The World Is Made of Glass

by Morris West

  “He handed me a small, flat bundle sewn in canvas with a sailmaker’s stitch. He begged, ‘You won’t open it, will you? That’s Lily’s privilege.’ Then he gave me a long appraising look. I knew he was deciding whether to kiss me or not. Finally he shook his head and grinned at me. ‘No, no, no! It’s too early for you and too late for me. I’d like to be young enough to enjoy you. I’d hate to be the man who failed you.’ He died three months later. Lily was broken hearted. It took her a long time to recover. She kept the package for weeks before she could bring herself to open it. Inside, written in Burton’s own hand, was a translation of The Scented Garden. We used to sit up in bed reading it to each other. Later, I heard that Elizabeth Arundell Burton was accused of burning this and a number of other Burton’s erotica. Perhaps she did and this was a copy which he made specially for Lily. I don’t know. I presume Lily still has it. I wonder what the parson will say when he finds it after her death among her belongings. I understand she’s become such a prim old lady!”

  She ends the story on this odd elegiac note; so I am almost sure we have done with Padua. She herself is weary of the tale. I suggest a few moments’ break and offer her a brandy or a cordial. We both settle for the brandy. By way of a diversion we rummage together through my books and come up with more snippets of useless information on Michael the Scot. We find that Dante has him in the fourth circle of hell, that Boccaccio rates him among the great masters of necromancy and that he crops up in a fresco in Florence – a small, slight fellow with a pointed beard, dressed like an Arab. I also learn a little more about my client. She knows very well how to use research material. She does read Latin and Greek – but then so did Messalina, who was a very bawdy and a very dangerous lady!

  I must have poured an over-large dose of brandy. I can feel it going to my head. Normally I like the first wave of relaxation that comes with a noggin of liquor; but not now. We are coming up to the moment which the old Greek healers called the “experience of the god”. It is an instant of great danger in which the patient will either submit to the Presence or run berserk in a destructive fury. So, dear Madame, if you’re ready, let’s recollect ourselves and begin our consideration of the last things, your private Escha-ton, the day of judgment and dissolution, when the scales fall from your eyes and you will see everything plain!

  MAGDA

  Zurich

  I see now why Jung was reluctant to prolong our session. It is only four in the afternoon and I am already conscious of fatigue. The drink helps at first. It makes me feel relaxed, open and agreeable; but it also loosens my controls and makes me vulnerable to any sudden pressure from outside or stress from within. I know I have been talking very freely, and I am surprised how much forgotten material has been revealed by Jung’s curious inquisition. I have not thought of Sister Damiana or Alma de Angelis in years. As for Lily’s affair with Sir Richard Burton, I thought that was consigned to the attic decades ago!

  Jung tells me that he still wants me to follow the chronology of my life, but not to linger too long on tenuous or unimportant recollections. He says, quite rightly, that the landmarks are usually visible from a long way off. I tell him that the two years after university were very important in my personal development, and it is essential to spend some time on them.

  I say this not entirely without guile. I know my history. He doesn’t. I need time and a new infusion of courage to get me to the moment of truth and past it. Jung understands, I think. For all his burly frame and his very obvious reactions to my female presence, there is a lot of the female in him. There are moments when he stops reasoning and guesses – and the guess is generally right. I can sense, too, when he is indulging me and when he is moving to block me. This happens always at moments when I am trying to play a confidence trick on myself.

  However, I think I have convinced him that I do have a mind, that I read more than fashion magazines, and that I can spell all the words in the medical dictionary. So, he asks, are we ready? I assure him we are. He opens with a simple affirmation.

  “You left Padua with a medical degree.”

  “A very good one, in fact.”

  “What plans did you have for a future career?”

  “They were still vague, because I hadn’t yet finished my training. Papa had procured me an internship at the Allgemeines Krankenhaus in Vienna. Your colleague Freud worked there too, if I remember rightly. After that I wanted to do post-graduate study in Edinburgh or London; but Papa, for obvious reasons, wasn’t too happy about that. Afterwards? Well, I had a vague idea that I would like to design my life as Papa had done: keep Silbersee and practise in Salzburg or Innsbruck. But first there was the grand ocean voyage which Papa had promised me as a reward for my graduation.

  “I was ready for change. We all were. Papa was in his fifties now, still chasing the girls, but beginning to wonder whether he shouldn’t find some comfortable, titled widow with a competence of her own and settle down! Lily, beginning to be middle-aged, was more possessive and occasionally rasping. Me? I was tired. The final year had been brutally hard: long hours at the hospital, late nights with my texts, very little diversion – and, to cap it all, a bout of bronchitis in the winter that I simply couldn’t shake off. I had no regular lover and little inclination to go chasing one. All I wanted was to get through the year and earn a freedom I had never enjoyed.”

  Jung looks at me with a mischievous grin and says:

  “That’s an odd thing to say. I should have thought you were the freest of mortal women, with your own establishment, plenty of money, a complaisant chaperone, and even more complaisant parent.”

  “You don’t understand. What I wanted most to be free of was my past – all the things that seemed to set me apart from other people. The voyage that Papa had planned would, I hoped, be a punctuation point from which I could begin a new chapter.”

  “Did it turn out so?”

  “Yes, it did. Though not quite as I expected. The voyage itself was a wonderful experience. We embarked at Rotterdam in first class accommodations on the flagship of the Royal Dutch Line: separate cabins for each of us because, as Papa put it, ‘We’re all old enough to need privacy!’ My God! I thought, so late in the day! Our outward route lay through the Suez Canal to Aden, Colombo, Singapore, Surabaja, Saigon, Shanghai and Hong Kong. Our fellow passengers were a mixed bunch of merchants, officials of the Dutch colonial service, British traders, and an assortment of wives and children. Don’t worry! I’m not going to give you the whole Baedeker tour; but I loved every day and every night of it. I did feel free. I did feel a woman in my own right.

  “I made friends with the ship’s doctor, who, once he got over his astonishment at finding a colleague in skirts, became a comfortable if somewhat persistent escort. I was, however, much more interested in a man who joined us at Aden. The moment she saw him Lily clutched my arm and said, That’s what Dick Burton must have looked like when he was a young man!’ He had the same arrogant bearing, the same hawk face and piercing eyes and cynical mouth. But his manners were ten times better than Ruffian Dick’s. He spoke softly, drank little and was full of small, unobtrusive courtesies. His name was Avram Kostykian, which caused Papa to dismiss him with a shrug: ‘Armenian Jew! You find ‘em everywhere there’s trade. I wouldn’t spend much time on him if I were you.’ I didn’t like Papa’s tone and I told him so. I also told him I would keep what company I chose. He shrugged and walked away. It was the first time I had realised how deep his prejudice was. When I told Lily, she laughed and said I didn’t know the half of it. No Jew in Austria could ever hope for promotion in the army or in the civil service. Even an army surgeon rarely got above the rank of captain.”

  I am surprised to see Jung blushing and fidgeting with his pen. I ask him pointblank:

  “Don’t you like Jews either?”

  “Not very much.” At least he has the grace to be frank. He also feels the need to explain himself further. “My colleague Freud is of course a Jew; but even with him I run up again
st certain limitations which are peculiarly Semitic. The Aryan heritage, the Aryan unconscious, is much richer in potential than the Jewish.” He grins and shrugs in deprecation. “I’m probably just as prejudiced as your father. None of my affairs with Jewish women has ever turned out very well!”

  I try not to show it, but he has disappointed me. I ask myself: if he is prejudiced against a whole race, how will he be when he knows my very special category? Also, his confession of other affairs sounds more like a boast in bad taste than a slip of the tongue. He knows I have met his wife. I would rather he kept his affairs to himself. And if they haven’t turned out well, must it be the woman who is to blame? I find a perverse satisfaction in extending the story of my encounter with Kostykian.

  “He was, as Papa had surmised, a trader, but a very special one. He dealt in precious stones: rubies, emeralds, sapphires, but especially in pearls. He travelled all over the East, wherever the pearl divers worked, to bid for their stocks. When he found I was interested, he would sit for hours showing me his treasures, telling me tales of the divers and the captains who drove them until they collapsed with the bends, and the Chinese and Indian and Malay merchants, who sat around for hours betting on the value of a pearl, as the ‘peeler’ worked on it. Do you know what a peeler is?”

  “I confess I do not, Madame. But I’m sure you will tell me.”

  For some reason Jung is huffy and a little impatient. I tell him he should be interested because the peeler does exactly what he, the analyst, is trying to do with me.

  “A pearl is made up of many layers of nacre deposited by the oyster over the original irritant in the shell. Sometimes even a fine pearl has defects in the outer skin: pinhole pittings, tiny indented marks. These greatly reduce the value of the jewel. However, if they are not too deep, they may be removed by peeling off layers of nacre until you reach a perfect, unblemished skin. It’s delicate, finical work and a mistake can be very costly. So you can imagine the scene in a Malay kampong or a Chinese godown: all those impassive faces watching as flake after flake of skin is removed, no one knowing whether the whole pearl will be pared away or whether a priceless beauty will be revealed. It takes a lot of nerve to bid blind on the ultimate value.

  “Kostykian told the story wonderfully. He had a poet’s feel for places and people. And, best of all, he taught me how to do the peeling! He challenged me, saying, ‘You’re a surgeon. You’ve got a scalpel and a pair of tongs. Here! I’ll show you.’ He handed me a pink pearl, nearly a centimetre across. It was badly pitted and probably worthless. He showed me how to start the operation and continue it with tiny, patient strokes. At the end of two hours I had a perfect pink pearl about a third of a centimetre in diameter. Kostykian gave it to me as a present. I had it mounted in a pendant; but I mislaid it somewhere, after I was married.”

  “A very charming story.” Jung makes a dry comment. “But can you tell me what it has to do with our concerns?”

  His manner irritates me as much as his slighting attitude to Jews. I give him a testy answer.

  “Yes I can. Kostykian was one man who gave me a lot and never asked anything of me. He took me ashore with him. He walked me round the jewel marts in Colombo and Bangkok. He showed me how to read a stone; the silk in an emerald, the distribution of colour in a sapphire, the difference between a Siam ruby and the rich pigeon blood of Burma. He was so attentive and yet so apparently passionless that I wondered whether he was like Gianni di Malvasia and preferred the love of men. The night before we parted in Singapore, he told me the reason: ‘I’m married. I have a wife and four little boys in Alexandria. They are the centre of my life. Although I am home only four months of the year, they are with me, every day and every night. I live a strange existence, as you see. I meet strange people in wild places. Life is cheap, women are cheaper. I am often offered a girl, just for the first option on a big pearl. I am a man of strong passions. I have to keep them very much under control, even in trade. Jewels are eerie things. One can lust after them just as one lusts after a woman. I know that once I slip, once I let down my defences, I am lost. I shall become like a spinning top whirling from port to port, arriving nowhere. You, my Magda, are the biggest and the sweetest temptation I have ever had! Now, let’s kiss good night and goodbye. I’ll be off the ship before you’re awake in the morning.’

  “When I went back to my cabin I found a package on the pillow. Inside it was a small but very pure sapphire, rich blue and quite brilliant. There was a note too. I remember it word for word. ‘The weight is two carats. There is a small inclusion at the apex, but it will take an expert to spot it. Nothing is perfect in this world. For the first time in my life, I’m regretting something I haven’t done. Thank you for the great, great pleasure of your company. Avram.’”

  “I wonder.” Jung laces his hands together, makes a church steeple of his fingertips and peers at me over the top of it. “I wonder why you tell that story with so much satisfaction.”

  “Because after all my other affairs, from Papa and Lily onwards, I have always felt used, deprived of some special freedom that should have been mine by right. I was never quite sure what it was – even a whore’s wage on the mantelpiece might have helped! But with Avram Kostykian, the Armenian Jew, everything was a free act between friends. When I said as much to Papa he just grunted and said grudgingly, ‘Well, it’s always a mistake to generalise.’ Lily gave me a surreptitious kick under the table and a terse reminder. ‘Never say I told you so. It’s the height of bad manners!’”

  “Perhaps that’s the answer to your problem.” Jung leans back in his chair and chuckles mischievously. “Find yourself a virtuous married Jew who brings you sapphires and doesn’t want to sleep with you!”

  “Don’t think I haven’t considered it!”

  I laugh in spite of myself. Jung presses on impatiently.

  “Is there anything else you want to tell me about the voyage?”

  I mention the Malay who ran amok in Surabaja and was shot in front of our eyes. I speak of the similarity between my own violent fugues and his demented, murderous dash through the streets. Jung writes copious notes at this point and then poses an unexpected question.

  “The end for the man amok is a bullet in the head. Are you saying death is the only solution for you too?”

  “It may be. I have to face it, don’t I? If you can’t do anything for me . . .”

  He slams his hand on the table and launches into a tirade.

  “I told you at the beginning! Don’t blackmail me with your life! I didn’t give it to you. I can’t take it away. I’m not a miracle worker either. I don’t cast out devils – though I know some Gadarene swine I’d like to send them into! Analysis isn’t surgery. You don’t chop out the diseased organ, sew up the patient and send her home to tea and sandwiches. This is a mutual effort to define the cause of a psychosis and, if possible, eliminate it, or at least make it possible for you to live with it. Live, you understand! Live! Of course, if you want, you can think yourself into dying, like the native under the witch doctor’s curse. If that’s what you want, I can’t help you!”

  This time his anger is not an act. I realise that he, like me, is getting tired. I must not tease him any more. I must not let him tease me either. I apologise. I tell him that I understand we are both under stress, that I really am trying to cooperate. He is quickly mollified and smiles at me again.

  “At least you know now that analysis is not a game for children. When you start rummaging about in the unconscious, you never know what strange animals will pop out. Try to sum it up for me. Was the voyage a success or not?”

  “For me a total success. I saw a world I had never expected – a beautiful, cruel, indifferent world in which an individual existence meant nothing. In China girl babies were exposed on rubbish heaps. In Japan fathers sold their girls into prostitution. Through all of Asia, millions died in floods, famines and epidemics. In India the British despised the off-whites they fathered. In Java the Dutch married them. In Siam
the king dispensed death at every meeting of his ministers. In Borneo the Dyaks hunted human heads for trophies. These experiences put me in my place – my small obscure place – and I was grateful.

  “Even so, it was good to be back at Silbersee, with three months still in hand before I had to take up my appointment at the Allgemeines Krankenhaus in Vienna. The estate had aged like all of us. Coming home for vacations I hadn’t noticed the change so much; but now it was clear that everything was running down. The Schloss and the tenant houses needed paint and plaster, our furniture needed recovering, the gardens were scraggy, the accounts untidy, the staff indolent and offhand. Papa was away so much that when he came home he wanted simply to relax and play the country gentleman.

  “For the first time I understood how much a son would have meant to him at this period of his life. For the first time too, I understood how spoiled and self-centred a creature I was. I knew that I could run Silbersee. With Lily as my lieutenant, I could run it and still do my internship in Vienna. The problem would be to get Papa to agree. I had no idea of the disposition of his will. I knew very well the disposition of his mind: that women were made for bed but not for business. A frontal attack on his prejudices would get me nowhere.

  “My opportunity came when, a couple of weeks after our return, he fell ill with pneumonia. It was a bad siege and it left him very weak and more dependent than I had ever seen him. He was quite childish at times, querulous and demanding. Finally, after a long talk with Lily, I decided to face matters out with him. I was amazed at my own vehemence. I told him nobody could play as he played, run a busy consulting practice, keep a steady hand in the operating theatre and manage a country estate the size of Silbersee. I couldn’t run his practice and I certainly wasn’t going to orchestrate his love life; but I could and would take on Silbersee, on two conditions: that I knew it was deeded to me and everyone else knew I was the Chief, the Boss, the Arbeitgeberin!