Anita Brookner
Look At Me
First published in 1983
One
Once a thing is known it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten. And, in a way that bends time, so long as it is remembered, it will indicate the future. It is wiser, in every circumstance, to forget, to cultivate the art of forgetting. To remember is to face the enemy. The truth lies in remembering.
My name is Frances Hinton and I do not like to be called Fanny. I work in the reference library of a medical research institute dedicated to the study of problems of human behaviour. I am in charge of pictorial material, an archive, said to be unparalleled anywhere else in the world, of photographs of works of art and popular prints depicting doctors and patients through the ages. It is an encyclopaedia of illness and death, for in early days few maladies were curable and they seem therefore to have exerted a dreadful fascination over the minds of men. We are particularly interested in dreams and madness, and our collection is rather naturally weighted towards the incalculable or the undiagnosed. Problems of human behaviour still continue to baffle us, but at least in the Library we have them properly filed.
I work with Olivia, my friend, and we send off for photographs to museums and galleries, and when they arrive we mount them on sheets of cardboard and type all the relevant information about them on a paper slip which is then fixed to the mount. It is extremely interesting, in a hopeless sort of way. So many lunatics, so many punitive hospitals, so much deterioration. And so much continuity, so much still unsolved. That, I am glad to say, is not my job, although it seems to exercise the minds of most of the people for whom I work.
Take the problem of melancholy, for example. I could almost write a treatise on melancholy, simply from looking through the files. In old prints melancholy is usually portrayed as a woman, dishevelled, deranged, surrounded by broken pitchers, leaning casks, torn books. She may be sunk in unpeaceful sleep, heavy limbed, overpowered by her inability to take the world’s measure, her compass and book laid aside. She is very frightening, but the person she frightens most is herself. She is her own disease. Miter shows her wearing a large ungainly dress, winged, a garland in her tangled hair. She has a fierce frown and so great is her disarray that she is closed in by emblems of study, duty, and suffering: a bell, an hourglass, a pair of scales, a globe, a compass, a ladder, nails. Sometimes this woman is shown surrounded by encroaching weeds, a cobweb undisturbed above her head. Sometimes she gazes out of the window at a full moon, for she is moonstruck. And should melancholy strike a man it will be because he is suffering from romantic love: he will lean his padded satin arm on a velvet cushion and gaze skywards under the nodding plume of his hat, or he will grasp a thorn or a nettle and indicate that he does not sleep. These men seem to me to be striking a bit of a pose, unlike the women, whose melancholy is less picturesque. The women look as if they are in the grip of an affliction too serious to be put into words. The men, on the other hand, appear to have dressed up for the occasion, and are anxious to put a noble face on their suffering. Which shows that nothing much has changed since the sixteenth century, at least in that respect.
Cures for melancholy include music and scourging. It is thought that some of the great religious figures of the past were melancholics. El Greco even chose models from the asylum of Toledo for his pictures of saints and apostles.
Next to melancholy in our filing system is madness, and this section too is heavily patronized. Here, the good news is that quite a bit has changed: madmen were once thought to be incredibly amusing, and there are far too many popular prints, most of them English, I am sorry to say, of funny men hitting themselves on the head or pulling faces at one another. But of course this material can be very serious indeed, particularly as quite a few artists have a close understanding of this sad condition. How powerful lunatics are! Once they were nude, struggling, chained. They tore their hair and hid their faces. A medieval emblem of a madman, on a Tarot card, shows a giant figure dressed in skins, a raven on his shoulder, playing the bagpipes. Only Géricault seems to have shown the mad as creatures of dignity, but of course he lived in the great age when the shackles of the insane were struck off, and in some cases the patients were allowed to wear their own clothes. And it is said that Géricault was mad himself, at least from time to time, and this would undoubtedly deepen his sense of kinship with this strange population. The world of obsession, of delusion, turns the eyes of G&ricault’s madmen red with suspicion, or opens them wide with uncorrupted innocence. Sometimes they think they are children, or generals, or kings. In a horrendous picture by Goya, a large vaulted room with a high window is filled with melee of furious nude figures, some fighting, some grovelling, some simply crawling on the ground, yet even among these barely human creatures some have adorned themselves with paper crowns or with feathers or with chains of office. Goya also shows a figure slipping away from the normal human condition, with an animal head and huge feet, his body electrified by a storm of black chalk strokes. I know very little about Goya’s state of mind apart from the fact that it must have been unenviable. He seems to have been on the edge of the tolerable all his life.
We also have a full range of deaths, and here the fear is unending. Death too can be a woman, with a skull, misleadingly handsome. But death is usually a skeleton which one perceives to be male. Death can menace the mother with the child, can invade the comfortable dwelling of the merchant, can interrupt the miser counting his gold or the scholar in his study. Death can waylay the bridegroom and his bride; death can attend the wedding feast. Death, wearing a crown, his bony foot on a globe, holds a glass inscribed with the words, The mirror that flatters not. And death is unpeaceful, as I well know. At the end temptation comes in the form of gargoyles and devils, and a fight for the soul of the dying will be waged by angels around his bed of suffering.
The section most popular in our Library is the one devoted to dreams. There are dreams of women, dreams of God, dreams of whirlwinds, of giant birds, of dogs, of fame. St Helena dreams of the True Cross, which she was later to find. The most famous dream image of all shows a man with his head sunk on his folded arms and bats flying all around him. All these dreams seem terribly disturbing. I never dream myself, and I suppose I am very lucky. I am also fortunate enough to be in excellent health, and this fact, and the fact that I have no specialist knowledge, makes my work tolerable. If I were to be afflicted in any way, I doubt if I could look at this stuff all day. Fortunately, even for one as invulnerable as myself, there are images of good doctors, although it is true that too many of them seem to spend their time pulling teeth or burrowing into open wounds with large iron instruments or squinting at flasks of urine. But I try to remember that picture painted by Goya (you see how his name keeps coming up) as an act of friendship towards his own doctor, Dr Arrieta. I have a peculiar fondness for this image. It shows the painter in a dressing gown; he faces the spectator in an extremity of suffering, the structure of his face and body disintegrating beneath the gravity of his pain, his expression both naked and disbelieving. Behind him stands his doctor, a small man, neat, hopeful, resolute. He extends one arm round the shoulders of his patient, and with the other proffers a remedy. I believe that on that occasion Goya did not die, although he may not in fact have ever fully recovered. Nobody knows what the illness was, but it was clearly terrible. Dr Arrieta was something of an expert on the plague and he went to Africa to investigate it. Whether he ever caught it or not I do not know. My information runs out here.
Most of the real work in the Library is done by Dr Leventhal, the librarian, who combs the many reference books in search of maladies and images of maladies and who then passes the information on to Olivia or myself. We do the work of mounting and filing, of collecting offprints of
learned articles, and we also look after the visitors who come to consult our archives. We are not very well known to the general public nor would we wish to be, but we cater for our own staff of doctors and for outside specialists and the odd, the very odd, visitor. At the moment we can count on Mrs Halloran and Dr Simek. Mrs Halloran is a wild-looking lady with a misleading air of authority who claims to be in touch with the other side and who is trying to prove her theory that the influence of Saturn is responsible for most anomalies of behaviour. You get a lot of borderline cases in libraries. Dr Simek is an extremely reticent Czech or Pole (we are not quite sure which and we do not see that it is our business to enquire). He is working, on a series of tiny file cards, on the history of the treatment of depressions, or melancholia, as it used to be known, and he comes in every day. They both come in every day, largely, I suspect, because the Library is so very well heated.
Mrs Halloran’s attempts to engage Dr Simek in conversation - efforts which he courteously and wordlessly ignores - usually reach some sort of climax when they both want to study the same folder of photographs. Mrs Halloran always wins, because she makes such a noise that it is in everybody’s interest to shut her up, just as some people get a lot of sympathy because they complain all the time. On these occasions Dr Simek smiles, inclines his head, and says, ‘Miss Frances, if you would be so kind…’, and requests more photographs. I always deal with him because Olivia is more brutal and has been known to tell Mrs Halloran to keep quiet or go to another library. Mrs Halloran knows that she would not last five minutes outside the confines of this peculiar place, half study, half nursery, and subsides, for a time, at least. Round about midday she says, ‘Either of you girls coming round to the Bricklayers?’, and we say, as we always do, that we are so busy that we are simply going to have a quick sandwich in the canteen. Mrs Halloran goes out for a couple of hours and comes back breathing rather heavily, her concentration gone, as is proved by the way she gazes out of the window for long periods and taps on the table with one or other of her massive onyx rings. She does not seem to know that she is doing this, and eventually Dr Simek looks up, inclines his head politely, and says, ‘Madam, if you would be so kind - -.’ I think this was the first phrase he learned when he came to this country. He never goes out to lunch. He never seems to eat at all. When I bring Olivia her tea I sometimes take him a cup, which is a bore because then Mrs Halloran wants one too, and then Dr Leventhal appears in the doorway that divides the Library from his office and wants to know if we are having a party, and could we please remember that silence is the rule. He is the sort of man who only breaks his own silence in order to utter a derogatory remark. But he is otherwise quite harmless. I would not say that we were genuinely fond of him (that would hardly be appropriate) but he is easy to work for, a mild, heavy man, probably shy, probably lonely, very correct, easily tolerated. We all get on very well.
The potential boredom of this routine is broken by the visits of one or other of the Institute’s own doctors, particularly one of the two whose research we are funding, James Anstey or Nick Fraser. Particularly Nick Fraser. Nick is everybody’s favourite, even Dr Leventhal’s. For as long as Olivia and I have known him he has been distinguished by that grace and confidence of manner that ensure success. He is tall and fair, an athlete, a socialite, well-connected, good-looking, charming: everything you could wish for in a man. Our allEngland hero, Olivia once called him, in those days when she was more than a little in love with him. She may still be, for all I know, but she never mentions it and I don’t ask. Sometimes her mouth tightens after one of his lightning visits when, in a mood of general hilarity or euphoria, he sweeps in, flings his arms around Mrs Halloran (‘Delia, you old monster., what are you doing here?’), demands, with an urgent clicking of the fingers, a whole pile of photographs, looks at his watch, remembers he has an appointment, begs me, with his ravishing smile, to take them up to his room, and sweeps out again, I I leaving a trail of disorder and excitement. Dr Leventhal appears in his doorway, sees who it is, and subsides. ‘Don’t take them,’ says Olivia. ‘Why should you?’
‘Oh, but I must,’ I reply. ‘I can’t hold up his work. He’s so brilliant. I mean his work is.’
‘You mean he is. You have succumbed, just like everybody else. The discreet charm of the bourgeoisie vanquished once more by the brutal fascination of the upper classes.’
She talks like that. She was brought up in a strictly socialist household. Also, she pines a little, I think, because Nick is married to the equally dazzling Alix, whom Olivia, for various reasons, can’t stand. We have never discussed this because on some matters reticence is preferable, particularly when feelings are liable to change. We are both rather old-fashioned, I suppose, and although our friendship is deep and sincere, we do not really subscribe to the women’s guerrilla movement. I think we like to maintain a certain loyalty to the men who have, or have had, our love and affection; we regard ourselves in some way as being concerned with their honour. Ridiculous, really, when you come to think of it. I have learned that there is no reciprocity in these matters. But in any case Olivia is a creature of such high breeding that she would consider such a discussion to be in questionable taste. So we never say anything, although I have seen her eyes darken and her face grow paler than usual after one of these visits. There is no hope, of course. I think she saw that even before I did. She is very brave.
So I struggle up the stairs with Nick’s photographs and he leans back in his chair for an instant and smiles and says, ‘Darling Fanny. What a good girl you are’, and I go downstairs again, and do something strenuous and unpleasant, like a lot of very brisk filing, until Mrs Halloran comes back from her lunch and knocks some- thing off one of the tables with her bag and the afternoon gets under way.
Nick is also working on depression and it sometimes surprises me that he talks to Mrs Halloran, whom he knows from the pub, rather than to Dr Simek, who was apparently quite an authority in his own country. I would have thought that they would have a great deal in common. Dr Simek has often tried to retain his attention but he is too courteous, too resigned, and Nick is always too much in demand for them ever to be able to get together. Dr Simek seems to accept this, as he accepts everything else: the un-European character of this Library, with its cups of tea and its ash-trays and Mrs Halloran, who is sometimes quite drunk, and the fact that one of the librarians is more or less immobile. I feel that it is just as well that Dr Simek is working largely on the nineteenth century for there is no doubt that Nick will sweep the board of honours when he publishes his own work on depression. Dr Simek always waits until Nick has finished his joke with Mrs Halloran, his head on one side, his lips slightly pursed, his eyes looking studiously down at the photograph in his slightly trembling hand, and when the laughter has died down, he clears his throat and says, ‘Dr Fraser, if you would be so kind… ‘, Which is his all-purpose phrase, and he shows him the photograph. Nick, who is always in a tearing hurry, and who has to combine his research with his professional duties and a full social life, makes a disappointed face. ‘Joseph,’ he says, ‘it really is too ridiculous that we never have time to discuss this properly. Why don’t you come to dinner one evening? I’ll get my wife to give you a ring.’
‘I have no telephone,’ says Dr Simek, as might have been expected. ‘Perhaps now we could…’
‘I’ll get her to ring here,’ Nick assures him. ‘One of the girls will take a message.’ Actually we are not allowed to use the telephone, which is in Dr Leventhal’s office and which is in fact his telephone, but I don’t suppose he would mind as it has to do with research. I assume that they have had this dinner, which Dr Simek certainly looks as if he needs, but he shows no signs of leaving Nick alone, and Nick sometimes advances behind his back with exaggerated wariness, willing him not to turn round. Dr Simek never does turn round: I suppose that, being a foreigner, he does not recognize the informal approach. Of course he knows that Nick is in the room because he has seen him come in, and I t
hink he also knows that Nick is avoiding him, but he merely purses his lips and gets on with his work. Curiously enough, Mrs Halloran and I find ourselves in some sort of complicity with Nick on these occasions. Our eyes follow his progress round the room, and he gives us both a grateful wink as he tiptoes out.
It is strange how this fails to annoy me, although as a rule I am sensitive to bad manners. It is just that occasionally, very occasionally, one meets someone who is so markedly a contrast with the general run of people that one’s instinctive reaction is one of admiration, indulgence, and, no doubt, if one is not very careful indeed, of supplication. I am not arguing the rights and wrongs of this: I am simply stating the facts as they appear to me. And not only to me, for I have noticed that extremely handsome men and extremely beautiful women exercise a power over others which they themselves have no need, or indeed no time, to analyse. People like Nick attract admirers, adherents, followers. They also attract people like me: observers. One is never totally at ease with such people, for they are like sovereigns and one’s duty is to divert them. Matters like worth or merit rarely receive much of their attention, for, with the power of choice which their looks bestow on them, they can change their minds whenever they care to do so. Because of their great range of possibilities, their attention span is very limited. And their beauty has accustomed them to continuous gratification.
I find such people - and I have met one or two - quite fascinating. I find myself respecting them, as I would respect some natural phenomenon: a rainbow, a mountain, a sunset. I recognize that they might have no intrinsic merit, and yet I will find myself trying to please them, to attract their attention. ‘Look at me,’ I want to say. ‘Look at me.’ And I am also intrigued by their destinies, which could, or should, be marvellous. I will exert myself for such people, and I will miss them when they leave. I will always want to know about them, for I tend to be in love with their entire lives. That is a measure of the power that they exert. That is why I join Nick in a smile of complicity when he spares himself the boredom of a conversation with Dr Simek. It is a kind of law,, I suppose.
Look at Me Page 1
