confused boy who was chosen by God, and who was now about to be delivered back to the wolves at court, who in all certainty would drive him even farther into illness.

  Perhaps it was inevitable. Perhaps delicate little Christian, the boy with the big, terrified eyes, perhaps he was irretrievably lost. Perhaps he ought to be locked up, become a normal royal cadaver that was exploited by the wolves.

  But Struensee was fond of him. In reality it was more than that; he couldn’t find the right word for it. But it was a fee
ling he could not escape.

  He had no children of his own.

  He had always imagined eternal life to be like having a child. That was how the eternal was achieved: by living on through a child. But the only child he now had was this trembling, mentally deranged boy who could have been so splendid—if only the wolves hadn’t torn him nearly to bits.

  He hated the wolves.

  Rantzau had persuaded him back then, nine months ago; it seemed like an eternity. There was sickness in Copenhagen too, he had said. And no doubt that was true. But it was not as simple as that. He was not naive. If he now continued on to Copenhagen, it was not in order to be a doctor to the poor of the Nørrebro district or to cup impoverished Danes. Nor the children of the court. He realized what it would mean.

  The fact that he did not leave the expedition in Altona. Did not flee to the East Indies. It was a form of responsibility. And he was almost certain that he had made the wrong decision.

  If indeed it was a decision.

  Or was it merely that he did not decide to stop the coach in Altona, did not decide to get out, and thus did not decide to remain in his old life: but rather simply continued on, into a new life? Simply continued, never actually decided, but simply continued.

  They stepped ashore in Korsor and continued through the winter storm to Copenhagen.

  The King and Struensee were alone in the coach.

  Christian was asleep. He had put his head on Struensee’s knee, not wearing his wig, but with a blanket over him; and as they slowly drove northeast through the Danish snowstorm, Struensee sat motionless, thinking that the sacred is what the one who is sacred does, all the while stroking Christian’s hair with his hand. The European journey would soon be over, and something entirely different would start, something he knew nothing about, nor did he want to.

  Christian was asleep. He whimpered faintly, but the sound was impossible to decipher. He seemed to be dreaming about something either delightful or ghastly; impossible to tell. Perhaps it was about the reunion of the lovers.

  PART III

  THE LOVERS

  CHAPTER 7

  THE RIDING MASTER

  1.

  ON JANUARY 14, 1769, the royal entourage finally reached Copenhagen.

  Two miles outside the city gates the worn and muddy coaches were brought to a halt and exchanged; new coaches stood ready, with silk traveling rugs in place of blankets, and then the Queen took her place in the coach beside her consort Christian VII.

  The two of them were alone. They studied each other closely, as if to discover changes they hoped for, or feared.

  Before the procession could start off, darkness had fallen; it was bitterly cold, and the incursion of coaches made its entry through Vesterport. Hundreds of soldiers were posted, with torches in hand. The guardsmen paraded, though without music.

  The sixteen coaches drove toward the palace gate. Inside the courtyard the court was assembled. Everyone had been waiting in the dark and cold, and their spirits were low.

  Upon arrival, no one remembered to introduce Struensee and the Queen to each other.

  Under the glow of the torches, in the icy sleet, a welcoming ceremony was held for the King. As soon as the coaches had stopped, he summoned Struensee, who now walked behind and slightly to one side of the royal couple. At the end of the line of those who were waiting—the whole cheering reception committee—stood Guldberg. He fixed an unwavering gaze on the King and his Royal Physician.

  There were many who stared and scrutinized.

  As they climbed the stairs, Struensee asked the King:

  “Who was that little man who gave you such an evil look?”

  “Guldberg.”

  “Who is he?”

  The King waited to give his reply, walking on ahead; then he turned around, and with an absolutely unexpected expression of hatred, he snarled:

  “He knows!—KNOWS!!!—where Caterine is!”

  Struensee didn’t understand.

  “Evil!” the King went on in the same rancorous tone. “Evil!!! and insignificant!!!”

  “His eyes, at least,” Struensee then said, “were not insignificant.”

  In the coach, alone with the King, the little English girl hadn’t said a word.

  She didn’t know whether she hated the thought of this reunion, or longed for it. Perhaps it wasn’t Christian that she longed for. Something else. A change.

  She had begun to realize that she had a body.

  Before, her body was something that the ladies-in-waiting, their eyes tactfully lowered, helped her cover, and which she then carried around in its armor under the gaze of the court—like a small warship. At first she thought she consisted only of armor. It was the armor of the Queen that defined her character. Clothed in this role she was the little armored warship, watched by these astonishing Danes who spoke her language so miserably, and whose personal hygiene was so repugnant. All of them were dusty and foul-smelling from cheap perfume and old powder.

  Then she discovered her body.

  After the birth of the child, when her ladies-in-waiting withdrew for the night, she became accustomed to removing her nightgown and lying shamelessly naked under the ice-cold sheets. Then she would touch her body; not to be lewd, no, it was not lewdness, she thought, it was so she could slowly identify and explore this body that now lay freed from its court gowns and powder.

  Just her skin.

  She had begun to like her body. It felt more and more as if it were hers. After the child was born and her breasts had shrunk back to their normal size, she had begun to like her body. She liked her skin. She liked her stomach, her thighs; she could lie there for hours, thinking: This is, in fact, my body.

  It’s lovely to touch.

  During the King’s European travels she had grown plumper, and at the same time she seemed to grow into her body. She could feel that people regarded her not merely as the Queen but as something else besides. She wasn’t naive, after all. She knew that something existed in connection with her naked body under the armor and her title, something that created an invisible radiance of sex, desire, and death around her.

  The Queen was, of course, forbidden fruit—and a woman. That’s how she instinctively knew that men looked right through her clothing and saw her body, which she now liked. She was certain that they wanted to penetrate her, and that it was the death in this that enticed them.

  The forbidden fruit was there. It radiated right through the armor. She was the most forbidden of all women, and she knew that the sexual aura surrounding her was utterly irresistible to them.

  It was the ultimate interdiction: a naked woman, and the Queen, and for that reason it was also death. To desire the Queen was to touch death. She was forbidden, and desired, and anyone who touched the most forbidden of all would have to die. It excited them; she knew that. She saw it in their eyes. And once she was aware of it, all the others seemed to become ensnared, ever more strongly, in an intense and silent radiance.

  She thought about this a great deal. It filled her with a curious exaltation: she was the Holy Grail, and if this holy grail were conquered, it would bring them the utmost pleasure—and death.

  She could see it in them. Her sex was constantly present in their consciousness. It felt like an itch to them. It plagued them. She imagined how they would think about her the whole time as they fornicated with their mistresses and whores, how they would shut their eyes and fantasize that it was not their whore or wife but the Queen’s exceedingly forbidden body into which they were thrusting; and it filled her with a tremendous sense of power.

  She was present in their bodies as a realization that this body meant death. And the Grail.

  She was like an itch on the phallus of the court. And they couldn’t reach her. Sex and death and an itch. And they couldn’t win release from this obsession, no matter how much they tried to fornicate their way out of it, no matter how much they tried to empty their itch into their women. She alone was utterly inaccessible, and alone
in uniting passion and death.

  It was a form of … power.

  But sometimes she would think: I like my body. And I know that I’m like an itch on the phallus of the court. But couldn’t I also use my body freely, and feel the absolute nearness of death to my sex, and take pleasure from it myself? And sometimes at night, as she lay naked, she would touch herself, touch her sex, and the pleasure would rise like a hot wave through her body, which she now liked even more.

  And surprisingly enough, she felt no shame, merely that she was a live human being.

  3.

  Christian, that delicate husband who never spoke to her, who was he? Didn’t he feel the itch?

  He was the one who was outside. And she tried to understand who he was.

  In April the Queen attended a performance at the Royal Theater of the play Zaïre by the Frenchman Voltaire.

  Monsieur Voltaire had sent this play to the King with a personal greeting, and the King wanted to play one of the roles himself. He also rehearsed the role.

  In the accompanying letter Monsieur Voltaire had intimated that the play contained a secret message, a key to the actions which the Most Estimable King of Denmark, the Light of the North and the savior of the oppressed, would soon undertake.

  After reading the play many times, the King declared his desire to play the role of the Sultan.

  And he was not at all a bad actor.

  He spoke his lines slowly, with peculiar emphasis, which created a surprising tension in the verses. His perplexing pauses created a tension, as if he had suddenly realized some hidden meaning and was stopping himself, as if in midstride. And when she saw him on stage, Caroline Mathilde felt a strange and reluctant attraction for her spouse.

  On stage he was a different person. His lines seemed more genuine than his conversation. As if he were emerging for the first time.