by Anna Vaught
… Aveva sentito parlare della…
Blah blah blah...
And then, for its beauty and because I learned and thought and learned and thought, so young, I drew out some Latin, from my treasure house of things forbidden. My parents had rather I’d been born a boy. That was not hidden from me and, when I was sixteen, I left school and was instead compelled to learn to prepare kosher food, understand home economy and spend days full of needlework. I raged. My younger brother Wilhelm, meanwhile, was attending high school, doing well. He would whine and complain about the boredom and confinement of his lessons and, once, not being the good little lady I was made to be, I picked up my needlework basket and hurled it at him, shrieking, What do you know? How dare you! You who are free! and all rounded on me. I smart about it now, but bear a pride that I was determined to learn and keep on learning in secret. I coveted knowledge and was ever more a votary from that day. So now, with my Latin and remembered anger, confinements bubbling up, I said: But doctor, doctor, what of erat vivus, philomela, requieverunt in ramis extra? Oh, aren’t I the storyteller? Aren’t I controlling the narrative now, Herr Experte? (And I was thinking too of Mother and Father and Wilhelm.)
He, Dr Breuer, was thinking, mad. Obviously. Doesn’t know which language she’s speaking in; can’t keep it straight. These hysterics can’t hold it in!
And Violet spoke Bertha’s story and, of course, it was extraordinary. You probably cannot believe all these languages, down pat, for a barmy old bird in a loony bin. Well, Breuer was nodding his head at Bertha, I bet, and aren’t you nodding your head at us? I ask you: what do you believe? Don’t you believe that a clever, resourceful lady (yes, alright, would-be assassin, said to be mad) could remember all this and mouth it for Bertha? Lady Violet Gibson has been here for thirty years and often shut off, by her own decision, from the inmates here. What did you think was going on in her head? She was thirsty, desperately so. Lonely. Ditto. She had all the books and papers she would like and she had time. That she did have. Decades of it. Remember, she’s had thirty years to think about and find voice and imagine. It looks like delusion. It looks like miracle. Actually, most of all, it’s bloody persistence and because she has a good heart.
All this I say and Violet tells me I was kind to understand and to take notice. I invite her to go on. I want to know Bertha so much more. I want to know about her beliefs, her faith, too. And Violet commands: Ah, well listen and make sure your noting is excellent. Bertha asks us to look down at her hand, on her lap there, saying: And in my hand I held my Torah and a letter. I kept my handkerchief over my hand, for these are my records of this time and of no man’s. Torah open on the Psalms; yesterday on Exodus.
Know this:
God provided for the nomadic Israelites and when the fall of the dew lifted, there, over the surface of the wilderness, lay a fine and flaky substance, as fine as frost upon the ground and this was the bread that the Lord had given them to eat. When I was a child—and I am crying, crying thinking of this now—my father spoke often of this and showed me how, on Shabbat Shirah, which fell about my birthday, we would feed the birds upon the ground in memory of this, and I have loved this time all my life. When I was ill, when I was mad, I missed this time. In talking cures, it little seems to matter what our faith is and that, oh that is wrong. Eschatology; our last things: it is everything, the core of who we are, whether we believe or not. If we examine madness, we must examine faith. Why do these men not grasp this? We must examine our beliefs or our unbelief so that we may come to understand what we are made of. How would a talking cure work, otherwise?
Dummköpfe.
Outside, there is the song of sparrows on my windowsill; it is beautiful but it frightens me, too, for have you ever heard of the Guf? It is written of in our Talmud and in the texts of the Kabbalah: a mysterious storehouse of souls, a place of my dreams, and sparrows sing as souls are released into our world, but if they should cease then all is over. Our world is over. I am frightened for the moment the sparrows stop singing! In my illness and in my better days, I have to analyse what I believe.
On my worst nights, I, a girl of high intellectual ability, as the doctors described me, I hear them, souls, falter and cease. And then I wake, heavy drenched but sane. And I reach for my Tanakh and steady my hand and I read from the Psalms, thus, that You make springs gush forth in torrents, that they make their way between the hills, giving drink to all the wild beasts; the wild asses slake their thirst.
And: The birds of the sky dwell beside them
And sing among the foliage.
And I know that my life must have purpose more than this,
A little bird told me that it would.
And I look at the Aggadah. I read and I read. My eye drops, magic, to the birds and their great stories. Just as Leviathan is the king of fishes, so the Ziz is appointed to rule over the birds. It is said that its ankles rest on the earth, and its head reaches to the very sky. It’s so beautiful!
It once happened that travellers on a vessel noticed a bird. The bird stood in the water, which merely covered its feet, and its head knocked against the sky. The onlookers thought the water could not have any depth at that point, and they prepared to take a bath there. A heavenly voice warned them: Alight not here! Once a carpenter’s axe slipped from his hand at this spot, and it took it seven years to touch bottom. The bird the travellers saw was none other than the Ziz. Its wings are so huge that unfurled they darken the sun. They protect the earth against the storms of the south; without their aid the earth would not be able to resist the winds blowing thence. Once an egg of the Ziz fell to the ground and broke. The fluid from it flooded sixty cities, and the shock crushed three hundred cedars. Fortunately such accidents do not occur frequently. As a rule the bird lets its eggs slide gently into the nest. This one mishap was because the egg was rotten, and the bird cast it away carelessly. The Ziz has another name, Renanin, because it is the celestial singer. And isn’t that a lovely word? I dream of its song, always.
And I, Lucia, say to Violet: Oh that is lovely. I want to dream of it too! And she says, though not unkindly, Ah little fool, you will dream. I do not know who your celestial singer will be, but you will dream. When we get you out of here.
She’s talked about saving me, before. I thought she meant just... I don’t know... a sympathetic plan for how I should best conduct myself in St Andrew’s. Good behaviour, but mainly things to keep me alive, on the inside. Inside of me, I mean. How to use my imagination; to whom I might talk. Something. She had plans. But now she was speaking of something more practical, of escape and autonomy. I asked, Out of here? and she said to wait. Hear more of Bertha first and, together, have some adventures. Violet went on, for Bertha, in Vienna:
A letter came. It was extraordinary. Not by post, as such, but floating, as it appeared, to my window ledge, as if dropped by the nightingale at his twilight, gift and boon for me. Could it be so? Do I see clearly? Time out of time. Hide it away.
The nurse from Dr Breuer’s clinic called on me today, now I am at home, though watched. She said there had been a letter, but who would write?
They cannot have looked closely at this impossible thing. Its date, the stamps! Cockerel, emblem of the French Republic, yes? What is this? I rubbed my eyes, laughing. Hysterical! But no, it was there. Paris, 1887 it told me. Five years from now. Then the postmark said England and 1956 laughed its date. A pretty queen, cobalt blue, thistles, sceptre, a bird. The letter came from two places, winged twice.
How is this possible? Generations and seas away.
The little singing bird flies far and wide.
Who’ll sing a psalm?
I, said the Thrush, as she sat on a bush,
I’ll sing a psalm.
Even the sparrow finds a home and the swallow a nest.
I know all this and say it aloud.
Doubt me?
But then again, what do
you know what is possible, who has not been mad?
So what do you think of that, Lucia?’
Violet was supine and resting. And what do you think, I say to you. How extraordinary, all that reading and recitation. Well, Lady Gibson’s mind is an ornate building and she’s made rooms and rooms and, God love her, twiddly bits: cupolas and back stairs you weren’t expecting. It’s about survival. I cannot say madness is ever good, but then I don’t have a jamboree being sane. Being confined and unable to prove you are not mad hurts in a way it is impossible to voice. I dare not, for I shall scream and then they’ll come and it’ll likely be the camisole de force and, ah, a sedative for my friend and that won’t do. I realise I’m saying all this aloud. Too loudly.
Girl, you must speak like a lady, your sounds are too harsh, laughs Violet to me: Round them out, plump up your vowels like I do, like a Lady!
Violet, where did they put that mop, the one you hit Miss Drool with? It’s your turn! A lady, ha! I howl.
And she says I took it back and I killed a man and we laugh, and the scream of which I spoke is beaten back.
6
Violet. White. Albina. Violetta. As I said, I am growing to love you. In doing so, I wake.
St Andrew’s Hospital, March or thereabouts, 1956. This, as it went, was two months before Violet’s death. She had been very ill, but had rallied and managed, as you learned at the beginning, to go outside and feed the birds. I kept going with her. I loved them, those moments of rushed beauty as the birds came to the little pouches for seed and crumbs which she’d had sewn into her coat, her jacket, her ubiquitous black crêpe dress. She said, and we were in her room: That day, when I had finished whispering to you, Lucia, dear girl, and speaking in cod-Joyce, spoiled-Beckett, I felt... I felt awake. When we had been outside, the birds pecked at my fingers and caught my eyes and their eyes were of glass but warm and so I asked them to help me. Cock Robin, little nuthatch and you, humble little sparrow, put something in the wind for me. It is a letter I shall write and it needs to go back, just a little, just a little and to other places. And they cocked their heads and they answered, I.
This is my letter. I should say letters, really, because while you, Lucia, and Bertha are polyglots, Blanche speaks only French. Translating it—I had thought my French to be excellent, but there’s not much French to speak in this place and some of them, the others have, I swear, gone to pot on Snap and handicrafts so they’re monolingual, if that: not you, Lucia, not you—ah, yes, I was trying to say that I was pained at how raggedy it was, but made myself preserve it as such, knowing that you would be sympathetic and so not mind its judders. And of course, you tidy anything up with the languages, clever girl, and you fill in the gaps, anywhere, if I falter or get scant of breath? Girl, here’s the letter I’ve composed. I’ve lovely paper, see. I’ll read aloud, you take it down Miss Joyce and check it later, will you?’
I said, I am not your secretary or your vassal, Miss Gibson, and she said, Oh, dear girl, watch it with the late Middle English and do observe title, you below stairs! and I thought, Oh, God love us, when was the last time she and I had any FUN?
And she read her letter aloud. It was to Blanche and Bertha but also to me and, I think, to herself, too. Do you know, I looked at her handwriting and it was a thing of beauty. Here:
Dear songbirds.
From St Andrew’s, Northampton. It is a loony bin and I live here, against my will. I live here with execrable loonies, like old Miss Drool whom I went for with the mop, and I am not proud of that. But I’ve got one friend and her name is Miss Lucia Anna Joyce, the daughter of the novelist, Mr James Joyce, and she is writing everything down for me. And will, for us.
My name is Violet Albina Gibson, the Honourable. I am the daughter of Edward Gibson and Frances Colles. I am from Dublin, from a fine Anglo-Irish Protestant family (though I went over to Rome—and in more ways than one) and I would like to emphasise that I am a member of the aristocracy, though I cut up rough, because (apparently) I am a lunatic and notwithstanding I tried to shoot Mussolini which does not seem—and clearly this is taken by people here as further evidence for both madness and arrogance—such a foolish thing to do, given what he latterly got up to. Though my heart is heavy, I wish we had been able to stop him sooner. Before he was strung up by others. Oh yes: my father was quite famous in his way. Lawyer; politician; Lord Chancellor of Ireland and privy councillor. He had the patronage of Disraeli, Northcote and Churchill; I had hoped that all these connections might get me out of this place, but no. Churchill never wrote back. I am dying to tell you: I gave him lots of ideas of what to do in the war. I did quite well, I thought. Later, I petitioned all these important men: I am well enough to be released, said I. Never a reply.
Now, the crime that, above all, they said (I am not convinced) brought me here.
When I shot that horrid bad bird, Benito Mussolini, Italian dictator.
Why did I shoot him? My friend Lucia and I have discussed this in detail. Now, I had wondered about the pope and about others; those who seemed seedy or cruel and in places of power and influence where they should not be. There is a historical tradition of those impelled by faith, as I was, to do some taking off and to kill in the name of the Lord and for a greater glory and for the lives of others; to be a martyr to it. I felt impelled, as if I had been on a religious quest. I wept and prayed; wept and prayed. And my way was clear and logical, too. He was a monster, you know. If I had taken him off or if, you know, the chance came to shoot again... I would not argue it was a terrible thing, even after all these years of punishment and reflection.
Talk of my family will likely mean nothing to any of you (perhaps you, Miss Lucia Joyce). Yes, my father; I’ve told you a little already. I loved him. My life, though, was to be set out for me. Governess, debutante balls, all marked out in the proper place and my reasonable eminent father writing his speeches in the midst of these baying children. But do you know I was like Florence Nightingale’s Cassandra. I was screaming, screaming. That is what Virginia Woolf said—and I do know that not all of you will know all those I name, but give me time and I shall try to make the appropriate introductions. By stealth or society—that before Florence Nightingale set off for the Crimea and had angrily scratched down this book, she was not writing, she was screaming. Oh, and Mother. She was there but, as Constance, my sister and guardian once said, ‘There were so many Gibson children and Mother was not very strong.’ Plus she had to conserve her energies a good deal because that’s what Christian Scientists do.
I have done much screaming and been punished for it; now, I am at the stage, in my twilight and more quiet years, where my rebellion takes the form of singing. Florence wrote (solace to me!) that women of her time could find no outlet in ‘a cold and oppressive conventional atmosphere’ to satisfy their passion and intellect. They were not supposed to have ‘any occupation of sufficient importance not to be interrupted’ and we were to fritter away our days regarding this, regarding that, doing needlework, reading out loud, and taking drives in the carriage. At night, like Cassandra I screamed because I paid the price for the ‘accumulation of nervous energy’ that makes such women feel ‘as if they were going mad’.
Do you all know this feeling? I am confident that you do and have read all that I can on all of you.
And there were terrible losses; my brother Harry from tuberculosis, and I was crying curses as he rained them down. I am sure I do not need to explain to you about the consumptive brain; of what happens when the brain is bedevilled. You’ll have heard about such things, or seen them plain. My darling brother Victor and the closed off mystery. Dead in a chair by a fireside in a hotel and how I did not know. I know, Bertha, Blanche, Lucia, that you have suffered loss. I know.
Loss, bereavement, mystery. Not being loved, or not properly. Being denied redemption.
But I know this is a shambolic letter and I am sorry, I am trying to be composed but I don’t h
ave much time. I suspect that they do not send my letters here, from this elegant asylum; when I tried to find accomplices and smuggle them out, I was found out then. Perhaps that was why Churchill never replied? I am not a very good criminal and definitely not a very good shot, but perhaps we can come to that.
Please do not be startled and please read on.
I have tried to be a good person. We had our houses in London and Dublin; I had all the trimmings, did I not? But oh, how I was empty. With my brother, I would go to the slums and stews of London: Southwark and a grimy mewling child thrust into my arms, barking croup. I shall never forget. I gave alms, I tried to help. The sadness never stopped. Mother, dear frail Mother was a Christian Scientist, and I tried and tried but knew it was all gush and tripe. Mother spoke of how illness was an illusion and I knew she had a false God. And the Theosophists were in full throttle. Around our home in Mayfair, respectable people went to séances with Blavatsky and once I heard Madame Blavatsky singing opera and channelling Tibetan masters: the things I saw through a cracked door. But I felt in my blood the pain of Jesus and knew in my body and soul that I must be cleansed and made right.
I was a hermit with Jesuits; I travelled and travelled. Tried to know the saints in the cool of the mountains and the calm of the rock. When it did not work, back to London and love, but loss, more loss, then left again and something was forming in me. It hurt.
I write, but yes, it is like screaming as I travel back to this, though I am trying to sing, Passerines. My friends: Lucia, Blanche and Bertha. I have given you monikers and you are named for the pretty birds who come to me in the garden of our asylum here in England. I’ve been thinking of you in that way. I think of it when Lucia and I are outside feeding the birds, one of my few pleasures and, our carers say, part of my therapy. Oh, is it now?
Lucia: the song thrush
Blanche: the robin.
Bertha: the nightingale.
