The man before her submitted to the attention, closing his eyes as the sponge and Eleanor’s gentle strokes worked over his body. When she had finished, she paused for a moment and pulled herself back to the present, and then at her suggestion, he stood and allowed her to towel him with careful thoroughness and then wrap the towel around his waist. “There you are,” she said with a warm satisfied smile, his face remaining without expression. “Reborn.”
Moments later, as if fully aware of the timing, Herr Jodl returned with the new clothing. As he entered the bedroom and saw the man supposed to be Arnauld Esterhazy wrapped in a towel, Jodl looked at Eleanor and asked his question. “Now,” he said, “are you absolutely certain?”
“I am now absolutely certain,” she repeated to her protector after they had dressed their patient. “Our search is over.”
As with their trip from Vienna, more than once they found their train stopping and going no further. In one small Austrian village, they had to disembark and sit in a small station. Jodl left the other two travelers sitting on a wooden bench while he talked with the stationmaster about the schedule, if there was one, to Vienna. The station man only shrugged. “We shall see,” he said in German.
When their train arrived, they boarded and continued their journey back through the impoverished countryside until the next stop and then stood patiently on platforms together waiting for the next connection, none of the three seeming to tire. Finally, at one last small Austrian town, the conductor said the magic words, “Through train.”
The three of them now sat in silence as the Austrian countryside rolled past, on their way north to Vienna. The man chosen by fate to be reborn as Arnauld Esterhazy, legendary teacher of St. Gregory’s School, stared vacantly, only the deep recesses of his eyes betraying that hint of terrified alertness that signaled his not being an ordinary traveler.
Oh, my dear Arnauld, Eleanor wondered at one point when Jodl had gone to find coffee, where have you been? What have you seen?
57
ODYSSEUS AND ACHILLES
Eleanor and Jodl thought it wisest that they travel directly to Zurich, without stopping in Vienna for more time than necessary to pick up young Standish from Fräulein Tatlock and for Eleanor to say her good-byes, informing no one of their extraordinary discovery until they had arrived safely in Switzerland. “We shall wait until we are secure in Dr. Jung’s sanctuary,” Eleanor said, “before we try to sort all this out,” and Jodl nodded his taciturn consent.
They had planned that Jodl would wait at the train station with his secret charge, the man they assumed was Arnauld, while Eleanor went on to Fräulein Tatlock’s.
As anticipated, the reunion at Fräulein Tatlock’s was emotional, joyous on young Standish’s part. He ran to his mother and threw out his arms. “Oh, Mother,” the almost four-year-old exclaimed, “I thought you would never come,” and she hugged him with a fierceness that surprised both of them.
“We have made the best of our time,” the fräulein said, “but he missed his mother.” She had tears in her eyes now, already anticipating the parting. “He is a brave young man.”
Eleanor paused with her news, as she knew it would be poignant for this old woman, who had known the family from long ago. “I have found Arnauld,” she said. “He was in a hospital in Gorizia, among the unidentified.”
The old woman took a long slow moment to absorb what she had just heard. “He is alive, then?” she said faintly.
“He is alive. He and Herr Jodl are waiting for us at the train station. We are taking him to the hospital in Zurich, to Dr. Jung’s care.”
“Have you told his parents?”
“No,” Eleanor said. “I wish to get him safely to Switzerland before I tell them. You must tell no one until then.”
And Fräulein Tatlock, who held the secrets, only nodded. “It will be a shock to them.”
“I know,” Eleanor said.
Fräulein Tatlock looked at Standish for a long moment. “There is much you need to know of his birth,” she said suddenly.
Eleanor searched Fräulein Tatlock’s face. “I know the story,” Eleanor said. “Frau Esterhazy has told me in a letter.”
“It is only a story from long ago, not mine to confirm or deny.” Eleanor had known twenty years ago that Fräulein Tatlock had known Arnauld Esterhazy’s family, and now she was aware for the first time that the old lady knew dark secrets.
“You know the whole story?” Eleanor asked.
“It is not mine to tell.”
“I will see his parents in Zurich,” Eleanor said. “We will share the story then.”
The old woman nodded. “Perhaps then,” she said.
Eleanor ushered Fräulein Tatlock and her son to the train station, and they approached Jodl and his companion sitting on the bench in the large central hall. Fräulein Tatlock approached cautiously, her eyes filling with tears. “It is he,” she said in little more than a whisper. She reached out her hand and touched his arm. Arnauld did not move or acknowledge her in any way, only stared straight ahead. “It is he,” she repeated, obviously stunned.
“I will wait for you to inform Herr and Frau Esterhazy,” Fräulein Tatlock said as they bade good-byes there in the spacious sitting room.
Eleanor repeated her intentions to keep shipments of food coming from Switzerland. “Things will get better for Vienna,” she said with confidence.
“That is our prayer,” the old Viennese said.
During the whole trip to the Swiss border, the four travelers kept silent company. Arnauld sat across from Eleanor and her son, and he could only stare. Young Standish was fascinated by the man, finding it difficult to keep his eyes off the face that showed so little of the animation the boy was accustomed to.
“Why does he not speak, Mother?” the boy said, noticing that whenever the man became agitated and tried to form words, his mother calmed him with a movement of her hand, and with a comforting smile.
“He has been in the war,” she said, as if that would be enough explanation for her young son.
“I see,” Standish said, “like Odysseus and Achilles.”
“Like Odysseus and Achilles,” the mother repeated, and at the words their passenger gave the hint of a troubled look.
“It is all right, Arnauld,” she said gently. “You do not need to speak.” And then she added for good measure, “Everything will be all right.” And that seemed to calm him.
58
A SAD PARTING
Eleanor was unable to rest until she had delivered her charge to Carl Jung deep in neutral Switzerland. “We must get him there,” she had announced to her companion Jodl, “and only then announce to the world and his family our remarkable discovery.” She sank as comfortably as she could into her seat, allowing herself to drift into sleep, her attention fixed on the beautiful but vacant face across from her, fully assured that her companion would watch over them both. She thought of Arnauld’s letters to his parents she had received only recently and recalled one in particular, the last fully detailed one from the Isonzo war zone, the last fully coherent one.
Dear Mother and Father,
The tension is palpable as we await the next move of this Italian enemy that a very short time ago was our admired friend. The stench and discomfort of the trench becomes so routine as to be bearable, the uneven moments of rest and sleep now regular. Nerves that have gotten the better of me, I fear, can now be hidden as I look out for the betterment of my men. They don’t complain, the conditions of daily life so awful as to appear deadeningly normal. One of the most vocal, a seventeen-year-old from Moravia who has seen two of his teenage friends blown to pieces has concluded, “Don’t pick off the lice until they’re the size of cockroaches; they’re easier to see.”
Be on the ready, I tell them all. Always be on the ready. I steady myself through meditation, like a Buddhist monk. I try not to let anyone hear me talking to myself. My boy-men need me; they need someone to tell them what to do: to stand fast in the middle of
the deafening artillery fire.
One dream keeps me going, one image sustains me. My last night in Boston, with my beautiful Eleanor, whom you will someday meet perhaps when this nightmare has passed. We were alone at dinner that last night. She told me with great confidence of her vision of the future. Years before in Vienna an older gentleman, an American, had given me the same vision. “You will need to know this,” Eleanor said. “You will be a great teacher. You will be revered and long lived. I hope to have a son, she said, and you will be his Mentor, as Mentor was the great teacher of Odysseus.” She looked into my eyes with great intensity. “You will have a great ordeal, I fear, and you will have to keep this certainty before you, but you will return. I know you will return.” She seemed emphatic, desiring that I absorb without question what she was saying. I could not understand the urgency of her words then, but you can imagine now how comforting that simple prediction becomes in my present state.
We sat in her beautiful drawing room, and we talked leisurely and at length. The memories of that last evening fuel me now, carry me past my despair, allow me to escape this hopelessness. It is in that moment that I see and feel, in all her tenderness and power, my beautiful Beatrice.
Your loving son,
Arnauld
The other letters, the ones that followed, only a few of them, were short and increasingly disconnected, written in an increasingly faltering and trembling hand. And then they stopped altogether. That last letter was very much on her mind now as she looked into the face of the man who had been lost and now perhaps could be restored to life. She found herself grateful that her words of confidence had carried such weight for him during his ordeal, and she searched within herself now to find that faith once again, this time for herself.
It was then that she felt especially grateful for the friendship of Carl Jung. How fortunate we all are to have him, she thought, how complex and challenging, if even possible, his task is to be, leading this ruined human being back up into the real world. If anyone could do it, she reckoned, Jung and his clinic could.
Jodl had agreed to accompany them to the Swiss border, providing that final measure of support. She knew that their parting at the border would be difficult. Ever attentive to his responsibilities as protector, Jodl had arranged for an associate from the Swiss national police, also retired, to accompany Eleanor and Arnauld and young Standish until they reached the care of Dr. Jung in Zurich. Although he never mentioned his concern, he knew that those disturbeds returning from the war, such as this man they were returning to civilization, had the capacity for aberrant behavior or even violence, and he wanted a watchful eye kept on their companion at all times.
“My counterpart from the Swiss national police will be at your side,” he said. “He is a good man. You will have an easy go from here, Frau Burden.”
“Come with us to Zurich,” she said in a burst of spontaneity to her steadfast companion. “You can meet Dr. Jung.”
“Thank you,” he said, trying to maintain his reserve. “But my assignment is completed. I will return to my own city, to my other duties.”
For a moment she entertained teasing him for his staunch rectitude, but thought better of it. How she had grown to love this man of great strength. Again, wordlessly she looked into the retired policeman’s face. “We shall miss you,” she settled for. “This is a sad parting.”
Jodl nodded. And now, for the last detail of closure, he held out the suitcase he had guarded carefully during their whole time together, the lifeline of the operation. “And now this,” he said dutifully.
She paused, eyeing the offering, and then held out her hand, palm first. “No,” she said softly, and Jodl began to protest. “You keep it.”
“You must take it,” he said.
“No,” she repeated, looking him square in the eye, this time with supreme tenderness. “Fräulein Tatlock’s kitchen,” she said. “It will need support, and a treasurer.”
Franz Jodl paused before he spoke again. A man who weighed his words carefully, he weighed these words with special care. “I wish that my sons had had such an advocate.”
Eleanor held the man’s eyes for a long, sacred moment. “They had it,” she said finally. “In their father.” She moved to him and kissed him on both cheeks, then held on for a long moment. “Be well, my trusted champion.”
“Be well,” he repeated.
No further words were exchanged, and Jodl, ever the watchful sentinel, stood in his place on the station platform as Eleanor, her charge, and her young son disappeared through the doorway of the train car. She watched him through the cabin window as the train began to move and at the last moment waved, then she turned to the two passengers beside her, one small and one grown, but both totally dependent on her alone now.
PART
FIVE
59
BECAUSE OF THE BOY
Carl Jung had arranged for Arnauld to be admitted under his specific care to Burghölzli, the psychiatric hospital of the University of Zurich, where he had begun his career and made his name. The hospital had been founded in the 1860s as a facility specifically for the humane treatment of mental patients, one of the first and best in Europe. “Your Arnauld could not have landed in a better place,” the doctor said.
“That was the intention,” Eleanor replied.
Eleanor had arranged to stay in Zurich with Standish until she felt a proper diagnosis had been made and a path toward restoration had been established, a process, Jung assured her, that would be accomplished in just a few days. She was eager to return home to her daughters and Frank as soon as possible, but she awaited one more crucial step.
To her great relief, Eleanor found a message waiting upon her arrival in Zurich that all was as it should be in Boston, and the girls were well and eager for their mother’s return.
“I shall stay until the staff has had a chance for a thorough evaluation and you are able to report,” she told Jung, who agreed to the wisdom of the plan, and indeed within a few days he was ready. “Your friend Arnauld is an extreme case, as you know,” he said seriously. “He has lost his ability to relate to the world. It is, as you suggest, a case of severe repression of war experience, what the English call shell shock. There was perhaps head trauma, brain damage at its root that caused his present state, one from which some poor souls never emerge. He has dissociated, unable to sleep and unable to return to full consciousness. His reaction to the horrors of war is extreme, granted, but not highly unusual. He has gone deep inside, and it will be our task to try to entice him back to our world. He is a deeply tormented man, not shut off from feeling, as it appears, but feeling too much.”
“There is hope?” she said, halfway between a statement and a question.
“It is too early to establish that one way or the other. We can only progress one step at a time. The first step is a thorough neurological examination.”
“And is there no way to establish a prognosis and a schedule of recovery?” Eleanor asked, openly concerned.
“You have brought him this far, and by so doing have saved his life. You did your job, and heroically. Now we and time will have to do ours.”
“You can lead him out of this?” Eleanor said.
“We begin with that premise. Full recovery will always be our goal. The human mind is complex, and it protects itself in complex ways. Your friend Arnauld has sealed himself behind a great door. We will now attempt to untie the Gordian knot securing it. It will be done strand by strand. That is the only way.”
When she visited that first day, Arnauld had been moved to his own private room. “This will be his arena,” Jung said, “the place where he will find himself.”
She returned every day, and on the last she placed in his hand a single slim black volume and pressed both his hands around it until he had it firmly in his grip. “I must leave you,” she said. “I must tend to my family. But I leave you with this book, as part of me,” she added with firmness. “It will be your guide out.”
&
nbsp; Still unable to speak or acknowledge much from the outside world, Arnauld took the gift and clutched it tightly, pulling it to his chest. His lips moved and he seemed to mouth once again those syllables that had become familiar to anyone who had spent time with him. The book that from that moment onward was rarely out of his hands was titled City of Music by Jonathan Trumpp. She took her young son by the hand and led him out of the room.
Eleanor knew from a telegraph message from Jodl that he had been successful in his last task and that Arnauld’s parents would be arriving in Zurich on a train from Vienna in the early afternoon, the final step she was waiting for. She arranged for a driver to take her and Standish to the train station so that she would be there to greet the couple when they disembarked.
Herr Esterhazy and his wife looked expectant and somewhat awed by the whole turn of events. “This is an extraordinary surprise,” he said to Eleanor once they had said their greetings and the driver was loading their bags into the car. “You will have to pardon us if we are a bit out of sorts.”
“We had lost our son,” Frau Esterhazy said. “Now, we hear, he is found.”
“He has been found,” Eleanor said with calm authority. “I can only guess what you are feeling. He does not express much right now, you realize.”
The Lost Prince Page 41