Human Traces

  He found his own thoughts return again and again to Torrington, to the bedroom of his childhood with all the Greek and Latin texts ranged along the shelf below the window, with the Bible and the prayer book underneath. He thought of Sonia coming in and sitting on the side of his bed and how he told her stories of the deeds of Hector and Ajax and King Priam of Troy, having always for some reason wanted the Trojans to be successful in their defence of the city. He pictured the cedars overhanging the damp lawn and thought of the jugs of lemonade that the maids set out on the terrace. What was the name of that young maid who had been so taken by Jacques? His dry lips moved into a half smile, but it was painful, because it split the skin. His hair was long at the back of his head, hanging over his drenched shirt and he could feel that his beard, unshaved since Tanga, had grown again, though this time he knew it must be grey.

  The girl put little bits of ice in the lemonade. She used to go to the ice-house where a block was delivered in the spring and chip some pieces off for use in the house. Why had he so often disdained the drink? Just half a glass, just some moisture from it on a handkerchief with which to wet his lips . . . Or better still, to go to the river where they had gone that day on the horses, to lower his head beneath the surface of the stream and gulp. His tongue was like a piece of wood; it was like two tongues in his head. And the horse . . . Achilles. Did Achilles know he was a horse?

  Or the fountain at the schloss. He could step over the stone rim and curl himself around the spout, allow the drops to splash down on his face, while Kitty stood beside him, naked on the grass, carrying stone pitchers of water on her head from the colonnade, then bending over him and pouring.

  For three days they walked on without water until the evening, when even Thomas could take no more, and they fell down, ready to die, in the shade of some acacia trees. It grew dark. One of the hardiest of the Africans still had the wit to make a fire; most of them were prone and motionless. Crocker was muttering something as he lay with his mouth open. Thomas listened carefully until he was satisfied he had heard correctly: Crocker was praying for death.

  Thomas was deeply asleep when he found himself being shaken by a terrified native, the man’s wide eyes white against his dark skin. Thomas looked up. It was soon after dawn.

  ‘Elephants,’ said Crocker at the man’s shoulder. ‘He says there is the biggest herd of elephants he has ever heard in his life.’

  Thomas walked with both men to the top of the hill. It had been dark when they arrived the night before, and they had been too tired to explore.

  When he looked down from the peak now, he could see that at its foot, less than a hundred yards distant, was a railway. The sound ascribed to the herd of elephants was in fact coming from a steam locomotive about a mile up the track. Thomas ran down to the rails and waved his arms. He took off his shirt and waved that too. Eventually, he could hear the driver start to apply the brakes and he sent the native back to bring the others down as fast as possible.

  The driver, who was Indian and spoke English, agreed to hold the train while the bedraggled party climbed aboard. Thomas had a large bundle of rupees which he thrust into the man’s hand. It took time to bring all the enfeebled members of the expedition down the slope, none more reluctantly than Crocker’s cattle, which now numbered only eighteen specimens of hide and jutting bone. One or two passengers on the train had supplies of water that they shared with the most needy; half an hour later, they stopped at a small station, where there was tea.

  Kitty received a cable from the High Commission in Nairobi. ‘Dr Thos. Midwinter boarded German steamer Zanzibar bound for Marseille, yesterday, September 18. In good health, to confirm arrival Europe shortly.’ She ran to find the girls, to share the news with them, and then to Sonia, who was sitting at the kitchen table, drawing pictures with Daniel.

  ‘I never had the smallest doubt that he would come home safely,’ said Sonia.

  ‘Neither did I,’ said Kitty, and both burst out laughing at their lies.

  ‘We shall have to kill the fatted calf,’ said Sonia. ‘What is his favourite dinner?’

  ‘Something cooked by you,’ said Kitty. ‘Not by me or by Frau Egger. Steak and kidney pudding. Or rib of beef. Oysters. Strawberry tart.’

  ‘We are too late for strawberries,’ said Sonia. ‘But we will manage something. You must help me. I am so happy for you, Kitty. And for myself.’

  ‘I know. It is not easy being married, is it?’

  ‘No,’ said Sonia. ‘They need so much attention and encouragement – and indulgence.’

  Embarrassed for a moment, the two women stood opposite one another, Sonia with her brown hair flashed with grey, small pouches of flesh forming on her jaw and with deep lines running from the corners of her eyes; Kitty still with her athletic figure, but a little thinner than before, and prone to coughing.

  ‘But I would not have it any other way,’ said Kitty. ‘I mean, one has to let them take chances because that is their nature.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Sonia. ‘But I don’t imagine that all husbands are like that.’

  ‘I am quite sure of it. And I shall bear that in mind in my next life. Meanwhile, I shall go and find Daisy. She will be beside herself.’

  ‘Don’t tire yourself, Kitty.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You look flushed.’

  ‘I am exhilarated, Sonia, that is all. Goodbye, Daniel. I like your picture. Is it a lion?’

  Only as she ran across the mountain top to the main house, only when the worry had been lifted, did Kitty see how anxious she had been. She would not let him go away again on one of these foolish adventures; from now on she would bind him to her.

  At Tanga, Thomas bought some new clothes, and on board ship he visited the barber and tried to fatten himself up. By the time he boarded the train in Marseille, he looked respectable again: trimmed, shaved and only a little underweight. He appeared to have no after-effect from the fever, though what he was finding difficult was to digest the experience of Africa: to see how the thoughts he had had there might be incorporated into his work at home. There were moments as the ship puffed slowly up the coast and he looked back at the previous two months that it seemed to him he had taken leave of his senses. He was anxious to see Hannes again to discover what he remembered of his long speech by the campfire. Although he despised Crocker, who had cost them their most precious scientific evidence, he had undoubtedly bullied him in the end and he wondered if he should send a note of acknowledgment of that fact to the poste restante in Arusha. Then he thought of the bearer Crocker had carelessly shot and of how he had slept peacefully all night afterwards, and he decided that a letter could wait; presumably Crocker would not be able to read it, in any event, until he had replaced his glasses. In his cabin, Thomas took out the pages on which he had written his narrative for Kitty and divided them in two. Those covering the days up to his departure from Hannes at the Crater, he folded neatly and replaced in the lid of his case; those dealing with later events, he stuffed in a large envelope. He put in a bar of ship’s carbolic soap for ballast, went up on deck and threw them over the stern into the Red Sea.

  In Vienna, Thomas spent the night in his honeymoon hotel in an effort to reacclimatise himself and reconnect with the life he had left behind. What he had to do was somehow to find a synthesis – or at the very least a common thread that ran through the various areas of his clinical experience and his personal speculation. He knew the dangers of trying to present, as Jacques had done eleven years earlier, an all-encompassing theory based on the clinical examination of a single doubtful disease.

  If he himself were to begin with another difficult condition – dementia praecox, something whose definition was still not universally accepted – and use his experience of treating it to bring in ideas of evolution, heredity, neuropsychology, literature and archaeology, then force them into some sort of unified theory of why madness was the defining human disease . . . How exactly would that be more scientif
ic, more respectable and less of a desperate grab for glory than Jacques’s ‘psychophysical resolution’?

  As he sat on the train the next day, he had an idea. He would return to his old asylum in England, walk through the wards and talk to Faverill. He would see whether the mass of lunatics looked any different to him now. He would consult his old employer, talk things through with him and measure himself against the young man who had first set out into the difficult country of madness.

  In the meantime, he would enjoy his home and his life. He had barely allowed himself to look forward to the pleasure of his return until he wired ahead from Vienna; but as the branch line left the local station and theWilhelmskogel came into view, he thought of Kitty in his arms, of Charlotte and Martha running out to meet him, of Hans bringing old wines up from the cellar, of Sonia’s reproving smile and, perhaps, since one never knew, of Pierre Valade on an unscheduled visit.

  When the cable-car lipped out at last over the summit, he clambered out, straightened himself up, stiff from all the travelling, and walked to the green front door of his house. He dropped his bags in the hall and called out Kitty’s name.

  A door banged, there were running footsteps in the corridor and he was submerged beneath his family. When the exclamations and embraces had subsided, when the gifts had been handed round and tea had been taken, Kitty said, ‘So, after you and Hannes separated at this crater place, how did you find your way back to the railway?’

  ‘We had a few adventures on the way.’

  ‘What, Papa? What happened?’

  He looked at the three female faces gazing eagerly at him. ‘Nothing really,’ he said. ‘It all went according to plan.’

  One night in the spring, Sonia and Jacques went to a concert in town. An amateur orchestra gave a programme of work by Beethoven, Mahler and Brahms in order to raise money for an orphanage. Sonia settled happily in her seat, always pleased to be in a place of public entertainment. Jacques slipped his watch from his waistcoat and calculated when they would be home; if it ran late, they would have to spend the night in a hotel because they would be unable to get back to the top of the Wilhelmskogel.

  As the pianist was working his way through the ‘Emperor’ Concerto, Jacques ran his eye along the musicians in the pit, over which their raised seats gave them a clear view. They were not the usual city orchestra, but competent amateurs, women as well as men, smartly dressed and diligent in the service of their charity. Of the three violins, one was a dark-haired woman in a black velvet dress, young, tensed, her face a little averted from Jacques as she turned the page on her music stand. Although he could see only a quarter of her profile, there was something familiar about her that made him start. She turned a little, to catch the eye of the first violin at whom she nodded and smiled, as though perhaps remarking that they had completed a difficult passage. As she did so, Jacques saw enough of her face to be certain it was Roya Mikhailova.

  His response was one of despair. He did not want her to be living in this town. When he had thought to himself how strange this reaction was, he experienced a more normal sequence of thoughts: surprise, curiosity, a frisson of guilt at the memory of her kiss.

  He could not drag his eyes from her for the remainder of the programme. She was engrossed in her playing and was clearly accomplished at what she did; at least, he heard no discordant strings, only a harmonious unison, so she must be at least as adept as the others. Yet while she concentrated, she was at the same time detached. When the violins rested, she laid down her bow and smiled at one or two of the other players; he saw her mouth a message to the cellist and put her hand across her lips to stifle a laugh. Yet as she turned the pages and saw where her entrance was marked, she resumed an attitude of obedience, raised the violin and settled it beneath her chin, flexed the bow and, at the instruction of the conductor, returned to her work, her naked shoulders, arms and hands moving with submissive concentration. For an hour, Jacques watched, his gaze never leaving her as she moved between engagement and detachment, entirely sufficient to herself. He felt a surge of infantile jealousy when she bowed meekly to the conductor’s bidding or opened her eyes wide to a colleague in a silent pleasantry.

  Afterwards, there was a reception in an upstairs room of the concert hall where the chairman of the governors of the orphanage thanked his guests and urged them to make further donations. Waiters circulated with champagne and Jacques tried to edge Sonia towards the door so they could catch the last train back. She was engaged in conversation with the pianist, however, and he could not interrupt them. He felt his sleeve being lightly tugged. He breathed in deeply before he turned and found himself looking into a pair of deep, violet-coloured eyes.

  ‘Doctor . . . Rebière, is it not?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you remember me? We—’

  ‘Yes, I remember very well. Roya Mikhailova.’ Belatedly, he took her hand. ‘Why . . . Er, what brings you to Carinthia?’

  ‘My husband.’

  ‘Your husband?’

  Roya laughed. ‘You sound so surprised. Marriage is quite a common institution, dear doctor. Conventional, you might even say.’

  ‘Yes, I know. Is he here tonight?’ He was not concentrating on what he was saying because he was looking at the colour of her skin, noting that it was still unmarked. How young must she have been when first he met her – seven, eight years ago, perhaps.

  ‘. . . his political work. And his family was originally from Carinthia, so it all fell into place quite conveniently.’

  ‘His what? Political work?’

  ‘Yes. Here he is. Let me introduce you. My husband, Hofrat Drobesch. Doctor Rebière, who runs a very famous sanatorium.’

  Jacques found himself shaking hands with a grey-haired man, with a public, smiling manner and a belly that made the tails of his white waistcoat stick out in front of him. He must, thought Jacques, have been twenty years older than his wife . . . thirty years . . . forty. It seemed impossible.

  ‘. . . I found myself most interested,’ Drobesch was saying.

  He had used the word three or four times already, Jacques noticed.

  ‘And as for the recent Serbian development,’ Drobesch said, ‘I found that I was very interested by my own reaction to it!’

  ‘How very interesting,’ said Jacques, before he could stop himself.

  Drobesch continued. ‘We must get you along one day to one of our summer symposia. I am not sure we have ever had a psychiatrist read a paper before. It’s all most agreeable. We try to bring together people from all the different disciplines – not just boring old politicians like me. We do like to spread our net a little wider, do we not, my dear? Last year, we had the most interesting time.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Roya. ‘Perhaps you would care to come and dine with us. We would be delighted to meet your wife.’

  Jacques wondered if he had imagined a sardonic sparkle in her eye.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Or perhaps you would care to call one day after you have completed your clinic.’

  ‘Most kind. I must be going now or we shall miss the last train and be stranded in the valley.’

  ‘I shall write to you with our address so you know where to come.’

  ‘Thank you. Goodnight, goodnight. Sonia! Come!’

  After Daisy and Hans’s wedding in the summer, Thomas took his family to England for a holiday. They spent a week at the seaside, then went to stay with Edgar and Lucy at Torrington. Mrs Midwinter was being nursed in her room and did not recognise Thomas when he went up to see her. She was seventy years old and was not expected to survive much longer. For almost ten years she had suffered from a form of premature senility; it had started as mere forgetfulness, but the symptoms had lately confined her to her bed. When Kitty and the girls were settled, Thomas travelled to his old asylum, where Faverill had said he would be pleased to see him; the distance was great, the train was slow and he spent a night on the way.

  The cab set him down at the main gates,
where he introduced himself to the porter and was directed to the main building. He walked slowly down the path, through the park. Nothing had changed. There was the line of elms away to the right, bordering the meadow; there were the workshops on the hill, the same gate that he and Daisy Wilkins (now Frau Eckert of Carinthia) had once climbed; and the aromatic, puffing brewery. He remembered the specimen trees – a yellowish catalpa, a copper beech – on the lawns as he passed and the great double doors of the asylum with their barred fanlight ahead of him.

  This place had entered his memory at the lowest level. It was only when he saw again the angle of certain buildings and their brickwork corners, the alleyways, lawns and arches, that he recognised them as the settings of a thousand different dreams that he had dreamed in Paris, at the schloss, in Vienna and the African bush – dreams that had taken him from late boyhood deep into middle age. Few places in a man’s life could enter so profoundly, he thought; it was almost as though the asylum had limned some earlier outline that had already been laid down in his unconscious mind.

  He could not yet face going in, so walked along the flank of the asylum, on a gravelled path; at his feet were half-windows from the basement, barred, their lower lights underground, and sometimes a ground-floor window with the same arched top as the others, but bricked in. He felt as though he was twenty-five again and might be told to book in the new arrivals; yet he also felt in some odd way an impostor who could at any moment be apprehended. He should not really be there, because he knew too much; he knew the secrets of the past. If the young staff of today could read his mind, they could not perform their jobs, because the ability to continue depended on a baseless optimism, on a wilfully blind faith.