Human Traces (39 page)

to me that a hereditary predisposition to the disease must be closely allied in whatever microscopic way these things are transmitted from one generation to the next to something that is advantageous, connected in fact to something which by definition must be overwhelmingly advantageous to the development of the human. The more terrible the drawback, the more important must be the related advantage for the disease to have survived at that consistent level." "That is certainly logical." "What I am saying is that it is like a misprint. It is a mistake which serves no purpose. But the capacity to misprint is the minor price you pay for literature." "I don't quite follow' "It doesn't mean that there is something fundamentally wrong with the process of thinking, writing, printing or reading the sequence that comprises literature. It is a sequence so magnificent that misprints have been perpetuated tolerated. Because they are an organic and inseparable part of the greater good. Because you simply cannot have literature without misprints. And it is still a price worth paying. If misprints were somehow taken out of the mixture, you would risk losing literature too. You might throw out the baby, humanity, with the bathwater, dementia." "A very unfortunate choice of words in the circumstances," said Kitty with her hand on her belly. "I am sorry." "So what you are saying is that the capacity to be mad in this way is somehow close to the very thing that made us human in the first place." "Exactly. It is something my old employer Dr. Faverill first mentioned to me. But of course I should have to be able to prove that the incidence of the illness really is stable throughout the world and has survived the selective pressure of all different environments. And that I cannot do though oddly enough it would not present any great scientific difficulty. It is just that the task of organising and collecting the data would take so long. And people would have to agree a precise diagnosis of the illness which, knowing doctors, would be difficult." "But how would that prove that it is as fundamental as you say? If there are as many people with it in Japan as in Brazil?" "Because if it was both universally spread and indifferent to the pressures of natural selection then it must have been endemic in the first humans who came out of Africa. It would suggest that it was related to whatever transmutation took place in Africa that first turned pre-humans into Homo sapiens! "But you cannot prove it, Thomas." Thomas laughed. "No. I cannot. At heart, I am only a scholar of Shakespeare, though I am perfectly sure, as a matter of fact, that Shakespeare recognised and described this illness in several characters. You see it also in the Bible. Think of John the Baptist naked, raving, hearing voices, eating insects. I have treated a hundred such men You could argue that in the times referred to by Homer it was in fact more widespread, because almost everyone seemed to hear voices. But we don't know when that time was, and the voice-hearing could be a literary invention rather than a literal fact." "But what does this mean for your work now?" Thomas sighed. "You are very practical, Kitty. It means that Franz and I will go on looking at pieces of brain tissue beneath our microscope in the hope of finding something. We shall try to find out more about the mechanics of heredity, the nature of which eluded even Mr. Darwin." "I thought we believed in him," said Kitty. "We think he was right about natural selection as the engine of evolution. But he thought that the characteristics of the offspring were transmitted by a "blending" of the characteristics of the parents, and he was wrong about that." "How do we know?" "Because if you fully transfuse the blood of a white rabbit into that of a brown rabbit, it still has brown offspring. A man called Galton did it. So the nature of the brown rabbit's offspring is not altered by anything that happens to it. If you cut off its tail, its offspring will still be born with tails unless it mated with a naturally tailless species, of course. And then you would not get half-tails. You would get either one or the other." "And what then does determine exactly what the offspring inherits?" "Nobody knows. Though gardeners and livestock breeders have always had their theories." "So Mr. Darwin was right about one thing and wrong about another." "Yes. That is the nature of science. Mr. Galton is right about this, but he was wrong in thinking that all murderers have square jaws or that adulterers have high foreheads. Though that theory was quite popular when I worked in the asylum." "And does that apply to you as well, my love? That you will not get everything right?" "Yes. The two-steps-forward-one-step-back law of scientific discovery will take care of that. And the limits of the human mind." "And are you right about your theory of the man beneath the chestnut tree?" "I am probably right about some parts and wrong about others. But I will persist in thinking in this way, because even if Franz and I don't find the lesion or the particle beneath the stain, even if we don't find a medicine that soothes these patients, it may be helpful to think about them in this way, to see their illness in the longest human perspective. It might help us, at the very least, in our efforts to be kind to them." Kitty's twins were born on February 24th. A girl arrived at nine in the morning purple, slight, with dark hair and swollen genitals; then half an hour later, distressed by the umbilicus tight round the neck, quickly freed by Frau Holzer, a second girl. Thomas had given Kitty a powder to dull the pain at the onset, but she waved him away as the labour progressed and he left her with the midwife while he went for a walk by the lake. He knelt down by the small landing stage, concealing himself from any inquisitive eyes that might be turned on him from the schloss, and offered an awkward prayer to whatever deity might be allowed to exist in the interstices of Mr. Darwin's theory, Mr. Wallace's more theistic al variations and in his own child-memory of the Bible and its literary grandeur. He began with many scientific qualifications and apologies to the divinity whose existence he could not logically concede, but ended with a tearful plea to the God of his fathers: please spare my wife and our children and I will always believe in You. He was anxious that, if Kitty's heart had been weakened by rheumatic fever, the birth of twins might strain it, but when he returned in mid-morning, he found her sitting up in bed, washed, tidy and smiling, with a twin at each breast. He sat with her until noon, when Sonia and Daniel came to visit. Thomas felt as though he had been singled out among all men for some enormous, inexplicable and undeserved good fortune; as though after almost forty years of unrequited prayers, each of his desires, including many of which he was unaware, had been granted all at once. Why me? he thought as wandered in a daze through the main hall of the schloss. The fountain sang to him in the courtyard. The snow on the distant peaks flashed messages in the winter sun. The madmen in the gardens muttered and gambolled to a tune whose unheard melody was surely part of a benign universal harmony. Daisy came running up from the North Hall, her wooden shoes sounding on the cobbles, and threw herself onto him. The wind whipped the snowdrops on the bank into a flurry of white felicitation. He heard Mary's stick tap-tapping at an urgent pace over the terra cotta floors of the open section of the first-floor gallery; and in a minute she too was hugging him. He walked on towards the stables, Daisy on one arm and Mary on the other, to tell Josef and Hans of his astonishing fortune, readying his modesty for the onslaught of their congratulations. In the afternoon, Pierre Valade arrived for one of his twice-yearly but still unannounced visits. "It could not be better timing," said Thomas. "I shall put you in the green room." "Tonight," said Valade,"we shall celebrate. I suppose you would have preferred boys, but never mind. Nature cannot be helped. We can still have champagne." "I can," said Thomas. "But you can only have some if you concede that my daughters are not only far better than any boys but also the most beautiful children ever born." "I shall go at once to your wife's room to see for myself Thomas spent the afternoon with Kitty, in the course of which they discussed names. They began with the idea of something Carinthian, and tried out Andrea, Use, Fanny, Ulrike and Claudia, but could not agree on any of them; in the end they settled on Martha, which was almost the local Marta, and since the girls were in any case three quarters English Charlotte. Martha was the first born and Charlotte the younger; they appeared to be identical, but Thomas pointed out that all babies look much the same. Kitty, though tired and with a spot of fever in her cheeks, had suffered no ill effects. That evening, Thomas ate in the main dining room with Sonia, Jacques and Pierre Valade. He distributed champagne to all the patients so they could drink to the health of his daughters, and after dinner Valade insisted on bringing brandy and more champagne to his rooms in the South Court, where they closed all the intervening doors for fear of waking the girls. Thomas went to bed at last in a spare room not far from where Kitty was sleeping with the twins. In the middle of the night he was awoken by a terrible screaming. "Thomas!" It was Kitty's voice. "Thomas! Thomas!" He threw himself out of bed and ran down the corridor. She had rolled over and suffocated one of the twins... He had never heard panic like this before. They had been savaged by a wolf... Both were dead... The bedroom door rebounded against the wall as he burst into her room. "What is it? What is it?" Kitty stirred sleepily in the depths of their large bed. "What?" "What is it? Why were you screaming?" "I didn't scream, I was asleep." "What?" "I was asleep until you came in." "And the girls? Are they all right?" "Look." They were both asleep, wrapped tight and peaceful, lying in wicker baskets by the side of the bed. "But... But you called." "No, I didn't. Everything is fine, my love. Now go back to bed." "All right." He leaned over the bed to kiss her. "But I did hear you." Valade was thrilled by the proposed railway, for which he took the credit, since it was he who had first seen the magazine article about Mount Lowe, and he appointed himself draughts man to the project. He and Thomas went by mule to the summit of the Wilhelmskogel and inspected the widow's buildings. They had clearly once comprised a tiny village, from which a church with double bell tower and onion-dome spire survived. On its west wall were faded outdoor frescoes, punished by the wind and altitude, but still with recognisable Biblical figures in sandy orange and blue. The main house was in the local style, dilapidated despite its extra wooden weatherboarding; there were two farms and a dozen smaller dwellings, some of which had collapsed beyond repair. Valade sat down and took out his sketch pad. Within an hour he had produced an impression of what the new schloss might look like: half a dozen satellite buildings ranged about the main house, which he had extended to include a walled courtyard and a shallow stream. He had notion ally laid down a large area to grass among the existing trees, with walkways, pergolas and secret gardens. "You should have roses here, though of course I don't know what will survive this high up," he said. "And your kitchen gardens will need sun, so they had better be on the south side, down a little and out of the wind. You should keep the structure of the main house if you can. It is rather fine if you like Carinthian vernacular." "A complete world," said Thomas. "And the wonderful thing is that when the cable-car is built and the railway spur is running, you could be in the middle of town in little more than half an hour. So we would be apart and above, but not isolated. I shall show your sketch to the architect." "You have an architect?" "Well... He hasn't done anything yet, but in theory we do." "Could it not be me?" said Valade. "But you are not trained as an architect, are you?" "No, but as far as any calculations of weight or stress are concerned, your little engineer could do them, couldn't he? What was his name?" "Geissler. I suppose he could. What about supervising the builders?" "I don't imagine that with you and your sister and your brother-in-law they will be short of instruction. And your wife told me that the stable boy wants to oversee it as well." "Yes. She mentioned that to me. In fact, it might work quite well. Hans could live up here during the week and make sure they do what they are meant to. He has become quite bossy lately. He is a nuisance at the schloss. I imagine most of the builders will live up here as well rather than go up and down by mule, and he could keep an eye on them." "May I make a suggestion?" "Of course." "The sooner you get the cable-car installed, the easier it will be. Then you can bring the building supplies up on it." During March and April, Jacques and Sonia, with the help of Herr Leopold and a lawyer called Kalman, set about forming a small company to finance the building of the railway and the cable-car. Jacques talked to the mayor and persuaded him that the new schloss would bring renown to the district; he persuaded him to invest some money from the city reserves on financing the rail extension. In return, he conceded that for the first five years passengers would not be charged for this part of the journey, which took them about a third of the way up the mountain, to a place from which there were many walks to be enjoyed. They would build a refuge here, a modest version of the Rubio pavilion in Echo Mountain, with food and drink, lavatories and first aid for blisters, heatstroke and such things. The mayor agreed, knowing that his city's wealth depended on attracting summer visitors. Jacques also went to the physics and astronomy department of the university and explained that the Wilhelmskogel would offer an excellent site for the telescope which he knew they had not been allowed to situate on the nearby Magdalensberg; in return for funds for the building of the cable-car, he proposed that all members of the university department should receive free transport to the telescope at the summit, an arrangement to be reviewed after ten years. It happened that the university's endowment exceeded the requirements of the modest number of students it attracted and its treasurer was eager to invest. Thomas then wrote to their old patron Monsieur Kalaji in Paris; he received a reply from the secretary of his foundation saying that Kalaji was abroad and could not be reached for several months, but in view of the success of his investment in the schloss, the
secretary was authorised to make another advance up to a certain figure; further funds would have to await Kalaji's return. The balance of money they needed was raised by a stock issue for the Wilhelmskogel Railway and Cable-Car Company supervised by Herr Leopold's head office in Vienna, and by the time the surveyor's full report arrived in late April they had funds enough to start the work. The existing branch line in the valley was served by small steam engines, but Geissler had determined that the Wilhelmskogel line should run on electric traction, and although it was referred to as a 'spur', the rails did not actually join those of the steam line. Passengers were to dismount and cross a sturdy wooden platform to join the mountain railway; at one end of the platform was an engine shed and at the other the electric power house. The first spike was driven by Daniel Rebière at noon on May 30th, 1897, his mother holding the hammer in his hands, the moment repeated several times for the benefit of his Uncle Thomas's Kodak camera. Sonia was appalled to see how grey her hair was growing when the picture was eventually printed. A photographer from the local newspaper was also present, and his picture appeared on the front page under the headline: "All Aboard for the Madhouse! Doctor's wife inaugurates new railway to proposed mountaintop sanatorium." The article went on: Work has begun on a new private railway line under the direction of Herr Tobias Geissler, the well-known Villach engineer. More than forty labourers, mostly Slovene-speakers from Karfreit in the Julian Alps, are working night and day to lay two kilometres of track up a slope in the foothills of the Wilhelmskogel. At the narrow-gauge railway terminus, passengers may transfer to an electric cable-car that will take them on a gradient of almost one-in-two, up to the top of the mountain. Here, local alienists Dr. Thomas Midwinter, aged 37, from England, and Dr. Jacques Rebière, also 37, from France, are to move their existing Schloss Seeblick sanatorium for nervous disorders. Work is going on simultaneously on 'grading' the slope for the cable-car lift. Herr Geissler assured reporters that there would be no repeat of the loud explosions which alarmed local residents throughout last week. "It was necessary to lay sizeable dynamite charges to clear the rocks at the foot of the cableway," Herr Geissler explained. "Men were lowered on ropes to drill holes in the rock for the placing of the charges. But I believe the rest of it can be cleared by hand. We apologise for any disturbance caused by the explosions." The electric railway will span minor gulfs and ravines in the foothills by means of large wooden trestles which are already under construction. The design of the two electric railway cars is based by Herr Geissler on that of a Viennese tram; it takes power from 600-volt conventional overhead cables, many of which are already in place. The cars are being built by the Neubauer-Hebenstreit iron works in Villach, under Herr Geissler's supervision. The most unusual aspect of the work, however, is the steep cable-car lift to the summit. Dr. Rebière travelled to California in the United States of America to inspect a similar system last year, and is collaborating closely with Herr Geissler on the construction. The main wheels and cables are being made in Bavaria, but the car itself will be manufactured locally by Blatnik and Sons in Graz. Use of the cable-car will at first be restricted to patients and staff of the sanatorium, though it is hoped that it will be opened to the public when the summit has been sufficiently developed to afford privacy to the patients and recreational facilities for the paying public. Viewing platforms, a restaurant and a small zoo are envisaged. "It is important to get the cable-car running as soon as possible," said Dr. Rebière. "Then we can use it to take building materials to the summit." The famous Parisian architect Monsieur Pierre Valade is a consultant to the building work, which is being overseen by Schloss Seeblick employee and local man, Hans Eckert, aged 29. It is expected that the work will take eighteen months to complete." As the labourers cleared and smoothed the cableway, they discovered they could not dispose of the debris without blocking the run below, so had to drag it fifty metres up the hill and tip it down a side canyon, a vertical gash that ran all the way to the top, parallel to the gentler Incline up which the cable-car would run. Progress through the summer was extremely slow. "Do not worry, gentlemen," said Geissler. "It is always this way. Once the electric railway is complete, it will be much faster to take what we need to the foot of the cable-car. Once the cable Incline is graded, the rails are down and we can pull a wagon up, the work at the summit will rush ahead. At the moment, everything waits on everything else. It is just hard labour, hacking rock, night and day. Life is sometimes like that. There is a time to dance and a time to keep hacking rocks, but one must not lose the faith. When it lifts, it will all lift at once." Geissler moved into the schloss and sat up late with Jacques in his consulting room, where the new electric lights illuminated the plans he spread across the desk. He stabbed his forefinger at the paper. "The car will have the capacity to carry twelve people. To reduce the weight, I propose a tin roof, though of course we must have closed wood-and-glass sides in our climate. I calculate it will take ten horsepower to raise an empty car and thirty to raise a full one. Not that we can persuade a mule or horse up a sixty-degree gradient." "A hypothetical horse," said Jacques. "Precisely. I also calculate that perhaps a third of the necessary power can be generated and stored by the descent." Geissler laughed. "Not quite perpetual motion but a damned good effort. The main power source, as you know, is a series of two hundred storage batteries." Jacques had a sudden picture in his mind of old Signor Volta with two hundred batteries beneath his tongue. Suppressing a smile, he said, "How is the water supply?" "Almost ready. The stream from the summit, which will provide your daily needs, has been diverted into a reservoir. A narrow pipe runs down to a 75-horsepower waterwheel at the foot of the Incline. The volume of water is small, but the pressure is intense." The main cable was only four centimetres in diameter. It was spliced round grip wheels at the top and bottom of the Incline; the lower wheel was placed below the platform with access for engineers to go in and adjust the tension. Geissler had it tested to twenty times its maximum load and specified a second, independent safety cable that could stop a full car in less than a metre. The car was to be detached each night and the cable wound on a fixed distance daily to prevent uneven wear. "The main wheel is cast-iron," said Geissler, 'three metres in diameter, attached to an electric motor. If the wheel itself is geared to turn at twelve revolutions per minute, then the Incline should, I calculate, take six minutes to ascend. How's that, Doctor?" "I think anything faster would scare the patients, Tobias." On through the summer, the autumn and deep into the winter, the Karfreit workers toiled. They moved into the buildings on the summit and at night made conflagrations in the huge stone fireplaces from spare railway sleepers. Hans watched over them fiercely, excited by his first position of authority and determined to make sure his employers were not cheated by the workforce. Food still had to be brought up by mule, but they established a cook-tent halfway up the mountain for the midday meal. The Slovenes were dark, lean men who liked eating, particularly when once a week they had breaded veal with cheese sauce; they also liked wine and dancing if they were given a chance but were prepared to work in all weathers and, so far as Hans could see, with minimal rest. Jacques was taken in the coach by Josef to inspect the work once a week, but he seldom went to the top since it took a further hour by mule. He relied on daily despatches from Geissler and a weekly report from Hans when he came back for his day off at the schloss. By the following summer, the railway was almost complete, but a fall of rock on the cableway took six weeks to clear and extra men had to be drafted in to try to complete the work by Christmas 1898. This would still allow a year for the work on the sanatorium itself to be completed in time for a move in the last days of the century. Life in the Schloss Seeblick seemed to slow down, because everything appointments, repairs, planning became provisional. Sonia watched Daniel wander round the garden with the handle of a wicker basket of toy animals digging into the flesh of his right arm. She regretted the imminent move, because, although she saw that it was inevitable, and a measure of their success and optimism, she did not see how they could be more happy than they were. Never mind, she thought; her husband had regained some of that imaginative fire that had first made her love him; she could see that the move would be good for him and so, in a way, it must be good for her and Daniel too. The unexpected bonus in her life was that she had come to love Kitty, who made her laugh immoderately, particularly when confiding in her about Thomas's peculiarities, though Sonia could never quite stop herself thinking of her as an invalid. Jacques counted the days impatiently until he could make a new start and put behind him the irksome memories of his professional failures at the schloss. He liked the buildings well enough, but he had not cured his brother and he had not made his name. Thomas shared his excitement; he felt there was something propitious about their moving at the start of a new century. They had paused; but now they would move on with new heart to fulfil the youthful ambitions they had declared at Deauville. Kitty loved her South Court home, the chestnut tree and the room where the girls had been born. When it was being cleaned for a new arrival, she went to visit Number 18, where she had lived as a patient. She remembered how Thomas had stepped in off the balcony, then seemed to unravel in front of her; how he had seen himself whole for the first time. It was a moment of privilege, and one on which she knew her own life had turned. She remembered, too, how he had gone down on his knee to propose to her, with the mountains behind him; and for these and many other reasons, she was sad to leave. Yet she had been the newcomer; she had tactfully restrained herself, particularly with Sonia who, while she could not imaginably have been more generous, sometimes spoke her mind with a directness that Kitty found unnerving. On the mountaintop they would all begin again as equal partners, and she shared Thomas's delight in the fact that while they would be removed from the world, high above the clamour of the cities of the plain, she could be in the best shopping street in town in half an hour. The work was not finished by Christmas, nor by February when there was further delay while the workers celebrated the Slovene festival of Kurenti. Hans was informed by their foreman that no work would be done for a week because the men needed to drive out the 'evil spirits of winter'. Extra consignments of wine were brought by mule; in the evening the men built a huge fire outside and dressed themselves in animal masks and old furs. They ran through the woods shouting and banging drums; they commanded the evil spirits to be gone, to throw themselves from the summit of the mountain and let the spring begin once more. Hans watched in trepidation, wondering if the exorcism really needed a whole week, and so much wine. The railway was complete, though the car was not yet ready, and in April the cableway, too, was finished. Horses were led up the mule tracks to the top and attached to a wooden windlass, whose rope was in turn attached to the steel cable itself, which, under Herr Geissler's agitated supervision, was hauled up to the summit. It took two days to attach the cable at each end and to tension it to Geissler's satisfaction. The car itself was still being weatherproofed and painted in Graz, but it was possible to attach an open truck to the cable and it was proposed that this first ascent should be marked by a celebration. Although the mayor had agreed to officiate at the formal opening, whenever that should be, Sonia was selected to break a bottle of champagne on the top wheel at four o'clock on April 20, and so inaugurate the run.