Pilgrim

  He looked up and smiled at Jung like an evil child whose parents will one day be murdered. A shiver passed over Jung’s shoulders. Though he tried not to show his shock, he was barely able to nod in response.

  “Then I shall set this photograph of Sybil in its place and look at it every day. I thank you for it. You are kind. Very kind. More than kind. You are thoughtful and considerate. You have an understanding heart. You are filled with compassion. What a burden it must be, to love the human race to such a degree. Overwhelming, I should imagine. Overwhelming, overpowering. Soul-consuming—ruinous, almost. Annihilating. To think that you do such thoughtful, kindly, generous things as hand out photographs of the deceased. It is unimaginable. Some kind of miracle—indeed, the very essence of the milk of human kindness. What must your filing system cost you in upkeep! Cellars filled with photographs! The whole human race! And all with one little camera! May I see it? One day, I should like to see it. Truly. Really. Absolutely. Doctor Jung and his camera compassionata! Think of it! The whole human race in black and white…”

  All of this had been spoken with a sleepy, offhand drawl delivered from a languid stance—the photograph drooping from Pilgrim’s hand the way a handkerchief might dangle from the fingers of a dandified raconteur while he entertains his host with amusing gossip. But Pilgrim’s eyes belied any thought of humour or of entertainment. They grew increasingly narrowed until, at the end of his diatribe—for it had been precisely that—they were closed.

  Then, all at once, he shouted: “WHY HAVE YOU MADE ME LOOK AT HER? SHE’S DEAD. SHE HAS ACHIEVED WHAT I CANNOT ACHIEVE. WHY HAVE YOU SHOWN ME THIS? WHY?”

  Jung put out his hand and guided Pilgrim to a chair, where he seated his patient and asked Kessler to bring a glass of water.

  Pilgrim sat, desolate—the photograph upside down in his lap.

  Jung stood back and put the other photographs, including the butterfly, in his pocket.

  He realized that a window, if not a door, had been opened—prompting Pilgrim’s flood of words. But he did not quite know what to do next. Why, for instance, had Pilgrim not mentioned Elisabetta’s letter? Had he truly not known what it was—or was something about it so deeply buried in Pilgrim’s psyche that he could not speak of it?

  When Kessler returned, he offered a tall glass of water to Pilgrim and a second glass to Jung. In a war, Kessler had reasoned, both sides are thirsty.

  6

  A walk in the garden would do her a world of good. Carl Gustav would not return for the midday meal, having expected that his encounter with Patient Pilgrim would, in some way, be traumatic. That had been his word, although of course he had not intended a clinical reading of it. He had meant only to convey the range of what might take place between himself and his recalcitrant adversary.

  “Really, Carl Gustav,” Emma had said, “you must not refer to your patients as adversaries. They are not your enemies.”

  “Yes, they are,” Jung had replied. “In their way, they are. Each and every patient is like a territory lost in a war—or a tract of the homeland that must be reclaimed. Some aspect of some disease or condition has won them away and convinced them they are now the citizens of another country. That’s why they show so much hostility. They’ve been propagandized by their demons and made to recite some alien catechism. And in the long run, they believe it—this alien catechism. That’s what mental disease is about, Emmy. Or any disease. As Pilgrim himself has cited in his journal, though he puts the words in Leonardo da Vinci’s mouth: everything wants to live, including contagion. The whole struggle is to win the war not only against the disease or the condition, but against the victim who carries it. That’s why one must listen and believe. That’s why I encourage the Countess to go on living on the Moon. Until I can recognize the Moon’s voice—or Blavinskeya’s version of it—there’s no way I can help her. It’s not enough—it’s not enough—it’s never enough to do what Furtwängler does and simply tell her there can be no life on the Moon. If she believes it—we must find out why.

  “You must recall your sister Mutti’s struggle with tuberculosis,” he went on. “It’s going to kill me, she said. Wailed, in fact. Don’t you remember? Oh! Oh! Oh! I’m going to die of this, she cried, sure as fate! Yes? Pure propaganda. Nothing more and nothing less. The contagion itself sets up a Ministry of Culture and sets about distributing handbills and pronouncements. You are a conquered nation! Do not resist. The outcome of our occupation can only end in your death! Yes? You remember? But we won. And why? Because we wanted her back and we set up our own Ministry of Culture in order to claim her—reclaim her. We never denied the other Ministry existed. We heard what it told her and we fought back. We told her that cures were being developed. We told her that she need not die. We told her not to surrender. We put her in the best sanitarium in all of Switzerland. We gave her hope—and one year later, she walked away as healthy as a horse.”

  “And one year after that, she died.”

  “To be sure,” Jung had said. “To be sure. But only because she fell back under the spell of despair. And despair is always fatal.”

  Emma put on her overcoat, wrapped a scarf around her neck and pulled a green woollen cap down around her ears. I look like a bear, she thought when she saw herself in the vestibule mirror. A big, fat pregnant Mama Bear.

  “Hello, Mama!” she said to her reflection—and waved a mitted hand.

  Five months pregnant almost to the day. December 10th of last year. She had made the entry in her private daybook on the morning of the 11th. A hit! A hit! A palpable hit! she had written in English. A woman knows.

  The night of the 10th had been momentous. Christmas was coming. The girls were about to be released from school. Franzie was making a Father Christmas in the nursery with Albertine, the children’s nurse. Sunday, a feast day. Snowfall. Tannenbaum. Music. And guests.

  In her mind, there was a blur of friendly faces—everyone rosy-cheeked and drunk on wine. Laughter. Dancing. Anna playing a one-fingered version of Frère Jacques on the piano. Oh, oh, oh—and Carl Gustav looking along at me from the head of the table with that unmistakeable look in his eye…

  And in our bed, not even waiting to put on nightgown or pyjama, we threw back the covers and he played with me as if he had just discovered what I was. And this! And this! And this! A WOMAN! And he put his head in my lap and peeled me open the way a man will suck a peach—one and then another—then another—and me the orchard—an orchard of peaches. And when he came to me with “himself” in his hand, I was so eager for him I wept. And we rode together, my ankles pressed against his flank—my horse—and we rode and we rode and I bit his neck…

  Emma laughed out loud at the memory of it.

  And when it happened…

  When it happened, I felt it. I could feel him reaching all the way to my core and I felt him spurting—as men say, shooting—as if a gun had been fired. A hit! A hit! A palpable hit!

  This is all true. It was so. And I knew it in the very instant: this is a child, I thought. A child. We have made another child.

  Suddenly, Emma stopped in her tracks. How had she got out here—beyond the house and into the garden? She could not remember. But it didn’t matter. The memory of their love-making had carried her, lost in the reliving of it, lost in the telling.

  I like the part about the peaches.

  She smiled and pulled at the branch of a cedar tree and wandered on towards the lake.

  We’ve made such a lovely house and garden here. All our own doing. And all our own design. We’ve been—we are so happy here. Carl Gustav—me—the children—even the servants. Our lives here are all so good.

  And only that once. Only that one bad time. And I, of course, didn’t care for it. It made me so unhappy—so unsure. Sabina. At least the name was apt!

  She laughed again.

  At the shore, she stood on the pebbled beach and gazed out over the lake.

  Sabina Spielrein.

  First, she had been Carl Gustav’s patient
. Then she had been his pupil. He had treated her for hysteria.

  Whatever that might be…

  One of Freud’s favourite words and taken up by Carl Gustav because it presented such a wide field of interpretation. Hysteria. Sexual, of course. Laden with sexual tensions and possible manifestations. Why, the poor girl—this, according to Carl Gustav himself—the poor girl had the misfortune to fall in love with me!

  Oh, the poor, dear girl! Oh, my poor, dear husband! The poor, dear innocent doctor and the poor, dear innocent Jewess with her big black innocent eyes the size of saucers. Oh, the poor, dear pair of them, sitting there batting their poor, dear lashes at one another! What, oh what—whatever shall we do? Why—copulate, of course. It’s the only right and proper hysterical thing to do!

  God! And I forgave him!

  Why did I forgive him? How?

  Sabina wanted his child. Dear Christ—she wanted his child! She told him so herself. Our own Jewish-Aryan love child! Those were her very words.

  But I…

  I am his wife.

  I am the mother of…

  I am his orchard.

  I am…

  I.

  There will be soup for lunch. Delicious tomato soup—the tomatoes from Spain—out-of-season tomatoes, out-of-season lettuce and onions from Spain. In the merry, merry month of May.

  English. Everything in English. Why?

  That woman. The Marchioness of Quartermaine. La Duchesse du Baur au Lac. The Countess of Avalanche. Lady Death herself.

  He had her, too, I’d bet.

  Wanted to. Thought about it. Dreamt of it. Invaded her disguised as her friend’s saviour. How many invasions have there been, I wonder? I’m sure I’ll never know. Patients—nurses—students—the titled lady friends who bring their charges to be saved. Sets up his Ministry of Culture and launches his campaign. He’s even done it with me. The Husband’s Invasion of December, 1911! And the consequent Occupation by Imperial Forces. This—his child. Our child.

  And so, what is sauce for the gander can also be sauce for the goose. Why not?

  But who shall I choose? A Spanish gardener with thick black hair and muscular arms, who will bring me onions and tomatoes in his naked lap. Rich, ripe tomatoes nesting in black curly hair and spilling all their juices down his thighs and I…

  If Carl Gustav can, so can I.

  But no.

  I am Emma Jung—his wife. I am Emma Jung—the mother of…I am his orchard. I am…

  I.

  Go back in and sigh and be content. There are no Spanish gardeners here. Only tomato soup. And this sunlit day. This high, blue, loveless day.

  Emma splayed her feet in their square-toed rubber boots, making watery pits for her heels amongst the pebbles. She placed her hands inside her coat and made a nest for her belly. I am the bearer of this good news, she thought. Of one new life. And the new shall save the old. That is all that matters.

  Out on the lake, there were three white gulls.

  Inside her, there was a kick.

  Emma smiled.

  “Hello,” she said. “There are three white gulls on the lake. Three white gulls on the lake—and all around us—can you smell it? Oh, I hope you can—the garden where we live is coming back to life—and I—and I and you—and we are cloistered here in paradise and nothing—nothing—nothing will ever break our happiness again. I will not allow it.”

  There had been no Jewish-Aryan love-child. Sabina Spielrein had married a Russian doctor and departed. The English woman had died, albeit tragically—and not a death that Emma would have wished on anyone. But she was gone—departed into memory and all was well.

  Turning, Emma saw the garden sloping to her feet—its flowers, its lawns, its trees, its paths and destinations—its aspen grove, its summer house, its benches set amidst the arboured shade and the house itself, beyond, and glancing westward to the sun. And she rejoiced that so much offers hope and so little offers despair in this, my private moment with my child, walking here, sunlit in the garden of my love and poised with my spoon in hand at the lip of a bowl of tomato soup from Spain.

  7

  “I have always admired this view,” Jung said. “My office windows show much the same—the trees, the distant mountains rising above them. I must admit, I look out at all this whenever I’m tired—or depressed. It’s all so peaceful.”

  “Unless there’s a storm,” said Pilgrim.

  Jung had risen. Pilgrim had not. He still sat somewhat askew in his chair, with the water glass—now emptied—in his hand and the photograph lying in his lap. “I’m not the least bit interested in peace,” he went on. “What I want—and all I want—is death. And you won’t give it to me.”

  “It isn’t mine to give,” said Jung. “A physician, by definition, is devoted to life. You know that.”

  “Yes. I know that. Which is why you’re all so useless.”

  “I’ve said this to you already, Mister Pilgrim. If you want to kill yourself, go right ahead. So long as that is your choice, there isn’t a great deal I can do to prevent you.”

  “Then why did you?”

  “Why did I what?”

  “Prevent me.”

  “I cannot help you die—and I cannot let you die, Mister Pilgrim. You will have to accomplish your aim somewhere out of my purview. But you have been put in my charge and so long as you remain in my charge, it is my sworn duty to see that you live—even if that means reviving you at death’s door.”

  Pilgrim turned the glass in his hand upside down and glanced at the photograph, whose back was staring up at him.

  “Since it was my friend who consigned me to your care,” he said, “and now that my friend is mercifully dead—am I free to go?”

  “No. You are to stay here for as long as it takes to come to terms with—if not to solve—your dilemma; namely, why you want to die.”

  “I want to die because I am unable to die.”

  “Everyone is able when it comes to death, Mister Pilgrim. That is the human condition. But why not wait until nature takes its course and kills you as it kills us all—either with time or with disease or in war or by means of accident? Why do you reject your humanity?”

  “I have not rejected my humanity. My humanity has rejected me. I have none—not one of its privileges.”

  “As a statement, that is incomprehensible. Just to look at you—to see you—all I can see is a living, breathing upright human being. Granted, an unhappy human being—a troubled human being. But to say you lack the privileges of humanity is ridiculous. There’s a roof up there above you—food on the table—money in your pocket—clothes on your back…”

  “Those things are all acquired, Doctor Jung. Store-bought privileges. The results of my labour. I mean the privilege of running free—of making choices—of not being duty-bound to fail in my quest for death. I want the privilege of never, never, never again having to bow three times and mutter: thy will be done. Thy will only. Never mine.”

  “I’m not aware of having issued any decrees, Mister Pilgrim.”

  “WHAT MAKES YOU THINK I’M TALKING ABOUT YOU, YOU POMPOUS IDIOT!”

  Pilgrim rose from his chair and went to the door of the sitting-room.

  “There are greater powers than C.G. Jung, Doctor Vanity! Doctor Narcissus, sir! Doctor Pride! There are greater powers than God!”

  He walked away out of sight and Jung and Kessler heard the sound of breaking glass.

  Kessler stepped forward, but Jung put out his hand.

  “No,” he said. “I will do this. You stay here.”

  When he stepped to the door, he was empty-handed. No, he decided. I must take something with me to distract him.

  Pilgrim had opened a window and was standing with his back to Jung. The broken glass was scattered up against the baseboard underneath a large shattered mirror.

  “Aren’t you aware that breaking a mirror is bad luck?” Jung spoke as lightly as he dared, not wanting to startle his patient.

  “When all else
fails, bring on the old wives’ tales—is that it? Fear of black cats—fear of stepping on cracks—fear of killing spiders inside the house?” Pilgrim did not turn, but remained motionless—upright and ramrod stiff. Even his fingers were frozen, laid against the window panes as if he wished to study them one by one. “The only bad luck that can befall me, Doctor, is that I will live.”

  “You must explain this to me, Mister Pilgrim. As one who loves life, I find your reaction to it baffling. You are not ill. You are not in physical pain. You are not destitute. You are not untalented. You are not unsung. You have friends, so I understand, and a decent mode of life. You are barely more than middle-aged and you live in what everyone agrees is a progressive, creative and hopeful era. And yet, you want to close the windows, bolt the door and turn on the gas. This leaves me at a loss for understanding, and I need some instruction. Consider that I am your pupil and know nothing.”

  As Jung spoke, he moved farther into the room, ignoring the shattered mirror and the broken glass. Here, the furniture was all of a very pleasant green-shaded wicker, with seat cushions covered in blue cotton and set off with pillows wrapped in burnt orange ticking. There were three chairs and a small settee, plus tables strategically placed to offer ample space for ashtrays, magazines and books. The curtains, as seemed to be universal throughout the residential floor of the Clinic, were made of white muslin. Pilgrim had pushed these aside where he stood and they framed him now like shrouds awaiting the dead. There was nothing, Jung concluded as he watched his patient’s white-suited back, that did not somehow conjure death in Pilgrim’s presence.

  Jung sat down at the furthest distance, setting aside his intended “distraction”—the monograph on the subject of Psyche butterflies.

  “If I were to tell you the truth, Doctor Jung, no matter how brilliantly, you would not believe me. As a teacher—as an instructor on the subject of the conditions under which I live—you would fail me instantly and send for the next candidate.”