Pilgrim (32 page)

There was a moment of silence. Then, with no apparent signal being given, Lords David and Toby moved to the rear of the hearse, and together with the driver and his attendants, they drew the casket forward into the light and carried it to the waiting cart.

Lord Quartermaine, foundering on Lady Margot’s arm, leaned down and kissed the lid of the mahogany coffin and laid his forehead against the wood, stretched his arms as if to embrace its burden and stayed this way until the Ladies Catherine and Margot drew him away to one side.

The cart was then pulled forward, all the veils on all the women waving like flags and standards and all heads bowed—but Pilgrim’s.

Then, at the very last moment Pilgrim, laying his violets on the coffin, said—for all to hear:
ave atque vale
and turned away.

To Lady Temple, he offered a penny, saying to her:
you will know what to do with this
—to which she nodded.

The ceremony was over. Sybil had been drawn into the dark by her attendants and was gone.

9

That evening, after dinner, Jung sat desolate at his desk beneath the lamplight, pondering the events of the day. His journal was open before him, in which he had already recorded the departure of Sybil Quartermaine’s remains and the melancholy return to the Clinic.

Phoebe Peebles had followed her mistress to England and would continue in service there as maid to Lady Catherine Pryde—the Quartermaine daughter known as Kate, who would one day acquire a reputation as one of British theatre’s brightest stars.

Forster had returned to the Hôtel Baur au Lac in the company of the charming though somewhat mysterious Messager couple, whose connection to Lady Quartermaine remained totally unexplained. On leaving, neither Forster nor Pilgrim had so much as nodded at one another—and thus, another mystery.

As the landau bearing Pilgrim, Kessler and Jung himself had climbed the heights through the woods and gardens below the Clinic, Pilgrim had sat like a deposed king on the far side of the carriage, refusing to acknowledge his fellow passengers and the world at large around him. His gaze was entirely inward, his hands stilled and empty, his dark glasses showing the reflections of passing trees and floating clouds.

Kessler was in mourning, as he would confess that evening to his mother, for the loss of one angel—
perhaps the most beautiful I have ever seen
. At the station, confronted by the casket, he had wondered what might become of angels when they die. His mother, on hearing this, kept her counsel. She feared all references to winged creatures and said only:
like all of us, they are returned to heaven.

Watching Pilgrim, Jung could not help feeling his own deep sense of depression. That things should work out so badly in some people’s lives. That triumph—if, as and when it was achieved—could be won only at the cost of lost dreams, discarded hopes and displaced relationships. Friends fall aside—or are pushed—ejected—refused admittance. Husbands, wives and lovers are separated—children abandoned. Place means nothing. Lost health—fatigue replacing
stamina—fear replacing joy—recklessness replacing reason. Then death. This had been the story of his parents’ lives—not only one by one, but as a couple. He had spent his whole childhood in the embrace of their sorrows—of his father’s failure to connect with God and his mother’s ultimate failure to connect with reality. And yet, they had devoted their lives to making those connections. It was more than sad, Jung decided. It was unjust.

Nonetheless, it had to be said that in her final hours and with her final gestures, Sybil Quartermaine had achieved a kind of triumph. Her life had been rounded with a sacrifice—
to the unknown God
—as she had written herself—who perhaps was the god of reason who would also deliver Pilgrim. Certainly, she had made every effort in Pilgrim’s behalf to guide him to a safe, good place in which to begin the rest of his life.

In the dark, surrounded by his study lamps and by his sleeping family, Jung had the first of what would prove to be a series of revelations regarding his own immediate journey—an epiphany of sorts—almost religious, but not. He eschewed the religious at every turn. All at once, his journal still open before him, he scribbled that
happiness is not our goal.
And further:
that the achievement of happiness deflects us from our true destiny, which is the utter realization of self.

The utter realization of self.

Jung sat back and dragged a handkerchief from a pocket, wiped his glasses, wiped his brow and wiped his lips.

When I came here first,
he wrote,
to the Burghölzli
Clinic at Zürich, it was an entry into a monastery world, a submission to a vow to believe only in what was probable, average, commonplace, barren of meaning; to renounce everything strange and significant and reduce anything extraordinary to the banal. Henceforth there were only surfaces that hid nothing
—
Furtwängler’s cursory “get it done!” Menken’s “all there is, is what there is!” My own “the Moon! The Moon!” Only beginnings without continuations, knowledge that shrank to ever smaller circles, oppressively narrow horizons and the unending desert of routine…

He reached for the decanter and refilled his emptied glass—emptied but once—and relit a cheroot that had died in the ashtray. But these were mere distractions. The brandy burned where it should and the smoke reopened his throat and the smell of the sulphurous match-end made him wipe his eyes yet again.

And once more—the pen.

For six months I locked myself within these monastic walls in order to get accustomed to the life and spirit of the asylum
—
and I read through the fifty volumes
—
fifty!
—
of the
Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie
from its very beginnings, in order to acquaint myself with the psychiatric mentality. I wanted to know how the human mind reacted to the sight of its own destruction, for psychiatry seemed to me an articulate expression of that biological reaction which seizes upon the so-called healthy mind in the presence of mental illness.

And yet…And yet…

The pen stuttered.

Jung set it aside, and wrote only in his mind.

The realization of self is all there is or can be or should be. The
I
that is in everyone, struggling to achieve breath.

The I
in me. The
I
in Pilgrim. The
I
in Blavinskeya. The
I
in Emma. The
I
in that child already lying in our bed in Emma’s belly.

The
I
in Sybil Quartermaine’s avalanche. The
I
in Pilgrim’s butterfly.

Yes! The butterfly had been as real as I am, sitting here
—
reaching for its mountains beyond the window. And I
—
that blind
I—
did not see it and yet, thank God, the
I
in Pilgrim did, and it was he who opened the window and set it free.

Jung closed his eyes and removed his glasses and set them down away from the light.

“I do believe him,” he whispered. “I do believe. For if I could not, I would perish untried.”

10

Pilgrim, too, sat alone late that evening. He had pulled the curtains aside and was watching from his bedroom window as the Moon began her climb. The Moon, however, was not in his thoughts. There, another subject had risen, baffling at first, being unbidden.

…then there was the tale of the industrious rabbit. His name was Peter and his mother was a widow by the name of Josephine. He had three sisters: Mopsy, Flopsy and Cottontail. There was also a cousin whose name was…

Barnaby?

No. That doesn’t seem right
—
though the
B
is correct. I think.

Bobby?

No. That can’t be it. Not
Bobby Rabbit.
Bobby Rabbit does not sound right, though
Peter
does and
Mopsy, Flopsy, Josephine
and
Cottontail.
These are true rabbit names and…

Barraclough.

Barraclough Rabbit. That is plausible. There was that boy—that young man at Christ’s who lived on lettuce. Lettuce, peas and cabbages—a panacea of greens. Barracloe—Barra-cluff. He was always being teased—and, more than teased, ragged—even made to wear a sign around his neck that read:

My name is Barra-

What-you-choose.

I know not how

To say it.

But if you rag me

Long enough,

I will confess to

Barra-cluff.

And if you let

Your urine flow

Upon my shoes, I’m

Barra-cloe.

Boys were ever so. Thus and so. The makers of schoolyard wars that spilled out into the playing fields and on to Waterloo. Poor old Barraclough. He might have been a Belgian battlefield himself for all the good it did him. Then
he went out and died in the Sudan at Omdurman. Wherever that might be.

And all because he ate lettuce.

He wanted to be a playwright. Had wanted to be another Ibsen.

Ibsen.

Of all the absurd and wonderful…As if an Englishman could be an Ibsen. And yet, he was
—
he had been dedicated to it:
to the truth and the plain realities of life as life is lived.

Why, I would slam all the doors from here to kingdom come if I had my chance! he would say. If Ibsen hadn’t slammed them all before me. Slam all the doors—not just a doll’s house door. And nurture all the wild ducks in the whole wide world! Yes—and I would fire off all the guns, even though they say people never do such things…But Hedda did—and she was right. Right, because other women had faced such choices and done such things. But now, for every Hedda who fires a gun, there must be a multitude who need not do it—need not die. Yes, Pilgrim! Yes! Do you not believe it? I do. I do. That’s why plays are written—or should be written. To break the bonds. To set us free of one another and all the silly, stifling, killing rules we live by. And that’s what I would do—and will do, one day—if I’m given half a chance!

And so to Omdurman. And death.

Barraclough.

But that’s not it.

Brainerd?

Hardly.

Beverly?

Possibly.

Beverly Rabbit and his cousin Peter. Yes, it could be. Didn’t he end up marrying one of Peter’s sisters? I think so.

But no. It was still not right.

Pilgrim took
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
from its place in the top drawer of the bureau and glanced inside the cover.
Temple Pryde
, he read.
Her book, with love from Mommy, Christmas, 1905.
He kept it hidden in amongst his handkerchiefs for fear some other erudite reader might find it and steal it away. Just as Peter had ventured into Mister McGregor’s garden in the hopes of stealing some lettuce, anyone with half a mind to expand his horizons would spy and abscond with and cherish this book.

There was Peter in his blue jacket and his black slippers.

Possibly the finest novel written in the English language,
Pilgrim thought.
Entirely possible.

All the requisite qualities had been laid out in order. Tension. Jeopardy. A quest. Poverty. Striving. Deceit and Truthfulness. Crime and Punishment. Problem and Resolution. Not to say, a morality tale, and something of a love story
—
if sad. For hadn’t Josephine Rabbit been widowed with four young children to raise and her husband baked in a pie by a veritable Medea?

Well
—
not quite.

But still, an evil figure
—
and a force to contend with in the world of rabbits…the redoubtable, hideous, nightmare figure of Mrs McGregor, with her spoons and pans and knives. And Mister McGregor himself, with everything a man could
imagine standing at hand with which to kill a poor fellow.

And all for the love of a cabbage leaf and a hankering for French beans and radishes.

Barraclough. Cabbage. Boy-wars. Waterloo. Omdurman.

You eats what you’re given, sonny. Take it or starve.

Pilgrim thumbed the little book in his hand.

Beloved. Or is that stupid
—
sentimental
—
mad?

A grown man—a child’s treasure. A child’s first encounter, perhaps, with harsh reality. Certainly the first such encounter for a child of privilege. A child ensconced and barricaded in a nursery world of cosy fires and cambric tea, of toy soldiers, storytelling, cosseting and the long stairs down to one’s parents and the adult world.

I must have had some such book myself, though I don’t remember what it was.
The Fables of Aesop,
perhaps…

He smiled.

Of all the many childhoods I’ve had access to, none remains clarified in memory. I know that I have lain in darkened cellars and in lighted toy-strewn attics
—
in castles, cottages and caves
—
and there are glimmers still in my mind of the view from a mother’s arms or a father’s shoulders. How many mothers
—
how many fathers
—
all of whom I should mourn, if I were a proper human being. But I am not. Am not and never have been. I slept, or so it seems, through all my childhoods
—
every one
—
though I remember other children who must have been my siblings or companions
—
a brother in Florence
—
a sister in Spain
—
a boy somewhere in Greece…But otherwise, it seems I slept. And while asleep, I dreamt.