The Double

by Ann Gosslin

  Perched high above a forested valley in the Bernese Oberland, the former retreat of an eccentric 1920s industrialist who’d lost everything in the crash had been transformed into the clinic’s main building. A folly of turrets and parapets, acres of parquet, and a soaring tower with a bird’s-eye view of the grounds. Surrounded by quintessentially Swiss chalets for the patients and staff, the whole set-up might have been plucked straight from a fairy tale.

  Fifteen years ago, when he’d had no money for such an enterprise, the idea of starting his own clinic was just a pipe dream. But after a former patient died of cancer, he was shocked to learn she’d left him the bulk of her fortune. The poor woman suffered from a recurrent somatic disorder, resulting in paralysis and extreme distress. She’d seen a dozen specialists to no avail, until at last, under Gessen’s ministrations, she was able to resume her old life. While under his care, though she’d talked extensively about herself, he’d had no idea she stood at the helm of a vast fortune.

  In her will, she made it clear he should use the money to establish a private clinic, where he could help lift others out of the terrible mental and physical anguish that had beset her in midlife. Along with a considerable sum of money, the bequest included the manor house and surrounding property that would become the heart of the clinic.

  Over the years, with a seemingly endless stream of funds at his disposal to create a bucolic respite from the world, he’d been profligate to the point of irresponsibility. What did he care about money? Mental health was the holy grail, and on many occasions he would waive the fees for patients who couldn’t pay, or reduced the costs for others.

  But as the reputation of the clinic’s facilities and storybook setting grew, the thorny psychiatric cases he’d sought to treat had somehow transformed into the wealthy and bored who found their way to his door. He welcomed a few of these individuals, seeking nothing more than relief from their malaise, though always with a twinge of guilt, as a way of injecting some much-needed cash into the clinic’s depleted coffers. He justified this treachery so that those truly in need, but unable to pay, would benefit from his skill as a clinician of the mind. Now, according to the grim reckoning of his accountant, and having taken a major hit in the global financial crash, the hour had arrived to pay the piper.

  He poured himself a coffee and opened the Berner Zeitung to read again the news item about the Cambridge don in Copenhagen. It was only three lines and gave no details, but one of the London papers online provided a more tantalising summary:

  Copenhagen, 23 October 2008 – The winner of the 2008 Søgaard Prize for Excellence and Innovation in Neuroscience, Professor Vidor Kiraly OBE, of Cambridge University, United Kingdom, was taken to hospital yesterday following an incident at the awards ceremony at Rosenborg Castle. Honoured for his pioneering work on sensory integration and pattern recognition in the human brain, Kiraly was in the Danish capital to accept the prestigious award from his Royal Highness, the Crown Prince of Denmark. According to eyewitnesses, Kiraly displayed signs of agitation during his acceptance speech and began to shout in a foreign language at a man at the back of the hall. Before anyone could stop him, Kiraly rushed off the stage and knocked the man to the floor. Though Kiraly was largely incoherent at the time of the attack, a member of the audience identified two of the words he shouted as ‘monster’ and ‘dead’. Medics arrived promptly on the scene and administered a sedative before transporting Kiraly to a local hospital. The man who was attacked appeared to be seriously injured and was taken away by ambulance. No further information on the victim’s condition, or Professor Kiraly’s whereabouts, is available at this time.

  Gessen clicked on other links about the incident, including a video taken during the ceremony. The video started mid-sentence, as an elegant man announced Professor Kiraly’s name. Clad in a grey suit with an expensive sheen, Kiraly mounted the stage, his eyes shadowed, and his dark hair, touched with silver at the temples, swept back. A gold signet ring on his left hand caught the light.

  The Crown Prince of Denmark, resplendent in full dress uniform, strode forth and presented Kiraly with a medal and a brass plaque. Polite applause, a burst of flashbulbs. Kiraly flinched at the lights as he stepped up to the dais and leaned into the microphone, thanking the committee and his Danish hosts, noting how pleased he was to be back in the Danish capital, home to his favourite philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard. He said a few words in what Gessen took to be Danish, eliciting from the audience – and the Prince – a ripple of laughter.

  Two minutes into his prepared speech, beaded with perspiration, Kiraly paused to look at the audience. As the blood drained from his face, followed by a flush of anger, he raised his fist in the air and shouted something Gessen couldn’t make out, before rushing down the steps and into the aisle. The camera panned jerkily to a man at the back of the hall, elegant in a pin-striped suit and horn-rimmed glasses, his leonine head adorned with a white mane of hair. Kiraly raced down the aisle and launched himself at the man, shouting something in a language Gessen assumed was Hungarian.

  Two security guards grappled Kiraly to the ground. Another man, perhaps one of the organisers, rushed over to assist. As Kiraly’s face was pushed against the floor, his eyes flicked with terror, before a hand swam up to the camera lens and the film cut out.

  Gessen stared at the darkened screen, his heart bumping against his ribs. In need of air, he raised the blinds and flung open the window, hoping the sight of the high mountains and vast bowl of open space would settle his churning thoughts.

  The raw fury in Kiraly’s face. So unexpected in such an elegantly dressed and courtly Cambridge don. Why the explosive rage, and at that particular man? Was it someone Kiraly knew, or believed he did? It didn’t make sense. Gessen’s first thought was amok syndrome. From the Malay word for ‘rampage’, the rare, delusional condition was characterised by non-premeditated violent or homicidal rage against another person or persons. He’d never seen a real case up close, but it had fascinated him since his medical school days. Often accompanied by amnesia or exhaustion, an individual afflicted with amok syndrome might be driven to psychotic rage by something as trivial as a perceived insult.

  He had some experience with similar bizarre disorders. Years ago, he’d treated a young boy with lycanthropy, a rare delusion that one was turning into an animal, such as a wolf. In the case of Gessen’s patient, it wasn’t a wolf but a lynx. The boy was from Romania and, according to his mother, he was frightened by a lynx as a toddler, and had acted strange ever since. Then there was the woman from Korea whom he’d diagnosed with shin-byung, a delusional disorder with symptoms of anxiety, dizziness, and gastrointestinal complaints. The patient believed she was possessed by ancestral spirits and such was her distress that even now, six years later, he could recall the terror in her eyes and her piercing screams.

  An older woman with Capgras was a particularly heartbreaking case, one of his first as a trainee doctor in Zurich. A truly bizarre disorder, also known as imposter syndrome, in which family members or friends appear either as strangers or are mistaken for each other. The woman had become convinced her husband of thirty-five years was her long-deceased father and refused to let him sleep in her bed. Diagnosed with atypical psychosis, she only recovered after spending several weeks at a psychiatric facility in the high mountains near the Austrian border.

  It was that case that sparked the idea of setting up his own clinic where patients, traumatised by the bright lights, harsh buzzers, and rattling meal carts of the typical psychiatric ward, could heal in an environment of peace and natural beauty. Though at the time he’d had only his dreams, but no money to turn them into reality, a few years later, when the patient he rescued from somaticised paralysis had passed away, he’d used her generous bequest to make the clinic a reality. But the unusual and intractable cases had waned in number, and his only interesting patient from a medical perspective was a woman with Munchausen’s. If this Professor Kiraly was truly suffering from something like amok sy
ndrome, possibly complicated by childhood trauma, it would present Gessen with the biggest challenge he’d encountered in years.

  He closed his laptop and stood at the window to breathe in the sun-warmed air, filled with the dried grass and red-berry scent of early autumn. If Kiraly were to become his patient, and Gessen was successful in treating him, he would not only cure a world-class scientist from a serious psychiatric affliction, but it might give a tremendous boost to his flagging energy and the declining fortunes of the clinic.

  Not that he could ever reveal to the public that Kiraly was his patient. An anonymised case study would be the only outlet to publicise his role. But surely the grateful professor, returned to health and exonerated from any charges lodged against him, would be delighted to give credit where credit was due. Perhaps extol the excellence of his doctor and the clinic’s staff, and spread a little gold dust in his wake.

  4

  ‘Vidor Kiraly?’ The voice of Gessen’s friend, a soft-spoken Berliner who worked at a clinic in Copenhagen, echoed down the line. ‘Oh, yes. The whole city’s talking about him. Poor man. What a spectacular fall from grace. I believe he was taken to Bispebjerg Hospital. Give me a minute to make some calls, and I’ll get back to you.’

  He was halfway through his second cup of coffee when his friend rang back. Kiraly was indeed at Bispebjerg. Refusing treatment and adamantly against a transfer to an NHS hospital in London. No family or next of kin, apparently. And no emergency contact provided, so they didn’t know whom to call.

  No family or close friends? Surprising in such a high-profile, successful man, but that could work in Gessen’s favour. He thanked his friend and considered his next move. With nowhere else to go, perhaps Professor Kiraly would be willing to come to him? The remote location and superb facilities at Les Hirondelles might be inducement enough.

  As he studied the dregs of the strong Turkish coffee he drank in the mornings, Gessen was struck by a memory from his boyhood, how he’d been lured during a visit to a provincial fair into a shadowy tent by a woman with crow-black hair who promised to read his fortune in the tea leaves. Past, present, and future. Come, my boy, don’t be afraid.

  He’d shivered at the idea, but before he could pull away, she prepared the leaves and bent her head over the cup. In a thick accent, she spoke of a dark knight, a monstrous secret, a gold ring. Admonishing him with a stern frown, after she’d taken his money, to beware his second Saturn return. Whatever that was. Even as a boy he’d known it was nonsense, though shivers had travelled down his arms, and for several days afterwards he suffered from a strange fever and bouts of dizziness.

  Later in life, after her prophecies came true, he wondered how she’d known. Had she seen something in his face or a shadow in his eyes? A glimpse, perhaps, of the fatal flaw he himself knew nothing of. On some days, while working with a particularly difficult patient, trying to understand the trauma in their past by the signposts of the present, Gessen’s thoughts would return to the fortune teller, who’d frightened him by the urgency of her words, wondering if their different means of divination, one mystical, the other grounded in science, were simply opposite sides of the same coin.

  After several attempts he got Kiraly’s attending physician on the phone and made his proposition. If Kiraly were willing, Gessen would cover the costs of his transfer and treatment at his private clinic in the Bernese Oberland. Top-notch facilities and stellar psychiatric care, guaranteed.

  ‘I know who you are,’ said the woman in lightly accented English. ‘I’ve read your case studies on trauma and somatisation. Very compelling, and a particular interest of mine. Though he’s stable now, Professor Kiraly continues to insist there’s nothing wrong with him and is threatening to leave the hospital against medical advice.’

  Gessen jotted a few notes. ‘I’ll have my assistant email a copy of our brochure. Perhaps our tranquil setting and extensive range of facilities will be inducement enough for Professor Kiraly to agree to therapy.’

  He ended the call and buzzed Mathilde to have her forward the clinic’s information straight away. His mind was already leaping ahead. If Kiraly agreed to the transfer, he would send Ursula to Copenhagen to accompany him on the trip to Saint-Odile. A skilled clinical psychologist, Ursula would be furious if she suspected he was using her as a lure. But it certainly didn’t hurt that along with a keen analytical mind and excellent language skills, she was blessed with a quiet grace and winning smile. Something about this case suggested that a male doctor, appearing at Kiraly’s bedside to offer a solution to his problem, might be contentious, even threatening. With Les Hirondelles as an enticement and Ursula as his ambassador, Gessen might persuade Kiraly to seek relief from his affliction where others had failed.

  5

  Clinique Les Hirondelles

  Saint-Odile, Switzerland

  2 November 2008

  Far below, lights spring on in the gathering dusk. Cowbells sound a mournful note as an ancient herder leads his charges down the mountain. The peaks, craggy indeed, are dusted with a layer of snow that turns to peach – no, scratch that – turns to… apricot as the light fades. Alpine serenity. Tout est parfait…

  Vidor groaned and tossed the notebook on the bench. Penning such drivel had given him a throbbing headache. But the delightful Dr Lindstrom, who possessed not only an engaging mind but also the face of a Botticelli angel, had encouraged him to write down his thoughts, or whatever else came to mind. So why not oblige?

  At the back of the notebook he’d begun a sketch of the grounds and flipped to the page to add a few more details to his map. Once, as a young boy on a family outing to the countryside near Budapest, he had wandered away and got lost in a forest so dense that little light reached the ground. A terrifying experience he’d no wish to repeat. Ever after, upon finding himself in a new place, it was his habit to sketch out the terrain. Entrances and exits. Landmarks and escape routes. Places of seclusion, should he wish to be alone.

  A hundred paces from the high front gate to his assigned living quarters, and another eighty or so to the stone manor house at the centre of the grounds. An architectural mishmash of turrets, peaked roofs, and mullioned windows. Some long-dead industrialist’s idea of a castle in the sky. It amused him to imagine the Herculean effort it must have taken to haul all that stone up the mountain. Only one way up and one way down, according to the info-packet in his room, with the single-carriage funicular their only link to civilisation. A creaky toy-sized train he couldn’t remember boarding.

  Perched high above the valley and ringed by jagged peaks, when the snows came they would be cut off from the world. He couldn’t help thinking it was a precarious location for a clinic, though he was familiar with the nineteenth-century vogue of establishing sanatoriums high in the mountains for the healing effects of the crystalline air. In an emergency, rescue by helicopter would be the only way out. Not that he would be here long enough to witness any of the infamous winter storms. After a week or so of rest at someone else’s expense – and who could say no to that? – he would return to his tidy house and bustling lab in Cambridge and pick up his life where he left off.

  An attendant with an unruly thatch of ginger hair appeared from behind the boxwood hedge to announce it was time for Movement & Meditation. Had two days passed already? According to Dr Lindstrom, he’d been here a solid week. Though fuzzy on the details, he was brought to this place after suffering an accident of some kind in Copenhagen. An ischaemic attack from overexcitement, perhaps. Or a minor cerebral haemorrhage. That would account for the amnesia. But Dr Lindstrom assured him he was not to worry. All would be explained when he met with the clinic’s director. Her eyes had shone when she spoke the man’s name. Whoever the mysterious Dr Gessen was, she was clearly an acolyte.

  Worse than the confusion about the exact details of his arrival, he had lost all sense of time. Along with his belt and shoelaces, they’d taken away his wristwatch and without it he was lost at sea. No timepiece or calendar to order his
days. Only at the sun’s zenith could he guess with some certainty the position of the clock. Not even a sundial graced the grounds. With his days largely empty, but for the meals in the dining hall and the twice-weekly regimen of quasi-Eastern folderol the staff called ‘M&M’, a time-killing activity cooked up no doubt by the elusive Dr Gessen, the hours seemed to contract and expand in baffling ways.

  He dropped his notebook in the canvas satchel the clinic had provided and followed the attendant to a round building with a thatched roof. His guide had a nervous, twitchy air. Another of Dr Gessen’s many disciples, Vidor supposed. The longer they made him wait to meet this mysterious character the more his impatience grew.

  * * *

  In the north turret of the manor house, Gessen adjusted the focus on the binoculars until his newest patient swam into view. Seated on a bench next to the bronze statue of swallows in flight, Vidor Kiraly emanated an air of ennui as he scribbled in a notebook. Twice he looked up to gaze at the high peaks across the valley.

  He’d been observing Kiraly from a distance since the day he arrived, and yet Gessen still didn’t know what to make of him. Each observation was coloured by the fear that Kiraly might rampage again, though he’d yet to note anything alarming in the man’s behaviour. According to the staff, Kiraly was as placid and obedient as a well-trained beagle. Having agreed to cover the costs of his stay, a charitable act he could ill afford, Gessen tried to quell the nagging feeling he had embarked on a fool’s errand.

  As with all new patients, Ursula was in charge of Vidor’s care during the settling-in period. He’d discovered early on, after a few false starts and one minor disaster, that the treatment phase proceeded more smoothly when patients were allowed time to adjust before starting on the arduous work of excavating the mind. Once they discovered that the clinic was more like a high-end resort than the nightmarish facilities of their imagination, or popularised in films, they dropped their guard and gladly abided by the rules.