Pilgrim Read online

  The door closed.

  Pilgrim’s hands reached up from his lap and gripped the arms of the Bath chair.

  He shook.

  His lips parted.

  He spoke.

  “The sky,” he said.

  And then again: “the sky.”

  He shaded his eyes and gazed at the sun.

  The sun would cure him.

  If he was truly snow—he would melt.

  18

  “Carl Gustav?”

  It was Furtwängler.

  “Yes, Josef.”

  Furtwängler had seen Jung’s back as he closed the door to Pilgrim’s rooms and started away down the corridor.

  “Wait for me one moment.” Furtwängler hurried forward.

  Jung prepared himself for the worst—another of Josef’s icy tirades, another of his paranoid accusations.

  “So,” Furtwängler said, “you have again managed to steal one of my patients.”

  Here we go, Jung thought. “Yes,” he said. “But I wouldn’t call it theft.”

  “What would you call it, then?”

  “Acceptance of a professional assignment. As usual, I was asked to say yes or no. I said yes.”

  “Not the usual. This time you pulled strings. Bleuler had me in his office this morning at 8:30. He said that you were to take over Pilgrim’s case—not because he thought it best, but because Lady Quarter-maine insisted. But at least he had the decency to apologize.”

  “Do you want an apology from me, Josef? It’s yours and I give it freely.”

  They came to the stairs and started down.

  “I do not accept it,” said Furtwängler. “If I thought for one second it was sincere, I would. But I know you too well, Carl Gustav. You have connived in this. You have connived and inveigled and undermined my position. And you did this by going directly to Lady Quartermaine in order to have me removed.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “You were seen taking lunch with her yesterday. And last evening, so I am told, she paid a personal call on the Director and apparently convinced him in a single sitting that my diagnosis and treatment of Mister Pilgrim were inappropriate and unacceptable. Inappropriate and unacceptable! What can I possibly have done to deserve this sort of criticism?”

  “You misread your patient.”

  “I did not misread him! How can you say that?”

  They had reached the landing and had to fall silent and step aside in order to let two ascending nurses pass. Smiles and nods of pleasure all round. It must not be apparent to staff that an argument was taking place. Not, at least, until it had been settled.

  After a moment of silence, Jung spoke without stepping down from the landing. “Yes,” he said. “I had lunch with Lady Quartermaine yesterday. At her instigation, not mine. I did nothing to facilitate this transfer,” he lied. “Nothing.” Then he moved on down the stairs.

  Furtwängler, who at all costs could not bear to lose face or to appear at a disadvantage, resisted the temptation to hurry down after him. Instead, he came down as if he expected a welcoming party to greet him at the bottom.

  “I must say, Carl Gustav, you do this sort of thing very well,” he said icily.

  “What sort of thing?”

  “Placing knives in people’s backs and then behaving as though they had somehow managed to reach round and stab themselves.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way, Josef. I was hoping—and I should tell you, Lady Quartermaine herself was rather hoping—that you would continue on with this case as primary consultant.”

  They were now in the foyer, which was streaming with sunlight. A number of patients, their relatives, orderlies and nurses were going in to an early lunch. It was the first of May and someone had placed several pots of forced bulbs on the reception desk—hyacinths, paperwhites and jonquils—whose colours and whose scent were a welcome foretaste of the season waiting to burgeon beyond the doors.

  Furtwängler momentarily was at a loss for words. Then he said: “was that a sincere offer of reconciliation?”

  “Of course it was,” said Jung—smiling.

  “It’s only been a week, now, since he was admitted—but I’ve become quite attached to him. Pilgrim. So much has happened in that time—I’m intrigued by his case and I really would hate to lose contact with it altogether.”

  “And you needn’t. No need at all.”

  Furtwängler gave a hesitant smile. “Well, then,” he said. “In that case, I wish you the best of luck with him.”

  Jung gave a mock bow. “Thank you,” he said.

  They stood there, neither one quite certain whether the subject was closed or if there was more to be said. Then Furtwängler—as usual when he needed time to think—took out his handkerchief and began to polish a pair of spectacles which he kept in his pocket, purely to give him a certain cachet—the insignia of an intellectual.

  “You were with Mister Pilgrim just now,” he finally said. “How did you find him? I must tell you, I spent an hour with him yesterday afternoon and I have never witnessed a man with so much anguish in his gaze.”

  “Yes. I agree,” said Jung. “And, this morning, nothing has changed. He said nothing. Moved his hands thus…” he demonstrated “…and stared at the mountains. He fixes the distance with something approaching fanaticism, you know—as if he expected someone out there to speak to him. So, I’m trying a ploy. I spoke with him at fairly great length, mostly about the view from the window, the snow—and Leonardo da Vinci. And I sense, having reread his book, that my best chance of persuading him to communicate lies somewhere in the subject of da Vinci. I want to provoke an argument in him. See if I can upset him sufficiently to force him to speak. But I have also told him I will not return until he asks for me.”

  “Isn’t that risky?”

  “Perhaps. But I know he wants to speak. What prevents him—God alone knows. He has the motor capacity for speech. There has been no stroke or other impediment. His health is sound, though he rarely eats and never sleeps. He seems to have the constitution of a warhorse.”

  Furtwängler returned his spectacles to their pocket and began to fold his handkerchief.

  “Josef,” said Jung. “I am going to ask a favour of you.”

  “Ah, me. I don’t like the sound of this,” Furt-wängler said. “But go ahead. Ask.”

  “I want you not to see Mister Pilgrim for a day or two. I want to turn the screws on his need to speak. He will not speak to Kessler. Certainly, he’s not about to say to Kessler what he wants to transmit to me or to you. And I insist that it be me. I’m sorry, but I hope you will understand.”

  Furtwängler gave a pale, unrehearsed smile—a hopeless smile. “One day, Carl Gustav,” he said, “you will run this clinic. And when that happens, I am not sure I want to be here.”

  “Now you are angry again.”

  “Yes. I want some part of Pilgrim for myself, as you promised. As principal consultant, I must have contact.”

  “For two days, Josef. Two days only. Then we will share him.”

  Furtwängler looked away.

  “Science comes first,” he said. “Science comes first or the patient is lost entirely.”

  “Nonsense,” said Jung. “The patient comes first.”

  “As you say. But I have to tell you that, in my opinion, you have already failed the agreement we came to on this matter only moments ago. Failed it utterly. Good day to you.”

  Furtwängler turned on his heel and walked away.

  Watching him, Jung thought: well, that’s too bad, but at least it gets him off my back.

  As he began to walk towards his office, he also began to hum the tune of Tales From the Vienna Woods—and soon discovered that he was dancing.

  19

  By eleven o’clock that night, Kessler had persuaded Pilgrim to retire. The Bath chair had been sequestered in a corner and Pilgrim was in his bed.

  It had become Kessler’s habit to sleep on a small iron cot at the far end of the s
itting-room—the cot being a foldaway which he hid behind the armoire by day. He turned out all the lamps but one on a distant table whose glow was quite sufficient, should there be an emergency, but not so strong as to prevent sleep.

  “Good night, Mister Pilgrim,” he said before climbing fully clothed beneath his blanket. But there was no reply.

  Of course there is no reply, Kessler thought bitterly, kicking off his shoes. His silence is going to last till doomsday.

  At midnight, Kessler heard the clock strike twelve, but he was on the verge of dreams and only counted off the strokes the way some others count sheep.

  By two in the morning, Kessler was fully asleep.

  “You there?” a voice said.

  A dream voice?

  “Are you there, man?”

  No. Not a dream voice. Wake up.

  Kessler struggled to his elbows and listened.

  “Speak. Are you there?”

  Kessler had never heard Pilgrim’s voice. It might as well have belonged to a stranger.

  He stood up and fumbled his way to the bedside.

  “Mister Pilgrim?”

  “Is someone there? A doctor?”

  Kessler turned on the bedside lamp.

  “Mister Pilgrim?”

  Pilgrim was facing away from him.

  “Mister Pilgrim?”

  There was no reply.

  Kessler did not want to chance startling him, and so before he spoke again, he went around to the other side of the bed where he could be seen.

  “Are you awake?” he said.

  Still there was no answer. Nor was it clear from Pilgrim’s posture what state he was in. To Kessler, however, it seemed unlikely that he was awake. There were no motor reactions—except the barely visible fact that he was breathing.

  Kessler went to the desk and made a note in German: speech commenced at roughly 2:05 a.m. After this, he sat down with his forearm across the page upon which he had written, the pen still uncapped in his other hand. He waited.

  “Speak, Mister Pilgrim,” he finally said. “Speak again.”

  Nothing was forthcoming.

  Kessler looked at the clock on the desk and turned back to the page. Speech ceased at roughly 2:14 a.m., he wrote. Then he capped the pen, turned out the light and sat in the dark.

  While everyone else deserts him, he thought, I stay. It is me who stays by his side—not Doctor Jung—not Doctor Furtwängler—not his friend Lady Quartermaine. It is me who sits here. I am his watchman. I am his guardian. I am his protector—but they will take the credit. To them, I am nothing more than his keeper. Yet it will be me—I—me that knows him best when he is ready for recovery. Not the others—not his doctors—but me, who stayed with him through the night.

  There was a snore from the bed. Deep sleep.

  Kessler rose and returned to his cot.

  He was tired. It was impossible to stay awake for one more second. He listened for the sound of wings—and when it commenced, as it always did prior to sleep, he slept.

  20

  In the morning, when Jung heard that Pilgrim had spoken in his sleep, he asked Kessler to find a cot like his own and set it up at the foot of Pilgrim’s bed.

  “I shall stay here tonight,” he said, “and we shall hope that he speaks again.” In the sitting-room, out of Pilgrim’s hearing, Jung then asked: “are you certain he asked for me?”

  “Not by name,” Kessler told him. “No. But he did say doctor. He said: is someone there? A doctor? But no name.”

  Jung was just as glad. It allowed him some leeway not to have a name for the moment. Pilgrim, after all, could have meant any doctor—Greene or Hammond or anyone. Though Jung had told him his name, Pilgrim had never uttered it. Therefore there was no proof the name had even registered. And to have the wrong name could bring this chance of communication to a close—whereas, he could stand in for anyone, so long as he remained anonymous.

  Throughout the day, Pilgrim was kept distracted by a visit to the baths while two junior interns set up the prescribed cot for Jung and prepared its covers. When Pilgrim returned, still in his robe, he lay down on the cot as if it had been provided for his own use and slept there through the afternoon.

  At 7:00 p.m. he awakened, ate a light meal of scrambled eggs and retired to his own bed. He still did not speak. In fact, he had barely seemed to be awake as he had eaten, although he did take up his napkin and return it to its place when he had finished. All this movement was still in the automatic mode.

  It was not until the moon had risen, now in its final quarter, that Jung arrived at the door of Suite 306 and knocked lightly for admittance.

  “Is he asleep?” he asked.

  “Yessir.”

  “Good.”

  In the bedroom, Jung unpacked a pair of pyjamas, a robe, a pair of slippers, a notebook and a bottle of brandy.

  “That will be all, Kessler,” he said. “I shall bed down now and ask you to do the same. If I need you, I will call you.”

  “Yessir.”

  Suite 306 had become a military encampment—or so it seemed to Kessler. He felt an irresistible urge to click his heels and bob in Jung’s direction. Though he managed not to do so in the doctor’s presence, he did click his heels very lightly as he half closed the door between them.

  Jung retired to the bathroom, where he removed his clothes and exchanged them for pyjamas and slippers. He brushed his teeth, used the toilet and washed his hands. Then he folded his clothes and carried them into the bedroom, where he laid them on a chair. He set his shoes side by side beneath his cot and turned the covers back. He had not slept alone for so long that the sight of the empty sheets almost unnerved him, until he smiled and thought: this will be no different than sleeping in the barracks once a year during service—when a hundred empty beds lie in wait for a hundred married men, all dragged away from their homes and their wives. What a dreary time that always is, having to get through the dark with ninety-nine men around you all fingering themselves until they sigh themselves to sleep…

  Before turning out the lamp on the desk, Jung poured himself a modicum of brandy and stood there watching his patient.

  “Speak,” he whispered—and threw back the drink. “And pray God I wake to hear you.”

  Then he pressed the light switch and climbed beneath the covers.

  It was 11:30.

  Somewhere, a bell rang that told him so.

  At 4:00 a.m. Pilgrim spoke.

  Jung awoke and waited.

  There was a spill of pale light from the sitting-room, where Kessler as always kept one lamp active in case of need.

  “Is someone there?”

  Jung slid his legs from beneath the covers and fumbled for his slippers.

  “Yes,” he said. “I am here.”

  “Who are you?”

  “A friend.”

  Jung went to Pilgrim’s bedside and turned on the light.

  Pilgrim seemed to be asleep, but he spoke again.

  “Give me a pen,” he said.

  Jung knew better than to question anything the voice asked. It might well be that Pilgrim was a medium. Jung had heard many such voices in the past—dead sounding and distanced from their speakers because they belonged to someone else.

  It had been during his researches into spiritualism—a subject abandoned while he pursued his interest in schizophrenia. Men had spoken as women—women had spoken as men—foreign languages had emerged from the mouths of people who could barely speak their own. And this voice had that same disembodied sound to it—the voice of another, rising from another source.

  And yet, to date in Jung’s observation of Pilgrim, nothing had indicated he was possessed, as folklore would have it. Nothing had indicated he was a medium—a seer—a “speaker.” He had seemed to be entirely himself, however remote and damaged.

  Jung retrieved his own pen and notebook from the desk top and took them back into the light. He placed the pen in Pilgrim’s fingers and offered him the paper.

&n
bsp; The pen fell onto the coverlet. The fingers seemed unable to hold it.

  “Write,” said the voice.

  Jung returned to the desk and sat.

  Pilgrim’s back was to him—his own back, of necessity, turned towards the bed. He poured a generous portion of brandy, uncapped the pen and smoothed his notebook, open at an empty page.

  “Yes,” he said, barely raising his voice, “I am ready. I shall write.”

  There was a long sigh as Pilgrim rolled onto his back. If Jung had turned to regard him, he would have seen one hand and one bandaged wrist lying in place across the eyes. And he would have seen the other hand palm up on the covers—fisted, its bandaged wrist seeping blood.

  “There is a chair,” the voice said, “turned towards the windows. The chair has lion’s feet, some carving and a cushioned seat. In it, a young man is lying back as though asleep. He is naked—little more than a boy, but nonetheless mature. There is hair beneath his arms and at his groin. One arm has been laid as if to shade his eyes. The other arm hangs down along his leg. Someone…”

  Jung stopped writing and waited.

  Pilgrim gave a sigh of frustration.

  “Someone I cannot see is…”

  Nothing.

  Silence.

  Another sigh—and then: “there is a piece of paper. A page turned back in a notebook—the notebook wide and thick, stitched by hand and bound in leather. And…”

  Yes?

  “On the paper—on the page—there is a drawing. I can see this drawing even as it is made. The drawing and the hand that makes it—but nothing else, as though the hand were mine—or perhaps I am standing behind the arm and its hand as they draw…”

  Yes?

  “Lit—but not by sunlight. Northern light—diffused. Perhaps deliberate diffusion—a masking, a shrouding somehow of light—but good light—ample light—sufficient. And the drawing shows the young man’s figure. But he is incomplete. He has no face. And then…”

  Yes?

  “And then…”

  Yes?

  Jung waited—pen poised.

  “The face begins to draw itself. It draws itself. No fingers—hand—no arm to guide the…what? The crayon…No hand to guide the crayon and the face begins to draw itself…Oh, God…”