Mobius Dick

by Andrew Crumey

  ‘So much paperwork, Herr Doktor,’ I observed.

  ‘Indeed,’ he said, squaring and at last mastering the heap before disposing of it in a drawer he slammed shut. ‘The essence of science is exactitude. Precision of habit,’ he elaborated, now contemplating the open lid of his silver inkwell, becoming quickly distracted by it, ‘engenders … precision … of …’ He closed the lid, fell silent.

  ‘Thought?’ I suggested.

  ‘Exactly, madam,’ he declared, recapturing his thread. ‘Precision of thought. The kernel of science. The artist’s mind, on the other hand, is characterized, so to speak, more by … by …’ The position of the inkwell on his desk appeared to be causing him some disquiet; he slid the object from left to right, as if unsure which hand was meant to dip a pen in it.

  ‘Vagueness?’ I offered.

  ‘What’s that you say?’ Richarz squinted at me. ‘Madam, I’m afraid you’ll have to speak up a little.’

  I therefore suggested to him, mezzo forte and with clarity: ‘The artist’s mind is characterized by imprecision.’

  ‘Really, what nonsense!’ Richarz chuckled heartily to himself, almost breaking into a chesty cough. ‘Madam, though you have known the affections of the greatest artists of our age, it seems your feminine charms have served only to make those artists hide from you the very root of their genius. No, my dear Frau von Arnim, the artistic mind has, at its foundation, something very precise indeed. I mean the condition of melancholy.’

  Then he sat back, creaking heavily in his chair, and from his waistcoat drew a snuff box with which he began to fiddle. In this way he could at least forget about the matching silver inkwell, which had by now come to rest in the middle of his desk, directly before his myopic gaze.

  ‘Yes, madam, melancholy,’ he said grandly. ‘Of course, I readily grant that a thousand men might have all the sorrows of Werther, and none of the talent. Melancholy is, as we scientists say, a necessary but insufficient condition of genius. Moreover there appear to have been one or two artists throughout history in whom the melancholic disposition has been suppressed to such an extent, and with such uncanny skill, that to their earthly companions these inspired men seemed almost happy. Oh, yes, I could describe a dozen case histories – poets, composers, painters – all of whom were men of public laughter and good cheer. But look into the dark privacy of their souls, madam, and you will always find a streak of despair where none suspected it; and this hard, thin sliver bears the very sap of genius.’

  ‘Which brings us, does it not,’ I reminded Dr Richarz, ‘to our friend Robert Schumann?’

  The doctor, having spilled more snuff than he had rubbed, now poked some into his nose. ‘His is a very typical case,’ Richarz told me, his eyes watering, though not with emotion. ‘His sap, so to speak, has run dry. It is the inevitable concluding state of his condition.’ He spoke with the satisfaction of one who has completed a difficult calculation, arriving at exactly the required total.

  ‘If he has reached the final stage,’ I said, ‘does this mean his wife Clara can expect to see him discharged soon?’

  Richarz was suddenly deaf again, and ignored my question. Wiping a moist eye, he told me, ‘For some time now we have been offering only basic supportive care. He refuses to eat, and has almost completely lost the power of speech, or of comprehension. Such vegetative degeneration is wholly to be expected, given the causative factors and overall pathology. He’ll be dead in a month or two.’ Richarz turned his head and gazed complacently towards the window’s sickly light. ‘It’s all very sad, of course,’ he said. ‘But Schumann’s end, one might say, is something of an occupational hazard, as much as the hardening of a miner’s lung. Genius and melancholy, inseparably bound, are like … how should I put it … ?’

  ‘Two sides of the same coin?’ I suggested.

  ‘What’s that? A coin? Yes, Frau von Arnim, you circumscribe it very amply indeed.’

  The asylum of Dr Richarz had been earning a great many coins from Schumann’s illness, most of them donated by sympathetic friends and fellow musicians, since Clara’s earnings as a pianist could not cover the heavy costs in addition to feeding seven children. The last of them, Felix, was born three months after Schumann came to Endenich. Now Robert had been here for more than two years, and in all that time, Richarz had never allowed Clara to see him. It was a drive of several hours: too far to undertake, Richarz insisted, unless strictly necessary. At first he told Clara that emotional stimulation would only further damage the composer’s fragile organism. More recently, Richarz had advised all visitors to stay away, so that they need not witness his patient’s irreparably pitiable condition.

  ‘A coin, yes,’ Richarz murmured. ‘You speak with the voice of a poet, Frau von Arnim. You, who have known Goethe.’

  During my previous visit, Richarz quizzed me endlessly about my most famous friend. Was Goethe’s melancholy manifest, the doctor wanted to know, or else suppressed? Tell me, Richarz had asked, pen in hand; was Goethe’s love, in your opinion, a form of self-punishment?

  Then there was Beethoven, of course. Richarz had diagnosed his period of ‘organic instability’ quite precisely. It occurred, he informed me, only a few years after I brought Beethoven and Goethe together for their historic meeting. And do tell me about Liszt, Richarz had added, showing me the piano Franz once played, which Schumann now ignored. For Richarz, these names – men whose company and even love I shared – were merely illustrious specimens, in need of proper cataloguing.

  During that first visit, I made it clear to Richarz I was only interested in discussing Schumann. But Richarz was after bigger game, and now once more he raised the hallowed icon of my greatest love.

  ‘We should not speak of Goethe,’ I told him. ‘It would be indelicate of me; like the gossiping of a physician about a patient.’

  Richarz was not too deaf to raise an eyebrow; he knew my meaning. His wagging tongue had made it common knowledge round here: Schumann’s wife had taken as lover the promising and beautiful young Brahms, whom Schumann himself unnaturally doted on. Family problems, Richarz reckoned, were what had made Schumann throw himself into the Rhine only months after Brahms showed up on their doorstep in Düsseldorf and made himself at home. A domineering wife whose performing success eclipsed Schumann’s own failed career as conductor; and now she was unfaithful too. My friend Joseph Joachim tried to save him, but it was too late. Joachim and Brahms were allowed to visit Endenich, but not Clara.

  ‘Gossip is a vice that does not tempt me,’ Richarz said smugly. ‘I leave that to the fairer sex. But regarding Goethe, whom you knew so intimately, I was thinking only that the two-sided coin with which artists pay for their immortality is a pact the author of Faust must clearly have understood. He, more than anyone, must have known the deep, dark chasm of despondency from which all art springs.’

  I left Richarz to pursue this reverie in the seclusion of his own meandering thoughts, but soon found the doctor quoting the poet’s words: ‘Brief joy must be our lot, that woes overwhelm. A flicker of happiness is all we can hope for, Frau von Arnim, followed inevitably by darkness. Such is Faust’s realization. Granted his every wish, he has Helen woken from the Trojan dead: the most beautiful and desirable woman in all history. Yet what can he enjoy with her, except a moment of dream-like pleasure? And after that, oblivion.’

  Richarz looked at me with the hollow wisdom of a man who takes as truth exactly whatever he has found written in some other man’s book.

  ‘I wonder who Goethe’s Helen really was,’ Richarz then asked teasingly. ‘Who was the lost love he raised from the past in his great poetic drama? Or does Goethe perhaps mean Eternal Woman: the spirit that drives men to art, and to despair?’ Richarz waited for me to answer; I gave him none. So he continued, ‘Goethe’s early love for your mother is a story as famous and touching as the one you yourself have told of his later affection for you.’ Still I remained silent. ‘And Beethoven, of course, had his own Immortal Beloved, did he not? Som
e allege the unknown woman who inspired him was you, madam. My, what a veritable stable of earthly muses!’

  Again Richarz chuckled, and again I ignored him. Yes, I – Bettina von Arnim – was Goethe’s lover: my late husband Achim and the whole world knew it. Nature never meant me to be a wife, or a widow; and if now, an old woman past my seventieth year, I should still find myself charmed by a fine young man such as Joseph Joachim, what of it? Richarz would no doubt have been shocked beyond words had I admitted to him my love for the musician who was himself spurned by my own daughter. But I have lived long enough to know that in this world anything is possible, and that everything, if only it can be understood, can be forgiven. Goethe loved my mother before he ever fell for me; and I do not dismiss the idea that love can leap generations in the other direction too, so that after a daughter, a mother is loved, even if she is old.

  Very well then, I have adopted young Joachim, just as the Schumanns adopted Brahms. And yes, it was only out of consideration for Joseph that, like him, I visited Endenich; just as Brahms did only in order to please Clara. But should we then conclude, as Richarz apparently did, that the melancholy of geniuses is precipitated always by the fickleness of women?

  ‘Why do you resist visitors such as myself and Clara,’ I asked him, ‘but not Brahms or Joachim?’

  Richarz rocked uneasily in his chair. ‘I would prefer those gentlemen not to waste their time coming here, however I am in no position to resist. They have a legal right of access.’

  ‘And Schumann’s own wife does not?’

  ‘Madam,’ Richarz said, ‘please do not put me in the position of having to speak of matters which might embarrass you.’

  I was having none of this. ‘Dr Richarz,’ I told him, ‘I am seventy-one years old, a widow, an author of considerable renown, and a woman who has seen all that the world has to offer. If there’s anything you could possibly say that would embarrass me, I think I’d be quite interested to hear it!’

  Richarz, his mouth hanging open with surprise, was saved by a knock at the door.

  ‘Ah, this must be Dr Peters,’ Richarz exclaimed with some relief. ‘Come in!’

  The fellow who entered was tall, thin, grey faced, and wore the sorrowfully expectant look of an undertaker. He greeted me civilly, then seated himself near the window.

  ‘Dr Peters is in charge of Schumann’s day-to-day treatment,’ Richarz explained to me. ‘He can tell you far more than I about the patient’s demeanour.’

  I looked from one man to the other, not knowing which of them I trusted less. Peters was waiting for someone to prompt him.

  ‘How is he today?’ I finally asked.

  Peters was unsure how to answer. ‘As before,’ he eventually told me.

  ‘We shall wait until Schumann is soundly asleep,’ Richarz explained to me, ‘before going up to see him.’

  I was puzzled by this. ‘Would it not be better for me to see him awake?’

  Richarz and Peters looked at one another, then again at me.

  ‘No,’ said Richarz. ‘It would not.’ Then he turned to Peters again. ‘Have there been further hallucinations?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And is their content unchanged?’

  ‘It is, sir.’

  I began to understand that Richarz’s dialogue with his subordinate was a way for him to ease his own embarrassment in clarifying for me the nature of Schumann’s latest illness.

  ‘Tell me, Dr Peters,’ Richarz continued, ‘would it be accurate to say that the patient’s hallucinations principally concern an individual, or individuals, of the female sex?’

  ‘It would, sir.’

  ‘And would it therefore possibly be inadvisable for any living individual of that sex to be present while such hallucinations were in progress?’

  ‘Indubitably, sir.’

  Richarz clearly felt he had said enough. He straightened his waistcoat with a victorious air, then slid his ink-well definitively to the edge of his desk.

  I turned and said to the cadaverous Dr Peters, ‘Does Robert imagine he is with his wife?’

  Peters was uneasy, and spoke quietly. ‘It’s hard to say, madam.’ He looked to Richarz for encouragement; received none, and hence was forced to continue. ‘The patient came to the conclusion some time ago that his wife – as she has never written or visited – must be dead. Since then, he hasn’t been eating. We have to use a tube.’

  ‘A tube?’ I exclaimed, loudly enough for Richarz to hear.

  ‘That’s enough, Dr Peters,’ he instructed. ‘We should not expose our distinguished guest to the distasteful physical details of our patient’s medical treatment.’

  I interrupted angrily. ‘Are you telling me that Schumann is being force-fed?’ Searching the faces of the two men, I saw nothing but indifference. ‘Has isolation from his family made him lose the will to live? What kind of doctors are you? This is not care, it’s mediaeval torture!’

  ‘Enough!’ Richarz silenced me, then continued more calmly though with evident irritation. ‘This is no place for hysterical outbursts. We have ways of alleviating such conditions. I assure you, madam, that if you were as fully qualified and informed about the matter as we are, then you would not use such slanderous language.’ He stood up; Dr Peters did likewise. ‘I shall leave you for a moment, Frau von Arnim, while I and my assistant go upstairs to assess the patient. I hope that when we return you will have reconsidered your opinions about our establishment. Otherwise I shall have no alternative but to terminate your visit.’

  Then he came out from behind his desk and marched stiffly to the door, followed by Peters who closed it behind them, leaving me to try and guess what state poor Schumann must be in.

  Twelve months earlier, when I had last visited, I had found very little wrong with him apart from an excess of nervous energy that the boredom of his confinement had greatly aggravated. On that occasion too, Richarz would not allow me to see him until I had first endured a long delay whose only purpose, it seemed, was to make sure I knew whose will it was that shaped things here.

  Then, as now, Richarz had begun with a lecture. ‘The human mind,’ he informed me, ‘is somewhat like …’ And he lapsed into his habitual academic silence, leaving me to try and supply the necessary metaphor.

  ‘A book, Herr Doktor?’ I suggested.

  ‘What’s that? No, no,’ he said. ‘A book is written in advance and demands only to be read.’

  ‘Then is the human mind like the author of the book?’

  Dr Richarz laughed. ‘Since you are an author yourself, Frau von Arnim, I can see that the analogy must be appealing. But no; we are not the conscious authors of our thoughts. Why, even from his earliest years, Schumann claimed to possess two separate personalities with separate wills of their own. And he heard the voices of angels, dictating music to him.’

  ‘Does he hear them still?’ I asked.

  Richarz frowned then. Now, waiting for my second encounter with his patient, I recalled that frown and wondered what it meant. Were those angels the stuff of his latest visions?

  Joseph Joachim has the face of an angel. So does Brahms, of course. They will be the great men that some old lady like myself one day remembers; and in Brahms’s case, that greatness was bestowed by Schumann himself, in print. New Paths, Schumann called the article where he announced the arrival of a Messiah to counter the Wagnerites. ‘He is come, a young blood by whose cradle graces and heroes kept watch. He is called Johannes Brahms.’ Not bad, as first reviews go. And that’s all it takes to launch a career. Oh, people like Richarz can ponder their lofty nonsense about genius and melancholy, but I’ve seen enough of the world to know how it is that people make it onto the pedestal in the first place. Opinions are formed by intelligent people such as Schumann, or myself. Then they are repeated by common fools like Richarz who turn them into great truths. If Brahms were not so handsome, would Schumann have been quite so indiscreet in his admiration? If Brahms had not knocked unannounced on Schumann’s door one
day and made himself a house guest, would anyone ever have heard of this girlish twenty-year-old; this blond blue-eyed lad who they say perfected his piano technique in a Hamburg brothel?

  It doesn’t take much to put an angel among the stars. In Brahms’s case, as in so many others, it was merely a matter of the right word from the right authority. Schumann’s prophecy is sure to fulfil itself, and one day busts of Brahms, grown old and famous, will adorn respectable parlour pianos everywhere. Of course I’d heard the rumours: that for Brahms and Clara, Schumann’s imprisonment here was quite convenient. Or even that the seventh child whom Robert never saw is not his own. I leave such matters to the likes of Richarz: the quacks and scholars who need great men as fleas need dogs.

  Still no sign of him and Peters. They were making me wait, just like before. Such games must afford them welcome entertainment in a place where mental stimulation of any kind is strictly banned. Even Richarz’s office, where I sat, was largely bare. Uncluttered surroundings, Richarz told me, make for an uncluttered mind. What he really meant, I think, was empty.

  Schumann began writing his article about Brahms almost as soon as the young Apollo walked into his life. And a few weeks after that, Schumann conducted his last concert. Joachim told me what a disaster it was. In the rehearsals, Schumann kept dropping the baton, eventually having to tie it to his wrist with string. The Düsseldorf orchestra had seen Schumann grow increasingly erratic in recent months, but now he reached the limit. He was spilling sheets of music from the lectern; he didn’t know where he was. An important horn solo never happened, since Schumann had lost count of the bars and failed to cue the player. Could love alone so turn a head? Was the angelic Brahms, lounging on Schumann’s hearth rug, the cause of such distraction?

  The musicians begged Joachim to conduct the evening’s performance, but he refused: he could never do such a thing to a friend. Schumann raised the baton that night, and it was a shambles. Afterwards he was effectively dismissed from his post.