The Relic (7 page)

Clinics and cuckoo clocks
. The words chased each other round his brain like some idiot jingle. He looked at his watch. He sighed. He had left his car and chauffeur while he walked. They were waiting on the road.

It was a short drive up the hillside. The clinic was built on a promontary, with spectacular views across the lake to the distant Jura mountains in their bridal wreath of clouds. He went up the steps and in to the reception.

It was a handsome modern building, with lots of glass. Cool colours, plenty of air. Pastel flower arrangements and smiling faces coming to greet him. Empty eyes and painted smiles. To soothe the mad, he thought savagely. Am I, Adolph Brückner, mad? What is it, inside my head, that all the skill of technological science cannot find?

A nurse guided him to a silent lift that stopped at the third floor without seeming to move. She came with him and he read the name plate.
Dr I. Volkov
. The nurse knocked, and then opened it for him. Her smile was painted, too. He stepped inside.

He had formed a mental picture of the famous Russian doctor. He was expecting a big, butch woman, with spectacles and shorn hair. The woman who came to meet him was slight, fair haired and in her thirties. She wore a well-cut blue dress and a gold necklace. She smiled at him and held out her hand, as if it were a social encounter.

‘Monsieur Brückner. Good morning. Do come and sit down, please. Make yourself comfortable.'

A big leather armchair faced her across her desk.

‘Do you smoke?'

He shook his head. ‘Thank you, no.'

‘Very sensible,' she said and smiled. ‘But I'm afraid I do. If you don't mind.'

‘I don't mind.'

She wasn't a health freak; that helped. He had no time for the anti-alcohol and tobacco lobby. People should make their own decisions about what was bad for them. And he had interests in the tobacco companies.

‘I've been looking through your notes,' she said. ‘You're a very healthy man. No illnesses apart from a remedial operation for a war wound.'

‘I was shot in the leg on the Russian front,' he said. ‘Army surgeons cocked it up. I walked with a limp till it was put right.'

She nodded. She wore her blonde hair in a short swinging bob. The colour of corn swaying in a light breeze. Fields and fields of corn as they rumbled through, cutting across them, scything down the crops.

‘But you have this one problem,' he heard her say. ‘Headaches. Acute attacks lasting for days, sometimes. Clinical investigations show no malignancy or physical cause. Migraine has been eliminated. Psychological stress is the diagnosis, but the attacks occur as frequently when you're on holiday or during leisure activities. You play golf, I see.'

‘And I ski,' he added. ‘I keep myself fit.'

‘Well,' the doctor said; she put out her cigarette. ‘I'll start by asking you some routine questions. Do you have any secret anxieties that you can't discuss with anyone? Any business problems? Personal relationships? Money?'

He said no, to each one.

‘Sex?' she enquired and smiled at him, as if it were a foolish question.

‘I'm seventy-one,' he said. ‘I'm still able to perform, if that's what you mean.'

‘I'm sure you are.'

He knew he was being aggressive; she didn't seem to mind. ‘No aberrations, no perversions you're ashamed of? Don't think you can shock me. I've heard everything. I've great sympathy with problems of that kind.'

‘I'm not a sado-masochist, paedophile or anything else,' he said. ‘And I don't want to fuck men, or dress up in women's clothes.'

‘Would you like a cup of coffee?'

It was a gentle put-down, and he knew it. She had a slight accent, not very thick, but with the lilt he recognized from all those years ago. He said, ‘Doctor, I didn't come here to drink coffee. What can you do for me?'

‘It's what you can do for yourself,' she said. ‘Your headaches are self-induced, M'sieur Brückner. You are punishing yourself.
I
don't know why, but
you
do.'

He glared at her. ‘That's nonsense. I'm not listening to a lot of psychiatric crap.'

‘Then get up and walk out of here,' she suggested. ‘I guarantee you'll have the worst headache of your life.'

He didn't move. He rubbed one hand against his forehead. There was sweat on his palm.

‘What am I to do?' he said at last.

‘You can trust me,' she said quietly. ‘Try to think of me as a friend. Let me help you in the way I think best. I'd like to give you an injection, something to help you relax and make it easy to talk.'

He jerked suspiciously. ‘Sodium Penthadol? I'm not having the truth drug!'

‘No, you're not,' she assured him. ‘You've been reading too many spy novels, M'seiur. That's a lot of nonsense. I'll give you something called Buscopan which simply relaxes the muscles and stops you feeling tense. It will hold that headache at bay for a little while. Now, why don't we start. Would you prefer to lie down?'

He grimaced. ‘No couch for me, thank you.'

‘If you're comfortable, you're just as well sitting up. Take off your jacket and roll up your right sleeve, please.'

She straightened up. He hadn't even felt the needle go in. ‘You won't feel drowsy,' she assured him. ‘Just loose, not uptight. So,' she went behind her desk and lit another cigarette. He remembered the smell. Strong, scented Balkan tobacco. ‘Tell me about yourself. From the beginning.'

It was the third time Volkov had said goodbye. They'd been walking aimlessly, stopping to sit and gaze at the lake and the passers-by, mostly in silence. There was a bar up a side street. Lucy saw him glance towards it and then stop.

‘Time for me to go home,' he said.

‘And I must go back to my hotel,' Lucy said. ‘It's lonely when you don't know anybody. There's a café over there. I wouldn't mind a glass of wine and a sandwich. Then I'll say goodbye. I promise.'

He didn't argue. They left the quayside and crossed over; Lucy asked if she could take his arm.

‘I'm not used to the traffic yet.' She knew he didn't want the contact, but he was not going to refuse. He was a naturally gentle man, she realized that. A kind man. The courage, the self-respect might have been stripped from him, but his natural kindness remained. He guided her across the stream of traffic.

‘This is a nice little place,' Lucy remarked. ‘Do you come here every day?'

‘If I walk this way. I have a routine, you see. I have a drink at the St Honoré, then I walk to the end here and sit down for a bit in the Jardin Anglais. I stop off here occasionally. There are bars and cafés everywhere. The Swiss like their food and drink.'

They sat down; the bar was already full of people eating snack lunches, drinking beer and coffee. The waitresses were busy. Volkov fidgeted.

Lucy said quickly, ‘What do you do when it rains?'

‘I go to the Bibliothéque in the Place aux Vivres and borrow a book. Or I go to the cinema.' He was looking around, trying to attract attention.

Lucy waved at a passing waitress. ‘The menu please and a glass of cognac. Bring the cognac right away, my friend's not feeling very well.

‘Why did you do that?' he said suddenly.

‘I know you need a drink,' she said quietly. ‘Tell me, what sort of books do you like?'

‘I'm reading about Buddhism at the moment. Ah, thank you.' He took the brandy and sipped it.

Lucy waited. ‘Do you believe in Buddhism?'

‘I don't believe in anything. I live in a vacuum. Rather, I exist … There was a Protestant pastor in prison with me. He was a good man. He said I'd find it easier if I was a Christian. I wonder what's happened to him … If he ended up in a labour camp he's probably dead. He wasn't very strong.'

‘But you survived,' she pointed out. ‘That's what's important.'

Finishing the brandy, the sense of not being, not caring, spread through him. She had such a delicate face, such an innocent intensity …

‘You're a nice person, Lucy Warren. But you're wasting your time with me. I've nothing more to give. So, for the last time, go away and leave me in peace. Please.'

‘All right,' Lucy stood up. ‘All right, I'll go. But I'll be back tomorrow and the day after and the day after that. You're not going to get rid of me, Professor. Because I'm damned if I'm going to let them win!'

Then she was gone. He watched her walk away down the street. It was peaceful now she had gone. And suddenly, lonely. The day ahead of him seemed very long, but he knew the remedy for that.

Back at the rented apartment, Lucy felt tired and drained. Despair was creeping up on her. The hero didn't exist; the fiery orator, the fearless protester against injustice and oppression had become a lost soul. Introverted, withdrawn, a drunk.

This man was no Andrei Sakharov, who, after years of exile, could enter politics and rally the opposition. Volkov was dying visibly, without even a martyr's crown. It was hopeless, and cruel to harass him. As he had said himself, he had nothing left to give.

She sat down and closed her eyes. All for nothing. Her father's dream of a crusade, her hopes, the trust of Mischa and the friends who had lobbied and marched in protest all over the world when Volkov was arrested. A year in prison. That was all that was needed to break his spirit.

She opened her eyes and sat up slowly. A year wasn't very long. Others had survived much worse and come out stronger and more determined. Was Volkov fundamentally weak? He hadn't seemed so when the world was watching. Ringing statements of defiance had been smuggled out of his cell in the Lubianka prison and published, to the rage of the Soviet authorities.

Lucy got up and opened the window. She took deep breaths of the clear Swiss air.
I'll be back tomorrow and the day after and the day after that. For as long as it takes until I reach him. If his wife is part of what's happened to him, then she's not going to win, either
.

She slammed the window shut so hard that the glass rattled.

Adolph Brückner was relaxed. The chair was comfortable. He had no sense of drowsiness or lack of control. It was natural to talk about himself; the doctor was so unobtrusive. She just asked an occasional question to concentrate his mind.

He'd had an unremarkable childhood, devoid of traumas. His parents were affectionate, his home life stable. He was the only son; he got on well with a younger sister. Yes, he'd joined the Hitler Youth. It was compulsory, after all. And not a bad training either, he insisted. Discipline, physical exercise, pride in achievements. The present generation of young Germans could benefit from such a system. He wasn't a Nazi, no, he rejected that. He was a patriotic German.

The army, Irina Volkov prompted. Tell me about the army. What was it like being a soldier? She was sitting just out of his view, a disembodied mentor. She could see his reflection in a cleverly placed mirror in the wall.

He tensed. His jaw clenched. He shifted in the chair. He didn't want to talk about the army.

‘There's nothing to tell,' he snapped back. ‘War is filthy. I survived with a bullet in my leg and that got me out of it and home.'

‘You were lucky,' she remarked. ‘Millions of Germans never got back at all.'

‘Ten million,' Brückner said. ‘Ten million dead. Don't talk to me about war.'

She had lit another cigarette. Her eyes narrowed against the smoke. ‘Twenty million Russians,' she amended. ‘If you went through that campaign, no wonder you get headaches.'

‘It's got nothing to do with that! I was invalided out by the end of forty-two.' He was visibly disturbed; sweat was trickling down his face in the air-conditioned room.

Irina stood up. ‘I think that's enough for today, Monsieur Brückner. You've made a good start.'

He was up, pulling on his jacket, running his tie in to place under his collar. He was anxious to get away.

‘I don't see there's any point in going on with this. All I've done is waste time talking about myself.'

She said quietly, ‘Do you have a headache?'

He paused. ‘No.'

‘One was beginning when you came here, wasn't it?'

‘Perhaps; yes, it was throbbing slightly.' The fear came back, swamping him.

‘Well, it's not hurting now, is it?' she said firmly.

‘No. No, it isn't.' He was buttoning his jacket. He wiped his damp face with a handkerchief. ‘I may not have another attack for weeks.'

‘I wouldn't like to bet on that.' Her voice was very cool. ‘I'd like you to come back tomorrow. Unless you want to wait till you get another headache.'

He raised his voice. He was used to shouting at employees and servants when they frustrated him in any way.

‘What good can all this talking do me? I'm busy. I've a business to run, I haven't time to waste on a lot of clap-trap.'

She was quite unmoved. She shrugged slightly. ‘It's up to you. I can't do anything for you except help you to help yourself. If you want to come back, there's a ten o'clock appointment reserved for you. Believe me, M'sieur, I have a waiting list of patients. I'm only seeing you because I know it's urgent.'

He went to the door. He turned the handle. Irinia Volkov didn't move. He opened the door; then he turned back and said, ‘All right. Ten o'clock tomorrow then.'

She left her desk and came to him. She smiled and nodded in a friendly way. ‘I'm glad,' she said. ‘You've made the right decision.' She gave him her hand to shake and gently closed the door on him.

Then, she bent down to the recorder hidden under his chair and pressed the button to rewind the tape.

There were four more appointments that afternoon. It was already dusk when she closed up her office. Just before she left she checked with her secretary. Yes, Monsieur Brückner had confirmed the ten o'clock session.