Pilgrim (28 page)
I will tell no more.
But how proud I was that I refrained from telling you then. I kept the knowledge of him with me as my weapon against despair—knowing that whatever else happened to me, I had the protection of his existence,
no matter how brief, as proof that anything can be survived.
It was his gift to me—that I survived you—and gave him life in spite of your deadly malice.
Why would I tell you his name—our child? He was no concern of yours. Though we “made” him, there was no union—merely violence.
Fusion, copulation, propagation, coupling
—even
mating
—for all that they reflect the labours of the marriage bed when love is absent, these are noble words compared to the getting of our son. We
grappled
. Don’t you remember?
I was vandalized. You stole my life.
And gave me his.
And for all that, you hated what you did and got no pleasure from it. At least my husband sighs when he is on me. You had no sighs—no murmurs even of triumph. One great cry is all I hear in memory of that moment—not mine, but yours. A cry of pain, Leonardo. Agony. And it is my belief that in that moment when the cry was given, you had discovered what it is to kill. It was a killer’s cry. A beast’s in the heat of dragging down its victim—a winning cry—that you had seized your opponent by the throat and disemboweled him, as the panther does and the leopard when he curls upon his prey. In fact, for one whole year I called you
Leopardo
in my mind.
Leopardo da Vinci
.
Yes?
This is true.
All this is true.
You might have cried out:
while I slay, I am slain!
It
merely depended on which of us would be the first to die. For while you mortally wounded me, I mortally wounded you. And knew it. Now, unless Heaven falls upon you, I have beaten you to the grave. You are dying, Leonardo—but I am dead. You killed me long ago. Not my body—but my love of life.
My parents knew of the child and to my great surprise, they came in time to cherish him, not knowing he was yours—though I hesitate still to use that word.
Yours
denotes caring—longing—pride—enjoyment.
Yours
denotes devotion to a vanity. Yes? You must recall the Bonfire of Vanities on which we laid what was cherished. I laid my freedom there that night. I shed my brother Angelo’s clothes and burned them so that I would never again be tempted by their allure. I also noted that you laid nothing down, but turned away and departed. This way, I knew that you regarded nothing as yours because you honoured nothing to be worthy of a sacrifice. Beyond one thing—your personal vanity. That, I grant you, remained in your possession.
You told me that you loved my brother. I believe you. I loved him, too, though the Angelo I loved and the one you called your lover were not the same young man. If he was wanton, then I rejoice for him because it means that he gained his freedom before he died. I never did and never will. But I do not wish to be misunderstood in this. There is a wantonness in men that is not akin to the wantonness in women. If I were to gain my freedom now, I could no longer be myself. If I had gained it then, I should not now be who I am. As it
is, I have a wanton will that my children—those who remain—shall live full lives. And those who are dead shall never be forgotten. One, you know of—the other was my husband’s child, the girl Alida, who died six months before I sat to you.
I sat in velvet and satin. You bade me wear some veiling on my hair and draped the upper reaches of the windows in the same pale gauze. It was blue. You wanted always some diffusion of the light—or so you told me. This way, the play of it was constant.
You refused to paint my birthmark, as if its being a butterfly offended you. I wore a silver locket, which you also did not paint. This is true. And a marriage ring which is not seen and a pillow at my back which was made for me by Violetta Cappici, who sat, all the while you worked, near the window with my babies and a book. She carried, you may remember, a painted fan with which she cooled my forehead, time to time. It showed a garden in the south with peacocks and a laurel tree—the laurel all in bloom.
And I removed my shoes and, having sat so long, could not replace them because my feet were swollen. And the angel with the paper wings knelt down and soothed them in a basin filled with scented water. Roses. Do you remember these things? I do. And now you are in France. A great way off, or so it seems. I cannot count the distance. There are rumours of your decline. Surely it will please you to know that at least you are spoken of in Florence—remembered and, yes, in some households, revered. That you will die is certain. But I have no wish to dwell on that beyond the
fact that, before you die, I wanted you to know the truth about the child. If Heaven exists, you may see him there. If not, so be it.
I am told you have taken me with you. Some say you will not be parted from me and others say the story of my husband’s refusal to have the portrait in his house is false and that you would not let him have me. This story goes that you claim the painting is unfinished. Another goes that you are in love with me.
I think not.
In all the time I sat to you, you never once acknowledged that we had met. Certainly never that we had
grappled
and that you had won. You gave me entertainments instead—the choirboy and the mandolin—the angel and the monkey. The making of my image cost us three whole years of being in one another’s company. I was given rocks and rivers to sit amongst and colonnades to sit between and a kitchen chair to sit on. The chair was real, the rest was not. And nothing for my mind to rest on—or my heart.
If posterity looks on me,
I thought,
they will recognize only the man who painted me.
If I am smiling still, then we alone will know that what is hidden there is the memory of a golden child. Not yours—but mine. And I will take him to my grave.
I do not wish you ill, nor any dread of me. We will pass together silent into time. But I wonder, will you write somewhere of me before you die:
face of a Florentine woman—painted by blue light, 1503-1506. Sleeves of dark green velvet. One button—made of wood.
This is the last you shall hear of me. The button here enclosed is from his jacket, which I keep beside me always. It is all of him that you shall ever have.
Go then, in whatever peace you can achieve.
Elisabetta Giocondo,
The Florentine Woman.
April 12, 1519.
On the second of May, in the same year, Leonardo da Vinci died at Cloux, in the valley of the Loire. He was sixty-seven.
It was not unlike the day of recovery after a long battle with illness. A calm had descended, marked by the presence of sunlight and the opening of windows. A fresh breeze stirred the curtains and turned the pages of open books. In various rooms, the occupants looked up from whatever had preoccupied them and wondered—sometimes aloud—what might have caused the silence that, for a moment only, was universal.
At eight o’clock on the morning of Monday, May 20th—six days after Sybil Quartermaine’s death—Jung made his way along the third-floor corridor of the Zürich Clinic to Suite 306. In his hand was a brown leather bag such as those employed by piano students to transport their sheet music. It was, in fact, the property of his six-year-old daughter, Anna—who had relinquished it only on the promise that it would be
returned when her father had found a suitable replacement. His own satchel had gone missing.
Inside the bag were the fragments of what Jung had culled and copied from his notebooks concerning Pilgrim—some as loose pages, others as torn remnants of envelopes—others, the backs of calling cards—others, mere scraps of paper, crisp shards of cardboard, magazines, and the Clinic’s internal memos and bits that had once been menus in restaurants or the insides of matchboxes. All of these bore scribbles—phrases—single words—whole paragraphs—and, in one or two cases, Fräulein Unger’s transcripts of passages from Jung’s notebooks, reference books and daybooks.
There was an envelope containing photographs—a replica of the
Mona Lisa
cut from a magazine—a monograph, with tinted illustrations, concerning the genus of butterfly collectively known as
Psyche
—a handwritten copy of Elisabetta Giocondo’s letter to Leonardo (as though it had only to be posted) and finally, the envelope addressed to Pilgrim from Sybil Quartermaine.
The copy of Elisabetta’s missive was intended for Archie Menken, whose opinion of it Jung was eager to seek—and since he could not show Archie the journal itself, he had thought to provide the letter as an enticement. No version of the name appeared—
Elisabetta del Giocondo, La Gioconda, Madonna Elisabetta
(shortened over time to
Mona Lisa
). It was entirely as Pilgrim had presented it—but unsigned.
Who might have written this?
Jung intended to ask. Just to see…just to see what sort of reaction it might
elicit. Emma had transcribed it for him—weeping as she had done so.
All of these, but for La Gioconda’s letter, were weapons, ready to be wielded in the ongoing war between Pilgrim’s belligerent silence and Jung’s aggressive pursuit of his patient’s voice. Kessler, in the meantime, had informed Jung of Pilgrim’s brief sentences, whispered on the day of Sybil Quartermaine’s death. But still…To have whispered in the baths was not to speak to one’s doctor.
To whisper to the air is not to address a person
—and Jung was prudent.
They might not even have been words, for all Kessler could tell,
he concluded. There was also the fact that on his return from the baths that day, Pilgrim had slowly subsided into a state that was almost comatose, and had not truly wakened except to stumble to the toilet and back to his bed. Kessler had informed Jung of this, as well, and was instructed to record any words that might be spoken, to monitor Mister Pilgrim’s breathing and pulse rate and to call at once if any significant change took place. All remained stable, however, and Mister Pilgrim did not utter. He did not even snore, Kessler noted, which meant that his own sleep was undisturbed.
For all the gravity of its contents, the music bag seemed to Jung to be as light as air. What it contained, after all, might make it possible to negotiate an armistice. If these would not provoke whole speech, then nothing would. These, and the dreadful news of Lady Quartermaine’s death.
In debating his own attitude to the latter, Jung at
first had considered setting the subject aside as a separate encounter—that he would not connect it with any of the weapons in his arsenal…
Really, Carl Gustav! Weapons! Arsenal! Such a pompous attitude!
I am thinking only of the patient’s good.
Hit him on the head with a hammer? Knock him down with a wooden mallet? Kick him in the shins and box his ears?
I must be cruel only to be kind.
Oh, for heaven’s sake!
Well, it’s true. I’ve coddled him too long.
Seems to me, it’s you who’ve been coddled. You’re more considerate of yourself than you are of Mister Pilgrim—avoiding at every turn the simple courtesy of treating him like a patient. You treat him, instead, like a prize. A trophy. Look what I have here! The oddity of oddities! The man who cannot die! And I’m his keeper! Me!
The shameful truth is, I’m afraid of him.
He’s only another human being, Carl Gustav. You deal with them every day.
Do I?
Look down the corridor. What do you see? A dozen doorways beyond which hides the human race in all its complexities and wondrous manifestations. In 308, a bear pit—in 309, the Moon. Back there in 301, a musical genius whose hands will not obey her, insisting they are the hands of Robert Schumann. In 304, a man who writes incessantly in an imaginary notebook. You have opened the door on these people day in, day out for as long almost as a year, and you have never doubted your competence to meet
them on their own terms, without a qualm. What, after all, is so different about Mister Pilgrim that you doubt your ability to cope with him? Nothing, Carl Gustav. Nothing. At the beginning of every journey on this floor, you have stepped into the dark with nothing but your intelligence, your interest, your instincts, your understanding of psychiatry and your dedication to medicine. All that’s lacking is a willingness to admit the extent of your ignorance.
Just then, Furtwängler appeared at the far end of the corridor, walking beside an intense young woman who wore an intern’s smock. At once, Jung was reminded of Emma—a slimmer, slightly younger Emma, to be sure—but Emma nonetheless. Her hair was darker—her stature somewhat less—her manner more effusive. And clearly, she had Furtwängler’s ear and was bending it at a furious rate. This was not like Emma. Emma would not have made such excitable gestures. She would not have given Furtwängler the benefit of her enthusiasm to anything like the degree this woman deployed. But she would have been an equally engaging companion. And was, when she was younger. Once…
Carl Gustav.
Yes, yes—indeed. My appointment with Mister Pilgrim. Though surely, I could wait to be introduced to the young lady. So attractive…So…
No, Carl Gustav. Get on with your work. The Pilgrim case, after all, is your job at the moment.
Of course.
Jung saw that Furtwängler was stopping just short of room 308.
“Mister Leveritch lives in a bear pit,” he told his young companion. “Be prepared.”
As they went through the door, Furtwängler gave Jung a smile which Jung did not return. Instead, he went through into Suite 306.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” Pilgrim said.
The sunlight was overwhelming, and when Jung at last could more or less see, he found his patient seated in the bedroom on a straight-backed chair—the Bath chair having been pushed into a darkened corner.
Kessler stood with one protective hand on Pilgrim’s shoulder. “Good morning, Doctor,” he said. He was smiling.
