Memory and Desire

by Lisa Appignanesi

  La spinach or la tacho

  Cigaretto torlo totto

  Her destination was Jacob Jardine’s new consulting room.

  She had not seen Jacob alone since that evening over two years back which had marked their parting. Oh yes, they had bumped into each other two or three times at social gatherings and exchanged a few polite, if strained, words. There had even been the occasional note: when her last pseudonymous book appeared, Jacob had sent a carefully worded congratulatory letter. She had returned the gesture when his book was published. True, she had not been in Paris as much as had been her wont previously. But she had hoped, particularly in those first months after their last meeting, that he would make some sign. There had been none. And on her side, she had been too proud to make any. She was pregnant.

  When she had first discovered her pregnancy, the Princesse had longed for Jacob, ached for him. His loss created a void which threatened to engulf her. Then, as her body swelled and burgeoned, she partly succeeded in putting him out of her mind. This pregnancy, unlike her earlier ones, took her over fully, perhaps because she was more at ease with her womanliness. She relaxed into her body, watched its changes in wonder. Luckily, Frederick was always at his most attentive during her pregnancies and his comfortable presence reassured her. He had no doubt but that the child was his. The Princesse knew that it was otherwise. However, she did nothing to dissuade him. The ignominy of discovering that he was fathering another man’s child would have been too great for Frederick. And the Princesse had no desire to hurt him. Sometimes, too, in those early days, she relished her secret. It replaced that other joyful secret - the affair with Jacob, himself.

  She must have, she realised in retrospect, unconsciously foreseen her pregnancy, for on her return to Denmark after her last meeting with Jacob, she had done everything in her power to lure Frederick into her bedroom. She had succeeded. As a result, there was no reason for Frederick to suspect anything. Only the Princesse when she had seen Violette for the first time had been confirmed in her knowledge. The child’s large, dark, eyes, the shape of her brow, were unmistakably Jacob’s. The Princesse had kept her counsel. She had made no sign of Violette’s arrival to Jacob. She was, in any case, so enthralled by her little girl, so immersed in her dainty movements and her ready show of affection, that she felt at first no desire to do otherwise. This baby, she told herself, was entirely hers - the embodiment of her love, not the product of another’s desire for succession.

  Violette had been born Elizabeth Marie, after Mathilde’s own mother. The second of the Princesse’s sons had nicknamed her Violette, claiming that the baby’s vast dark eyes and darker pupils were just like the flower. The name had stuck.

  It was only as the little girl grew out of her tiniest infancy and her total dependence on her mother, that the Princesse began to have twinges of a desire to share her with Jacob. In the last year, this desire had taken on a new and troubling momentum. It was fuelled by the Princesse’s sense of an impending cataclysm. Thoughts of death brought in their train memories of her father and a disturbing focus on the question of Violette’s paternity. After Mathilde had visited Germany and experienced life under Hitler, the need to see Jacob and reveal her secret became imperative. She had to speak to the one person whom this matter intimately concerned.

  The bronze shingle at the side of the wide double door confronted Mathilde. Dr. Jacob Jardine, Psychanalyste. Taking a deep breath, she rang the consulting room bell. As she did so, she realized that she should have made an appointment. Jacob would almost certainly be with a patient and would have no time to see her. But it was too late to turn back; nor did she wish to, now that she had taken the most difficult step.

  A small neat woman of middle years answered her ring and looked at her sternly. Before Mathilde could speak, she said, ‘Dr. Jardine is with a patient. You will need to telephone for an appointment.’

  ‘I prefer to wait till he is free,’ Mathilde said evenly.

  ‘He will not be free for another two hours,’ the woman said emphatically.

  Mathilde had the impression the woman was about to close the door in her face. She drew herself up to her full height and said authoritatively, ‘Please tell him that Princesse Mathilde de Polignesco wishes to see him.’ She watched the woman hesitate, saw the consternation on her face, the tug between her duty to consulting room regulations and the impact of her name.

  Yes, Mathilde smiled inwardly, despite the democratic tenor of the times, the word Princesse still carried some weight. As did Mathilde’s not inconsiderable demeanour. With the years, she had acquired a formidable presence - a tall, statuesque woman, whose strong features bore down on any challenger with shrivelling authority. The Princesse, it was immediately clear, had a character to be reckoned with.

  Jacob’s assistant ushered her into a small antechamber, turned away and then as if to prove that duty still held the upper hand, looked back to say, ‘I will not be able to speak to Dr. Jardine until his present patient has left, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ Mathilde murmured. She sat down in one of the two armchairs the space held and waited. There was a stillness about the room with its sparse furnishings and muted colours. The rush of traffic seemed far away. It was as if she had stepped into a neutral terrain designed only to take on whatever flavour its occupants wished to give it. There wasn’t a newspaper in sight. Mathilde looked out of the window to remind herself of her bearings, the impetus which had brought her here. At a depth of three floors below her, the Quai Voltaire bustled with life. The bouquinistes displayed their wares: hoary old volumes, sheets of music, cards. Beyond them, the River Seine’s grey waters curled round a passing boat. The sight reassured the Princesse.

  She didn’t know how much time had passed before the receptionist came back into the room. Her manner had visibly changed. ‘Would Madame la Princesse like to come and wait more comfortably next door? Dr. Jardine says he will see you as soon as he has finished with his next patient.’

  The Princesse followed the woman. She had a better sense of the lay-out of the apartment now. Opposite the room in which she had been sitting, a door stood slightly ajar to reveal a similar space in which she glimpsed a seated figure. Between them, a closed door signalled what she surmised must be Jacob’s consulting room. Down the corridor, to the right, she was ushered into a room she instantly knew must be Jacob’s study. It bore his stamp. Books lined the walls, a shelf full of Freud in German, French and English; surrealist manifestoes; novels, medical tomes; journals. The large desk with its sheaves of papers must have held his gaze just hours before. In the far corner of the room a striped divan and chairs provided a lounging space.

  It was here the Princesse sat breathing in Jacob’s atmosphere, remembering what she might have preferred to forget. No one had come into her life to fill the void Jacob had left. In retrospect now, the void appeared to be as much one of companionship as anything else. While Jacob had remained in her life, there had been a whole series of thoughts that she had stored only in order to share them with him. Now there was no one with whom to argue those perceptions, indeed to quicken them. She felt as if a part of her had gone into long hibernation.

  When the receptionist brought in a tray of tea and biscuits, Mathilde quickly picked up a newspaper and pretended to be immersed in the day’s headlines. What did Jacob make of Europe’s current plight? Would he share her sense of despair, understand why she had come to him now? As she stared into the middle distance, her eyes suddenly focussed on a series of photographs: Sylvie, artfully posed by a photographer whose style she recognized. The Princesse wrenched her gaze away. Somehow in the course of this afternoon, she had forgotten about Sylvie’s existence. Now, as the mixed innocence and archness of that face confronted her, she shivered. Perhaps it would be better to let secrets lie undisclosed. The Princesse gathered the folds of her coat round her. She wasn’t after all an abandoned parlour maid who needed to sue for love. The whole thing might prove too demeaning.

&nb
sp; ‘I see I have kept you waiting almost too long. I’m sorry,’ Jacob’s deep voice resonated across the room. He walked towards her. ‘If only you had let me know you were coming…’ He paused to look at her - the theatrically wide-brimmed hat, the mobile expressiveness of her features - and then took her hands in his. ‘I have missed you,’ he said softly.

  As he spoke them, Jacob realised how true the words were. It was not that over these last few years he had consciously thought of Princesse Mathilde with any regularity. Nor had he made any attempts to see her. Between work and the peculiarly obsessive nature of his relationship to Sylvie, his life was full. Sometimes, he thought, over full. But seeing her now in all her dramatic vividness, he was acutely aware of what had gone out of his life.

  ‘I am glad you have come,’ he said.

  ‘You may not be so glad by the time I have left,’ the Princesses’ tone was wry, light. What she felt was altogether different. Somehow, she had not prepared herself for the impact of Jacob’s physical presence. The passing of the years had left their mark, but they had only served to increase his attraction. They looked at each other for a long moment.

  At last Jacob dropped her hands. He took the full, richly-coloured coat from her shoulders and placed it carefully on a chair.

  ‘And now you see where I spend my hours outside the hospital.’ He gestured round him. ‘My father in his wisdom decided to retire to the South, where he keeps fit by running a clinic for workers,’ Jacob smiled ironically. ‘He insisted I take over his consulting rooms, though personally he has little patience with psychic ills, particularly of the more expensive variety.’

  ‘I wish someone had seen to the expense of Herr Hitler’s psychic ills a decade ago. Had I had the foresight, I would have done so myself. Then perhaps we would have been spared the sight of his unconscious unleashed on the rest of us,’ the Princesse’s face grew grim as she spoke, though she kept her voice light.

  There was a pause between them as they studied each other. In it they recognised how, despite their separation, their minds had followed a similar track.

  Jacob poured her a drink from an old crystal decanter, and then as he handed it to her, asked, ‘Why have you come, Mathilde?’

  She was startled by the directness of his question and she blurted out what she would have preferred to keep back for some moments yet.

  ‘To tell you that you are the father of a very lovely girl - my daughter.’ Her voice was low, direct. Dark eyes challenged him.

  Jacob stood very still, so still for what seemed so long that Mathilde was acutely aware of the tapping of a typewriter in the next room, of a bell ringing somewhere, of the sound of her own heart. She looked away from him.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me before, Mathilde ? Contact me?’ He sat down heavily. He looked sad, dejected. ‘Why Mathilde? Have I become such a stranger? Is it not something in your world to be a father?’

  He understood nothing, Mathilde thought. She shivered, held her shoulders proudly high.

  ‘Oh, of course,’ Jacob stood, paced. ‘It’s my doing, isn’t it? I should have made some sign.’ He exhaled a ragged breath. ‘I’m sorry, Mathilde. All those months without a word.’ He took her hand now, brought it to his lips, examined her features urgently. ‘It must have been difficult for you, very difficult,’ he paused. ‘But…what can I say?’ He turned away from her with a gesture of self-exasperation. ‘Had I known, I would have come to you. Somehow. Instantly,’ his voice was muffled.

  A weight lifted from Mathilde’s heart.‘Thank you for saying that, Jacob,’ she murmured. Now she could make light of it all, repeat the words she had endlessly repeated to herself, when her pain was at its worst. ‘And it wasn’t so very difficult,’ Mathilde raised a rueful eyebrow. ‘After all, I am hardly a helpless, impoverished little girl. The waif hasn’t been sent out for adoption, you’ll be pleased to hear.’ She paused, met his eyes ‘but I have missed you, wanted to tell you…’

  ‘I should like to see her,’ Jacob said softly. His face was raw with emotion, as defenceless as a youth’s. ‘More than anything, I should like to see her. Please, Mathilde. When can I see her?’

  The Princesse was surprised by the fierceness of the longing she read in him. She smiled a little wistfully, ‘Given the times we live in, there is perhaps no better moment than the present.’

  ‘Tonight then,’ Jacob’s features shone with relief. He had had a momentary fear that no sooner announced would his daughter be taken away from him. A child. A daughter. The thought thrilled him. ‘Yes, straight away.’ He looked at the Princesse with an air of wonder. ‘Did I used to tell you often enough in those distant days, what a remarkable woman you are?’

  Mathilde smiled as with buoyant alacrity, he picked up the telephone and dialled his home number.

  ‘No, I do not want to go to Neuilly for the weekend to visit Princesse Mathilde. I have already said so. You know I’m singing at the Razzma on Saturday,’ Sylvie raged around the bedroom and flung the silk stockings she was holding onto the floor. ‘If you must see your former mistresses, then you can very well do so without my company.’

  ‘Sylvie, I have told you that all that is over. Has been over for many years. And that the Princesse specifically invited both of us,’ Jacob restrained his temper and spoke evenly.

  Sylvie’s eyes blazed, ‘You know what you can do with your damned Princesse,’ she jerked her fingers lewdly in his face. ‘That’s how much I care about her. Now get out of here.’

  ‘Alright, I will.’ Jacob could see the sudden consternation on Sylvie’s face as he left the room. He hesitated and then, refusing to have the row escalate, marched out of the house. He needed some time to himself, needed to think. It was a dark, cold night and the Ile St Louis was cloaked in the shadows cast by its hooded lamps. Jacob walked rapidly along the embankment in the direction of the Quartier Latin. Here he lost himself in the milling crowds.

  Sylvie had made exactly the same scene the previous week when the Princesse’s prior invitation had come. He had felt trapped then and continued to do so. After all Sylvie had good reasons not to wish to see the Princesse. On the other hand, ever since he had spent his first few hours with little Violette, just over ten days ago the desire to be with her had been constant in him. He was enraptured by her plump toddler’s body, her alert dark eyes, her surprising speech patterns and comments. He was also perplexed by the strength of the emotions she elicited in him. Fatherhood, for him, had always been something of an intellectual construct: the experience was altogether different.

  The force which had impelled Jacob through the thirty-two years of his life had always been a desire to grasp and grapple with the unknown. That which was veiled, mysterious, called out for understanding. It was that which had drawn him to his work as a psychoanalyst. It was that which had initially propelled him towards the Princesse, with her code of values and mores which hearkened back and forward to another time. It was what kept him fixed by Sylvie’s side despite, or perhaps because of, all their difficulties.

  Now he found that force driving him towards his daughter. Yet he knew for all the rational social reasons that he could not allow himself - nor would he be allowed - to grow too close to Violette. It was tacitly understood between the Princesse and himself, that the matter of Violette’s paternity was only between them. She was, as far as the world and Frederick understood it, Frederick’s daughter. It could not be otherwise: too many people stood to suffer. The Princesse had made it clear that she was in Paris for only six weeks. After his second meeting with his daughter, she had pointedly invited him and Sylvie to spend the weekend in Neuilly. Sylvie had refused and Jacob had gone down for the day by himself. He would he knew do the same this weekend.

  But the situation was fraught with danger. There was a look he had caught on a number of occasions in the Princesse’s eyes while he was playing with Violette. It spoke of a yearning he no longer reciprocated. The look served as a warning. If he spent too much time alone with the Pri
ncesse and their daughter, he knew that sooner or later that look would have to be confronted. Whatever his response, the situation it would engender would be intolerable.

  Jacob reached the Place St Michel and walked into a café. He sat down beneath an expanse of mirror and ordered a pastis. The locale had a soothing effect on him: the constant movement; the raised yet muffled voices; the clang of dishes; the dramas being lived out at separate tables, all rendered him at once part of a crowd, yet anonymous. Cafés, he thought to himself, provided the perfect place of repose for modern urban man. He didn’t know what he would do without them.

  Certainly his life at home with Sylvie provided no still centre. But that was hardly why he was with her. Not married, no. She had initially refused him again and again and now he had ceased asking. It angered his mother and troubled the Ezards, but they had learned to live with it. Sylvie, was after all no ordinary bourgeoise.

  She had become the toast of his surrealist friends who painted her and photographed her and made her the muse of a hundred verses. He never knew when he walked through that door, made up of a man and woman conjoined, into the Gradiva Gallery how many variations on the figure of Sylvie he might meet.

  There had been no recurrence of the breakdown which had preceded her coming to live with him. Yet the sense of her vulnerability, the precariousness of her emotional balance, never left him. Sometimes it made him retreat into the safety of his professional guise.

  Without ever speaking of it, Sylvie knew that her ‘case’ hovered around them and occasionally positioned itself squarely and emphatically between them like an insurmountable concrete barrier. His retreat into a calculating professionalism, when it occurred, irritated her and made her goad him with a vengeful sadism. On one occasion, she had succeeded in tearing away his professional mask, and the results had not been pretty. He had been guiltily ashamed of himself. Yet even as Sylvie had lain on the bed crying softly and trembling like a wounded defenceless sparrow, he had seen the glint of triumph in her eye. Jacob didn’t want a repetition of that scene.