Pilgrim Read online

  “Aren’t you going to ask me some questions? It’s getting late. I want my tub and dinner.”

  “Yes. Yes. Of course. Forgive me.”

  Doctor Furtwängler took up his pen and drew a large pad of paper towards him. “To begin,” he said, “can you tell a little something of yourself. It would be helpful.”

  “My husband is the fifteenth Marquis of Quarter-maine. His first name is Harry. There’s an e at the end of Quartermaine. Too many ignorant people drop the e. They don’t understand the French connection. Nine centuries ago, we came to England from that quarter of France known as Maine. I say we—but of course, I mean my husband’s ancestors.”

  “Of course.”

  “I was born Sybil Copland. My father was Cyril Copland—Lord Copland, who sat in the Lords longer than any of his contemporaries. He died at the age of ninety-nine when I was twelve. He fathered me in his eighty-sixth year—something of a record, I believe.”

  “More than a record—phenomenal!”

  Watching him write all this down, Sybil said: “your English is very good, Doctor Furtwängler. Are you Swiss or German? Which?”

  “Austrian, as a matter of fact, but I took my medical degrees in Edinburgh.”

  Sybil smiled. “That explains the very slight burr I detect. How charming.”

  “I was very fond of Scotland. And of England. I am a hiking enthusiast, Lady Quartermaine. During my holidays between semesters, I walked in the Lake District, Wiltshire and Cambridgeshire. Wonderful. You are familiar with these areas?”

  “Very much so, yes. All my brothers and my husband attended King’s College at Cambridge. The countryside is a very heaven.”

  “And Mister Pilgrim?”

  “He took his education at Oxford. Magdalen College. I pity him.” She smiled.

  “Pity him?”

  “Yes. In England we call such a comment ironic, Doctor. I meant it only as a joke. In an amused way, the students at one university tend to think of the students at any other as being under-privileged.”

  “I see.” Furtwängler looked down at his notes. “And Mister Pilgrim—he is an art historian.”

  “Yes. Which is one of the bonds between us. My brother Symes was also an art historian.”

  “Was?”

  “Yes. He…” Her gaze drifted.

  Furtwängler watched her.

  “You need not tell me.”

  “No, no. I will. It’s just…” She closed her eyes and fumbled with one of her gloves until it lay against her cheek, in the way that a sympathetic friend might have done with her hand. “He committed suicide and now, with Mister Pilgrim’s attempt, it seems that Symes has come back to haunt me.”

  She opened her eyes and laid the glove beside its mate, fishing afterwards for a handkerchief in her handbag. Doing this, she regained her composure and spoke efficiently.

  “Symes Copland was my younger brother. He had only just turned thirty when he died. That was in 1901. September. He had been involved with creating the Tate Gallery, you see. It had only just opened its doors. The strain of his efforts…he loved it so. He was almost too devoted. Enslaved, you might say. But who could tell? He was too damned good at hiding his emotions.” She paused. “Forgive me, but his death still makes me angry. Such a sad, unnecessary waste.”

  “Clearly, he meant a great deal to you.”

  “Yes. As children, we were inseparable. The proximity of our ages, I suppose. I felt like his guardian. And then, somehow, I failed him.”

  “No one’s suicide is anyone else’s fault, Lady Quart ermaine.”

  “I find that very hard to believe.”

  “Nonetheless, you must try to be reconciled to it. It was his life to take. You did not kill him. He killed himself.”

  “Yes.” Sybil looked away.

  “Were Mister Pilgrim and your brother colleagues?”

  “No. Symes was an expert in the field of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century art exclusively. Pilgrim…Mister Pilgrim’s range is wider.”

  “I see. And his name, Lady Quartermaine? Why have we been given no first name?”

  “He maintains he hasn’t got one.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. And however strange that might be, it is something I have learned to accept without question. There is much I know about him. There is also much I do not know.”

  “Did you meet him through your brother?”

  “No. We were friends already, from earlier, younger times.”

  “Have you children, Lady Quartermaine?”

  “Yes. I have five. Two young men, two young women and a girl.”

  There was a pause. Sybil Quartermaine looked up.

  “You are staring at me, Herr Doktor.”

  “Yes. Forgive me.”

  “Why? For what reason?”

  Furtwängler glanced down at the page before him.

  “In my eyes,” he said, “you do not appear to be old enough to have young men as sons—young women as daughters.”

  “Is that all!” She laughed. “I don’t mind telling you in the least. I’m forty-four years old. My eldest child is twenty. Surely that’s not too amazing. His name is David and—I must be frank—I don’t really care for him.” She blinked. “My goodness—why did I tell you that?”

  “You are under a good deal of strain, Lady Quartermaine. Things slip out, unintended, under such conditions.”

  “Yes. I suppose.”

  “Has Mister Pilgrim other friends besides yourself?”

  “Some. Yes. A few. And many, many acquaintances—one or two of them relatively close. Most of them men.”

  “I see.”

  There was another pause.

  “Well? What else?”

  “Did he specifically ask for you, after the suicide attempt?”

  “No. I had been there the night before and was concerned. He had seemed distracted—lost in some way. Vague. And more than vague—he was unable to converse coherently. Not like one who is drunk—not like that at all—but someone who had lost the thread of his own words even as he spoke them. It occurred to me that he might have suffered a mild stroke. It was like that. And then, instead of saying good night in the usual fashion, with kisses on either cheek—he took my hand and held it very tight and said goodbye. Not like him at all. So I went round early. As you will see in the physicians’ reports I’ve provided, before I arrived he had been declared dead. But—also before I arrived—he had begun to show signs of life and the physicians involved were called back. They were still there with him, so I simply waited.”

  “And…?”

  “And stayed with him all that week. In fact, I went home only to pack my things and collect my maid in order to make this journey.”

  Silence. Furtwängler made a careful adjustment to the pattern of objects on his desk.

  “Lady Quartermaine…” He leaned forward above his notes. “There is something I must make clear at the outset.”

  Sybil watched him, impassive.

  “After our initial telephone conversation, I did indeed speak with…” He glanced down at the papers before him. “Doctor Greene, I believe?”

  Sybil nodded.

  “And so I am aware of the apparently extraordinary nature of Mister Pilgrim’s recovery from the trauma of his attempted suicide. My mandate, however, is not to investigate the circumstances of that attempt nor of the physical recovery from it. The sole purposes of any work to be done by me or by any of my colleagues shall be to determine, first, why he has wished to end his life—and second, how to reawaken his willingness to live. No.” He raised his hand, as if to forestall any comment. “How to reawaken his will to live.”

  Sybil waited only a moment before speaking. “Have no fear, Doctor Furtwängler. That is precisely why I have chosen to bring Mister Pilgrim to the Burghölzli. To reawaken his will to live.”

  “Excellent.” He leaned back. “Now. You say you were concerned about his erratic behaviour the night before. Does this mean you had expe
rienced such behaviour before?”

  “To some degree, I suppose. He goes through periods when he…” She considered the next word carefully and then said: “when he drifts.”

  “Drifts?”

  “Yes. Goes off. Away.”

  “Have such periods in the past preceded his other suicide attempts?”

  Sybil said: “really, Doctor, you surprise me. I am shocked. What other suicide attempts?”

  “You mean that you are unaware he has done this before?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You know nothing?”

  There was the briefest hesitation before she spoke again. “No,” she said. “Nothing.”

  Doctor Furtwängler made an unobtrusive note beside her name. Sie lügt is what he had written. She is lying. Then: warum?

  Why?

  4

  Pilgrim’s quarters, it turned out, were on the third floor. He rode up with Kessler in an ornate glass elevator with openwork brass fittings. Beyond the glass, he could see the curving marble staircase that surrounded them not unlike a corkscrew. Its banisters were made of some dark wood he could not identify.

  In the elevator there was an operator of indeterminate age. He wore a green uniform without a cap and he sat on a fold-down wooden seat, running the lift with a handle projecting from a wheel. His shoes were so highly polished they gave off light, and his hands were encased in white cotton gloves. There was absolutely no expression on his face the whole way up. He did not speak to Kessler. Nor did Kessler speak to him.

  On arrival at the third floor, Pilgrim hung back.

  The brass accordion gate stood open. Kessler moved forward and, turning, said from the marble landing: “you may come. All is well.”

  He held out his hand.

  The operator still had not risen from his seat. He sat there, leaning slightly forward in order to hold the gate in place, his other hand folded in his lap.

  “Mister Pilgrim?” Kessler smiled.

  Pilgrim glanced at the orderly’s extended hand and seemed to regard it not as a signal to proceed, but a warning—or perhaps a barrier.

  “You have nothing to fear,” Kessler said. “You are home.”

  No sooner was Pilgrim standing on the landing than the metal gate snapped shut behind him. When he turned to look, the operator’s still-expressionless face was disappearing below the marbled edge at Pilgrim’s feet.

  Kessler guided him towards the corridor, where a seamless carpet rolled away into the distance between an avenue of doors.

  The carpet, with gold-threaded edges, was a deep maroon in colour. No pattern. All the doors along the way were shut, though light was filtered into the hallway through open transoms.

  A long way off—or so it seemed—an old woman wrapped in a sheet stood watching them. Beyond her, a pale white light made an aureole about her figure.

  “You are fortunate, Mister Pilgrim,” Kessler said. “You will be in Suite number 306. It has a superior view.”

  He started off—came back—collected Pilgrim and, guiding him once again by the elbow, led him along the silencing carpet.

  The woman did not move. Whether she was watching them was not quite clear. Her eyes could not be seen.

  Suite number 306 had a tall white door, transom closed.

  Kessler led the way—through the vestibule to a second door and thus into a sitting-room that was more in the nature of what a hotel might offer. Nothing visible of a clinic. Between the windows there was an alcove fitted with an ornate desk and there were tables, chairs and carpets—the chairs wicker, with cushions. The carpets were ersatz Turkish—not expensive, but effective. Blue and red and yellow—the final threads undone, unfinished—ersatz dreams included free of charge.

  Kessler ushered his patient through to the bedroom.

  Pilgrim’s steamer trunk stood in the middle of the floor. His suitcases—two of them—sat unopened on the bed. They had all been delivered from the station during the time that coffee was being served.

  Both the windows were shuttered on the inside. “Against the wind,” Kessler explained. “There is a storm just now, but you will be safe in here and warm.” He was moving about the room, turning on lamps. “Here, as you see, is your bathroom. Everything just the same as if you were at home…”

  Pilgrim was paying no attention. He was standing beside the steamer trunk, using it—so it seemed—as a means of remaining upright. He gripped its edge with his left hand and stared about him.

  “Why not sit down, Mister Pilgrim?” said Kessler. “Here, I will bring you this chair.”

  He carried it to where his patient wavered beside the trunk. “There you are then.”

  Kessler lowered Pilgrim into the chair, but even so, Pilgrim would not let go of the trunk.

  “You cannot want to hold it so, Mister Pilgrim. Please, you must let it go.”

  Pilgrim held fast.

  Kessler reached out and gently, finger by finger, pried the hand free and laid it with the other in Pilgrim’s lap.

  At the door to the bedroom, a voice said: “have you come for me?”

  It was the woman wrapped in the sheet. She walked straight in and up to Pilgrim, staring at him. “You must have come for me,” she said, “or you would not be in my room.”

  Her voice was barely audible. Her tone was not accusatory. In fact, there was little inflection at all.

  For the briefest moment, the woman and Pilgrim remained face to face, but it seemed he did not see her. She was not so old as she had appeared in the distance down the corridor. Thirty or thirty-five at the most. Her face was quite unlined, though its colouring was sallow. Under her eyes she might have fingered some kohl, the shadows were so profound. Her hair was completely undone and wet as if it had just been washed.

  Kessler said to her: “please, Countess, you do not belong in here.”

  “But this is my suite,” the woman said. Her English was perfect—her accent, Russian. “I have been waiting all these years for him, and now—you see? He knew exactly where to find me.”

  “No, Madame. No. I will take you home. Come with me.”

  “But…”

  “Come with me.”

  Kessler led the woman to the door and beyond it through the sitting-room and vestibule into the corridor. All the while she protested that number 306 was where she belonged and that Pilgrim had arrived expressly and only in her behalf. “We have met before,” she said, “in a blizzard on the Moon.”

  Kessler did not protest. He knew the Countess Blavinskeya. She had been a famous ballerina and was sometimes his responsibility—a source of consternation to others, though not to him. She believed that she lived on the Moon and was the subject of many arguments amongst the doctors. Some, including Doctor Furtwängler, wanted her “returned to earth,” claiming Blavinskeya would never recover her mental stability unless she was forced to confront reality. Countering this was the argument that Blavinskeya suffered from “an excess of reality” and could barely function in what most people understood to be the real world. “If her survival depends on her belief that she belongs on the Moon, then we must reconcile ourselves to her reality, not she to ours.” This latter argument was so astonishing that those who propounded it—and there were few enough of them—were considered to be renegade and contra-science. Privately, Furtwängler called them mad and complained that if they had their way in her behalf, it would be tantamount to handing the Countess over to the madness that drove her.

  Kessler did not care, either way. The “Moon” and Suite 319, where Blavinskeya was housed, were synonymous. He himself would say: I am going to the Moon when it was his responsibility to get her through the day. She was exquisite—childlike—eternally innocent. To be with her even briefly was to be returned to those moments in childhood when every blade of grass is a revelation. The Moon need only be reached for to be achieved.

  Pilgrim sat transfixed.

  He could see his hands. They lay where Kessler had left them, twisted, staring up at him,
palms as pale as plates.

  He might as well have closed his eyes. He could not see outwards, only inwards. The room he sat in was nothing more nor less than a box—a floor, a ceiling, walls. The windows, shuttered, had no function. They were merely oblong shapes. The lamps and the light they shed were like portholes. Perhaps the sea lay beyond them, moonlit and wavering. Portholes. Moonlight. Water.

  In his mind the troubling news was given that the ship he was on was sinking. At any moment, the walls might tilt and spill the contents of the room towards him. The bed was a lifeboat—the table an upturned raft—the carpet, matted seaweed. The chairs were his fellow passengers—bulging with life preservers—floating upside down.

  All of this had happened on the night of April 15th, two days before he had hanged himself. He knew that. He had read it and he remembered. The ocean liner Titanic had struck an iceberg and sunk. Fifteen hundred persons had died. And he had lived. It wasn’t just—that so many had been granted his most fervent wish. It wasn’t just—that death was so generous to others.

  He sat and waited—listening.

  I am a voyager, he thought. I was going somewhere, but I have been denied my destination.

  The wind rose beyond the windows.

  Pilgrim’s eyes shifted.

  Someone stood beside him.

  “Mister Pilgrim?”

  It was Kessler.

  Pilgrim did not move.

  “Are you hungry?”

  Hungry?

  Kessler waved his hand before the staring eyes.

  Nothing. Not a flicker.

  Kessler retreated to the bed. He would unpack the suitcases. Then he would attempt the trunk. At any moment Doctor Furtwängler must arrive. And Lady Quartermaine would come to say goodbye. Instructions would be given. Perhaps some medication.

  Shirts. Underclothing. Socks…

  Handkerchiefs. Monograms. P for Pilgrim.

  Kessler eyed the seated figure, its uncombed hair a windblown halo. The wings were folded now—the shoulders drooping forward, the neck engulfed in tartan scarves.