Go then, in whatever peace you can achieve.
Elisabetta Giocondo,
The Florentine Woman.
April 12, 1519.
On the second of May, in the same year, Leonardo da Vinci died at Cloux, in the valley of the Loire. He was sixty-seven.
5
It was not unlike the day of recovery after a long battle with illness. A calm had descended, marked by the presence of sunlight and the opening of windows. A fresh breeze stirred the curtains and turned the pages of open books. In various rooms, the occupants looked up from whatever had preoccupied them and wondered—sometimes aloud—what might have caused the silence that, for a moment only, was universal.
At eight o’clock on the morning of Monday, May 20th—six days after Sybil Quartermaine’s death—Jung made his way along the third-floor corridor of the Zürich Clinic to Suite 306. In his hand was a brown leather bag such as those employed by piano students to transport their sheet music. It was, in fact, the property of his six-year-old daughter, Anna—who had relinquished it only on the promise that it would be returned when her father had found a suitable replacement. His own satchel had gone missing.
Inside the bag were the fragments of what Jung had culled and copied from his notebooks concerning Pilgrim—some as loose pages, others as torn remnants of envelopes—others, the backs of calling cards—others, mere scraps of paper, crisp shards of cardboard, magazines, and the Clinic’s internal memos and bits that had once been menus in restaurants or the insides of matchboxes. All of these bore scribbles—phrases—single words—whole paragraphs—and, in one or two cases, Fräulein Unger’s transcripts of passages from Jung’s notebooks, reference books and daybooks.
There was an envelope containing photographs—a replica of the Mona Lisa cut from a magazine—a monograph, with tinted illustrations, concerning the genus of butterfly collectively known as Psyche—a handwritten copy of Elisabetta Giocondo’s letter to Leonardo (as though it had only to be posted) and finally, the envelope addressed to Pilgrim from Sybil Quartermaine.
The copy of Elisabetta’s missive was intended for Archie Menken, whose opinion of it Jung was eager to seek—and since he could not show Archie the journal itself, he had thought to provide the letter as an enticement. No version of the name appeared—Elisabetta del Giocondo, La Gioconda, Madonna Elisabetta (shortened over time to Mona Lisa). It was entirely as Pilgrim had presented it—but unsigned. Who might have written this? Jung intended to ask. Just to see…just to see what sort of reaction it might elicit. Emma had transcribed it for him—weeping as she had done so.
All of these, but for La Gioconda’s letter, were weapons, ready to be wielded in the ongoing war between Pilgrim’s belligerent silence and Jung’s aggressive pursuit of his patient’s voice. Kessler, in the meantime, had informed Jung of Pilgrim’s brief sentences, whispered on the day of Sybil Quartermaine’s death. But still…To have whispered in the baths was not to speak to one’s doctor. To whisper to the air is not to address a person—and Jung was prudent. They might not even have been words, for all Kessler could tell, he concluded. There was also the fact that on his return from the baths that day, Pilgrim had slowly subsided into a state that was almost comatose, and had not truly wakened except to stumble to the toilet and back to his bed. Kessler had informed Jung of this, as well, and was instructed to record any words that might be spoken, to monitor Mister Pilgrim’s breathing and pulse rate and to call at once if any significant change took place. All remained stable, however, and Mister Pilgrim did not utter. He did not even snore, Kessler noted, which meant that his own sleep was undisturbed.
For all the gravity of its contents, the music bag seemed to Jung to be as light as air. What it contained, after all, might make it possible to negotiate an armistice. If these would not provoke whole speech, then nothing would. These, and the dreadful news of Lady Quartermaine’s death.
In debating his own attitude to the latter, Jung at first had considered setting the subject aside as a separate encounter—that he would not connect it with any of the weapons in his arsenal…
Really, Carl Gustav! Weapons! Arsenal! Such a pompous attitude!
I am thinking only of the patient’s good.
Hit him on the head with a hammer? Knock him down with a wooden mallet? Kick him in the shins and box his ears?
I must be cruel only to be kind.
Oh, for heaven’s sake!
Well, it’s true. I’ve coddled him too long.
Seems to me, it’s you who’ve been coddled. You’re more considerate of yourself than you are of Mister Pilgrim—avoiding at every turn the simple courtesy of treating him like a patient. You treat him, instead, like a prize. A trophy. Look what I have here! The oddity of oddities! The man who cannot die! And I’m his keeper! Me!
The shameful truth is, I’m afraid of him.
He’s only another human being, Carl Gustav. You deal with them every day.
Do I?
Look down the corridor. What do you see? A dozen doorways beyond which hides the human race in all its complexities and wondrous manifestations. In 308, a bear pit—in 309, the Moon. Back there in 301, a musical genius whose hands will not obey her, insisting they are the hands of Robert Schumann. In 304, a man who writes incessantly in an imaginary notebook. You have opened the door on these people day in, day out for as long almost as a year, and you have never doubted your competence to meet them on their own terms, without a qualm. What, after all, is so different about Mister Pilgrim that you doubt your ability to cope with him? Nothing, Carl Gustav. Nothing. At the beginning of every journey on this floor, you have stepped into the dark with nothing but your intelligence, your interest, your instincts, your understanding of psychiatry and your dedication to medicine. All that’s lacking is a willingness to admit the extent of your ignorance.
Just then, Furtwängler appeared at the far end of the corridor, walking beside an intense young woman who wore an intern’s smock. At once, Jung was reminded of Emma—a slimmer, slightly younger Emma, to be sure—but Emma nonetheless. Her hair was darker—her stature somewhat less—her manner more effusive. And clearly, she had Furtwängler’s ear and was bending it at a furious rate. This was not like Emma. Emma would not have made such excitable gestures. She would not have given Furtwängler the benefit of her enthusiasm to anything like the degree this woman deployed. But she would have been an equally engaging companion. And was, when she was younger. Once…
Carl Gustav.
Yes, yes—indeed. My appointment with Mister Pilgrim. Though surely, I could wait to be introduced to the young lady. So attractive…So…
No, Carl Gustav. Get on with your work. The Pilgrim case, after all, is your job at the moment.
Of course.
Jung saw that Furtwängler was stopping just short of room 308.
“Mister Leveritch lives in a bear pit,” he told his young companion. “Be prepared.”
As they went through the door, Furtwängler gave Jung a smile which Jung did not return. Instead, he went through into Suite 306.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” Pilgrim said.
The sunlight was overwhelming, and when Jung at last could more or less see, he found his patient seated in the bedroom on a straight-backed chair—the Bath chair having been pushed into a darkened corner.
Kessler stood with one protective hand on Pilgrim’s shoulder. “Good morning, Doctor,” he said. He was smiling.
“Yes. Good morning,” Jung replied, still half-blind. He looked sideways, guardedly, at Pilgrim. Had he indeed spoken—or was Kessler a ventriloquist? Or was it just a trick of Jung’s embattled imagination?
Pilgrim was fully dressed, including a pair of elegant boots, the boots—like his trousers, jacket and waistcoat—white. And a bright bow tie which sat like a butterfly below a high collar. The tie was blue, with a touch of violet—a colour in between the two, neither completely one nor the other. It seemed almost to have settled there of its own volition. From Pilgrim’s
breast pocket, a handkerchief of similar hue made a graceful puff, as of smoke.
The expression on Pilgrim’s face was that of a child who, expecting good news, has just divined that the news is bad.
Jung looked away, seeking refuge.
A chair had been placed near the foot of the bed. Plus a table—and on the table, an ashtray. There.
Jung sat down and slid the music bag onto the coverlet beside him.
Pilgrim followed this motion with his eyes. He made fists of both hands and pressed his knees together. His great height remained evident, even when he was seated. The curious cut of his hair was almost boylike, causing it to sit up over his brow as if the wind or a careless sweep of his hand had put it there. His cheeks, for all his general pallor, were pink. He might have just returned from a vigorous turn around the garden.
“Have you nothing to say?” he said to Jung. “I was expecting congratulations. My white suit…the abandoned chair…the undoubted pleasure of hearing my voice…” Pilgrim gave a nervous smile. “Of course, I believe you’ve heard it before…on a certain occasion. Though I cannot quite recall when that was, time is so…what? So out of kilter? I think that is what I mean. Out of joint. Someone said that. Hamlet, more than likely. Hamlet says everything, doesn’t he. Almost anything you can think of—so long as it’s in blank verse…”
He fell quiet.
Kessler shifted in his place and moved his fingers over Pilgrim’s shoulder. He eased himself from one foot to the other. His shoes squeaked. He coughed into one cupped hand.
Pilgrim looked down.
Jung looked up.
“Mister Pilgrim…There has been…”
“An accident.”
Pilgrim’s voice was hoarse, as though he had spent the last week shouting. He glanced away sideways towards the window and lifted his head.
“The water is wide,” he whispered. “I can not cross o’er.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“It’s a song. Just a song. Is she dead? My friend?”
“I’m afraid so. Yes.”
Pilgrim stood up. Kessler’s hand fell aside.
Pilgrim adjusted his tie. “I wore this for her,” he said. “I suppose I knew. In fact…I did know. I was hoping only that you…” He went to the window. “I thought perhaps you might have come to tell me I was wrong.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“An accident, you say.”
“Yes. In her motor car. She was killed in an instant, I can assure you.”
Pilgrim shrugged.
“Why do people always feel they have to say that?” he said. “It’s never true. And you know it isn’t. If I’m supposed to trust you, you’ll have to do better than that, Doctor.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You can tell me in a word. Just say it.”
“Avalanche.”
“Avalanche.”
“Yes.”
“I see.” Pilgrim sighed. In his mind, the image of the silver Daimler was turned and tumbled by a child creating a giant snowball. Inside, the occupants were rolled and tossed like laboratory mice in a revolving wheel. He reached out and ran his fingers along the edge of the gauze curtain to his right. “Was Miss Peebles with her?”
“No.”
“I thought not.”
“Only her chauffeur.”
“He must have had a name, Doctor Jung. They usually do.”
“Yes. His name was Otto Mohr.”
“Another instant death, no doubt.”
“One can only hope so.”
Pilgrim turned back into the room.
“I see that you have brought a child’s music bag with you.”
Surprised by the fact that Pilgrim had noticed the bag at all, let alone that he had guessed its true owner, Jung could only mutter: “I borrowed it from my daughter.”
Pilgrim indicated the bed, where the bag lay. “Is there anything in it for me?” he asked. He said this not so much coyly as meanly. It seemed almost that he was taunting Jung and Jung was not sure how to respond.
Pilgrim was now standing in the middle of the room, to Jung’s left. “A toy, perhaps?” he said. “I’m like a child, myself, you know,” he went on. “And a child’s bag ought to contain at least one toy. If you give me a toy, I’m yours forever. Isn’t that the way of children?”
Jung stood up.
“No toys, I’m afraid,” he said. “But there is a letter.”
He went to the bag, unbuckled it and drew out an envelope.
“Here,” he said—and handed it to Pilgrim.
Pilgrim went away to the farthest window in the sitting-room before he withdrew the letter from its white pocket.
White, white—everything white, Jung thought. What is that? Japanese? White for mourning—black for rejoicing? Something…
All at once, Pilgrim dropped the letter to the floor. He could not have read more than one or two sentences.
Jung waited nervously for Pilgrim to retrieve the fallen pages. Surely the man must want to know what his friend had to say to him, but Pilgrim remained motionless, the envelope dangling from his fingers. Slowly, Jung turned with mute panic to the music bag. Looking inside, he saw at once what he had done. There sat Lady Quartermaine’s letter.
He went to the sitting-room, leaned down and scooped up the scattered pages, afterward taking their envelope from Pilgrim’s hand.
Turning back to the bedroom and the music bag, he glanced with a sinking heart at the writing before him.
There was music—this is true. Dwarfs, there were none—though you promised them…
He had given Pilgrim Elisabetta’s letter to Leonardo, which he had not, of course, intended him to see at all. If Pilgrim ever knew of Jung’s access to the journals, he would have every right to retrieve them, and Jung would then lose a precious commodity in his pursuit of Pilgrim’s sanity. All at once, he found himself praying that Pilgrim had not, in fact, created the letter himself as an act of imagination, but had found it mouldering in some barely known archive from which Jung could then claim to have obtained a copy. Priejesu.
Ah, yes—the-chance-encounter-with-a-buried-treasure syndrome, to which so many dreamers succumb.
I thought you had agreed not to interfere.
I’m only here as an observer, Carl Gustav. Un témoin, as the French say. A witness. I could leave, of course. But if I depart, then any kind of accurate record of this encounter goes with me. After all, I am your memory as well as your conscience.
I don’t want a conscience.
Well, I’m sorry to tell you, but you have one. And why, I might ask, don’t you want one?
Because you stand in the way of spontaneity.
Don’t make me laugh, Carl Gustav! Don’t make me laugh. In your life, conscience never comes before the fact—only after. That’s what makes you a scientist instead of a philosopher—a psychiatrist and not a surgeon. Everything you do depends on leaping before you have a chance to think. If you had consulted me earlier, you would never have accepted the gift of Mister Pilgrim’s journals. You would have returned them instantly to Lady Quartermaine. Your judgement—to date, at any rate—has always been empirical. I never get my way until it’s too late. But…
The Inquisitor sighed and took a deep, internal breath.
…I am yours and you are mine. In the American parlance of Archie Menken—sometimes so infuriatingly apt—you and I are stuck with one another. And I think you ought to know that your patient is looking at you expectantly. Amongst his last words, before you handed him the fatal letter, were: “if you give me a toy, I’m yours forever.”
Jung folded the treacherous pages back into their envelope and returned them to the music bag. There, at hand, were the other two envelopes—one containing photographs—the other, Sybil Quartermaine’s letter. Also, the monograph concerning Psyche butterflies.
Jung drew the latter out—and the photographs.
Toys?
Well—the next best thing. Divertissements. T
his was what Pilgrim needed, now. Not a letter from a dead friend, but something entirely other. The shock of being confronted with La Gioconda’s words might, after all, have driven him back to silence and that, at all costs, must be prevented.
Jung returned to Pilgrim.
“I thought you might want to see these,” he said, and pulled the photographs into the light. Some, of course, would be meaningless to Pilgrim. The daffodil, the bust of Doctor Forel, the façade of the Jung house at Küsnacht. Emma looking pregnant, the children—Agathe, the eldest, holding Marianne, the youngest—Anna and little Franz. And the dogs, Philemon and Salome.
No. Don’t show him those. Too many happy faces. Some other time, perhaps. Not now.
But the pictures of Lady Quartermaine and Pilgrim in the garden—yes. Not the one showing Otto Mohr and the silver Daimler. Had it been nothing more than coincidence that all these latter photographs could be so neatly juxtaposed on the events that followed?
And, of course, the butterfly.
“I have brought these along,” Jung said as he crossed the room. “I took them last week, as you may well remember. They show you both together. In the garden. The garden just out there to the left of the…”
Don’t say Clinic.
“…building.”
Jung shuffled the photographs. Cards.
Pick a card. Any card. Do not tell me what it is. Put it back in the deck…
He fanned and offered them, palming the one that showed the butterfly. That must come last.
Pilgrim seized the fan and closed it.
Looking down, he discerned that Sybil indeed was sitting there.
How beautiful she is, he thought. Is, was and always will be.
“May I have this?” he asked. “Just the one. I should like to have it by me.”
“Certainly. Absolutely.”
Jung took back the other photographs.
“There’s a silver frame on the bureau,” Pilgrim said rather dreamily. “A photograph of the woman who claimed to be my mother, though I know better. I no longer need or want her. I shall destroy her—burn her at last and flush her down the toilet.”