The Lost Prince (64 page)

“Yes,” he said quietly.

“And his head was gone?”

Again the stare and the silence, but a memory began forcing itself to the surface. “Yes. And his—” The dread returned and stopped him.

Will Honeycutt paused, waiting, but no more came, so he said it. “It was his brain material that covered your face.”

“Yes,” Arnauld said, almost whispering.

“And you lapsed into unconsciousness. The Italians found you and thought you one of theirs. They took you.”

“I suppose.”

“That is what happened,” Will said with authority. “They heard you muttering about Beatrice, and they thought you one of theirs.”

“I suppose.”

“That is what happened, Arnauld. I am not making it up.” Suddenly, Will stopped and looked at his friend. “Arnauld, dying in battle is horrible. Those Italian soldiers, those horrible faces. Think of the deaths by infections you had to witness in your men. Your friend Pietr,” he said. “He was very dear to you.” The patient nodded. “You had become
companions of the heart,
I believe you wrote.”

Arnauld showed no objection to the term and remained unmoving and silent for a long moment, then looked up slowly and gave the slightest nod.

“The Czech Pietr was the best of humanity,” Will said. “He was a beautiful man.” Another nod from the subject. “And the explosion, it was devastating.” Another nod. “You came back to consciousness surrounded by blood and pieces of flesh. There were bits of flesh covering your face. You had seen it before, many times before.” Arnauld said nothing, only grimaced.

“Arnauld, look at me,” he said, and waited for the patient to look up, now he the one losing control. “Pietr the Czech poet, your friend, his death was horror.”

“It was all horror,” Arnauld said softly, with almost no emotion. “So much horror.”

“Descending from Caporetto you came upon men, gassed, scores of men grotesque, frothing at the mouth.” Again a grimace from the patient, but no response. Arnauld looked paralyzed. Suddenly Will Honeycutt broke the silence. “It was your fault,” he said, raising his voice now, accusing. “Eugene of Savoy came to you, told you, talked you into it. You were supposed to emerge as the charismatic leader. You were supposed to get them to stop, and you didn’t. It is all on your shoulders, all your fault.”

A glassiness having come over him, Arnauld seemed to fall back into the abyss in which he had been for the past few months.

“Arnauld, look at me,” Will Honeycutt insisted, and he waited. “You think it is your fault,” he said. “Prince Eugene of Savoy, the great hero, came to you, spoke to you, and you could do nothing, and it is all your fault.”

Will Honeycutt stopped, looked hard into the blank stare. Suddenly he was aware that he had pushed too hard, gone too far, his old bluntness with people resurfacing. The blank look had returned to Arnauld’s face. There now existed between the two men an empty silence. And all seemed ruined.

In his meeting with Jung the next day, the doctor expressed his concern about reports he had received from the Burghölzli. “Our method with this patient, as with all patients, has been to wait things out and allow the unconscious to reveal its secrets as it will.” He had assumed a kindly, fatherly tone. “You have gone on the attack, pursuing what you think is right. But, you have to appreciate, it is a method many at the Burghölzli find counterproductive.”

“They think I am bullying,” Will Honeycutt said, and Jung nodded. Will stared at him for a moment. “I think I can make it work.”

“You attacked and attacked and won’t retreat—”

Will Honeycutt interrupted. “Until he confronts the horrors he has seen and experienced firsthand.”

“Yes,” Jung said, “that would seem the case. It is just not our way. I am sure you understand.”

“But you had reached an impasse,” Will offered in protest.

“I will grant you that,” Jung said. Even this brusque American could see that the Swiss doctor was retreating. “For the time being, perhaps—”

“But I am getting past that impasse,” Will said, his brusque manner now fully surfaced. “Don’t you see?”

“Perhaps we need to discuss this later,” he said, pulling back in his chair.

Will Honeycutt, usually not one to notice even obvious language of body posture, sensed that he was losing. He stopped and tried to compose himself.

“Dr. Jung,” he began, “I know I am an abrasive man. I know I offend people with my manner. I know I am offending you now. It has been that way all my life. But this time I am right, don’t you see?” He stopped and looked for some kind of affirmation in the intense eyes of this man who knew so much about human nature, but there was none there. “Dr. Jung,” Will repeated. “Can I just have more time?”

Jung eyed him silently. “The doctors will do what I ask.”

“And will you ask for more time?”

Jung thought for another long moment, again assessing, and then said, “A few more days. I can ask for a few more days.”

THE FOLLY OF MEN

T
he next morning when Will Honeycutt walked into Arnauld’s room and placed a copy of Chapman’s
Iliad
in his lap, the patient only stared at it blankly and said nothing.

“I would like you to read to me,” Will Honeycutt said, impatient, tapping the spot on the page, and there was still nothing. “Very well,” Will said. “I will read,” and he proceeded to read scenes of battle in the
Iliad
until it was time to leave for the boathouse on the Zürichsee. In the auto on the way, Will feared that the regression was complete and that Arnauld would not row. Perhaps his brusque manner had ruined everything.

But after the usual routine and Arnauld, in his rowing shorts and jersey, was seated in the shell and pushed off from the dock, he began to row and headed out onto the mirrorlike smoothness of the lake. Exactly forty-five minutes later he was back at the dock.

For the rest of the day and into the evening, Will Honeycutt, patient again, read to his friend and got no response. The doctors at the Burghölzli avoided them both. The next day the same thing happened, and it was late at night, just as Will was thinking of calling it quits till the morning, that the change came.

They were back to reading the
Odyssey
and had arrived at the end, after Odysseus’s men had been drowned, and the hero had sailed home alone to Ithaca. There was a passage in which the citizens of Ithaca blamed their leader Odysseus for not bringing their sons safely home from war. Will
read the passage and then stopped. Then he read it again, and looked up into the face of his friend.

“Arnauld,” he said, “look at me. For God’s sake, look at me.” The persona of any mentor far gone, it was now just the very fallible Will Honeycutt himself, alone with his friend. And he might have been imagining it, but for just an instant he thought he saw a flash of recognition in those vacant eyes. “It is not his fault,” Will said, and there was nothing. “It is not his fault. Don’t you see”—and he enunciated each word slowly—“it is not his fault.”

And then, after more excruciating silence, he saw the lips move in what might have been
It is not his fault
.

Quickly, Will turned back in the book and found the passage about the bag of wind, and he read it aloud. “Did you hear?” he said when he had finished. “They were in sight of land, in sight of home. Odysseus had done all he could. He had convinced the gods to seal up the winds so that they could come home, all of them. Safe and sound from the war.” Will saw the eyes move and definitely saw a flash of life in them this time. “Whose fault was it?” he said, and then stared into the face. There was another long, painful silence.

Will Honeycutt saw the lips move first, then the words came. “The men,” Arnauld said.

“Arnauld,” his friend said, “it is not your fault.”

“It is not my fault,” came in little more than a whisper.

“Whose fault is it?” Will said.

There followed a silence, and then Arnauld Esterhazy uttered a single word, in little more than a whisper. “Men,” he said, and Will Honeycutt repeated his question.

This time the words came out with clarity. “Men,” Arnauld said, and then added very distinctly, “The folly of men.”

And the next morning when Carl Jung heard of it, he had tears in his eyes.

HOMECOMING

BOSTON, 1919

O
n a late summer afternoon, Eleanor stood on the platform at Back Bay Station waiting for the 3:50 train from New York. She was accompanied only by her young son, Standish, having decided that the girls and her husband, Frank, would stay home and offer their greeting there. She had also decided that it would be better if Will Honeycutt traveled to New York and met the ship from Le Havre and arranged for the train to Boston. She would be waiting at Back Bay Station.

She had been nervous and anxious all day, as the time seemed to pass with excruciating slowness. As there had been no word from New York, she judged that everything had gone smoothly, and she gathered Standish and left for the station much earlier than was necessary.

In the time that had passed since her return from northern Italy and Zurich, much had transpired. Will Honeycutt’s treatment had brought about what Carl Jung considered a near-miraculous breakthrough, one that the doctors at the Burghölzli believed would affect greatly the manner in which battle trauma would be viewed and treated.

“Once Arnauld could express outwardly the extremity of his trauma,” her friend Jung wrote, “his unconscious mind permitted full access to memories which had been denied. This change in turn brought about his near-complete return to normal, a return from the underworld.”

The change became so thorough that before Will Honeycutt left his
post at the hospital to return to Boston, it was concluded that the patient was fit to leave and continue his rehabilitation in his native Vienna, a step Will had prepared for by assigning the patient’s cousin as his companion and helper. He had very carefully recruited Miggo Sabatini to the task and to live at his cousin’s side for the months of the return to his former life there, including life at the university and in the cafés. Miggo had very detailed instructions on exactly how he would conduct his assignment, serving as Arnauld’s “extroverted alter ego, the perfect guide for the last part of the journey out,” as Will said. “Miggo knows not to stop the readings.”

“Be relentless,” Will Honeycutt had said, as if the impossible cousin needed coaching.

“Don’t worry,” Miggo replied. “I know the value of the letters and the readings and the memorials. I shall give him no rest.”

When Eleanor heard of this turn in the tale of the restoration of Arnauld Esterhazy, she smiled, thinking it a brilliant move, and she enjoyed receiving letters during this phase of the rehabilitation from both the mentor and the subject.

During this rehabilitation period, she also received a letter from Fräulein Tatlock and read with great pleasure that Herr Jodl had become a regular visitor at the pension and that he had heard word from the Italian government that his son was definitely among the many Austrian prisoners of war detained near Rome during the complexities of postwar negotiations.

She also heard from Edith Hamilton, from her girls’ school in Baltimore. Edith was overwhelmed by the news of Arnauld’s being found alive and then by the reports of his restoration and his need for further rehabilitation. “I shall bring him down here to the Chesapeake,” she wrote, “and take him up to Maine. We shall rediscover ancient Greece together and renew our work on our catalogue of the classic myths. I shall give him no rest until he is back to his old self, as good as new.”

And then as Eleanor waited with her own son on the platform of Back Bay Station, she heard the sound of the approaching train and Standish’s exuberant, “Oh boy. Here it comes,” not really clear on who it was exactly they were there to greet.

She knew the position in the line of cars where they would be disembarking, and she watched as a few passengers appeared in the doorway
and then stepped down onto the platform, the conductor watching to see that there were no missteps. Then suddenly Will Honeycutt stood in the doorway, and her heart began to race, and Standish burst out with, “Here he is!” thinking his mother’s longtime business associate the reason for their long wait at trackside. And immediately behind Will Honeycutt, the cousin Miggo appeared, now exercising his American citizenship, looking from side to side a little nervously from the train car doorway, then stepping down into the world of Boston.

And then time stopped. As the two men stepped down onto the station platform, behind them in the train car doorway a handsome and distinguished European appeared. He was tall and alert, with a clear-eyed presence that might have caused anyone to stop and notice. He looked down to where Eleanor and her son were standing. For an instant he flinched as if his eyes were adjusting to the light or he was unable to absorb immediately what he was seeing. And then he smiled, a smile of such radiance that it should have been captured by a great photographer or painter. He was looking straight into the face of Eleanor Burden, and she returned the gaze for a long moment.