The Royal Physician's Visit

by Per Olov Enquist

  But he had seen her face. When he raised his eyes from the righteous and true Scripture, he saw only her face, and afterward it had obscured all else, and he did not see the night hag but a child.

  That sudden, utterly naked innocence. And then the child.

  Two weeks after the second meeting with Caroline Mathilde, but before a verdict was pronounced, Guldberg was suddenly struck by doubt. This was the first time in his life, but he would characterize it as despair. He could find no other word for it.

  What happened was as follows.

  The interrogations of Struensee and Brandt were now very near completion; Struensee’s guilt was clear, the sentence could only be death. Guldberg then paid a visit to the Dowager Queen.

  He spoke to her about what would be the wisest course.

  “The wisest course,” he began, “the wisest course from a political perspective would not be a death sentence but something less severe …”

  “The Russian Tsarina,” the Dowager Queen interrupted him, “wishes for a reprieve, I don’t have to be told about that. As does the King of England. As do certain other monarchs who have been struck by the contagion of the Enlightenment. I have only one response to that.”

  “Which is?”

  “No.”

  She was intractable. She suddenly started talking about the great prairie fire of purity that would sweep across the world and annihilate everything, everything that was part of Struensee’s era. And then there would be no room for compassion. And she continued on in this way, and he listened; everything seemed to be an echo of what he had said himself but oh God, is there truly no place for love or is there only filth and lechery and he could do nothing but agree. Although afterward he did start to speak again of what would be wise, and sensible, and of the Russian Tsarina and the King of England, and the risks of serious complications, but perhaps that wasn’t what he meant but rather why must we cut ourselves off from what is called love and is it only wrathful like the wine treader’s love and the Dowager Queen did not listen.

  He felt something akin to weakness rising up in him, and he became confused. This was the basis for his despair.

  At night he lay awake for a long time, staring up at the darkness, where the avenging God could be found, and mercy, and love, and justice. It was then that he was seized with despair. There was nothing there in the dark, there was nothing, only emptiness, and a great despair.

  What kind of life is this, he thought, when justice and vengeance triumph, and I can’t see God’s love in the darkness, but only despair and emptiness?

  By the next day he had pulled himself together.

  Then he paid a visit to the King.

  As far as Christian was concerned, he seemed to have given up completely. He was terrified of everything and sat quaking in his rooms, only reluctantly eating the food that was now always brought to him, and he spoke only to his dog.

  The Negro page Moranti had disappeared. Perhaps on that vengeful night when he tried to hide under the sheet as Christian had taught him but was unable to flee, perhaps on that night he had given up, or wanted to return to something that no one knew anything about. Or he was killed on that night when Copenhagen exploded and the incomprehensible rage gripped everyone and they all knew that something was over and that their wrath had to be directed at something, though for reasons that no one understood, but the anger existed and revenge had to be taken; no one ever saw him after that night. He vanished from history. Christian had ordered a search for him, but it had proved fruitless.

  Now he had only the dog left.

  Guldberg was troubled by the reports of the King’s condition, and he wanted to determine for himself what was going on with the monarch. He went to see Christian and spoke to him kindly and soothingly, assuring him that all threats against the King’s life had now been averted and that he could feel safe.

  After a moment the King, in a whisper, began “confiding” to Guldberg certain secrets.

  In the past, he told Guldberg, he had suffered certain delusions, such as that his mother, Queen Louise, had had an English lover who was his father. And sometimes he had believed that Catherine the Great of Russia was his mother. He was convinced, however, that in some way he had been “exchanged.” He might be the changeling child of a peasant. He constantly used the word “exchanged,” which seemed to mean that an exchange had occurred or that he had been consciously traded away.

  Now, however, he was absolutely certain. The Queen, Caroline Mathilde, was his mother. The fact that she was imprisoned in Kronborg Castle was for him the most terrifying news. But that she was his mother was quite clear.

  Guldberg listened with increasing alarm and bewilderment.

  Christian, in his present state of “certainty,” or rather with his now quite certain demented image of himself, seemed to be blending in elements from Saxo’s portrayal of Amleth. Christian could not have seen the Englishman Shakespeare‘s Hamlet, which Guldberg knew quite well (it was, of course, not performed during the King’s stayin London), and there had not yet been any Danish performance.

  Christian’s confusion, as well as his strange delusion about his birth, was nothing new. Since the spring of 1771 it had become more and more evident. The fact that he experienced reality as theater was well known to everyone by now. But if it was true that he now thought he was taking part in a play in which Caroline Mathilde was his mother, then Guldberg had to ask himself with some anxiety what role he had assigned to Struensee.

  And how would Christian himself act in this real play? What script would he follow, and what interpretation would occur? What role did he intend to give himself? The fact that a deranged person might think he was acting in a theater performance was not at all unusual. But this actor did not see reality symbolically, or figuratively, nor was he without power. If he thought he was part of a theater performance, he had the power to make that performance real. It was still the case that an order and a directive from the King’s hand had to be obeyed. He held all formal power.

  If he was given the opportunity to visit his beloved “mother,” and to be used by her, anything might happen. The murder of a Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, or Guldberg was far too easy.

  “I wish,” said Guldberg,”that I might give Your Majesty advice in this extremely intricate matter.”

  Christian merely stared at his bare feet—he had taken off his shoes—and murmured:

  “If only the Sovereign of the Universe were here. If only she were here, and could. And could.”

  “What?” asked Guldberg. “Could what?”

  “Could give me her time,” whispered Christian.

  Guldberg then left. He also ordered that a tighter watch be kept on the King, and said that under no circumstances was he to have contact with anyone without Guldberg’s written permission.

  And he sensed with relief that his momentary weakness had receded, that his despair was gone, and that he once again could act in a thoroughly sensible manner.

  2.

  The pastor for the German congregation of St. Peter’s, theologian Doctor Balthasar Münter, had at the request of the government visited Struensee in his prison cell for the first time on March 1,1772.

  Six weeks had passed since the night when Struensee was imprisoned. And he had gradually fallen apart. There were two breakdowns. First the small one, in front of the Board of Inquisition, when he confessed and sacrificed the Queen. Then the big one, the internal one.

  At first, after his breakdown before the Court of Inquisition, he felt nothing at all, only despair and emptiness, but later came the shame. It was guilt and shame that took possession of him like a cancer and ate at him from the inside. He had confessed and had exposed her to the greatest humiliation; what would happen to her now? And to the child. He was at his wits’ end and couldn’t talk to anyone; he had only the Bible, and he hated the thought of resorting to that. He had already read Guldberg’s book about the now happily converted freethinker three times, and each time it had s
eemed to him more naive and more conceited. But he had no one to talk to, and at night it was bitterly cold and the chains rubbed oozing sores into his ankles and wrists; but that was not it.

  It was the silence.

  Once upon a time they called him “the Silent One,” because he listened, but now he understood what silence was. It was a hostile beast that waited. The sounds had ceased.

  That was when the pastor arrived.

  * * *

  For every night that passed, he seemed to be carried farther back into memory.

  He was carried a long way. Back to Altona, and even farther: back to his childhood, which he had almost never wanted to think about, but now it came to him. He was carried back to what was unpleasant, to the pious home. Also to his mother, who was not strict but rather filled with love. During one of their first meetings the pastor had brought a letter from Struensee’s father, and his father had given voice to his despair: “Your promotion, which we read about in the newspapers, did not please us,” and now, he wrote, their despair knew no bounds.

  His mother had added a few words of sorrow and sympathy; but the essence of the letter was that a complete conversion and submission to the Savior Jesus Christ and His mercy would be able to save him.

  It was unbearable.

  The pastor sat on his chair and looked at him calmly, and in his discreet voice he dissected Struensee’s problems into logical structures. It was not done insensitively. The pastor had seen his wounds and lamented at the cruel treatment, and let him cry. But when Pastor Münter spoke, Struensee suddenly experienced that strange feeling of inferiority, the feeling that he was not a thinker or a theoretician, that he was simply a doctor from Altona and had always wanted to sit in silence.

  And that he was inadequate.

  But the best thing was that the little pastor with his sharp, gaunt face and calm eyes formulated one problem that pushed aside the worst of it. The worst was not death or the pain or the fact that he might be tortured to death. The worst was another question that was grinding inside him, night and day.

  What did I do wrong? That was the worst question.

  One day the pastor, almost in passing, had stumbled onto this. He said:

  “Count Struensee, how could you from your study, in such isolation, know what was right? Why did you believe you possessed the truth when you knew nothing of reality?”

  “I worked for many years in Altona,” Struensee told him, “and I knew reality.”

  “Yes,” said Pastor Münter after a pause. “As a doctor in Altona. But what about those 632 decrees?”

  And after a moment of silence he added, with a certain curiosity:

  “Who did the research?”

  And Struensee replied, with the hint of a smile:

  “A dutiful government official always does the proper research, even if it’s to plan his own dismemberment.”

  The pastor nodded, as if he found the explanation both true and self-evident.

  He had not done anything wrong.

  From his study he had directed the Danish revolution, calmly and quietly, without murder or imprisonment or coercion or banishment, without becoming corrupt or rewarding his friends or procuring personal benefits or coveting this power for some obscure egotistical reason. And yet he must have done something wrong after all. And in his nightmares he returned again and again to the oppressed Danish peasants and to the episode with the dying boy on the wooden horse.

  That was it. There was something about this episode that would not let go.

  It was not that he had been afraid of the mob when it came rushing toward him. Rather, it was because this was the only time he had ever been near the people. But he had turned on his heel and run after the coach in the dark and the mud.

  In truth, he had betrayed himself. He often wished that he had concluded his European tour in Altona. But he actually had ended it back in Altona.

  He had sketched people’s faces in the margin of his doctoral dissertation. There was something important about this that he seemed to have forgotten. To see the mechanism, and the great game, and not to forget the people’s faces. Was that it?

  It was essential to push this away. And so the little logical pastor formulated a different problem for him. It was the problem of eternity, whether it existed, and gratefully he stretched out his hand to the little pastor and accepted this gift.

  And thus he could let go of the other question, which was the worst of all. And he was grateful.

  Twenty-seven times Pastor Münter would visit Struensee in his prison cell.

  During the second visit he said that he had learned with certainty that Struensee was to be executed. The following intellectual problem thus arose. If death meant complete annihilation—well, that was it. Then there would be no eternity, no God, no heaven or eternal punishment. Then Struensee’s meditations during these last few weeks would mean nothing. Therefore! primo: Struensee ought to focus on the only other possibility, which was that a life after death did exist; and secundo: investigate what opportunities existed for getting as much as possible out of this remaining possibility.

  He humbly asked Struensee whether he agreed with this analysis, and Struensee sat in silence for a long time. Then Struensee asked:

  “If the latter is true, will Pastor Münter come back often so that together we can analyze this second possibility?”

  “Yes,” said Münter. “Every day. And for many hours each day. ”

  Thus their conversations began. And Struensee’s conversion story was initiated.

  The more than two hundred pages in the conversion document take the form of questions and answers. Struensee diligently reads his Bible, discovers problems, wants answers, and receives them. “But tell me, Count Struensee, what is it about this passage that you find objectionable? Here, where Christ says to His mother: ‘Woman, what have I to do with you?’ it seems hard hearted and, if I dare use the word, indecent. ” And then follows the pastor’s exhaustive analysis, although whether it was delivered directly to Struensee or was composed later is unclear. But many pages of exhaustive theological answers. Then a brief question and a detailed answer, and at the end of the journal’s notes for the day, an affirmation that Count Struensee now understands, has a full grasp of the matter.

  Brief questions, long answers, and finally mutual understanding. About Struensee’s political activities there was nothing.

  His conversion confession was eventually published, and in many languages.

  No one knows what was actually said. Pastor Münter sat there, day after day, bent over his notebook. Later everything would be published and become quite famous: as the apology of the infamous freethinker and man of the Enlightenment.

  It was Münter who wrote it all down. The Dowager Queen later perused the text, before it was published, and made certain deletions and censored some passages.

  Then it was printed.

  The young Goethe was indignant when he read it. Many others were indignant. Not at his conversion, but at the fact that it was extracted under torture. Although this wasn’t true, and he never renounced his enlightened ideas; but he seemed to have cast himself joyfully into the arms of the Savior, to hide himself in His wounds. Although those who spoke of apostasy and hypocrisy extracted under torture could hardly have imagined how it was: with that calm, analytical, soft-spoken, sympathetic Pastor Münter who, in his gentle, melodic German, he spoke in German! at long last in German!, talked to him and steered clear of the most difficult question—why he had failed in this world—and talked about eternity, which was the easy, merciful question. And all of this, in German, seemed sometimes to carry Struensee back to a starting point that was warm and secure: which included the University of Halle and his mother and her admonishments and piety and his father’s letter and the fact that they would hear that he now was resting in the wounds of Christ, and their joy, and Altona and the cupping and his friends in Halle and everything, everything that seemed to have been lost.

 
; But now was found, and during these days and hours, was reawakened by Pastor Münter, sitting on his chair in front of him, in this appalling, ice-cold Copenhagen, which he never should have visited, and where only the logical, intellectual, theological conversations for a few hours could free “the Silent One,” the doctor from Altona, from the fear that was his weakness and perhaps, in the end, his strength.

  3.

  Struensee’s sentence was signed by the Board of Inquisition on Saturday, April 25.

  The reasoning behind it was not that he had committed adultery with the Queen but that he had consciously worked to satisfy his own hunger for power and had abolished the Council, and that it was his fault that His Majesty, who loved his people so dearly, had lost faith in the Council and that Struensee had then caused a series of violent acts; and because of his self-interest, his contempt for religion, decency, and proper morals.

  Nothing about infidelity, only a vague reference to “an additional misdeed, due to which he is guilty of lèse-majesté to the highest degree.” Nothing about Christian’s madness.