“I have broken a moral law, an ethical law which could—if the wrong people found out about it—place me in jeopardy from a professional point of view. I might be disciplined—I might even lose my position. I simply don’t know.”
“Carl Gustav, stop this walking around the corner and tell me what you have done.”
“This book…” he tapped it with his index finger—“…is the private journal of one of my patients.”
“So?”
“So—I am reading it without his permission.”
“Is he in any condition to give you his permission?”
“No.”
“So—what is your problem?”
Jung beamed. “Emmy,” he said, “I adore you. You have said precisely what I’d hoped you would say.”
“I see. So, when you’re arrested, it will be my fault.”
Now, at last, she laughed, stood up and drew her robe about her.
“I’m going back to bed,” she said. “Come when you will—but don’t blame me if you’re out of sorts in the morning. You have an appointment at nine.”
“Who with?”
“I don’t know. I’m not your secretary—I’m only your wife. Ask Fräulein Unger. All I know is nine o’clock.”
“I’ll try not to be too long.”
“Do what you must. Good night.”
Emma moved to the doorway and turned.
“Carl Gustav,” she said, “a wife knows things no other person knows about a man—even the man himself. If I were Josef Furtwängler’s wife and found him reading someone else’s private papers, I would worry. That I admit. But I am not—thank God in heaven—Heidi Furtwängler. I am Emma Jung, and when I climb back under the covers, I am going to sleep like a baby.” She gave him a comical curtsey. “Good night, my dear one. One day, I trust you will tell me what all of this is about.”
“I will,” he promised. “And soon, because it will require some research from you. Good night.”
She turned away from him back into the darkness. Jung sat listening to her climbing the staircase and briefly closed his eyes.
I am a lucky man, he thought, and reopened Pilgrim’s journal.
Paddling his fingers amongst the pages, attempting to find his place, he came upon a statement that stopped him cold. In parentheses, Pilgrim had suddenly broken off the narrative and written: even now, as I write these memoirs, the scene is so well remembered I grip the pen as if to break it in two.
Memoirs…So well remembered.
Curious.
As if what Pilgrim had written was truly something he recalled rather than something conjured from a reading of history. Something he must have felt he knew from firsthand experience.
But, of course, that was impossible. Impossible.
Or was it?
Jung reached for his own notebook, shoving Pilgrim’s aside. Finding a pen, he wrote: the life of the psyche requires no space and no time…it works within its own frame—limitless. No constraints. No confining. None of the demands of reason.
Go on, he decided. Keep reading. The question of voice would solve itself if he gave it a chance to speak unimpeded. Whether the voice was Pilgrim’s or someone else’s hardly mattered for now. The point was—the voice was there and clearly had its own integrity.
Jung sat forward.
It was four—four-fifteen in the morning.
He would have preferred to pause, reflect and ask more questions, but Pilgrim remained an enigma he could not begin to clarify until more pages had been turned.
The journal was open.
The reading resumed.
4
Now, a wind has risen—a wind that lifts and shifts the banners hung from every window and balcony in the Piazza Santa Maria Novella—scarlet banners displayed in honour of the Papal Nuncio whose mission to silence Savonarola so recently failed. Some are already ragged, torn by the yearning hands of citizens dying of the cold—and what one sees are merely tatters waving Goodbye! Go back to Rome! like windblown men on the decks of a ship that is doomed to sink.
At every distance the bells of all the churches begin to ring. The mighty bell of the Duomo and the tenor bells of Santa Maria Novella—squalls of independent bells, as if the wind itself is shaking them. On all sides of the Piazza, the shrouded figures huddle before their fires, pulling whatever cover they can up over their ears. Monday, Monday. Tomorrow, the bells are telling them, is the final day of Carnival, Saint Matthew’s Day, when once we all rejoiced and sang together—feasted and drank and danced. But that tomorrow is now forbidden. By Savonarola’s edict.
Jung instinctively closed his eyes when they encountered this name. Savonarola had been both a saint and a monster, and in Jung’s own view, a good deal more the monster than the saint. That he was a fanatic, there could be no doubt—and fanatics always claim their victims.
He made a note: Emma research: Savonarola.
Driven by accelerating updraughts, the fires leap higher against the walls, marking them with jagged shadows. The choir inside the church begins to sing louder, as if afraid.
…Chorus Angelorum te suscipiat,
et cum Lazaro, quondam paupere
aeternam habeas requiem.
…May the choir of Angels receive thee,
and with Lazarus, once poor
may thou have eternal rest.
A sudden surge of grey horses clatters on a diagonal across the Piazza, their riders nothing more than silhouettes with streaming hair and lashing arms.
And then…a man.
Jung tried to turn the page and failed. He wetted his finger and scrabbled it against the paper. At last he succeeded.
And then a man appeared. Bare-headed, so it seemed at first. Cloaked, with the cloak held tight against his waist. Tall. Substantial. Well-made—heavily clothed. A traveller, perhaps. A pilgrim. Who can tell?
He has entered the Piazza from the northeast, where it gives way to the Via Maronni. His shadow falls at first on the tattered banners above him and behind him, but as he moves forward his shadow runs around in front of him and seems to lay a path at his feet, on which he walks like a prince accustomed to ceremony, gazing without apparent concern at the scene around him.
From the periphery of fire, some dogs come forward, curious but unafraid—tentative but sensing their destination and making for it at a steady pace. The pilgrim—for so he still seems—stops and turns to watch the dogs as they approach him.
There are ten or twelve of them at least. They pause for a moment in their advance, but they do not retreat.
One dog slowly begins to wag its tail.
Then it must be that the pilgrim speaks, for the dog comes forward at once and greets him by leaning in against him and gazing up into his firelit face.
The man bends down. He crouches. He puts out both his hands. The dogs push forward. A huntsman and his pack.
Then from beneath his cloak, the pilgrim produces a satchel and the dogs lean further in towards him, some of them scrambling over others, all of them quivering with anticipation.
Whatever he gives them, it is certainly food because they fall upon it ravenously, yelping and baying for more until the satchel is completely emptied.
From their fires, the citizens turn to watch—in silence. The man may be a universal target for their scorn and even their fury—that any food should be given to dogs! But no one speaks.
The pilgrim perhaps is known to them. Certainly the dogs know him.
He turns then and walks away into the centre of the Piazza where the one grieving dog remains—having not risen or even moved during the feeding.
It raises its head, though it still does not rise from its prone position. The two gaze at one another. The pilgrim kneels.
What has happened here? Something has happened. What?
The dog does not move. The pilgrim holds out his hand. The dog subsides, but will not give up its place.
The man goes over to the nearest group of scavengers and opens his purse. A boy steps forward and, t
aking up a firebrand, follows the pilgrim back to the dog.
Because of the light from the torch it is possible now to see the pilgrim’s face.
He wears a cap on the back of his head. His hair, quite long, is a dark, rich red—the colour of Tuscan earth—and it shines with streaks of white or grey. He wears his beard in the fashion affected by the kings of France and Spain—shaped and cropped like a conté outline of his jaw and mouth and cheeks. His eyes are large and widely spaced and his nose—as one might have said if he had been a drawing or a painting: is in the style of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Indeed, this pilgrim might be a Medici returning to claim his city. A princely authority informs every move and gesture he makes, as if he were born to be obeyed.
While the boy watches, the pilgrim removes his cloak and lays it on the ground beside the dog.
He then sits down on top of the cloak and draws a notebook from a pocket in his long, woven coat. A notebook. And a crayon.
The boy stands closer. The torchlight flares and throws itself down across the page, where it rests on the pilgrim’s knees.
And then the pilgrim begins to draw.
I have seen this page, Jung read. Both to my wonder—and my sorrow—I have seen it. It shows the head and shoulders and the forepaws of a grieving dog. It also shows a brutally severed hand. And in the hand, a piece of bread.
Beneath this, written at a later time perhaps, in that curious mirror-imaged script for which he was famous, there is this notation:
Hand of a Florentine woman—drawn by torchlight on the night of February 6th, 1497. Dog would not leave her. Died there by morning. The woman’s sleeve of dark blue cotton. One button made of wood.
This was my first encounter with Leonardo.
5
Ten minutes later, Jung was still staring blindly at the page.
Leonardo.
Of course. Who else would Pilgrim be writing about in fifteenth-century Florence?
And surely that drawing had been reproduced in his book about da Vinci, the first original Leonardo that Pilgrim had ever seen—to judge from his final notation. And perhaps the first time he had ever laid eyes on the artist’s famous backward writing.
Jung reached out and turned off the lamp. Dawn had come and gone. The sun had risen.
He was cold. He could read no more. Young Angelo would have to wait. To have met Leonardo was enough.
He pulled up the collar of his robe and sat there for a moment hugging his sides and grieving for the woman, dead now four hundred and fifteen years.
One button made of wood.
He glanced down at the journal, its page sitting open, waiting to be turned.
No. Not now. Not yet. Enough. Enough.
Taking his half-filled tumbler of brandy, Jung rose and moved to the window.
Had Emma slept through all that turmoil?
What a curious question. What a curious notion. How curious it was to imagine she had witnessed the scene he had just finished reading—that she had heard its gusts of wind, its clatter of horses’ hooves, its barking dogs—and seen its leaping shadows.
On the other hand, it seemed to him the scene had played itself out as if he himself had looked from the windows and seen the figure striding like a pilgrim into the light. Leonardo.
Jung heard the girl passing through the hallway beyond the open door.
Dear heaven—what was her name? Her name? She was new. Frau Emmenthal had hired her only last week. And how could he forget her name? It had been impressed upon him so many times with so much courtesy—repeated eight times a day! Smiling—bobbing—speaking softly: I am…I am…I am…the girl had told him.
“Dammit, who are you?”
She was carrying a tray of bread and chocolate to Emma, and stopped in the doorway, mystified. The doctor had spoken, but surely not to her.
She peered into the shadows behind her to see who else might be present.
“Me, sir?”
“Yes. You.”
“I am Lotte, Herr Doktor. Charlotte, the new girl. Frau Emmenthal…”
“Ah, yes.” Now what to say? He was making a fool of himself. “Have I seen you before?”
Now, even more of a fool.
“Yes, Herr Doktor. I have been here one whole week.”
“Is there any more of that chocolate in the kitchen?”
“Yes, Herr Doktor.”
“Good. Then bring that tray in here and fix up another for Frau Doktor Jung.”
“Yes, sir.”
Lotte, whose honey hair was woven in a plait that hung down her back, came past him with the tray and set it on the library table amongst a horde of books. At once, she scrambled away.
A clock struck.
Seven.
There would be no sleep. Only bread and chocolate—a pleasant shave—I will trim my moustache—take a luxurious bath and move straight on to Pilgrim himself.
Filling his cup, Jung smiled. What an image! Straight on to Pilgrim without putting on my clothes! And look—it was snowing again.
Swallowing the first long draught of cocoa, he closed his eyes and conjured the image of his steaming, naked self rising from the bath and moving through a silent fall of snow.
I shall carry my notebook, of course. And my pen. And perhaps a staff.
A staff. That’s right.
The perfect image of a naked pilgrim.
6
In the Music Room—so-called because it had been set aside for patients for whom music provided therapy—there were twenty-one windows. Seven and seven and seven. Tall and narrow.
At nine o’clock on the morning Jung had been reading the Pilgrim journal, he stood in this room with his back to the door which led to the corridor. The snow beyond the windows fell as if the clouds were counting out pennies—huge, white ghosts of pennies from the days when pennies were the size of pocket-watches. Or so Jung thought he remembered.
Two clocks were ticking, but not in time—in counterpoint.
A grand piano stood in one corner, its lid raised expectantly. A cello, shrouded, leaned against one wall—despondent, abandoned. Three violins rested invisible inside their cases sitting on three gold chairs.
Will no one come?
A cluster of music stands was gathered in a corner. Gossips. Have you heard…? Did you know…? Two flutes, an oboe and a clarinet, also encased, had been laid on a shelf—and on the shelf beneath them, neatly piled, scores by Bach and Mozart lying on their sides. Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A Minor stood upright, turned towards the wall. In another corner, what might have been a giant’s boxed ear turned out to be a harp.
Jung had booked the Music Room through Fräulein Unger. Having telephoned the superintendent, she was then dispatched to Suite 306 where Kessler was instructed to bring Mister Pilgrim downstairs at nine o’clock.
It was now twenty minutes past the hour. Had Kessler misunderstood? Had Fräulein Unger misinformed him?
Jung inspected the pictures and pages laid out on a mile-long table—the table set in such a way that when he was seated there, his back would be to the brightest windows.
A mile-long table. Half a mile. Well—it is long, at any rate. To think of its true length was to fail to do it justice. The point was to make an impression—to overwhelm the patient with the dimensions of reality.
As for the light, it was not that he wanted to baffle Pilgrim regarding his identity—but when he spoke, his voice must be disembodied. His intention was to confront Pilgrim directly by indirect means—namely, his word-and-image-association test. Jung delighted in paradoxical phrases such as direct confrontation by indirect means. However nonsensical it might sound, it was in fact a precise description of how the test worked. Here is what is—a word—an object—an image—what do you make of it?
Furtwängler scoffed at this technique, which Jung had devised—or, more precisely, was in the process of devising by trial and error. In the course of a given session, Jung would speak single words, short phrases, sound images—bang! bang
! bang!—the patient having been instructed to respond with the first thought that entered his head. On some occasions, saying nothing, Jung would hold up pictures—drawings, photographs, paintings—and wait for a reaction. A patient’s silence, Jung was learning, could be just as telling as a verbal response.
Nervous for whatever reason, Jung went over to the piano and sat down.
What?
Something simple. His mother’s lullaby, perhaps—if only he could remember the tune. His fingers wandered over the keys, but the tune was fugitive. Perhaps the truth was, Jung did not want to remember it. He played only chords.
All at once he heard Kessler’s voice.
“There’s no one here,” the orderly said. “On the other hand, we’re late. Perhaps he’s gone.”
Jung stood up.
“Good morning,” he said in English.
Kessler clicked his heels and nodded.
Pilgrim, seated in his Bath chair, was silent.
Jung came forward, smiling.
“Surely you heard the music,” he said. “Perhaps the piano is haunted. Do you believe in ghosts, Mister Pilgrim?”
Pilgrim looked away.
Jung flicked his fingers at Kessler.
Kessler nodded and departed, closing the door behind him.
Jung went behind the mile-long table.
“Why don’t you join me?” he said.
Pilgrim did not move.
“I have something here I think you would like to see.”
Still silent, Pilgrim closed his eyes. He might have been listening to music.
“I am looking at a human hand,” Jung said. “Not my own. Another.”
Pilgrim did not stir.
“A woman’s hand.”
The clocks ticked.
Sunlight made its way across the floor in Pilgrim’s direction. Like an animal, it nosed his leather slippers; trousers; knees.
“You’ve seen this hand, I think,” said Jung, the very model of nonchalance. “A woman’s hand, curving inward…”