by Ann Gosslin
He’d had to endure a full fifteen minutes of listening to her plaintive voice, veering into a whine on the high notes, before he could make his escape. Hailing from a remote town in Saskatchewan, she’d taken up with a German man who was touring the country on a motorcycle. An unplanned pregnancy was followed by a quickie marriage and a move to Berlin, after which she lost the baby. They struggled on for a time, until she caught him with another woman. Tears, anguish, divorce. She’d stayed on in Berlin and tried to make a life for herself, though she had trouble making friends and feeling settled.
Vidor had kept his eyes closed throughout this long lament, desperate to escape, but not wanting to anger her in case she questioned him about his actions on the day Ismail died. When he could no longer stand the note of complaint in her voice, he’d snapped. ‘Why don’t you go back home then?’
‘Have you ever been to Saskatchewan?’ Her voice was bitter. When he shook his head, the noise coming from her throat was like a strangled cat. ‘There’s nothing there for me but a mother who loathes me, and a father who’s a drunk. I’d rather be dead than go back there.’ She waved her hand over her body. ‘And with all these strange illnesses I keep getting, and everyone saying I’m crazy, I’ll probably die and get dumped in some unmarked grave, and that will be the end of my sorry, stupid life.’
Before he fled, he’d had a sense of impending doom, as though all the oxygen was being sucked from the air. How dare she insinuate he had something to do with Ismail’s death? The Canadian woman’s head had expanded and contracted like a balloon, before pulling free and floating up towards the ceiling. What’s happening? A pain had stabbed his left temple. The water in the pool was the colour of blood. The last thing he’d heard was the sound of running feet, and someone calling for a doctor just before his head hit the tiles and he blacked out.
In the mirror, he examined the bandage on his forehead. A minor abrasion, apparently, though for all he knew he might have been subjected to an experimental procedure. Like his roommate, the OCD chap. How else to explain the bloody bandage on the man’s head Vidor had spotted a few weeks back?
47
Gessen waved his hand over the chessboard with a flourish. ‘I’m feeling in a particularly magnanimous mood today, so I’ll let you be white.’ He gestured at the outdoors where everything visible was covered in snow. The boxwood hedge and pines glittered like great dollops of ice cream, and the falcon sculpture was transformed into a snow cone. ‘Isn’t it stunning?’
He beckoned to Vidor to come through, but he seemed reluctant to step into the room.
‘I woke with a terrible headache this morning,’ he said, hanging back in the doorway. ‘Must be from this bump I got yesterday.’ He pointed to the bandage over his eye. ‘Those tiles by the pool are dangerous. I think it’s only fair to warn you that I might sue you for personal injury.’
Gessen let this pass. Vidor’s skin was the colour of uncooked veal and his eyes were rubbed raw, as if he hadn’t gotten a moment’s rest in the night. ‘Up until my little mishap, I felt in excellent form. I even swam a few laps in the pool.’
It was clear he had no memory of what preceded his collapse in the swimming pavilion. When Gessen questioned Babette, who’d witnessed the whole thing, she’d been quite voluble in her description of Vidor’s condition, as if he’d taken some kind of turn. His face had contorted, and his eyes rolled back in his head. It could have been a temporal lobe seizure. Or a garden-variety migraine, perhaps, though Vidor hadn’t mentioned any prior history. But such episodes seemed to be occurring more frequently. Babette was lucky he hadn’t attacked her as he had the man in Copenhagen and the one in the village. Though she may have found the whole episode exciting, and a source of new symptoms to add to her long list of ‘mystery ailments’. His patient for three months now, Babette’s Munchausen’s was proving particularly difficult to treat.
Vidor probed at the skin above his ear. Was he feeling something odd there? In rare cases temporal lobe seizures could result in violence. A possible diagnosis to add to the mix. He made a mental note to have Vidor undergo a seventy-two-hour electroencephalograph.
‘I can give you something for the pain if you like.’
He shook his head. ‘A nurse gave me some tablets that knocked it out. I’m still feeling woozy, but that will pass, no doubt.’
‘A game is just what you need then,’ Gessen said, ‘to get your mind off things. We can have our session later, if you prefer, but a friendly round of chess will get the blood flowing to your brain again.’
Vidor perched on the edge of the chair, hands clasped in his lap, docile as a child. Gessen tried not to stare openly as he attempted to parse Vidor’s state of mind. He looked befuddled and drained. Had something happened in the night? Another bout of sleepwalking or strange dreams? The frequency of nocturnal disturbances had shot up in the last few days. While exhausting for Vidor, it was a positive sign that his boundaries were beginning to dissolve. In this weakened state, his alter, if he were in there, was more likely to show his face. Tired, malleable, confused, Vidor might finally release the iron grip on his inner demons.
They faced each other across the chessboard. No fire was lit in the hearth today. Though Gessen normally relished the warmth and sound of a crackling fire, he didn’t need the distraction. Now that he was closing in on Vidor’s defences, it was important to stay focused.
Vidor moved his pawn in a classic opening manoeuvre. Gessen scanned the board, already several moves ahead. He checked his watch, hoping to reach checkmate in thirty minutes or less. Three moves in and his strategy seemed to be working.
Vidor swayed in his seat. ‘What is that smell?’ He wrinkled his nose as if faced with something putrid.
Gessen sniffed the air. ‘Anise, I believe, with a dash of nutmeg and cardamom. Don’t you like it? At this time of year, the housekeeper likes to place little sachets of her secret spice blend in all the rooms to put us in the mood for the holidays.’
‘I thought you were Jewish.’
Gessen’s chin tilted up in surprise. They’d never discussed religion before. Like most psychiatrists, he presented himself to his patients as a cipher, a blank slate upon which they could inscribe their own lives. ‘Indeed, I am. A quarter Jewish, on my mother’s side.’ He paused to move his knight to f4. ‘But that’s never stopped me from celebrating Christmas at the clinic. Many of the patients miss sharing the holidays with their families. We keep it fairly secular, so as not to offend those of a different faith. And I’m sure you’re aware that many – if not most – Christmas traditions pre-date Christianity. Evergreens, yule logs, sparkly lights. All pagan traditions meant to lessen the terror of the midwinter darkness.’
Vidor’s gaze was fixed on the board, his expression dull, eyes unfocused. He plucked his queen into the air and moved it to a precarious position. Was he just going through the motions, or did he want to lose? Within two moves, Gessen had placed his bishop next to Vidor’s king. ‘Check.’
This seemed to have an effect. Beads of sweat formed on Vidor’s brow. He frowned and shook his head, as if he’d never seen a chessboard before. He grabbed a pawn clumsily and moved it one square to the left. He sought Gessen’s eyes. ‘Is that a good move?’
Gessen’s heart quickened. Something was happening. ‘It’s an excellent move.’ But Vidor’s king was now wide open to attack. Should Gessen pretend he didn’t see the mistake, or go in for the kill? Better do it now, while Vidor seemed to be under some kind of spell, as if his mind had come untethered from his brain.
With his bishop, he knocked over Vidor’s king. ‘Checkmate. Sheikh mat.’
Vidor’s face paled. His pupils dilated.
‘Sheikh mat,’ Gessen repeated.
The words seemed to arouse Vidor from his stupor. ‘Sheikh, what?’
‘Mat. It’s the Arabic version of the word “checkmate”, a twist on the original Persian, meaning the king is dead.’ When Vidor turned his face towards Gessen, his eyes had ch
anged into those of a frightened child. ‘I’m not dead,’ he cried in a strangled voice. Bewilderment turned to accusation. ‘You tried to kill me, but I’m still alive. Ne me parle pas comme si j’étais stupide.’
This last bit, in French… don’t talk to me like I’m stupid, was uttered in the tone of a wounded boy. Gessen’s heart flipped in his chest. He fought to keep his face neutral, not wanting to scare whoever this was back into hiding. Was it Vidor’s alter, springing forth from some dark corner of his psyche? Or was this Malik Sayid, the boy he’d known in Paris, proclaiming his rightful existence? So nice to see you again, he wanted to say, but held his tongue. For several moments, in spite of his years of experience, Gessen didn’t quite know what to do. He’d come across such cases in the literature, but each patient was unique, and nothing he’d read about would help him here.
‘Would you like to lie down?’
‘Why would I want to lie down?’ he snapped. ‘I feel perfectly fine.’
And just like that, Vidor’s persona slotted back into place. Damn. He would have to find a way to coax the alter out of hiding again. Vidor’s woozy state from the pain meds might have provided a doorway. Perhaps some form of deep relaxation would bring the alter back.
Gessen stood and beckoned with his hand. ‘All the same, why don’t you stretch out on the couch in the next room?’
Vidor pressed his knuckles against his temples. ‘It’s this damn headache. I thought it was gone, but it’s come back with a vengeance.’
‘Could be a migraine,’ Gessen said. ‘The best thing for that is to lie quietly in a darkened room.’ He led Vidor into the adjoining treatment area and helped him onto the couch. After Gessen covered him with a blanket, he pressed a button on his desk that switched on the camera installed in the ceiling.
How long had Vidor’s alter been lurking under the dominant personality? Had he emerged before, perhaps during times of crisis? Or had he remained hidden from view for years? Gessen would need more information to know what he was dealing with. It might be dissociation, a case of repressed identity, or even an extended fugue state.
That Vidor had felt agitated in Ismail’s presence made sense now. He might have suspected that Vidor was not who he claimed to be. Whatever the case, Ismail’s physical proximity could have triggered the slumbering alter to appear. If Vidor was indeed Malik, someone from Egypt, as Ismail was, might have detected a hint of common ancestry in Vidor’s face. Or perhaps even goaded Vidor by tossing out a few choice insults in Arabic to see how he would react. If that were the case, there could be more behind Ismail’s death than he’d first suspected. If Vidor felt somehow that the young Egyptian was a threat to his identity, even on a subconscious level, it might have been reason enough to get Ismail out of the way.
Gessen handed Vidor a glass of water spiked with a sedative. He looked at it with suspicion but drank it down. After dimming the lights, he had Vidor lie down and concentrate on his breathing, while looking at the mandala on the far wall. As Vidor’s breathing slowed, Gessen retreated to the chair behind his head and led him through a relaxation exercise. As soon as Vidor reached a state of deep relaxation, the questioning could begin.
48
Transcript of Patient Session: Vidor Kiraly (and putative alter) 23 December 2008
I was born in the early hours of January. Which day exactly, I do not know. But I opened my eyes and took my first breath on a night of bitter cold and a sky ablaze with stars.
I was one of twin boys. Later I learned that my mother had already given birth to seven daughters, two of whom had died in infancy, and was delirious with relief to have produced a son. After an arduous labour and the loss of a great deal of blood, my brother arrived first in the world. She thought she was done, but then I appeared twenty minutes later. My mother was too exhausted to push, and as I refused to be born, she thought I had died in the womb. When I finally slithered into the hands of the darwisha, pale as a worm and no bigger than a rat, no one thought I would live. My unschooled mother still believed in the old ways. Twins were a bad omen and she feared for our future. The darwisha, who’d acted as midwife, assured her she would take over my care in the coming days. If I died, it was the will of the gods.
My mother, a Bedouin woman celebrated for her beauty, had been sold as a young girl to my father in marriage. Though she believed in the ancient gods, not in Allah, she would pretend to say her prayers to avoid my father’s wrath. Entranced though he was by her beauty, my father, an educated man, was suspicious of her character. He hated the darwisha, a traditional healer whom he denounced as a sorceress.
I wouldn’t suckle, so the darwisha dribbled the water from pieces of soaked bread into my mouth in a half-hearted bid to keep me alive. I did not cry like a normal newborn, so she feared I was infected by a malevolent spirit. As the weeks went by, and my twin brother grew into a fat bouncing infant, it became clear I was different in another way. My brother’s skin was dark like my father’s, while I was very pale, with strange grey-green eyes like a cat’s. Paler even than my mother. As if I were a child of the northern steppes, and not sprung from the sands of the Arabian deserts.
Believing himself to be a cuckold, my father beat my mother till she was black and blue. Screaming that she was a whore. How else to explain the scrawny worm that clearly wasn’t the fruit of his loins? He kept her up at night, shouting, beating her with his fists, hoping to pummel from her the name of her lover. It disgusted him to look at her, to look at me. After weeks of this terror, he forced her to decide: she must cast me aside or be banished forever. Did she want to be shunned as a harlot? She would end up in a brothel or on the streets. A filthy cur who opened her legs to any man who smiled at her.
I like to believe it wasn’t an easy decision for her to give me up. I clung to that belief – I cling to it still – that it was torture for her to hand me over into the care of another. But that was my fate, to be given away to a childless old crone in a nearby village, who wasn’t right in the head. But for the first six years of my life, she was the only mother I knew. If it hadn’t been for a boy at school who took pleasure in taunting me, I would never have known that the woman I thought of as my mother had not given birth to me. Everybody but me knew that my real mother was a woman called Sahira, the Arabic word for enchantress. Famed for her beauty and green eyes, but burdened with a husband prone to jealous rages, who rarely let her leave the house, even in the company of a guardian.
A boy who lived in the dwelling next to mine – house is too grand a word for the hovel I was raised in – took me one day to the market town where my real parents lived and pointed her out. She was returning home from the souk, accompanied by the man I learned was my father. Blood from the package in her hand, a sheep’s heart wrapped in paper, seeped through the cloth it was wrapped in. ‘That’s your mother,’ the boy said, grinning like a jackal.
If it was true that the lady with the green eyes was my real mother, I wanted to be with her, not the old woman who treated me more like a goat than a son, insisting I sleep in the shed with the other animals. A disgusting place that smelled of dung, where I once woke to find a viper curled on my chest. After that, I would sneak off to the town as often as I could in search of my mother. My heart swelled when I saw her, and I would follow her through the narrow alleys of the souk. Though she’d borne many children and must have been nearly thirty by then, her step was quick as a girl’s. Always veiled, the only thing visible were her eyes.
Usually, one of her older daughters was with her, or the boy who was my twin, Amir. She would tease him and ruffle his hair and hold him close as they moved through the throngs in the busy market. As they passed the tea stall, he would beg her to stop for tea and cakes. If I could be with my mother, I would never beg her for anything. But Amir was a young tyrant, the spoiled only son of a woman famed for her beauty, with hands so graceful they moved through the air like birds.
The first time he caught me following them in the market, I ducked into a carpe
t stall, but he tore after me and yanked my arm behind my back. Bigger and stronger, his face was twisted into an ugly scowl. Of course he knew who I was. I was the enemy, so losing sight of me might prove a fatal mistake. He spat in the dust at my feet. ‘You should have been drowned at birth. Come near us again, and I’ll tell my father. He’ll throttle you like the filthy vermin you are.’
My father haunted my dreams and stalked my nightmares, with the eyes of a snake, seeking me in the dark. Once, when he caught me following my mother as he accompanied her to the market, he grabbed me and threw me to the ground, placing his foot on my neck, threatening me with exile to a notorious underground prison in the desert. The Dark Prince who gave me life, but would banish me, if given the chance, to misery and exile. Tormenting me to the ends of the earth, until I was dead.
* * *
After reading through the transcript a second time, Gessen placed his pen on the desk and rubbed his eyes. Was this the story of Malik Sayid, and evidence of a bona fide case of dissociative identity disorder, or was this tale of abandonment and terror simply a waking dream? Perhaps it belonged to someone Vidor knew as a child, or was drawn from a fable he’d read long ago? Since it was impossible to shine a light on Vidor’s psyche, Gessen’s only hope at solving the puzzle was to tease out the threads of his entwined personalities – if that’s what they were – one careful step at a time.
49
Paris, France
23 December 2008
Dear Dr Gessen,
Ever since your visit to my home in Paris, when I reminisced about my brother, Vida, so many memories have come flooding back. Not just during the day while I’m awake and pottering about the kitchen, but in the darkest hours of the night, as well. Such dreams that I haven’t had in years have infiltrated my slumber. And not just memories of Vida, but also that student we took in for a short time as a lodger. When you asked me about him, I could hardly remember anything about that boy, as the tragedy of Vida’s premature demise crowded out everything else. But a singular memory has come back to me, and it’s a vivid one. Though that boy – whose name I can’t remember – was older than Vida by a year or two, he seemed to worship my brother, even to the point of copying his gestures and slang.