The Birth of Love

by Joanna Kavenna

  *

  It was futile to continue the interview, that much was plain, and so I informed Herr Meyer that I would return in the afternoon. I wondered if I should endeavour before my return to find out more about the man Klein, simply because his name had caused Herr S such agitation, and had indeed precipitated his decline. I was curious, naturally, though I was not sure if I should indulge my curiosity, because Herr S seemed so fearful of being returned to the world of names, of categories and limitations. Yet how was he to be released, how could he escape this horrible prison, if he lacked any recollection of the real nature of his circumstances? Grappling with these notions – Herr S’s fear of knowing himself, my sense that it was wrong for him to remain in this squalid cell, my loathing of the viciousness of the asylum and my conviction that no man could live long in such a place and not degenerate entirely – I returned to my house. I was pensive throughout luncheon. I had various pieces of work to finish, and though I sat at my desk with my papers in front of me, I found I could not consider them. My thoughts turned constantly to that man trapped in his cell, his hands chained, and I wondered just what treatment Herr Meyer was administering to him now. I was thinking of Herr S’s patchy recall, his oscillations between ordinary lucidity and something more revelatory and perilous, something which might bring forth everything or nothing at all, and I recalled again the devastating effect upon him of the name ‘Klein’. My moral sense was confused. If the man genuinely wanted to remain undisturbed, then perhaps his wishes should be respected. If the man were a murderer, as he claimed, then he should be brought to trial. If his thoughts of blood and murder were – as I strongly suspected – symbolical, then it would surely assist his recovery to supply him with the means to dismiss these darker elements of his being. Besides, at one point, before he was afflicted by his terrors, he had clearly asked me to find out who Johann Klein was.

  *

  I folded up my papers and placed them in a pile on my desk. It was early afternoon when I left my house again and walked through the crowded streets towards the hospital. I did not know precisely what I was doing. I merely remembered that Herr S had been agitated by the thought of the hospital, and that, along with the name Johann Klein, it was the only tangible clue I had unearthed from our conversation. I know of a man there – you know him too, perhaps – called Professor Zurbruck, and I wondered if he might be able to help me to ascertain the real identity of Herr S. It was a random hope, and I imagined it would prove fruitless. Yet I had no real idea of how else I might proceed, and so I went to the registrar’s office on the first floor, and asked if he had seen Professor Zurbruck that day.

  *

  Vienna General Hospital is a vast edifice, the sort of place you might vanish into and never emerge from; a labyrinth, and I trod carefully, clutching my tenuous thread. The hospital was founded as a benevolent enterprise and I am sure a great deal of good work is performed within its confines. Yet there is something about it that nonetheless disturbs me, and, because of this, I have never spent much time there, except when there has been an interesting case on one of the wards, and I have sought an interview. I have a few acquaintances among the doctors there, but my connections are not strong. Professor Zurbruck I know simply because his brother was a friend of my brother when they studied at the university here in Vienna. We have met a few times, at gatherings and suppers, though I had never previously sought him out at the hospital. A young doctor directed me towards Professor Zurbruck’s quarters, and I walked swiftly along the corridors, thinking that this really was the sort of place in which one might need a ball of twine yet all the while trying to keep my thoughts firmly on the matter in hand.

  *

  At Professor Zurbruck’s door, I knocked and waited for a response, but my knock sounded hollow and as if I summoned no one, and I perceived that I must wait. Indeed I was obliged to pace the corridors, avoiding the milling hordes of students, for a good hour before Professor Zurbruck returned. I had almost given up hope, when he emerged abruptly around a corner. Even then he was hurried and rather gruesome – he is like his brother a man of great height and unusual thinness, and yet while his brother is rather jovial and thereby reassuring, Professor Zurbruck lacks his sibling’s warmth. He extended a fleshless hand to me and suggested I explain my cause as succinctly as I could. He was polite but he emphasised – in his slow monotone – that he could only offer me a few minutes of his time, as he had an appointment very shortly.

  *

  In his room, as he busied himself finding materials for his next lecture, I laid out what I knew of the case of Herr S. I explained that he had been disturbed and transfixed by the notion of the General Hospital, and that he had also produced a single name, Johann Klein. I explained myself as precisely as I could yet it seemed to me that Professor Zurbruck was scarcely attending to my words. He was about to stand up, indeed, and announce that he must depart, when I mentioned that Herr S had accused himself and others of murder and had claimed there was a conspiracy to silence him.

  *

  ‘Ah,’ said Professor Zurbruck, with a slow nod of his head, as if something had just fallen into place.

  ‘You recognise something in this case?’

  ‘I may do. He talks of a massacre?’

  ‘Yes, oceans of blood, he says. The massacre of women.’

  ‘He accuses specific professionals of murder?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  *

  His manner was curious, as if he knew the answers to his questions already, and was rather contemplating how much to reveal to me than seeking enlightenment. I began to grow most eager, and I said, ‘My dear professor, if there is anything you know of this case, I entreat you to inform me. Herr S is in a very grave position, and if you were to see how dreadful are the conditions of his confinement, you would pity him.’

  ‘I have no doubt I would pity him. I am simply wondering if he might be – there is a chance he might be Professor Semmelweis. You might ask him if he is. Perhaps this would prompt his memory.’

  ‘Who is Professor Semmelweis?’

  ‘I must emphasise that I do not want to slander a former colleague, by suggesting he must be this poor lunatic you describe. Yet it is possible. Certainly Professor Semmelweis had become eccentric in recent years, and there were fears for his health.’

  ‘On what were these fears based?’

  ‘He had written a very rambling book, justifying himself, explaining to everyone that he had been right when they had all been contemptible fools, essentially. Or so I heard, I never read it. It is not my area of expertise. And when that was not received with the acclaim he thought it deserved, he took to haranguing his colleagues through personal letters, strewn with vicious accusations.’

  ‘What sort of accusations?’

  ‘This is why your remarks conjured the name Semmelweis. Because Professor Semmelweis has acquired a reputation for accusing his colleagues of murder, individually, in these letters, and in general in his book and other published works. And he claims, I believe, that there has been a massacre.’

  ‘Why does he claim this?’

  ‘He takes upon himself – and expects others to do the same – the burden of guilt for those women who die each year in our hospitals of childbed fever, or puerperal sepsis as it is known within the medical profession.’

  ‘He thinks he has killed them?’

  ‘Yes, I believe he claims that their deaths were caused by his actions, and by the actions of his colleagues. He calls childbed fever a global epidemic, spread by doctors. He suggests doctors are unclean, and the bearers of contagion, and this assertion has irritated many of his colleagues. Also, I believe he is not rigorous and therefore his theories have been queried. He does not enter into reasoned argument, he does not prove his case by amassing evidence through experimentation. He merely insults his opponents and slanders their reputations. In this way, he has lost his few supporters.’

  ‘What were they supporting?’

  ‘H
is theory about how puerperal sepsis is spread by the hands of doctors. It has been generally refuted, and anyway, it does not much concern me, as I am a surgeon. Professor Semmelweis’s focus is the woman in labour and after labour.’

  ‘What is his theory?’

  ‘A colleague once suggested it is rather like the example of Columbus’s egg. It is not a work of grave complexity. Perhaps he might have persuaded his colleagues to adopt it, purely as a cautionary measure, had he not been so bombastic. Yet his manner angered Johann Klein, Professor Johann Klein, who was the head of the lying-in department of the hospital. Yes, the theory, you are anxiously waiting, and I really must attend to my business, concerns the washing of hands in chlorinated lime solution. Professor Semmelweis talks of, now what was the expression – ah yes, “cadaverous particles” – festering particles derived from the bodies of those who have recently died of puerperal sepsis. Infection, he claimed, could be carried from a dead body to a living body through these particles. You know it is still quite usual for students and doctors to perform autopsies of women who have died in childbirth shortly before they go to examine the lying-in patients in the First Division. And Professor Semmelweis proposed that these doctors and students must wash their hands in chlorinated lime solution after they had dealt with corpses and before they conducted an internal examination of a living woman. He claimed this would prevent puerperal sepsis.’

  ‘And did it?’

  ‘The theory has never been proven by experiment or systematic investigation. Professor Semmelweis however is adamant that it is the solution. He is adamant that those who refuse to adopt his preventative measures are wilfully slaying their patients.’

  ‘So this is why he was cast out?’

  *

  Professor Zurbruck was pacing the room, in a long-limbed, leisurely manner, and now he came to rest – staring at me with his sunken eyes, and placing a long hand upon his desk. ‘He was not cast out, my good fellow. He has behaved very strangely. He fled from Vienna many years ago. It was something about debts, I think; I cannot remember the details. I think he went back to his native Budapest. That is perhaps right. You must remember I have never known the man well. Yes, I heard he reigned supreme over a lying-in ward somewhere in the Hungarian Lands, though his techniques infuriated many of his colleagues. He is a hectoring angry man, you may have noticed.’

  ‘He is much reduced.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear that.’

  ‘So his wife and children are in Budapest now?’

  ‘I do not know where they are, I am afraid. This is all I know of the man. Now I really must go. Perhaps it would be useful for your further enquiries if I refer you to my colleague – Professor Hebra. I think he knew Professor Semmelweis well. Professor Hebra can be found at this address …’

  *

  He wrote it down for me on a piece of paper. I thanked him, and he nodded and waved me away. When I hurried to make enquiries of Professor Hebra, I was disappointed to discover that he had gone to Paris for a conference, and would be absent for a week. The lying-in ward, which I went to immediately I had failed to locate Professor Hebra, was equally unhelpful. I pushed open the heavy doors. It was an unusually hot day, and there were hardly any medical students in the wards. There were rows of women lying in beds – the blankets moulded around the swollen forms of those who had not yet delivered, and their faces taut with pain. Row upon row of them, about to cross the threshold, not knowing if they would survive. In suspense they lay there, and they had looked up fearfully when I opened the door. I had little time to gaze upon them before a midwife hurried up to inform me I could not stay there. She held up her hands, as if to shield the modesty of these women. So I bowed and turned away. I was pursued along the corridor by a strange volley of sounds, some like war cries, and some like the lowing of cattle. Then I found some terse doctors, who told me they knew nothing of any Semmelweis and hadn’t time to consider the nature of his accusations. When I asked them about chlorinated lime solution, and cadaverous particles, one of them – a stern man of forty or so, who had just come, he said, from delivering a healthy boy, and who had to hurry to advise a midwife on a troublesome birth – said he had heard mention of something of that nature, but it was blatantly apparent – as Professor Klein had always argued – that puerperal sepsis was spread by a foul atmosphere, and all that was required was an extensive ventilation system, such as Professor Klein had installed. ‘Chlorinated lime is simply superfluous, though any man should feel entitled to use it if he wishes,’ he added, and then hurried away to his duties.

  *

  Feeling hot and rather tired, I went to take a glass of lemonade in a café nearby. As I reviewed my recent enquiries, I wondered if the best course of action would be to inform Herr S of what I had found and thus – perhaps – prompt him to further recollections. I suspected I held the key to his human identity, his social existence and the nature of his profession. I was confident further details of his life could be gathered: I had only spoken to one man, and he was no expert on childbirth, and he had already told me a great deal about Professor Semmelweis. Once Professor Hebra returned, he would clarify matters further. Had I the time, I thought, I could make a decent study of this man Semmelweis, and discover something of the controversy over his assertions, the battles he had fought, those colleagues who had supported and later deserted him, and no doubt, in the end, precisely who had committed him to the asylum. I was quite convinced I could hunt much of this information out, if I devoted some time to the case.

  *

  Yet I am not a detective, naturally given to harvesting facts, craving resolution simply for the neatness and purity it affords. I was mindful, furthermore, of Herr S’s own reluctance to regain himself, his fear of the harshness of the solar realm. While some might say this was a symptom of his distress, I do maintain that, for some unfortunate individuals, the ‘lunatic’ condition is a respite from reality, and it is plain cruelty to force them to return to the world of absolutes. There had been some moral imperative upon me to ascertain that Herr S was not a murderer – in a sense which would interest the law. This achieved, there was no clear justification for further enquiries, unless they were to the benefit of Herr S himself. More practically, I perceived that for the sake of his reputation, and his family, I must not wander around Vienna proclaiming that he had been placed in an asylum. While I perceive no shame in this epithet ‘mad’, I am aware that for most it carries a terrible stigma, and if Herr S’s family subscribed to this opinion, I did not want to distress them. Professor Zurbruck I knew to be a man of discretion, for all his ghoulishness, but others might not be so careful.

  *

  After much thought, I decided I should refer the dilemma to the man himself, Herr S or Professor Semmelweis. I would inform him of his name and lay the case before him – that I had garnered some other details about him, or rather about his non-lunar existence, and that they could be revealed to him as he chose. I would be directed by his desires, unreasoning though they might be. I hastened back to the asylum, weighted down by the many implications of what I had discovered, uncertain as to the effect my words might have on this desperate man.

  *

  I am cursing as I write this last sentence, as there is someone below who I simply must see. I will continue with this letter as soon as possible …

  The Empress

  15 August 2009 and London was clad in heat and dust. The day hung still and close; there was no breeze. The tarmac was burning to the touch; everything was harsh and overlit. People were moving, but listlessly; the heat had gradually sapped them. They were walking with their hands at their eyes, trying to block out the sun. From time to time it rained, in violent bursts which made everyone run for cover, though the dampness was a relief all the same. After the rainstorms the city gleamed, as if someone had polished the buildings.

  *

  It was barely mid-morning and Brigid Hayes felt already as if she had been awake for a dozen hours. She was smiling at
her son, trying to please him, struggling against a latent sense of failure. She was not certain, but she feared this was failure, that she was failing her son. There was a gulf between them: on one side his dynamism, brightness, his vivid urges to do, to consume, to understand; on the other her basic attempts to subsist, to endure the day. He was ambitious, incessantly curious; she was faded, fading before his eyes, though still she was smiling and holding out her hands to him. She had left childbearing late, and so at thirty-nine she set about it zealously, but fearing the worst. Twenty months later, she had Calumn. Seventeen months after his birth, she was expecting another baby, as yet unnamed. As yet invisible, trapped within her though due any day. This child would be the last, she was sure of that. She had hardly expected to have one child, when she began ‘trying’ three years ago. Two was more than enough. Two was extraordinary, if she took the time to think about it. But she rarely took the time. When she wasn’t dealing with her son and the physical demands of pregnancy she was working, dull copy-editing work but she did it because they needed the money. She had given up her teaching job but now she pored over manuscripts and wrote symbols in the margins. She was precise and disciplined in her work, chaotic and self-critical with her child. It didn’t make any sense.

  *

  She was tired and not quite well. At night she could not sleep; she would lie for hours in the dark, waiting for exhaustion to drag her under. She could scarcely breathe or find a comfortable way to lie. So she listened to the nocturnal whispers of the radio, watched the sky change; often it was dawn before she slept. That had ruined her well enough, and then during the days Patrick went out to work and she stumbled around the house. He was worried about her, she knew; he told her she must stay inside, rest whenever she could. Still, the other day she had aimed at defiance, she had grown so bored at home. She had forced Calumn into his pushchair and walked to the local park. After that, she coughed her throat raw; she had scarcely slept at all.