The Birth of Love

by Joanna Kavenna

  *

  I have seen such self-loathing before; indeed such sentiments are often regarded as perfectly necessary and even devout by many of those who follow our major creeds. I have seen these beliefs become rigid in the asylums, drawing many into terrible visions of damnation. It begins with mere conventional piety, and descends into individual mayhem. Thereby believers come to despise the blood which flows through their bodies, and which sustains them. They come to despise it and to hope for a time when it will cease to move in their veins and they will be purged and resur-rected clean. For does it not say in the teachings of Ben Sira, ‘Of the woman came the beginning of sin, and through her we all die’ – through birth we all die into life, torn from the side of our father God? The mother betrays us, drags us away from our spiritual parent, the invisible Father. So millions of humans have been persuaded that the questing soul must deny the mother and the earth; that the divine is not present among us but lies far beyond us. I wondered if Herr S had simply allowed his heart to be commanded by such teachings; and thus he feared this blood he imagined, believed his yearning for it was treacherous and must condemn him.

  *

  My good Professor Wilson, these are rather vague musings, and I hope you will forgive me. I have often been criticised for the diffusion and inconsequentiality of my thought, and I am quite aware that my opinions are not widely held. And indeed even to those who may agree, such proposals might well seem superfluous to the sad case of Herr S. I am only recording them, indeed, that you may perceive how I have tried to understand him, how many theories I have fashioned. This was how my thoughts ran at this time, and I allowed myself a few moments to note them down.

  *

  When I lifted my head, and stopped my pen, Herr S had fallen once more into silence. Hoping to rouse him again, I said, ‘Do you have other recurring thoughts?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Many thoughts.’

  Then he shuddered, horribly, so violently that I thought he must be falling into a fit. He rattled the chains and his whole body convulsed, and he said, ‘Oh I cannot speak about them, they are too … They are …’

  ‘Can you disclose any of them at all?’

  ‘There is a name. A name which hammers in my thoughts. It is the name of a woman – I dread to tell it.’

  ‘If you can, then perhaps we can shed some more light on your condition.’

  ‘My “condition”? That is a fine word for it!’

  ‘Why are you afraid of telling me the name of this woman?’

  ‘She is a woman with bright blue eyes. Flaxen hair, I think. She is very angry with me. I fear I shall anger her further. She is furious and I believe she is tormenting me. I am being punished for the death of this woman.’

  ‘You know she is dead?’

  ‘I know it because I killed her.’

  ‘Why do you believe this to be the case?’

  ‘She appears to me – she was here just the other day, and she accused me with her eyes. They were piercing my flesh. My body burned when she looked upon me. And there was a pain at my core – here’ – and he pounded on his chest – ‘as her eyes burned into me.’

  ‘You think you knew this woman?’

  ‘I did not know her. I met her somewhere, I cannot remember where. I met her and then shortly afterwards – a few days perhaps – she was dead.’

  ‘Herr S, I would be most interested to know what you call this woman.’

  ‘I cannot tell you,’ he said. He was shuddering; the man was shaking in the depths of his dread.

  *

  So I said, ‘Are there any other names you remember?’

  arks on them, around the hollows of the eyes and on the gaunt cheeks. They are women’s faces and they are stricken with pain. They appear to me on the wall. I wake and I see them arrayed on the wall before me. Thousands and thousands, perhaps, I am not sure, and I think they are all this woman …’

  ‘All of them are the same woman?’

  ‘No they do not look the same. They are not physically the same. But somehow they are all her, I believe them to be her. When these women appear before me they are not like her though they are somehow her but these women have their eyes screwed up in agony and I am fearful, so very fearful, lest they open their eyes. I am writhing in torment, waiting for them to open their eyes and burn me. If they all open their eyes, I am quite sure I must die. So I watch them, and always so far their eyes have been closed. But soon, soon they must open. Then I will burn. Do you understand me?’

  ‘I am not sure that I do. But I am determined to help you, if I can.’

  ‘You?’ he said, staring at me suddenly. ‘Why?’

  As I began to speak he remembered once more, and said, ‘Yes, yes, of course. It is this cloud. The cloud disperses my recollections. So then I must speak to you alone?’

  ‘You are under no obligation to talk to me.’

  ‘You are preparing a document against me?’

  ‘No, I am not.’

  ‘My words have always been twisted and used to testify against me. I have a sense that it is very dangerous to speak, to explain, because my words will be misconstrued.’

  ‘You feel you have been traduced?’

  ‘I feel I am guilty indeed, mired in blood. But somehow I have been unfairly judged nonetheless.’

  ‘Do you want to become well again?’ I said.

  ‘But what is well?’

  ‘That is a very pertinent question, Herr S. You are right to query my idle expression. I mean do you want to leave this place?’

  ‘How will I leave? They have confined me here. To be rid of me. I am quite sure they want to be rid of me.’

  ‘Who are they, to your mind?’

  ‘I do not know. I know they have acted decisively. I am aware I am ill, and I think I have done many dreadful things. Aside from the crimes of which I am rightly accused – oh somewhere I am accused, I know – I have done dreadful things to other people, and – oh my wife!’ And now his features were mangled by longing and grief, and he twisted in his chair.

  ‘You remember your wife?’

  ‘I am not sure. I think I … I think perhaps I dealt foully with my wife. I have – I think I was, oh I remember another woman, someone I fled to. But I was not fleeing from my wife, I was trying to hide myself.’

  ‘But it is not your wife you see in these dreams?’

  ‘No no, it is not her face.’

  ‘Perhaps it is an aspect of your wife you see. Or an aspect of this other woman you speak of.’

  ‘No! No, that is quite wrong.’ And now he was terse, as if I was being obtuse and must be castigated. ‘This woman who visits me here has nothing to do with my wife! And why do you presume to mention her?’

  ‘You were telling me just now about her. That you see her frequently, and that you could not tell me her name.’ He paused for a moment, and passed a hand across his eyes, as if trying to clear his vision. I said, ‘Do you remember if you have a family?’

  ‘Children?’

  ‘Yes, do you think you have children?’

  ‘I think I have many beautiful children but I am not sure.’

  ‘When did you last see your family?’

  ‘I do not know. I cannot remember.’

  ‘Do you have any idea where they might be?’

  ‘No, I do not. And must I die without seeing them again?’

  And now the man suffered a substantial collapse, and for a while he sobbed wildly, and I said nothing. I sat in his gloomy vicious cell, the darkness seeping from the corners, and waited. When his sobs appeared to be diminishing, I said quietly, ‘Herr S, you are not dying.’ I said this, though I knew nothing of his condition. My intention by such a remark was simply to calm him, so I might continue to speak with him. But I am afraid my words gave him hope, and he lifted his ravaged face and said, ‘You are sure?’

  ‘I am not sure, but I do not think you are dying,’ I said. ‘But please do not take me as any sort of an authority. I am not, as I said be
fore, a medical man.’

  ‘No, I think you are not, after all,’ he said, looking at me carefully, as if he was seeing me clearly for the first time. I submitted myself to his gaze – I was there, assessing and observing him; it seemed only fair to permit him to do the same in return. He stared at me in silence for a time, and then he said, slowly, still in a contemplative mood, ‘It is as if I have lost a portion of my brain. My thoughts run into holes. Do you understand?’

  ‘I do understand.’

  ‘They are very far away, I know that. My wife is a good and virtuous woman.’

  ‘Do you think she knows you are here?’

  ‘I hope she does not.’

  *

  There was a pause, and then he said, still quite calmly, as if he were expounding a scientific theory, ‘When I dream of blood I think because I crave blood and love blood in the dream then I must have in the past been a bloodthirsty man. In the dream I am drinking blood. So I must have thirsted after blood and this is why – or one of the reasons – I think I committed a crime. I think I have spent years in a deep reverie, a criminal reverie and in this deranged state I have committed acts of violence and now I have fallen out of that reverie and yet I cannot remember my former actions. As if I have experienced two lives in one body.’

  ‘But you say that you are also looking for something in the blood?’

  ‘I am delving into the blood,’ he said, and he briefly stopped wringing his hands and instead made a horrible grasping gesture, as if he were probing deep within something, his hands opening and shutting and finding only empty air. ‘I must find it … I must … I must drag it out …’

  *

  Now he stopped this delving and fell silent again. His hands for one brief unnerving moment were entirely still, and the clanking of the chains stopped, and the dank cell was silent. Then he began to wring his hands again, and the jangling resumed.

  *

  ‘You remember elements of your past but it seems there are significant gaps in your recall,’ I said. ‘The one place you remembered was the General Hospital. Perhaps they will know you there. I would be glad to make enquiries, if you did not mind me doing so.’

  ‘I am not sure that is a good idea. If they do know me then you too would be their enemy.’

  ‘I do not think I would. Besides, it does not matter.’

  ‘You do not know how powerful they are, how they will unite to destroy you.’

  *

  We had reached something of an impasse. He was deep in the domain of the symbolic, and though I was content to observe him in this domain – it is always a privilege and a matter for awe to witness the human mind unmasked, disgorging mysteries – I also felt a great sense of curiosity about his true identity. I wondered what he had done, and if there had truly been a campaign of any sort to dismantle his reputation. I wondered about the real or symbolic nature of his Great Reversal, the moment when all he had worked to achieve was undone. I wondered if he must have experienced a particular shock, the final catalyst, which had thrust him from the lucid realm into twilight and dream. I did not know. I was torn, indeed, between a suspicion that it might be most comfortable for him to remain in this twilight state, in the ‘wolf-light’ as Homer so beautifully describes it, and my own urge to draw him into the daylight. I was not sure if he wanted to return to the harsh glare of day. It had made him dreadfully unhappy to stand there, I imagined. Illuminated by the glances of other men, until they had turned away from him. I must confess that I did not know what to do, and was deep in thought when he turned to me and said, ‘What did they tell you my name was?’

  ‘Herr S, that is all Herr Meyer would say to me.’

  ‘Do not speak of that man,’ he entreated, with all the trembling desperation of before. In the wolf-light, Herr Meyer loomed large, like a monster conjured from the darkest reaches of the human soul, and I apologised for my thoughtlessness. I had no desire to torment this poor man. Yet he had quickly recovered, and was saying, in a neutral tone, ‘My surname then begins with S, perhaps. I wonder what it could be?’

  ‘You really do not remember?’

  ‘I am afraid I do not.’

  *

  He had lost himself. The man had lost his very name, and a man without a name – well, he is indeed in limbo. The nameless man has symbolically reverted to the time before we are named, when we are residing in the womb or perhaps drifting in the spirit world, waiting to be summoned to earth. You are a scientific man, Professor Wilson, and will think all this nonsense, I suspect. It is just my way of alluding to mysteries which might otherwise be inexpressible. Herr S had his own theory, and he was saying, ‘I have no name because I am a malefactor. I should have a number, not a name. Because of the crimes I have committed. We should all be stripped of our names.’

  I was preparing another question, when he suddenly said, ‘Klein.’

  Thinking he was merely using the adjective, I said, ‘What do you mean by this word?’

  ‘I mean it is a name,’ he said. And he had begun rubbing his forehead, his motions once more frenzied. ‘It is not mine. It is the name of a man. An enemy. I cannot remember my own name, but I remember his. Johann, that is it. Johann Klein.’

  ‘You believe he is your enemy?’

  ‘I believe he is my darkest foe. And I believe he visited me last night, and gloated over my ruin.’

  ‘I do not think he visited you in body, but perhaps you dreamed of him,’ I said.

  ‘He has been here. He spoke of the quality of the air, and how that had caused it all, and how unfortunate it was that I had not accepted his theory, and then he left.’

  ‘And you remember nothing more of him?’

  ‘I do not. It is only because he was here yesterday that I remember him at all.’

  While speaking of this man, Herr S’s appearance changed altogether. Before, he had been slumped in his chair, wringing his hands in his habitual way and staring at the floor. Now he straightened his back and looked directly at me. His face darkened. For a moment I thought he would try to rise, and certainly he writhed in his chair. Yet he did not rise, though as he spoke it became clear he was furious; he spat out his words.

  ‘It makes me very – that man – you must tell me who he is.’

  ‘I am afraid I do not know. I can make enquiries, how-ever.’

  ‘I am sure – it is he who has killed them all.’

  *

  We stared at each other for a moment. Something was beginning to clear. Herr S was still rattling his chains and grimacing towards me but now it seemed as if there was content to his rage, a tangible argument we might draw out. Before I had been merely trying to understand the particulars of his state and I had considered it largely a matter of the intimate and mysterious workings of the mind, but now I had a further sense there might be facts involved and, perhaps, even individuals. I said, ‘You are accusing this man Klein of murder?’

  ‘Yes. I believe he is among the worst of them.’

  ‘The worst of whom?’

  ‘Of the murderers. He presided over the greatest massacre of all. It is – in my deadened brain, something is sparking – if I can only – if you will help me. You must tell me something else about this man – anything, his appearance, the details of his dress, how he spoke, any detail which may … help my memory …’

  ‘I am afraid I do not know anything about him.’

  ‘Ah, I could gouge a hole in my skull, if it would release the truth …’ And he was tearing at the skin on his forehead, so frantically that he scratched himself and released a thin trickle of blood. I said, ‘Herr S, you must calm yourself. I am trying to help you but …’

  ‘I cannot be calm. There has been a massacre, you must understand. And every day it continues …’

  I was about to explain to him that this massacre he perceived might well be suggestive of something else, that the question might not be whether to ‘prove’ it but rather to understand the significance this concept held for him, but I must c
onfess that I was now uncertain of my own theory, and I feared suddenly that Herr S might hold the key to a genuine crime, a real series of murders. Before I could speak again he slammed his fists together, and he struggled to break out of his chains. He hammered on the chair, screaming, ‘You must help me you must help me to stop it.’ And then he seemed to entertain a vision, an awful, dark vision, because he began wailing in terror, and he stretched out an arm and said, ‘But you must forgive me, you must! I beg forgiveness.’ He whispered something which sounded like ‘Mea culpa’, and then slumped down in exhaustion.

  *

  To my consternation, the sound of raging had caused Herr Meyer to return, and once he arrived Herr S retreated into his earlier catatonic state and would not look at me, and certainly not at Herr Meyer, though the vile man addressed him in his sneering way, demanding to know what he had ‘been doing’ and whether he had been ‘behaving himself ’. As if Herr S was a wicked child, to be punished with the rod! And poor Herr S was hunched over, surrendered to his impotence, occasionally muttering or wringing his hands. Sometimes he pressed his hands to his head, as if to protect himself from blows. It was sad indeed to see him there, cowering like a dog, and I turned in my anger to Herr Meyer and said, ‘Herr S is – to my mind – poised between the worlds of reason and lunacy. It is imperative that you are gentle with him. His condition is most precarious. If he degenerates further, you will be responsible.’

  *

  Naturally, Herr Meyer did not like that at all, and glared at me in his vicious way, as if he was sizing me up for a straitjacket, and then he said, ‘I do not require your opinions on how to treat my patients.’

  ‘You do not, if you perceive them as such. However I fear they are prisoners to your mind, malefactors, not patients at all.’

  And Herr Meyer snorted and turned away from me.