by Morris West
“They might also be very confusing,” says Gianni. “It’s not the same as physical medicine: I could describe your symptoms to any reputable doctor and he would make the same diagnosis as I. In psychiatry it’s different, much more clouded.”
“Weren’t you curious about Jung’s notes, Magda? I can’t imagine any woman not wanting to know what the man was writing about her.”
Zaharoff is jocular, benign. I, on the contrary, was concerned to be serious.
“You miss the point. When you’re there, as I was, anchored in the chair, you don’t care what he’s putting down. He’s doing surgery on your psyche and it hurts like hell. For all you know, he could be writing bad verse or drawing dirty pictures. Anyway, I’m glad Gianni burned the stuff!”
“Fascinating,” says Basil Zaharoff. “I can see a future for the art! It has lots of problems and some interesting uses. Just at this moment I would very much like to have a transcript of the love life of Mr. Lloyd George!”
When the evening was over, Gianni paid me a big compliment. I had done very well. I had charmed the vultures out of the trees and turned them into singing birds. I asked him:
“What was Zaharoff going on about? Why should he be interested in analytic procedures?”
“He’s not,” said Gianni with a grin. “He’s interested in you – and how much you might have told about his business offer or his prowess in bed.”
“And if I’d spilled it all?”
“Then, this week or next, next month perhaps, you’d be dead! Don’t laugh! It’s true. He’s made a huge fortune. He’s achieved enormous power. Now he has to be respectable. That was the whole point of the dinner party. I want you in Paris. I can’t keep you here if Basil Zaharoff is unhappy about you.”
“I don’t believe this!”
“Believe it, my dear!” says Gianni curtly. “We live in a jungle, and Basil Zaharoff is king of the beasts.”
Two mornings later Gianni knocked on my bedroom door and commanded me to get dressed:
“Old clothes, stout shoes. The dowdier you can look, the better. We leave in thirty minutes.”
“Where are we going?”
“La Ruelle des Anges – Angel Lane.”
“It’s a pretty name.”
“That’s the only pretty thing about it. It’s a couple of blocks behind the Boul ‘Mich’, a rough quarter – hence the sober clothes.”
“Why are we going there?”
“Business.”
“What sort of business?”
“Possess your soul in patience.”
“I don’t have a soul.”
“Then possess your body in patience.”
“What the hell do you think I’ve been doing? It seems years since I’ve had any sex.”
“Good! Then you’ll have a clear head and a pure mind.”
“I don’t have a mind either, at this hour of the morning.”
“Then we’ll have to make do with whatever’s left, won’t we? Hurry please! It’s five past eight; we leave at eight-thirty.”
La Ruelle des Anges belied its name. It was a grimy cobbled alley with an open gutter down the centre and rows of bedraggled old dwellings on either side. At the far end was a big wooden coach gate with a smaller door cut into it. Gianni explained that the name Angel Lane was an irony. The angels in question were the prostitutes who used to live there but who had left long since for better accommodation. When we approached the coach gate, Gianni pointed to a newly lettered sign: “Hospice des Anges”. He pushed open the wicket gate and ushered me into what had once been the stable yard of an imposing mansion. The stables were now in an advanced stage of reconstruction. The yard was busy with workmen. Gianni threw out his arms in an expansive gesture.
“Well, this is it!”
“This is what?”
“The business, the investment we talked about. We should be able to open in about six weeks.”
“Doing what? Bringing the angels back?”
“In a way, yes. That’s what the name on the gate signifies. It’s a hospice for women or girls who’ve been on the game and fallen victims to it, one way or another. It’s a place where they can come when they get out of gaol, or when they’ve been beaten up or fallen pregnant. There’ll be lodgings, a kitchen and dining room, an infirmary. The commune of Paris has promised a small subsidy on the basis that we’ll help to keep down the V.D. rate.”
“And who’s going to run all this?”
“There’s a small group of women in Paris – widows mostly – who are experimenting with an old Christian concept of common life and service. They call themselves ‘Les Filles du San Graal’. They don’t wear religious dress. They don’t make vows, just pledge themselves to service for as long as they can offer it. They’ve taken up this idea and they’re going to staff the place for us. I’ve undertaken to supply medical service and try to raise the funds we’ll need to keep going. It’s a simple idea. A place for women to go when things get too much, a place to be when they’re sick and friendless. We’ve got a motto. We’re printing it on the cards which will be passed out around the quarter: ‘Hospice des Anges. Here we make no judgments. We offer only friendship and service.’ Well, what do you think?”
“What am I supposed to think?”
He tells me – tic-tac! – in a swift rattle of words.
“That it’s a good idea! That you’ll give us a lot of money and that you’ll come and work here as a doctor!”
I simply do not believe what I am hearing. It is all too cliché for words. I round on him.
“If this is your idea of a joke, Gianni.”
“No joke.”
“You’re out of your mind! I’m known on the circuit the girls come from! You’ll make yourself and this place a laughing stock.”
“Change your name then! Call yourself Sister Mary of the Angels. I don’t give a damn! But I want you here.”
“The money you can have, but. . .”
“To hell with your money! I want you. And you, by God, need this!”
“Like the plague I need it.”
“You are the plague!” He is cold and utterly contemptuous. “You’re the Black Death! You kill everything you touch – because you’ve never in all your life thought of anyone but yourself. This place is a refuge for the casualties you and your kind have created and will go on creating. I read Jung’s notes on you very carefully. I understand you better than he does. I’m an odd one, like you. I’m also an old fashioned absolutist; and so – God damn it! – are you! You want to kill yourself. And you will one day; because you’re a defaulting debtor and you don’t want to face the accounting. I’m giving you a chance to do just that: pay life for life, child for child, love for hate. Jung wrote something about you that hit me like a hammer. ‘She expects too much. She demands a god I can’t reveal to her, an absolution she hasn’t earned and probably never will!’ How right he was! The only time you were close to God was at your husband’s bedside and you ran away from Him. You couldn’t face what He meant. The moment our first girl walks through our gate, with a broken nose and a dose of clap, He’s going to be here again, and you’re going to miss Him again – and again and again until you can’t bear the solitude any more and you blow what’s left of your brains out! Oh hell! What’s the use! Come on, I’ll get you a cab.”
“Gianni!” He is halfway to the gate before I find my voice, a small unsteady voice that I hardly recognise as my own. “Gianni, wait a minute, please!”
“What is it?”
“Suppose. Just suppose I said yes.”
“I’m supposing. Go on.”
“How could it possibly work? You know everything about me now. I can’t trust myself too far. You’ve said yourself I’m the Black Death. I know I am. In a place like this I’m very close to old memories and not-so-old associations. I don’t know what that’s going to do to me.”
“Frankly, I don’t either. I’m gambling.”
“Not on me, please! I’m a bad risk.”
“There was something else in Jung’s notes: ‘She is much taken with the inscription over my door.’”
“I was impressed by it, yes. But I really did feel something should have happened: a puff of blue flame, divine fireworks. I don’t know.”
“I believe something did happen.”
“What, for God’s sake?”
“That day in Jung’s house, you died a little.”
“A little! Oh, Gianni, Gianni, so much of me died that the rest hardly matters!”
“That’s what I’m gambling on: ‘Si le grain ne meurt.’”
“Say that again.”
“‘Si le grain ne meurt. Unless the seed dies it remains for ever solitary and sterile.’ It’s a quotation from the gospels.”
“I’ve never read them.”
“No matter. In this place you’ll be living them, with the blind, the halt, the maimed – and the spirochete as well. Come on! Let me show you round. I need some suggestions.”
“Gianni.”
“Yes?”
“What are you doing to me?”
“Just what you asked Jung to do – except he didn’t know how. This is a breech presentation, maximum risk, high-forceps delivery. You’re being born again – into Angel Lane!”
“You’re a bastard!”
“No, my darling you have it wrong. You’re the one born on the wrong side of the blanket. I’m a high born, totally legitimate Florentine snob!”
[FRAGMENTS IN EPILOGUE]
Undated letter from Emma Jung to Magda Kardoss von Gamsfeld
My dear one,
I cannot tell you how sorry I am that Anna Sibilla has responded negatively to my letter; but at least she has responded and I think we both understand her answer. Sometimes it is best to leave things the way they are, because the effort to change them is too painful. . . Carl is vigorous. His fame grows, as does his entourage. There is still love between us, of a strange and thorny kind. He has never mentioned you once since you left. I, of course, have said nothing. I am content to enjoy our friendship in secret.
Much, much love,
Emma.
Letter from Magda Kardoss von Gamsfeld to Emma Jung, probably written in January 1914:
I still do not know what holds me at the Hospice des Anges. It is all so sordid and futile. The girls come; the girls go. I clean up their infections, patch up their injuries, dole out medicine, money and useless advice – then wait for them to come back in worse condition than before. I feel their pain. I rail at their stupidity. I carry on a running battle with the pimps and brothel touts who batten on them like parasites. I change nothing. I am like a blind donkey harnessed to the millstone, plodding around the same circle, day after day.
Why do I endure it? Perhaps it is because I am in the same state as your Carl, who needs an architecture, a structure to hold him together. Perhaps it is only because Gianni goads me and coaxes me and makes it seem that I am important in the scheme of things. He has no desire for me as a woman; yet he loves me and protects me against myself. When I am most deeply depressed, he insists on the point of honour: I am repaying a debt. When I ask to whom I am repaying it he grins and tells me: “To yourself of course. You cheated yourself of so much.”
Sometimes – only sometimes – it makes a little sense. Even as I write, there is a girl child sleeping in a crib beside me. She would have died if I had not been here to deliver her. I wish I had the courage to adopt her. Gianni counsels against it. The Daughters of the San Graal will find a home for her . . . Well, my dear Emma, a New Year for both of us! I wonder . . .
Fragment of a holograph memo from the files of the Ministry of the Interior, with pencilled date 19 March 1914:
. . . The Minister met with Zed-Zed. Among matters discussed was the security of the houses of appointment on the Selected List. There is a danger that this security may be damaged by subversion or defection of the girls. Zed-Zed points out that some girls, who defect from the life in Paris, now find their way to the Hospice des Anges, where the principal medical officer is a woman of Austrian nationality, but of mixed parentage (Hungarian and English) who has herself a long record of sexual delinquencies. The situation is sufficiently anomalous to merit attention, especially in view of possible hostilities this year. You are requested to investigate and recommend appropriate action . . .
Letter to Frau Magda Liliane Kardoss von Gamsfeld, from the Vicarage, Bibury, England, dated 23 March 1914:
Dear Madam,
It is with great regret that I inform you of the death of Miss Lily Mostyn on the eighteenth day of this month. She passed, very peacefully, in her sleep. I had been to visit her the day before and found her most chatty and tranquil.
As one of the executors of her will, I am charged with the disposal of her effects. She has bequeathed directly to you a package of papers which turns out to be a translation of The Scented Garden in the handwriting of the late Sir Richard Burton.
This is, as you know, a valuable, if rather exotic item. May I ask whether you have any special instructions about its disposal? One would not want to run the risk of contravening regulations regarding the transmission of obscene material through His Majesty’s mails.
I am remembering Miss Mostyn in our Sunday Service. You may wish to join your prayers with those of our congregation here.
Yours in the Communion of Saints,
(Signature illegible)
Vicar
Extract from an unpublished notebook of Carl Gustav Jung, inscribed Obiter Dicta, undated:
It has taken me a long time to come to terms with my failure in the case of Magda von G. I still cannot discuss it even with Toni; but at least I can contemplate it in meditation. One day I shall try to make clinical sense of it, although I shall never be able to publish it in literal form. It touches the living; it touches the dead; it is, for me, a numinous event, rich in mystery, heavy with terror. It raises questions to which I have still no adequate answers: the nature of evil, the complicated logic of guilt, man’s absolute need of pardon as a condition of psychic health, the authority – or is it simply the love? – which makes the pardon acceptable and potent. Have I forgiven myself for what I did to Magda von G? Not yet, I think. Has she forgiven me? I shall never know. I have not found the courage to enquire whether she is alive, or dead . . .
Letter from Gianni di Malvasia to Arnaldo Orsini dated 26 April 1914:
. . . I am heartbroken over what has happened. I have lost a dear, dear friend. The hospice has lost a gallant and loving collaborator. At the same time I am so enraged, I could, myself, commit murder. The whole affair is so calculated, so brutal.
It was about eight in the evening. Magda had handed over the keys of the dispensary to the night nurse and was walking down the Ruelle des Anges to pick up a cab on the main road. A man was seen to step out of the shadows and speak to her. He stabbed her once and then ran. Nobody stopped him. Passers-by picked Magda up and carried her back into the hospice. She was already dead.
The post mortem, which I performed myself, revealed a puncture that ran from the sternum upwards into the heart. The wound was obviously made by a cheese needle or a very fine stiletto. The police think it may have been a professional job. I know it was.
We have always had occasional trouble with pimps whose girls ran away from them and came to us; but this was something different. The hand that struck the blow was Corsican: thumb on the blade and strike upwards! The man who bought the service? Boh! I can never prove it. It is too dangerous even to set it down on paper. My house was burgled the other night. Little of value was taken but my papers were in disarray. What does that tell you?
I am leaving here and coming home to Italy. I have handed the hospice and the funds Magda left for its maintenance, to the Daughters of the San Graal. There will be war before the summer is out. I am told so on the best authority: Basil Zaharoff. He sent flowers to the graveside and wrote a most tender note about Magda and her work! I hope he rots in hell!
The Po
or Clares were kind. They let me bury Magda in the convent cemetery. I had to be honest and tell the Mother Superior she was an unbeliever. The old girl was marvellous. She’s eighty if she’s a day; but she still has all of her wits about her. She told me: “Gianni, my boy, it doesn’t matter what we believe about God. It’s what He knows about us. Your Magda will be very welcome here.”
I’ve left money for the headstone. I can’t for the life of me think of an epitaph. How do you describe a woman like that? She was all of us, good and bad, rolled into one package – except she had the courage that most of us lack! I still haven’t found the words; but they’ll come. There is time. The ground hasn’t sunk yet. The flowers have hardly withered on the grave. “Il pleure dans mon coeur. . .” I am lonely tonight. I never thought I could miss a woman so much . . .
