by Morris West
“The truth is you make a scene about every goddamned woman who steps into my office . . . and I’m sick of your pathological jealousy!”
“And why shouldn’t I be jealous? Look at the scandals we’ve had. You’re a fool with women! You turn on that great tender charm, and they all think it’s an invitation to bed. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t; but it gets you a bad name and damages the practice. But with Toni it’s way beyond that. You want to make her a member of the family!”
“She has a legitimate place in my life – just as you have.”
“Legitimate place! Do, please, tell me about that!”
“You are my wife, the mother of my children, the mistress of my house.” As I mouth the pompous phrases I have a sudden comic vision of my father acting out his Sunday sermon. Like my father I ignore the comedy and plough on: “You have my love, my respect and my unswerving loyalty. Toni began as my patient. Her personal experience of mental illness and her natural intelligence make her a most valuable collaborator.”
“And in bed, Carl? How is she? What do you do? Read case histories to each other?”
Before I have the chance to reply, the door opens and Toni comes in. She carries the morning mail and a new summer hat that dangles from a pink ribbon. She greets us both cheerfully, tosses the mail on the table and displays the hat to Emma.
“How do you like this? I trimmed it myself.”
“Charming!” Emma is frigid but meticulously polite. Not for nothing was she bred among the good burghers of Basel. Toni looks to each of us for some explanation of this moment of suspended animation. Finally she asks, “Forgive me, but have I interrupted something? If so, I can take a stroll in the garden.”
“No, we’ve just finished.” Emma adds a parting word for us both. “I’ll take your advice, Carl. I will – I must – concentrate my life round the children. They have a special need of me now. As for you, Toni, Carl tells me you’ll be directing his analysis. He has great faith in your skill. I hope, for all our sakes, it’s justified Which reminds me, you must have him show you the notes he wrote last night. They’re very revealing!”
The door closes, a shade too loudly, on her exit. Toni asks with somewhat edgy humour:
“And what, pray, was all that about?”
This time I cannot lie; the best I can do is defuse the drama. I tell her with a shrug:
“We had a few sharp words. She thinks I should go into analysis with Freud. I told her I want to work with you.”
“And she of course said, ‘Oh how splendid! The best treatment for any psychosis is a tumble in the hay with Toni.’”
That sets us both laughing; but our mirth has an uneasy ring to it, like the giggling of children listening to ghost stories around a dying fire. We kiss, we embrace. I am full of desire for her but she disengages herself quickly and retreats behind her desk. Clearly, she is still punishing me for the Spielrein letter. She mentions Emma’s comment about my notes. It is easier to show them to her than to explain. Her reaction is identical with Emma’s.
“Good God! This is a farrago of nonsense!”
“Toxic fatigue.” Again I try to shrug the matter off “I’ve been up five nights in a row.”
“You’d have been better off spending them at my place.”
“I agree, my love; but I can’t very well go creeping around the countryside at two in the morning.”
“You’d have found me awake. I need you, too, you know.”
Once again we are on the edge of a quarrel. Always it is over the same thing – the precedence of wife and mistress and other women in my very complicated life. I sometimes think it would be wonderful to have the power of bi-location as certain Christian mystics and primitive witch doctors are supposed to have. On the other hand, it might not be such a good idea after all. Quarrelling with two women at once could be a very exhausting experience.
I decide it is time to be businesslike. I return to my desk. Toni brings her notebook. We begin the analysis of the new elements in the chaos dream. I must say this for Toni: no matter how irritable she gets about our love affair, in clinical matters she is one hundred per cent professional. The first point she makes is the presence of the black stallion in the dream. She recalls to me that the horse is always myself. Always, too, the animal is handicapped. In the earlier dream he was dragging a great log. In this one he is trying in vain to find a foothold in the floodwaters. Finally he is drowned – as I am afraid of drowning in a sea of personal troubles.
Next, we talk of Elijah. He is a conductor in the dream. He controls the train and the destiny of everyone on board. We can sleep safely under his tutelage. He is for me the archetype of the perfect father figure.
Salome, however, has changed her role. She is no longer the daughter, lover, protector of Elijah. She is the hostile woman playing the role of naked seductress to me, a man who has no desire for her. There is a clear connection here with Sabina Spielrein, who I had thought was out of my life for good. Now she has written herself back into it. I do not want her. I have Toni. For the first time Toni steps out of her professional role and asks me a very pointed question:
“Have you ever thought that the day may come when you will be talking about me exactly as you are talking about Sabina Spielrein?”
I protest stoutly that my feelings for the Spielrein were pure infatuation. I was betrayed into them by pity and by her dependence upon me during her illness.
“Which is exactly how you and I came together,” Toni reminds me sweetly. “I, too, have progressed from patient to pupil to colleague and mistress.”
“Then as a colleague, please remember that we are in a clinical situation where you have no right to intrude your private sentiments.”
She blushes. Her eyes fill up with tears. She protests bitterly.
“My God! You can be brutal sometimes!”
“And you are tactless, stupid and unprofessional! At this moment I am not your lover, I am your patient. The fact that I am in control of myself makes no matter. In other circumstances with another person, you could do great damage.”
“Forgive me, doctor!” she blazes at me. “I have so little experience in these matters. This is my first affair with a married man.”
“And may I remind you that you walked into it with your eyes open.”
“So I did. But I also walked into it with all of me, body and soul. I am not like you. I can’t divide my life into neat little slices and hand them round like sponge cake. This one’s for you; this one’s for Emma. This one’s for Aunt Mary! I’m me – Toni Wolff! – all of one piece; and if you don’t like that, I’m sorry.”
“On the contrary, I like it very much. As your former physician, I am proud of your mature and stable personality!”
She bursts into tears, slams her notebook on my desk and runs towards the door. I shout at her like a drill sergeant:
“Stop right there!”
She stops. I berate her brutally.
“You are not a child. You are an intelligent woman, free to make your own choices about your own life. At this moment, however, you have the responsibility of a healer. I am in desperate need of your help with this analysis. Now compose yourself and let’s get back to work!”
I see what it costs her to control her emotions. It is a physical effort, painful to watch. Finally her head comes up proudly, and she turns to face me again.
“I am at your service, doctor. If you agree, I think we should now consider the death wish element in both the versions of the dream.”
I tell her that I would rather not get too involved in the smaller details. I would rather discuss for a while the larger context: the vast flood obliterating the land. She reminds me with cool formality:
“I know what you would rather do; but have you not told me over and over again that the subject which the patient least wishes to discuss is that which is nearest to the heart of his problem? So, if you don’t mind, let’s talk about your death wish – for Emma, for Freud, for your own chi
ldren. Let’s ask what you will do instead of killing them . . . because the ritual has to be accomplished in fact or in symbol.”
MAGDA
En voyage
I am travelling by wagon-lit to Zurich in a compartment reserved exclusively for myself I shall dine in the restaurant car, then retire early and read myself to sleep. On my arrival I shall establish myself at the Baur au Lac in a suite with a view over the lake. Once there, I shall consider how best to make contact with this famous Dr. Jung.
Now that I have begun my journey, I feel almost light hearted. Life has at last simplified itself to what Lily used to call Hobson’s choice. If Jung can help me – if he can show me how to come to terms with the past, and devise a tolerable future away from demon country – then I shall accept with thanks. If he cannot, then amen! It is a very short stride into nothingness. I carry the key in my reticule: a small blue bottle sealed with red wax.
In the old days, before I was married – and after! – I was passionately fond of train travel. It gave me always a heightened sexual excitement. There was no telling whom one might meet in the corridors or in the dining car, what midnight assignations might be made between the soup and the cheese. This time, however, I feel no such excitement. I have no urge for casual encounters. I cannot cope with the threadbare rituals of love with a stranger. Even my bedtime reading is chosen to distract me from sexual preoccupation: a novel about the English detective Sherlock Holmes and his chronicler, Dr. Watson.
Nevertheless, I dress carefully for dinner and I am not unconscious of the admiring glances and the whispered comments of the male diners when I enter the restaurant. The head waiter places me, as I have asked, at a table for two. He has promised also that he will find me, if possible, a woman guest to share the table. When I arrive, however, the other place is still empty. I am already beginning my second course when my dinner companion arrives. The head waiter introduces her as Mademoiselle de Launay. For an instant I gape at her, dumbstruck. She is the living image of Ilse Hellman. Reason tells me there can be no possible connection. This girl is only in her early twenties. She is French. Ilse was Austrian and had never borne children. I try to bridge the awkward moment with a smile and an explanation.
“Forgive me. You are the image of a girl I once knew. Please sit down. I hope you will allow me to tell you that you look very, very pretty.”
The meal goes pleasantly enough. She is well mannered and charming. She tells me she is going to stay with relatives in Locarno. I am not really interested. Her looks continue to distract me. Whenever she turns her head in a certain fashion, I see Ilse Hellman, companion of my school days, who married the man I wanted for myself.
The adventures of Mr. Sherlock Holmes are pale stuff beside this piece of personal history. The book remains unread while I lie wakeful in the darkness, rehearsing the drama which began in those distant days and the last act of which is yet to be played out in Zurich.
When I was fourteen years old, Papa decided that I must be removed from what he called “the company of peasants and country bumpkins”. I must be trained for my destiny as a young lady of quality. In short, it was time I went to boarding school. After much correspondence and consultation with friends, Papa and Lily decided that the best place for me was the International Academy for Young Gentlewomen. This high-sounding establishment was situated near Geneva and was run by a very formidable lady called the Countess Adrienne de Volnay.
The regimen promised by the countess included: “a broad education in the arts, constant training in the social proprieties, regular exercise in conformity with the needs of the feminine physique, carefully supervised leisure, including visits to museums, concerts, operas and folk festivals, regular but well chaperoned contacts with young gentlemen of good family and impeccable morals.”
Looking back now, I recognise her for an educator, far in advance of her time. She turned out literate and polished women. She gave us a comfortable living, a tolerable but efficient discipline and considerably more freedom than other similar establishments of the time.
I enjoyed the place – probably because I was better prepared for it than most of my peers. Lily had taught me well, and I was easily able to hold my own in the academic subjects. More than that – thanks to Papa! – my sentimental education was much more advanced than that of my companions. I had started menstruating at twelve. I understood my own anatomy and its functions. I had been taught to regard myself as a woman, albeit a young one. The sexual functions and precautions had been explained to me. The rising tides of desire in my own body were not unfamiliar nor for that matter were the means of satisfying them.
So, it was all too easy to set myself up as a leader, a kind of Keeper of Mysteries at our International Academy. My friendship was courted. I was not ashamed to profit from it. Everyone wanted me for a “special friend”; but the one I chose was Ilse Hellman, who came from the eastern part of Land Salzburg and was therefore almost a neighbour. It was I who gave her her first experience of sex between girls. She was a prize to wear in my bonnet, too, because she was tall and slim and rich and easily the prettiest of us all.
Looking back now, I can see that there was one fundamental difference between us. I was the only child of a very exotic alliance. Ilse was the fourth of six children, with three older brothers and two younger sisters. Whatever I had – comfort, opportunity, love, deference – was mine by right. If it wasn’t offered, I didn’t argue about it. I simply entered into possession. I annexed things, people too, for that matter. Mademoiselle Felice who admired my talent for languages, was my French mistress. Rudi, who taught us equitation was my riding master. Laurent, who was the handsomest of the young gentlemen who came to our dancing classes was my partner – until I chose to hand him down to Ilse or one of our junior admirers.
Ilse, on the other hand, was well trained in social strategy. She had to be, to survive with three sturdy males, two junior sisters, an anaemic mother and a father who was a big entrepreneur in the mining and metal business. She wanted to be protected. She liked sexual comfort. She needed a girl friend to bolster her confidence with boys. She was happy to pay tribute for these services; but once she fixed her notions on a prize she would use every pirate’s trick to get it. Strange as it may seem, it was she who first taught me to be jealous.
It was Papa’s custom to visit me once in mid-term, usually when he was on his way to Paris with some new lover. Lily came twice a year, and I was instructed always to introduce her as “Tante Liliane”, my dead mother’s sister from England. The first time Papa came, he took Ilse and myself out to lunch at a lakeside restaurant in Geneva – very chic, very expensive. Two minutes after we were seated, Ilse was playing up to Papa like a young Sarah Bernhardt. She fluttered at him. She touched his hand; she admired his clothes; she giggled at his jokes. Papa played back like the veteran Casanova he was. I was so angry I wanted to be sick in my soup; but there was never any point in being angry with Papa. You had to play his game, toujours gai, always the happy cavalier. However, I knew very well that, if I ever invited Ilse to Silbersee, there would be love under the stars the first night and hell to pay ever after for Lily and me!
I said nothing to Ilse. Not for anything would I let her know she had upset me; but after that I began quietly and slowly to replace her as my court favourite. I told Lily about the incident on her next visit. She gave an unsteady little laugh and a wry comment.
“You were absolutely right, lassie. While your Papa’s getting older, his follies are getting younger and more expensive. We’ll have to watch him, you and I, otherwise some little tart from nowhere will end up sporting the Kardoss arms and wearing your grandmother’s diamonds!”
It was probably this exchange of confidences which prepared us both for what happened at Silbersee on my seventeenth birthday. I was home for the summer holidays. Papa had arranged a daylong party for me: lunch in the garden with friends and neighbours, a gypsy orchestra brought down from Salzburg, dancing on the terrace as night fell,
a champagne supper, carriages calling at ten-thirty so that those with young families could be home by a decent hour. Ilse Hellman was there with her parents. I had invited her because she was my nearest schoolfriend, and she couldn’t get into too much harm with her parents on the premises. Even so, she flirted outrageously with Papa; and I have often wondered how much her presence had to do with what followed.
It was nearly midnight, I remember; we were all together in the upstairs suite, Lily, Papa and I, drinking a last glass of champagne and reminiscing over the events of the day. There was a moment of drowsy silence, then, apropos of nothing at all, Papa said:
“Lily my dear, don’t you think our Magda is beautiful?”
“Very beautiful.”
She bent and kissed me on the lips. I remember telling them, a little fuzzily, that they were beautiful, too – the most beautiful couple in the world. Then Papa kissed me, too – a lover’s kiss – and drew me to my feet, lifted me and carried me into his bedroom. He told me with a smile:
“You have one more birthday surprise, my love. You’re going to be changed from a girl into a woman.”
Somehow I had always known it would happen just like this. They had both led me, step by pleasant step, to the moment of initiation. They had taught me enough ways to satisfy myself so that this moment would be theirs and theirs alone. Together they undressed me, together they excited me slowly and with an infinity of small pleasures. Then, when it seemed I could bear the waiting no longer, Papa, with Lily as witness and mistress of ceremonies, made me a woman – and made sure that no man, ever again, would blot his memory out of my mind or my body.
Even now, as the train clatters, clickety-clack, through the night, the ecstasy repeats itself, all too briefly. When it is over, I weep quietly in the dark. Papa is long dead, and Lily is a little old lady who lives with her cat in a small stone cottage in the Cotswolds. She has a pension from me, paid every month by the Ysambard brothers. We have never seen each other since she left Europe after my marriage. The local parson keeps an eye on her for me. I have sometimes thought I would like to visit her and salvage a little of our lost love before she dies. However, the parson tells me she is almost stone-deaf – and I cannot imagine shouting all our secrets up and down the street in an English village.
