Pilgrim (45 page)

Emma, the child, had heard of the Jews, but had very little knowledge of them. She knew that the Jews had killed Jesus Christ, but that was more or less the extent of her awareness. Little was said of them at home or at school unless it was in some way or another a reinforcement of this single piece of information. Emma never questioned it. She was never told differently. You were not allowed to know the Jews, or play with them or even to speak to them. You could not ask a Jew the way or the time of day or purchase from
them or sell to them and certainly never do them favours.

On that long ago Sunday, Emma had turned to look back at the old man with the white beard, who by then had risen to his knees and looked as if he was praying. Indeed, he might have been, for it was very difficult—almost impossible—for him to rise to his feet. But she saw that he did at last manage this and her final sight of him was the moment in which he retrieved his hat, dusted its brim against his leg and placed it on his head. He did this with the same precision he might have used to place a period at the end of a sentence.

Only an old Jew.

Only a shepherd.

Emma realized she had been taught to think like this and she had blindly continued to do so, never once pausing to assess the consequences.
What, for instance, if people thought of me that way?

Well!

She laughed out loud.

Of course,
she thought,
they already do! I’m
only
a woman!

Only a Jew. Only a shepherd. Only a woman.

On the other hand, she also knew that if she were to fall in the street, people would come to her assistance. Partly because she was a woman—and
women are weak and totally helpless. They must be coddled
and
women must be protected.
She also realized with a twinge of conscience that people would come to her assistance because she was
Frau Doktor Jung
—and the prestige of coming to her aid would be prized.

As for Manolo, if her mother and father had passed him in the street and seen him fall, would they have helped him up and handed him his sticks? Would she herself have done this? No. Emma knew the answer was
no,
because Manolo was only a shepherd and unworthy of her attention. Then—but not now. Now, she knew better. Now, she knew more of the world and its casual cruelty. Now, she was a grown woman with a mind of her own. And a will.

The ferry was approaching Zürich and Emma could see the first of the bridges over the Limmat, the Grossmünster with its twin spires and the gardens dotted amongst the Quays. All of it was so familiar now, and all of it so dear, though once upon a time she had dreaded this city, with its foreboding dedication to religious revolution—and perfection. It was here that the great reformist Zwingli had brought the Catholic church to its knees in the sixteenth century and it was here that her husband, Carl Gustav Jung, would bring the world of psychiatry to its knees in the twentieth century.

My beloved husband
—
the father of my children and the father of my mind…

She would take a cab. This way she could both race to Carl Gustav’s side and avoid the impossible strain of climbing the final hill on foot.

When Emma arrived at the Burghölzli, she had to constrain old Konstantine, the concierge, from announcing her presence.

“I want to surprise the good doctor,” she told him. “Is he in his office?”

“Yes, Frau Doktor—but I beg of you, let me precede you.”

“No, I wouldn’t dream of it!” Emma laughed. “What is the fun of a surprise if the whole world knows I’m coming?”

“But, please…”

“No. I insist. And don’t you dare pick up that telephone. I don’t want any warning given.”

She strode off down the corridor, while Konstantine returned to his station, removed his white cotton gloves and exchanged them for another pair.

“Dear, dear, oh, dear,” he muttered. “Dear, dear, oh, dear.”

Emma gave her customary rapid three knocks on the door and, preparing herself to speak, pushed it open.

The sight that greeted her eyes could not have been real. Nothing about it could be rationalized. It was cut from images seen exclusively in Emma’s worst dreams.

Jung was spread-eagled in his chair, his waistcoat and shirt unbuttoned, his trousers opened and halfway down his thighs. His knees were parted and a woman knelt in the space between them, her back to Emma.

The curtains had been closed—the lights had been dimmed and the air smelled of perfume, smoke and old books.

Emma blinked—and when she opened her eyes again, the woman—or the image of the woman—had completely disappeared. It was as though she had not
been there.

Jung had risen, turned his back on his wife and was busy adjusting his clothing.

Emma leaned against the door, afraid she was going to collapse, but could see no way to a chair.

Jung said: “why are you here?”

Emma could not speak.

I wanted to surprise you,
she thought.

“Do you realize I could have had a patient with me? How dare you burst in like that! How dare you do this!” Jung, with his back still towards her, was shaking.

At last he drew on his white smock, smoothed his hair and turned.

“It was such a lovely day,” Emma said. “I…”

“How did you get here?” Jung demanded. His voice was like a knife that had just finished cutting ice.

“I came on the ferry,” Emma said. “I want to sit down.”

“Came on the ferry? By public transport? Showing yourself to everyone? You must be mad.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Carl Gustav. Please—could there be some light? I must sit down.”

Jung switched on the desk lamp with the green shade. With the normal pattern of shadows reversed and thrown upward, he looked demonic.

Emma, using the bookcase, the wall and her walking stick as supports, found her way to a chair at last and sat. All she could think was:
I must not faint
.

Jung was staring at her, saying nothing—seemingly calculating what to say. Then he gave an expansive
shrug, sighed and said: “how can you have done this? You, of all people. How can you possibly have done this?”

He was leaning into the light.

“Done what, Carl Gustav?” Emma could barely hear her own voice. “Done what?”

“C
OME ALL THE WAY FROM
K
üSNACHT ON THE FERRY
! I
N FULL VIEW OF EVERYONE—AND IN THAT CONDITION
!”

The desk shook.

Emma was so disoriented she could not understand him. Looking down, she touched her lovely new spring coat and whispered to it: “what—what—what condition?”

“You are
pregnant!”
he said. It was as though he had said:
you are black and blue and crimson.

Emma said: “I know that. I know that, Carl Gustav. But it was such a lovely day…”

“I will never hear the end of it, you realize,” Jung said—ignoring her words entirely. “There will be no end to this.
There she was
—
right on the ferry
—
flaunting herself
—
the wife of Herr Doktor Jung
—
and seven months pregnant!”
He mimicked a high-pitched, feminine voice. “
Out in the open
—
for all the world to see!”

Emma looked away and said: “you have done up the buttons of your waistcoat in the wrong order, Carl Gustav.” She wanted to cry, but refused the temptation. Instead, she said: “some attitudes are changing, you know. It’s no crime to appear in public when one is pregnant.”

“You may think so, but I know nothing of the kind.
And I want you out of this building immediately. Konstantine will telephone for a cab and you will be driven straight back to Küsnacht—I don’t care what it costs. Dear Jesus God—what if someone had seen you…?”

“But…I came to see you, my darling…”

“Do not call me your
darling
.” Jung was attempting to right the miscalculated buttons—and failing. “You have done me irreparable damage and it will be some time before I forgive you—if, in fact, I ever do forgive you. Come along.”

At last, he stepped away from his desk, and grasping her elbow in a vicelike grip, he turned her and marched her like a prisoner out of his office and down the corridor to the reception area.

Don’t let me fall,
Emma thought.
Don’t let me trip and fall.

As though he were handing over a perverted murder suspect, Jung requested that Konstantine telephone for a cab, turned and departed without another word, his heels pounding like hammer blows on the marble until, at last, the sound of his office door being slammed brought the episode to an end.

All the way home, Emma fought off the tears. The cab was a two-wheeled hansom and she concentrated her gaze on the horse’s swinging gait.

Was Carl Gustav mad? Had he gone mad, somehow, without her knowing it until this moment?

His charges against her were insane, of course. No one had paid the slightest attention to her “condition”
on the ferry. Granted, it was more or less accepted as a general custom that women—especially women of Emma’s class and station—did not appear in public while noticeably pregnant. But it wasn’t a
rule
. There could be exigencies. There could be moments when it was necessary. Moments when it could even be proper—a dinner party—a reception…

Emma was trying not to think of the woman kneeling between her husband’s knees.

I didn’t see her. She wasn’t there. A person cannot simply disappear. It’s impossible.

But she had seen her.

She had.

And she knew it.

Sitting in the chair, dazed by Carl Gustav’s attack, she had seen the shape of the woman crouching under the desk, attempting and failing to hide.

She had seen her hair in the modicum of light that fell through the open door to the corridor.

She had seen what they had been doing.

She had seen her husband desperately attempting to adjust his clothing and getting it wrong.

She had seen the woman’s hand where it supported her crouching form beneath the desk.

She had seen her fingernails.

She had smelled her perfume and noted the presence of a woman’s hat beyond a pile of books on her husband’s desk.

Dear God, my life is over,
Emma thought.

I am dying. I am dead.

It did not matter who the woman was. How could it matter if she had a name? She
was,
that was the point. And for how long?

All the luncheons eaten alone across the table from her husband’s empty place. All the nights when she had already gone to bed before he returned. And all the mornings he was gone before she rose. Weeks? Months? How could she remember how long it had been? How could she tell?

It was over. Everything was over.

That evening—it was Friday, the 31st of May—Jung received a telephone call from Küsnacht. It was Doctor Richard Walter, Emma’s physician.

“You should know, Carl Gustav, that Emma has had an accident. My advice would be to return as quickly as you can.”

She had fallen down the stairs, having dressed for dinner, and the fall had brought on a miscarriage. The child was dead and Emma was comatose.

Jung did not return for another two hours. The woman had to be informed and dealt with and, for a while, dismissed. The incident in his office would never again be mentioned.

In 1910, at the time of his affair with Sabine Spielrein, Jung had written to Freud about Emma:
she has been staging jealous scenes, groundlessly. She does not understand that the prerequisite for a good marriage
—
or so it seems to me
—
is a licence to be unfaithful.
Then he had added:
I in my turn have learned a great deal.

Clearly, what he had learned was how to control his wife—but not how to control the mother of his children.

10

Emma lay so still that Jung for a moment wondered if she was dead.

He reached for her hand and held it in his own.

Doctor Walter stood to one side.

“Can she have another?” Jung asked.

“One day, perhaps. I suspect, however, she may not choose to.”

“I dare say. I dare say.” Jung gave Emma’s hand a squeeze and laid it back on the coverlet. “Could you tell what sex it was?”

“Yes. You would have had a second son.”

“Oh, God.”

Jung turned away from the bed.

A nurse had been hired to stay for as long as needed. A week at least, perhaps longer, Doctor Walter said. Her name was Berthe. Schwester Berthe. She was tall and calm and silent. She read books and would content herself with reading
Death in Venice
during the long hours of Emma’s silence. As Doctor Jung and Doctor Walter left the room, she set a chair in place at the foot of the bed where she could keep an eye on her patient, and opened the slim volume—breaking its back in three places and lifting it to her nose so that
she could drink in its smell. Ink. Paper, binding glue—Venice. Nothing more was required.

Once downstairs and the requisite brandy poured, Jung said to Doctor Walter: “what is done with the remains in such a case?”

Walter, who had attended Emma ever since her marriage and residence in Zürich and Küsnacht, said: “with your permission, the simplest means of disposal is fire.”

“I see. May I see it?”

“I wouldn’t advise it, Carl Gustav. It is too sad.”

“Was it healthy and well formed?”

“Yes.”

“And a son, you say?”

“Yes.”

“Be honest with me, Richard,” Jung said. “Do you think what happened was truly an accident?”

“I have no way of knowing.”

“Who found her?”

“Frau Emmenthal.”

“And?”

“She heard the sound of the fall and came at once. Your wife was unconscious. I was summoned. The miscarriage took place in my presence—perhaps not quite an hour later. I feared it and was prepared. Emma felt nothing.”