Remember Me (22 page)

Back at Berg he searched for something that he could still give up. There was not much.

He still liked to go to Richard’s house once a week. It was only a half an hour’s walk from Berg, a fragrant stroll through the trees towards warmth and some humanity. There, if he could be father to nothing, at least he could play uncle. He brought gifts to the children, so he was sure of his welcome there. The house was clean and airy, and for once he did not have to stoop in rooms too large for him, nor stand erect in those too small. It was only a performance, but it was a performance of which he was fond. He must give it up.

He did not want Richard to see what would happen now. We should never be seen as we are by those who once knew us as we were. That is indignity, whether we have risen or fallen in the interim, either way. Besides Richard had left him in spirit long ago. Now he dismissed his presence as well. Even as he did so, he could see in Richard’s eyes that there is a point beyond which no one can be saved, and that he had passed that point long ago, almost without knowing it.

He heard Richard’s footsteps retreating down the
corridor for the last time, rustling like leaves. It was odd to realize he would never hear them again. They had
always
been back before.

With Richard gone, he was at last alone in a world that contained only objects. That is the last world, the world where men, being merely a commodity, have no souls and so become inanimate. Silence dripped around him like water round a tap. Except for panic, he was not sorry.

It was 1885. It was fifteen years since he had made his first experiments with this new soulless quiet world, rowing round solitude like a man in a boat, on a lake too small to have a shore. Yet the years were very long.

He had done such foolish things. He had eaten dinners at which the plates were laid for guests who never came. How could they come? There had been no one to invite. He had picked water lilies on the lake of the wintergarden at the Residenz. He had seen the table rising through the floor at Linderhof, into an empty room. He had taken that ride to Kufstein long ago, to pretend Richard was with him. He had not come to silence unprepared. He had long ago learned the rules; and if life was to be a parable, it should be a parable of the past. Wagner was gone. Kainz was gone. If there were no men to match their voices, then he would hear no voices. He would communicate with the world by note. And that is what he did. It was a nuisance to scribble them, but they saved bother.

Even objects now moved against him by stealth, like figures on a board of chess. How does the King feel, watching from the castle corner the strategy he alone can do so little to defeat? He sees his queen throw bishops, knights and pawns across the board, not to save him, but to destroy the enemy. Only the enemy is concerned with his defence until it is too late, the queen is lost, and he
has only two or three moves possible to evade defeat, for the board is swept clean. Only the pieces of the other side remain in place, their strategy planned too early in the game for him to defeat now. Given all his guile, without more pieces back he can only achieve a stalemate. He can defeat his enemy only by constructing for himself a prison so strait that he cannot leave it, or the enemy enter.

He knew perfectly well that the court and his ministers cabaled against him in Munich. They always had. As his own pieces were swept off the board, he saw their strategy, and Otto standing in his own castle square at Fürstenried, safe from the moves of the game. He had not the power left to defeat them, except in so far as he made his own prison strait. His brain worked clearly. That much he could do. He could retreat to
Neuschwanstein
and there be safe. But what is safety, to be
motionless
? When a man sits still his body goes to sleep. His circulation fails.

So he communicated by message only. He would speak to no one. Sometimes, all too rarely, a message reached him from outside, in return. Of all those he had ever known or ever taken into his favour, only Kainz and Wagner wrote to him afterwards. Was it because they had a life of their own, whereas the others had had merely the life he had given them, which they lost when they lost him? It was possible. Twice in his life he had touched something alive. His fingers still tingled from the shock. For a letter from Kainz he was always grateful. It was a message from the past, which he had thought could send no messages.

But even the past grew silent in time. The messages from Wagner had ceased. Those from Kainz would do the same. These last years tightened around him like rope around a winch, when the anchor is too heavy.

He watched the outside world grow narrower.
Stalemate
would be soon. That filled him with relief.

It was a pleasure to appear in public now, for every appearance might be his last. Only once was he
disconcerted
. He met the Infanta Paz again, the wife of his cousin. She seemed almost real. When he spoke, even of Kainz and
Marion
de
Lorme,
she appeared to
understand
. He could feel her waiting to enter his imagination, was touched, but pushed her back sadly. It was too late. Yet he was moved. She really did seem to know what he talked about when he spoke. He found that a curious sensation. But she could be no more than a spectator. Everyone was a spectator now. He sent her flowers. Why should the actor not send the audience flowers, if for once it understood the nature of his performance? The idea pleased him. It was something to tell Kainz, if Kainz had been there to speak to.

For he was weary. There is a time when you want the game over. You see you cannot win. The difference
between
checkmate and stalemate is merely a difference of moral patience. The conqueror sometimes forgets that the victory is not always of his making. Sometimes he wins only because the losing side decides it does not wish to let the winner enjoy his victory any longer. Cowardice saves more lives than bravery ever does, and the stoicism of those who are too wise to fight saves even more.

Why should he bother to explain? As long as his orders were obeyed, he was content. Let others make of his life what they would. He had his own system for dealing with the world now. He left notes for his household staff on his writing-table as he went to his bath. When he returned they were gone. That was as it should be. He did not want to be interrupted by anyone.

Pencils were blunt. They must be sharpened. Teacups
were ugly. They must be replaced. The peerage must be watered by the selling of titles, so it might flow harmlessly away. The valet, to whom he refused to speak, must be taught to tie his tie properly. The man was a booby. The books sent him were unsatisfactory. They must be returned and others procured. He knew that tactic. It was no use their trying to force him out by cutting off supplies. Stalemate should be his, not check theirs. He had only to tire the other side.

He began to have awful nightmares. Through his dreams, if they were dreams and not the sub-conscious reflections cast by sleeplessness, now walked an endless procession of dead lovers. Dead, at least, to him. It began to happen almost every night. The curse of sleeplessness is to show us what the sub-conscious contains, something we should never see, for beneficial to sleep, it is poison to consciousness.

Of all that procession, only Kainz turned to look back at him, so that he could see his face. He saw now when it was too late that the face had been a noble one. He would have spoken, had he had the strength, but sleeplessness drugged his senses utterly. Kainz hurried on.

Then the others came. Paul of Thurn and Taxis, Richard, others of whom he did not even allow himself to remember the names, Varicourt, Mayr, Voelk, Welcker, Hesselschwert, each turning towards him and each
without
a face, the ugly ghosts of a tyrannical physical
necessity
.

He had looked so often into the faces of others, in search of the ideal face, that they cancelled each other out and all were featureless. Yet they all had the same face, and that face was his own. He always realized that shortly before dawn. The conclusion was terrible. If he could love only himself, then there was no love that was
not circular. From the far end of the procession Kainz’s features turned one last time before the figure
disappeared
. Kainz had had his own face. That love was circular could not be true. There was somewhere another kind of love, which had no name and maybe no identity.

It did not matter where or what, if love was, then it had a nature and an identity. One by one the figures went by, each staring, and each without eyes with which to stare. When he could watch no more he would fall asleep. There must be something more. In his sleep he smiled. It is only in sleep that the sleepless dare to smile. That is the only ease they ever get, and they cannot even see it.

If the ideal did not exist, then at least he could pollute the self. He could debase it. He could show how little it was worth. When we are no longer beautiful, we like best a mirror that reflects us badly. Perhaps in the sudden brief illusory release of sex, with its magnesium light, he could burn the body away and so destroy desire. At least such things made the night shorter.

But there is mercy in the world after all. It came to him as mercy usually does, by accident. Fortunately
self-interest
is blind. It never realizes that in serving itself it may accidentally be serving others as well. Materialists will never recognize the existence of the spirit.
Therefore
they can destroy only the body, which is all they can see. In that way sometimes the spirit can get free.

Such was the mercy that liberated him. On Tuesday, 8th June 1886, four physicians sat in a room in Munich and agreed that the King was mad. It was the only way they could remove him from the throne
constitutionally
, so they did not feel that any examination was necessary. The move came from the Cabinet, not from the Royal family. Dynasties can wait, and are
therefore
often forebearing, but ambitious men are limited to the term of their office and grow impatient at delay. The King, the Cabinet had heard, wished to sell the crown jewels, and jewels are valuable. Set in crowns, they twinkle down upon ambition, and even a physician knows very well what money is. It is a power which all obey.

Ludwig did well to smile in his sleep, for now there was hope. Now the stalemate was ended. With hope comes dignity, and dignity is the voice of the soul.

Once in his golden cage, and Bajazet was free.

As soon as the medical commission had reached its decision, the news was not long in reaching
Neuschwanstein
. The King received it calmly and slept well for the first time in many years. His mind had cleared and was at peace. Moonlight invaded the room. It did not wake him. Now he knew what to do, so he slept the refreshed sleep of a man who has work to face in the morning.

I
t was his last year, he knew it, and he was glad, for his mind was made up.

With him the direct line ended. The crown would pass to his uncle in time, or to his uncle’s sons, but that was not the direct line as he understood it. With him was cut the central scarlet thread. Who can know what it is like to bear in one perishable body the final extinguishable seeds of a race, and to know that once one is dead, that name will never be spoken again of the living, either in affection, in reverence, in amity, or in abuse? He had relatives, cousins, and conjoiners. Some of them would be both wise and efficient. Some would not. But he and Otto were the last in the direct line; and it is great pride and quiet joy to embody and to be the last of any name. It has a quiet uplifted finality. It improves the jaw. One turns to one’s ancestors, and one says, now we shall be together. Now we are complete. I shall be with you very soon. I have not disgraced you. Let us sit and talk of what we were.

He was waiting now only on the event, for those who would set sail, even in our day, are still at the command of time and tide.

Landscape, wrote Schelling, should be used as a veil through which one may glimpse a loftier reality. That is
true; but sometimes the landscape is shrouded in mist. Ludwig stood at a window and looked across the
twilight
moonscape of Bavaria.

The wind snapped through Neuschwanstein. It seemed to him that down the unfinished corridors he could hear the slamming of innumerable doors. The arches were full of shadows.

He went and sat in the Romanesque throne room. The Germans are incorrigibly Greek, and looking at the dim murals of Lohengrin, he remembered once more the true legend of the swan. The swan predated Lohengrin and Wagner both. Cygnus was the companion of
Phaeton
, who mourned his friend so endlessly along the river, that at last Zeus took pity and immortalized the feelings of friendship in the body of the swan. In that sense the swan does not bear love away. The swan itself is love.

His senses were very alert. He peered into the shadows. But there were no shadows there. Even his own ideals no longer stood between him and reality. This was reality, and he sat in the midst of it.

He was almost glad. Before going to bed he watched the mist billowing below him. He was at the still centre at last, and his world became serene. The view was deeply moving, for he was the only one awake to see it. The world was alive again, and from the peaks he seemed to hear a long, contented sigh.

In his blood ran the blood of seven centuries of Dukes, seven Electors, and four Wittelsbach Kings. He would not go down alone. For that reason he would at least
pretend
to fight, for he was taking a thousand years of
history
down with him. He would remember that and he was ready. Charles I took his religion to the scaffold with him. Louis XVI took nothing. But at least the walk of both had dignity, for in each of them died not a man,
but a society. Theirs was a ritual death. So would be his.

*

Of the days that followed he remembered only the last, but those clearly. Since what he intended to do would not frighten his enemies until long afterward, first he wanted to frighten them in the only way it was possible to do so.

Early on the morning of June 10th he rose and
walked
through the hollow castle. It was to say good-bye. He had roused the people he needed, and for a little while they would be loyal. It would be long enough.

He was sad. After all, Neuschwanstein was the
Wartberg
, too. Around him from the walls looked down the noble prototypes of Hans Sachs, Sigurd, Tannhäuser, Walther van der Vogelweide, and St. Louis. They were painted shadows now, but they had had a meaning once. At the Wartberg Wagner had conceived the
Meistersinger.
Richard had become his friend. And now there were only these paintings left.

In the cold throne room he stood looking out the
windows
at the mountains riding the mist. At one end of the room twenty semi-circular steps led up to what should have been the throne, but it was not yet installed, nor was it paid for, and it never would be now. He ascended the stairs and gazed out over the room and found it good. It was empty now. It should continue so.

He nodded his head and climbed the stairs to his
bedroom
. He sat there to wait.

It began to be dawn. The mists began to dissolve, showing more and more the bases of the mountains. At last he could even glimpse the surface of the tarn among the trees. He looked down at it for a long time, for there are a few things in this world which are very good indeed. They make us happy merely to look upon, so they are the
things we see first and last. He had spent his childhood near here, at Hohenschwangau. That seemed appropriate.

A servant roused him at five. The party from Munich had arrived and was approaching the castle keep. He followed the servant at once, hastening through the
pearl-grey
outer courtyard and climbing to the rooms over the keep.

Below him, toiling up the road, he saw Kraft Baron von Crailsheim, the Minister of his Household and of Foreign Affairs; Count Holnstein, whom he had himself raised; Baron von Malsen; and others. Even from this little elevation above them, they looked remarkably futile. He could not see the peasants and the local Fire Brigade he had ordered to guard the gate below him. He heard some sort of parley. The air made the voices clear, but far away. The scene must look rather medieval. He heard the officer of the Brigade announce that he would shoot if the party came any closer.

Baron von Crailsheim broke ranks and ran down the hill. The others swiftly followed. Ludwig grunted. It would be something for them to write about in their memoirs. No doubt they would take refuge at
Hohenschwangau
, which was not far away. He found that he felt remarkably well, ordered the Fire Brigade out to arrest them, and sat down to breakfast. The effort was of course futile, but it would at least remind them of the nature of the power they were so eager to destroy, and the lesson would do them no harm.

An hour and a half later the guard returned. The entire party had been arrested. He had no desire to see any of them. He told the guard to lock them up over the keep. One of the men had escaped and was on his way to Munich for reinforcements.

It made little difference. Neuschwanstein was not
equipped for a siege, and he had no desire to withstand one. The pleasure of seeing traitors step forward, he decided, was chiefly that of counting their heads.
Inevitably
one had omitted a few names, but not many. The omissions were understandable. Traitors, whatever their ages or names, have much in common and therefore look much alike.

He wished to have the matter over. It seemed silly to drag it out, and he had made the only point he wished to make. At least the fools would have a few hours of anxiety in the rooms above the keep. He wandered about the palace. He could see so little from the windows, that he decided to climb the tower. It would be only fitting, this last time, to see the view complete.

Unfortunately, from what motives he could not guess, the key to the tower door had been hidden. On the other hand, the door itself was not strong, and a last breath of clear air would be of immense help.

He made only one mistake. He had not realized that the rescue party from Munich was already in the castle. He went to the base of the tower and began to climb. It was a long climb and it made him breathless. At the top of the stairs was the small locked door to the circular steps leading to the topmost roof. He was concentrating on the view he was about to see.

He reached the landing unprepared. Two men sprang out and thrust his arms into a strait-jacket. He blinked. It was as sudden as that.

He was pleased to see, however, that they still felt enough awe of his person to be scared. They took him downstairs to his own bedroom. He walked in. There were guards posted at the doors and windows. The
strait-jacket
was highly annoying. It hurt his arms. A little man appeared before him.

“I am Dr. Gudden,” it announced. “You may not remember me. I had the honour once to report to you about Prince Otto’s condition.”

Ludwig merely looked down on him. “On the
contrary
, I remember you quite well,” he said drily.
Unbelievably
the doctor’s black little face reddened into a gratified smile. But then irony was something he would not have expected from a deposed King. The proper use of language can be a defence in depth. The presence of Dr. Gudden did not in the least surprise him. He had known long ago that he would see him again.

“Without examining me, how can you pronounce on the state of my health?”

“An examination is unnecessary,” said Gudden blandly. It was clear he believed what he said. He sat down. Inwardly Ludwig frowned, but outwardly he pretended to smile. He needed Gudden in a good mood, but he should pay for the impertinence of sitting down in his presence soon enough. He sat down himself, for it appeared that Dr. Gudden had decided to harangue him. He talked for three hours. Since he was so clearly uncertain of his own abilities, no doubt he wanted to brag about them. From time to time Ludwig smiled. Having an audience seemed to mollify the doctor. After a while the ridiculous strait-jacket was removed.

Ludwig thought that he might be taken to Linderhof, but it appeared that that was out of the question. If he was correct, Dr. Gudden had all the earmarks of a petty sadist. Therefore Ludwig said he wished to go to
Linderhof
, and waited. Dr. Gudden rose to the bait at once and told him he would be taken to Berg.

Once more Ludwig smiled inwardly. Berg was the place he would have chosen himself. He knew every inch of its grounds, and it would serve his purposes admirably.
He was careful, however, not to appear pleased, for Dr. Gudden was clearly a man who believed in suffering.

He was moved to Berg the next day, in a procession of three carriages, painted blue and silver in the royal colours, and with excellent horses. It was fitting that the peasants should see their King leave them as a King should, with pomp. However his keepers seemed afraid of a demonstration. He was roused early and the party left Neuschwanstein at 4 a.m. Ludwig did not particularly mind. He had made his own plans and would put them into execution soon enough.

It remained only to find the occasion. Whit Sunday, June 13th, seemed as good a day as any. He had spent a troubled night, but as soon as he opened his eyes and saw the sunlight he knew that this Pentecost of 1886 was to be the correct and chosen day. He woke very early. He wanted to get up, but was told not to, so he lay drowsing until six. The dawn was truly lovely. He had forgotten the quality of new-born light. As usual he called for and was given a morning cup of soup.

The cup, he noted with pleasure, was one he had had designed for himself years ago. It was a man’s cup,
beautifully
squat, with a gold repoussée lip, one handle, and gold Chinese figures on a blue ground. It held half a gill. Of course a wide-lipped cup lost its heat rapidly, but since he always drank hot fluids at a gulp, that did not greatly matter. The soup was
consommé
sprinkled with chopped parsley. He found it very good.

It was like the morning of his coronation oath, in a way, except that now there was no terror and no doubt. He looked round the room curiously. There was one answer he would like to have, without the fatigue of asking for it, but perhaps he would find out in time.

It did not seem to be his own room any more. It was
like a room in which he had slept only overnight. That startled him briefly. It had not occurred to him that our possessions, in being extensions of the self, lose identity even before we do, being so to speak the first suburbs to fall.

At one time everything in this room at Berg had meant a great deal to him. He wondered if the familiar rooms downstairs would have become as meaningless.

At eight Dr. Gudden arrived for his morning
interview
. So, too, Tamburlaine must often have arrived to Bajazet at unexpected hours, to see if the matter had really been brought off, for conquerors are parvenus. They can never be sure that the chair is behind them when they sit down. They have to check. He must not on any account annoy the good doctor now.

The hour chosen for the interview was hardly tactful, but that would be typical of Gudden. Tact, for him, would always be like charm, one of the hallmarks of his betters, a possession to be ignored since he could never have it himself.

Ludwig could hear below him the hammering of
carpenters
, come to bar the windows of Berg. His cocoon was to be spun around him, it seemed, so that the public might imagine that he had woven it himself. The noise was agonizing.

Gudden was less bumptious than usual. He begged to introduce his assistant, Dr. Grashey, and then left.
Ludwig
talked to Grashey for half an hour, with
considerable
surprise. Grashey seemed to have belief in his
profession
and ability. Therefore he was not ashamed of what he was doing. He was the first man Ludwig had met since Kainz who seemed to have some inkling of self-respect. The spectacle was cheering.

He decided to make a gesture proper to his
circumstances
, and therefore asked if he might hear Mass. He
had no quarrel with God, for they had never met, but politeness did no harm. The request, as he had expected, was refused. That would be Gudden, with his sadism again. Gudden was Protestant. Ludwig smiled. Faith was indeed tidal. It came and went along a thousand shores. But did Dr. Gudden really feel that, even as Protestant, he could control the tides?

At 10 a.m. Gudden sent up a message suggesting that they should go for a walk. Ludwig was only too pleased to agree. He went downstairs, to find as he had imagined that the other rooms had become utterly impersonal. He glanced at them curiously. Once he had been fond of them, but they seemed garish now.