Pilgrim

by Timothy Findley

  “I cannot say. I do not know.”

  Teresa was frightened. She was being cast in a role she had never sought to play and had never understood except in the most rudimentary way. She knew that she could nurture, clothe and to some degree protect Manolo, but she could not make him whole.

  “Dost thou not love me?” he asked.

  And how does one answer that?

  “Yes,” she said. “You are my friend in the wilderness.”

  “What is wilderness?” Manolo asked.

  “It is nowhere—I suppose—and everywhere,” Teresa answered.

  “Thee do not know?”

  “It is everywhere,” she said decisively.

  Manolo looked at her with a mixture of disappointment and chagrin. “In my dream, there were priests and crosses, the Christ Child and angels. It was a sign. But thou wilt not bring thy God to me. Thou wilt not bring me to thy God,” he said. “I hate thee.”

  Teresa sat frozen, wrapped in her nightgown and sheets. She looked away from Manolo. She felt endangered. Something was going to happen.

  “I do not feel well,” she said—but she spoke so quietly Manolo did not hear her.

  “Do you think you could find my aunt,” she said aloud, “and bring her to me?”

  A fire had begun to burn at the base of her skull. There was noise in her brain.

  “Please,” she said.

  “I cannot bring thy aunt,” Manolo told her. “I cannot walk.”

  He turned and began to crawl away to the other side of the room.

  “You must. I am ill,” Teresa pleaded.

  “Thou must, I am ill! Did I not say these words to thee?”

  “Yes. Yes. Yes. But there was nothing I could do. There is nothing I can do for you. I am unable!”

  She burst into tears. The noise in her brain grew harsher. It was a shrieking noise as of someone sawing wood, the wood like a living person screeching in terror.

  “Don’t! Don’t! Don’t!” she shouted. “DON’T!”

  Manolo sat down beside his crutches.

  “I can do nothing,” he said. “I cannot walk. Thou hast left me so.”

  It started. The bed began to shake. Teresa drew a corner of the sheet into her mouth and fell back.

  People came running. A maidservant. A cousin. A stableboy who had heard the shouting from beyond the window—and, at last, Doña Aña.

  She moved to the bed. The others were afraid, being unfamiliar with Teresa’s seizures. Doña Aña went to the servant-girl and slapped her in the face.

  “Come! At once!”

  The girl crept over to the far side of the bed and did as she was told.

  “We must hold her arms,” Doña Aña said. “We must keep her from harming herself.”

  This was done.

  “Gently, gently,” Doña Aña cautioned. “Gently, gently…”

  Slowly, the thrashing in the bed wound down towards stillness, and as Manolo watched from his place in the corner, he recognized the mirror image of his own incompetence.

  When it was truly over and Teresa lay against the pillows with her aunt holding her hand, Manolo thought: her God comes to still her, but I am left forever as I am.

  And yet, he loved her still—though he would never say so again.

  In the months remaining of summer and the early days of autumn, Teresa still rode out to La Sierra de Gredos and sat beside Las Aguas while Picaro stood in the shade of the stunted oak and cork trees behind her. The yellowed pelicans, the ducks and the weasels still appeared, but the doe with her fawns, the heron and the kingfisher came no more. Nor did Manolo. He had led his flock to the farthest reaches of la tierra dorada and the golden land with its crippled shepherd was soon to be consigned entirely to memory.

  Teresa would never see them again. In her dreams, however, a naked man on crutches would stand beneath the branches where she prayed and he would ask her if she knew the way to God.

  Beside him, a dusty golden dog looked up and slowly wagged its tail. It had a merry look in its eye, and a look, somehow, of knowing. People do not sit in trees, but angels do and creatures from another place than this.

  As for the way to God, Teresa wrote in her book one day: God can happen only when you give up being God.

  Manolo had taught her that, all unknowing and to his sorrow. But it was true. There can be no miracles until the gift of simplicity has been acknowledged and become a way of life.

  As always, the doves made their circles in the sky. As always, the cicadas sang. As always, Teresa waited for God to happen—but it seemed that He was waiting, too.

  Two years later, at the age of twenty, a young woman appeared at the gates of the Convent of Carmelite nuns in Avila and offered herself as a postulant. This was in 1535. In her lifetime, she would change the face of her religion. And just one hundred years after her birth, Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada would be sanctified as the medium of miracles.

  9

  Emma fed the book back into the drawer and turned the key.

  A moving and disturbing episode had ended in Pilgrim’s chronicles and she could not yet bring herself to digest more. Perhaps this would be a good day to take some air and get some exercise. Doctor Walter, her physician would be pleased. He had recently criticized her for not being more active.

  “It encourages circulation,” he had told her. “It strengthens the constitution. Too much sitting is bad for the back, and when the time comes, you will be glad if you have taken these precautions.”

  Emma knew all this and was somewhat dismayed that Doctor Walter had thought he needed to bring such things to her attention. It was not as if she had never given birth before.

  She pocketed the key and went to the kitchen, where she told Frau Emmenthal that she was going to go for a stroll and might be some time.

  She put on a light spring coat and a hat, and taking a walking stick, she strode down the garden path towards the lake, where she intended to walk on the beach.

  I will look for round stones, she thought, and think about Teresa of Avila.

  Ten minutes later, having found a large round stone that perfectly fitted into the palm of her hand, she stood and stared across the water to the other side.

  I should like to be out there, she thought. I should like to be riding on the lake.

  She looked to one side towards the town. There was the ferry dock and far beyond it, the ferry itself, returning from Zürich.

  Emma fished her watch from the pocket where it rested and saw that, if she hurried, she could be on time to board the ferry before it made its three o’clock departure for the city.

  Once on deck and standing near the railing, she began to feel thoroughly rejuvenated. There was a forest-scented breeze and several noisy gulls were floating above the wake of the ferry in the hopes that passengers would throw them bits of bread and rolls from the café-bar on board. Children often did this, but Emma was not inclined. She wanted just to stand and watch the water, dreaming of Manolo and what might have become of him if a miracle had occurred and he had gained the proper use of his limbs. The phrase, he was only a shepherd, kept returning in her mind and she wondered why. Did it matter that he was only a shepherd? Of course not. And yet…

  She would ask Carl Gustav about this reaction—and whether or not it necessarily meant her sense of compassion was qualified. She hoped not—but it worried her. She had once heard her father say a most unfortunate thing to her mother when they were out for a walk on a Sunday afternoon in Schaffhausen. It was in the spring of the year in which Emma turned ten. 1892. How long ago that seemed.

  An elderly man with a long white beard had fallen in the street and no one had helped him up. Emma’s mother had made a gesture as though she would go to his aid, but Emma’s father had pulled her back and said: pay no attention. It is only an old Jew.

  Emma, the child, had heard of the Jews, but had very little knowledge of them. She knew that the Jews had killed Jesus Christ, but that was more or less the extent of her awareness.
Little was said of them at home or at school unless it was in some way or another a reinforcement of this single piece of information. Emma never questioned it. She was never told differently. You were not allowed to know the Jews, or play with them or even to speak to them. You could not ask a Jew the way or the time of day or purchase from them or sell to them and certainly never do them favours.

  On that long ago Sunday, Emma had turned to look back at the old man with the white beard, who by then had risen to his knees and looked as if he was praying. Indeed, he might have been, for it was very difficult—almost impossible—for him to rise to his feet. But she saw that he did at last manage this and her final sight of him was the moment in which he retrieved his hat, dusted its brim against his leg and placed it on his head. He did this with the same precision he might have used to place a period at the end of a sentence.

  Only an old Jew.

  Only a shepherd.

  Emma realized she had been taught to think like this and she had blindly continued to do so, never once pausing to assess the consequences. What, for instance, if people thought of me that way?

  Well!

  She laughed out loud.

  Of course, she thought, they already do! I’m only a woman!

  Only a Jew. Only a shepherd. Only a woman.

  On the other hand, she also knew that if she were to fall in the street, people would come to her assistance. Partly because she was a woman—and women are weak and totally helpless. They must be coddled and women must be protected. She also realized with a twinge of conscience that people would come to her assistance because she was Frau Doktor Jung—and the prestige of coming to her aid would be prized.

  As for Manolo, if her mother and father had passed him in the street and seen him fall, would they have helped him up and handed him his sticks? Would she herself have done this? No. Emma knew the answer was no, because Manolo was only a shepherd and unworthy of her attention. Then—but not now. Now, she knew better. Now, she knew more of the world and its casual cruelty. Now, she was a grown woman with a mind of her own. And a will.

  The ferry was approaching Zürich and Emma could see the first of the bridges over the Limmat, the Grossmünster with its twin spires and the gardens dotted amongst the Quays. All of it was so familiar now, and all of it so dear, though once upon a time she had dreaded this city, with its foreboding dedication to religious revolution—and perfection. It was here that the great reformist Zwingli had brought the Catholic church to its knees in the sixteenth century and it was here that her husband, Carl Gustav Jung, would bring the world of psychiatry to its knees in the twentieth century.

  My beloved husband—the father of my children and the father of my mind…

  She would take a cab. This way she could both race to Carl Gustav’s side and avoid the impossible strain of climbing the final hill on foot.

  When Emma arrived at the Burghölzli, she had to constrain old Konstantine, the concierge, from announcing her presence.

  “I want to surprise the good doctor,” she told him. “Is he in his office?”

  “Yes, Frau Doktor—but I beg of you, let me precede you.”

  “No, I wouldn’t dream of it!” Emma laughed. “What is the fun of a surprise if the whole world knows I’m coming?”

  “But, please…”

  “No. I insist. And don’t you dare pick up that telephone. I don’t want any warning given.”

  She strode off down the corridor, while Konstantine returned to his station, removed his white cotton gloves and exchanged them for another pair.

  “Dear, dear, oh, dear,” he muttered. “Dear, dear, oh, dear.”

  Emma gave her customary rapid three knocks on the door and, preparing herself to speak, pushed it open.

  The sight that greeted her eyes could not have been real. Nothing about it could be rationalized. It was cut from images seen exclusively in Emma’s worst dreams.

  Jung was spread-eagled in his chair, his waistcoat and shirt unbuttoned, his trousers opened and halfway down his thighs. His knees were parted and a woman knelt in the space between them, her back to Emma.

  The curtains had been closed—the lights had been dimmed and the air smelled of perfume, smoke and old books.

  Emma blinked—and when she opened her eyes again, the woman—or the image of the woman—had completely disappeared. It was as though she had not been there.

  Jung had risen, turned his back on his wife and was busy adjusting his clothing.

  Emma leaned against the door, afraid she was going to collapse, but could see no way to a chair.

  Jung said: “why are you here?”

  Emma could not speak.

  I wanted to surprise you, she thought.

  “Do you realize I could have had a patient with me? How dare you burst in like that! How dare you do this!” Jung, with his back still towards her, was shaking.

  At last he drew on his white smock, smoothed his hair and turned.

  “It was such a lovely day,” Emma said. “I…”

  “How did you get here?” Jung demanded. His voice was like a knife that had just finished cutting ice.

  “I came on the ferry,” Emma said. “I want to sit down.”

  “Came on the ferry? By public transport? Showing yourself to everyone? You must be mad.”

  “I don’t know what you mean, Carl Gustav. Please—could there be some light? I must sit down.”

  Jung switched on the desk lamp with the green shade. With the normal pattern of shadows reversed and thrown upward, he looked demonic.

  Emma, using the bookcase, the wall and her walking stick as supports, found her way to a chair at last and sat. All she could think was: I must not faint.

  Jung was staring at her, saying nothing—seemingly calculating what to say. Then he gave an expansive shrug, sighed and said: “how can you have done this? You, of all people. How can you possibly have done this?”

  He was leaning into the light.

  “Done what, Carl Gustav?” Emma could barely hear her own voice. “Done what?”

  “COME ALL THE WAY FROM KüSNACHT ON THE FERRY! IN FULL VIEW OF EVERYONE—AND IN THAT CONDITION!”

  The desk shook.

  Emma was so disoriented she could not understand him. Looking down, she touched her lovely new spring coat and whispered to it: “what—what—what condition?”

  “You are pregnant!” he said. It was as though he had said: you are black and blue and crimson.

  Emma said: “I know that. I know that, Carl Gustav. But it was such a lovely day…”

  “I will never hear the end of it, you realize,” Jung said—ignoring her words entirely. “There will be no end to this. There she was—right on the ferry—flaunting herself—the wife of Herr Doktor Jung—and seven months pregnant!” He mimicked a high-pitched, feminine voice. “Out in the open—for all the world to see!”

  Emma looked away and said: “you have done up the buttons of your waistcoat in the wrong order, Carl Gustav.” She wanted to cry, but refused the temptation. Instead, she said: “some attitudes are changing, you know. It’s no crime to appear in public when one is pregnant.”

  “You may think so, but I know nothing of the kind. And I want you out of this building immediately. Konstantine will telephone for a cab and you will be driven straight back to Küsnacht—I don’t care what it costs. Dear Jesus God—what if someone had seen you…?”

  “But…I came to see you, my darling…”

  “Do not call me your darling.” Jung was attempting to right the miscalculated buttons—and failing. “You have done me irreparable damage and it will be some time before I forgive you—if, in fact, I ever do forgive you. Come along.”

  At last, he stepped away from his desk, and grasping her elbow in a vicelike grip, he turned her and marched her like a prisoner out of his office and down the corridor to the reception area.

  Don’t let me fall, Emma thought. Don’t let me trip and fall.

  As though he were handing over a perverte
d murder suspect, Jung requested that Konstantine telephone for a cab, turned and departed without another word, his heels pounding like hammer blows on the marble until, at last, the sound of his office door being slammed brought the episode to an end.

  All the way home, Emma fought off the tears. The cab was a two-wheeled hansom and she concentrated her gaze on the horse’s swinging gait.

  Was Carl Gustav mad? Had he gone mad, somehow, without her knowing it until this moment?

  His charges against her were insane, of course. No one had paid the slightest attention to her “condition” on the ferry. Granted, it was more or less accepted as a general custom that women—especially women of Emma’s class and station—did not appear in public while noticeably pregnant. But it wasn’t a rule. There could be exigencies. There could be moments when it was necessary. Moments when it could even be proper—a dinner party—a reception…

  Emma was trying not to think of the woman kneeling between her husband’s knees.

  I didn’t see her. She wasn’t there. A person cannot simply disappear. It’s impossible.

  But she had seen her.

  She had.

  And she knew it.

  Sitting in the chair, dazed by Carl Gustav’s attack, she had seen the shape of the woman crouching under the desk, attempting and failing to hide.

  She had seen her hair in the modicum of light that fell through the open door to the corridor.

  She had seen what they had been doing.

  She had seen her husband desperately attempting to adjust his clothing and getting it wrong.

  She had seen the woman’s hand where it supported her crouching form beneath the desk.

  She had seen her fingernails.

  She had smelled her perfume and noted the presence of a woman’s hat beyond a pile of books on her husband’s desk.

  Dear God, my life is over, Emma thought.

  I am dying. I am dead.

  It did not matter who the woman was. How could it matter if she had a name? She was, that was the point. And for how long?