What do I know now, what else have I learned
if not that lies and truth are as alike
as if they were two drops of water.
Doubt! Doubt! yes, all is doubt.
And nothing but doubt is true.
In one sense he looked comical in his costume. That Oriental guise! That turban! And the curved sword that seemed much too big for his small, delicate body! And yet: he spoke his long monologues with remarkable conviction, as if at that moment, on that stage, and before the entire court, he was creating his lines. It was at that very moment they were born. Yes, it was as if this mad little boy, who so far had lived his life by saying the court’s lines in the court’s theater, was now, for the first time, speaking without a script. For the first time the words came from within.
As if he were creating the lines right there, on the theater stage.
A crime have I committed
against my ruler’s scepter
and power have I squandered when I tried
to bear it.
He played his role quietly, but with passion, and the other actors seemed stunned by his performance; occasionally they would forget their own lines and freeze in position, staring at the King. Where did His Majesty’s controlled rage come from? And that sense of conviction, which could not have come from the theater?
I wish to be alone—in this hell!
My shame in blood, in blood! shall I
wipe away myself.
Here is my altar, an altar of revenge
and I—the head priest!
Afterward the applause lasted for a long time, but seemed almost fearful. Caroline Mathilde noted that the German Royal Physician, Doctor Struensee, stopped applauding after only a brief moment, perhaps not for lack of appreciation, she imagined, but for some other reason.
He was regarding Christian with an odd expression of curiosity, leaning forward, as if about to stand up and approach the King, as if with a question on his lips.
She was almost certain that this new favorite, this Doctor Struensee, was her most dangerous enemy. And that it was absolutely necessary to crush him.
4.
The silence surrounding the Queen seemed to become slowly magnetized after the arrival of the new enemy.
She was quite certain. Something dangerous was going to take place, something would happen, something would change. Before, the world had been insufferably boring; an ennui in which life at court and in Copenhagen and in Denmark seemed like one of those winter days when the fog from Øresund was thick and absolutely still over the water, and she would ask to be driven down to the shore and she would stand on the rocks and look at the birds resting in the black, motionless, quicksilver-like water; and when a bird rose up, beating the tips of its wings against the surface of the water, and disappeared into the mist, she would think: This water is the vast sea, and on the other side is England, and if I were a bird with wings … but then the cold and ennui would force her back.
Back then life stood still and smelled of death and seaweed. Now life stood still, but it smelled of death or life; the difference was that the silence seemed more dangerous, and it filled her with an odd excitement.
What was it? Was it the new enemy?
Doctor Struensee was not like the others, and he was her enemy. He wanted to destroy her, of that she was certain. He was always near the King, and he had power over him. Everyone had taken note of Doctor Struensee’s power. But what puzzled everyone, and her as well, was that he didn’t seem inclined to make use of his power. He exerted power, more and more, that much was evident. But with a sort of quiet reluctance.
What was it he wanted?
He was considered a handsome man. He was still young. He was a head taller than all the courtiers, he was exceedingly friendly and reticent, and at court he was called “the Silent One.”
But what was it he was keeping to himself?
One day she was sitting with her crochet work in the Rose Lane just beyond the inner courtyard of the palace; suddenly she was overwhelmed by such great sorrow that she could not control herself. The crochet work fell to her lap, she bent her head and buried her face in her hands, feeling at her wits’ end.
This was not the first time she had wept in Copenhagen. Sometimes she felt as if her time in Denmark was nothing but a long period of weeping. But this was the first time she had wept outside her rooms.
As she sat there alone, with her face buried in her hands, she didn’t see Struensee approach. Suddenly he was there. He came up to her very quietly and calmly, pulled out a lace-trimmed handkerchief, and offered it to her.
In this way he indicated that he had seen her tears. What shamelessness, what a breach of discretion.
Yet she took the handkerchief and dried her tears. Then he began bowing and took a step backward, as if to leave. She felt it necessary to rebuke him.
“Doctor Struensee,” she said. “Everyone wants to flock around the King. But soon you’ll be the only one flocking there. What is it you want so ardently? What is it that you’re flocking around?”
He merely smiled, a swift little humorous smile, shook his head, bowed, and left without a word.
Without a word!
What enraged her most was his friendly inaccessibility.
He didn’t even seem to look through her clothing, the way the others did, at her forbidden body. If she was the most forbidden of women, the Holy Grail, an itch on the phallus of the court, why did he seem so silent, friendly, and uninterested?
Sometimes she thought: Isn’t he even enticed by the lure of the black, quicksilver-like sea of death?
5.
In April summer arrived.
It came early, the greenery quickly exploded, and the promenades in Bernstorff Park were magnificent. The ladies-in-waiting, with the child in a baby carriage, followed behind. She wanted to walk alone, ten paces ahead of her attendants.
After Fru von Plessen was taken from her, she had refused to choose any other confidante. It was a decision based on principle.
It was on May 12 that she met Struensee in the park.
He stopped, he was walking alone, and he bowed courteously, with that little, friendly, perhaps ironic smile on his lips that annoyed and bewildered her so much.
Why did she stop too? Because she had a purpose. That was the reason. She had a perfectly legitimate and natural purpose, and that was why she stopped and addressed him.
That was why it was completely natural for her to stop.
“Doctor … Struensee,” she said. “It is … Struensee? Isn’t it?”
He pretended not to notice the slight sarcasm, but merely replied:
“Yes, Your Majesty?”
“It’s about the cupping of the Crown Prince. Smallpox is spreading through Copenhagen; they tell me you’re a specialist, but I’m afraid, and I don’t know whether we should dare …”
He gave her a somber look.
“There’s nothing wrong with being afraid.”
“No???”
The ladies-in-waiting with the child in the baby carriage had stopped a respectful distance away and were waiting.
Then he said, “I could, if Your Royal Highness so wishes, perform a cupping. I believe that I have a great deal of experience. I have worked with cuppings in Altona for many years.”
“And you are … a man of science … and know everything about cupping?”
“I did not write my dissertation on cupping,” he replied with a little smile. “It has been a matter of practical experience. Several thousand children. My dissertation was not concerned with that topic.”
“What was it concerned with, then?”
“‘On the Risks of Aberrant Motions of the Limbs.’”
He fell silent.
“And which … limbs run the greatest risk?”
He didn’t reply. What a strange tension there was in the air; she sensed that he grew hesitant, and it filled her with a kind of triumph; now she could continue.
“The
King speaks well of you,” she said.
He gave a small bow.
“On those occasions when the King speaks to me, he speaks well of you,” she clarified and immediately regretted doing so; why had she said that? On those occasions when he speaks to me. No doubt he understood what she meant, but it was no concern of his.
No reply.
“But I don’t know you,” she added in a cool tone.
“No. No one does. Not in Copenhagen.”
“No one?”
“Not here.”
“Do you have other interests aside from … the King’s health?”
He now seemed curious, as if his inaccessibility had been broken, and for the first time he gave her an intense look, as if waking up and seeing her.
“Philosophy,” he told her.
“Aha. Anything else?”
“Horseback riding.”
“Oh …” she said. “I can’t ride.”
“It’s possible to … learn … to ride.”
“Difficult?”
“Well, yes,” he said, “but fabulous.”
Now, she thought, now this brief conversation has grown much too intimate. She knew that he had noticed what was forbidden. She was certain of that; suddenly she was furious with herself, that she was the one who had been forced to bring it to light. He should have noticed on his own. Without help. Like the others.
She began walking. Then she stopped, turned around, and said abruptly:
“You are a stranger at court.”
It was not a question. It was a statement. Meant to put him in his place.
And it was then that he gave a reply, completely naturally and as if it were self-evident, that was absolutely perfect:
“Yes. As are you, Your Majesty.”
Then she couldn’t help herself.
“In that case,” she said quickly and without expression, “you will teach me to ride.”
6.
Count Rantzau, who had once, only a year earlier, proposed to Guldberg the idea of the German Doctor Struensee as a beneficial royal medicus for the King, no longer could tell what the situation was.
In a strange way he felt as if things were out of control.
Either everything had gone extremely well, or else he had misjudged his friend and protégé Struensee, who was always with the King but seemed oddly passive. So close to His Majesty, but with such silence surrounding the two of them. It was said that Struensee now opened the King’s mail, culled what was important, and wrote the drafts for the King’s decrees.
What could this be, if not an indication of power? And more than an indication.
It was for this reason that he had invited Struensee to take a walk through the city to investigate the situation as to the “cupping urgency.”
That was how he had expressed it. The cupping urgency was what he believed would be the proper starting point for renewing the old intimacy with his friend.
The silent man from Altona.
They walked through Copenhagen. Struensee seemed unperturbed by the decay and filth, as if he were all too familiar with such things, but Rantzau was horrified.
“A smallpox epidemic could reach the court,” Rantzau said. “It could seep in … and leave us defenseless …”
“In spite of the Danish national defense,” replied Struensee. “In spite of the great appropriations for the army.”
“The Crown Prince must be protected,” Rantzau retorted coldly, since he didn’t find it a suitable topic for jest.
“I know,” Struensee replied swiftly. “The Queen has already asked me. I will do it.”
Rantzau was nearly struck dumb, but he pulled himself together and gave the proper response in the right tone of voice.
“The Queen? Already? How splendid.”
“Yes, the Queen.”
“The King will idolize you for the rest of your life if the cupping is successful. He already idolizes you. It’s amazing. He trusts you.”
Struensee did not reply.
“What is the King’s … situation? In fact?”
“It’s complicated,” said Struensee.
He said no more than that. And it was actually what he thought. During the months that had passed since their return from Europe, he felt he had come to understand that the King’s situation was precisely that: complicated.
Christian’s conversation with the French encyclopedists in Paris had been an unprecedented moment. And for several weeks he had believed that Christian could be healed; that this little boy might indeed have suffered from frostbite of the soul, but that it was not by any means too late. During those weeks Christian seemed to awaken from his lethargy; he talked about having a mission to create a kingdom of reason, that the court was a madhouse but that he steadfastly and completely trusted Struensee.
He trusted him steadfastly and completely. Steadfastly and completely. He repeated that often.
But it was the reason behind his devotion that was so puzzling, so ominous. Struensee was to be his “stick,” he said; as if he were once again a child, had captured the rod of the dreaded headmaster, and had now placed it in the hands of a new vassal.
Struensee told him that he did not wish to be a “stick,” not even a sword, nor an avenger. The kingdom of reason could not be built on revenge. And together, over and over like a liturgy, they had read the letter that Voltaire had written to the King, and about him.
Light. Reason. But at the same time Struensee knew that this light and reason was in the hands of a boy who bore the darkness inside him like a mighty black torch.
How could light emerge from that?
Yet there was something about the image of the “stick” that attracted Struensee, in spite of himself. Was the “stick” necessary for the change? Voltaire had said something that he could not forget; about the necessity—or did he say duty?—of stepping through the aperture that might suddenly be created in history. And he had always dreamed that changes might be possible, but thought that he himself, an insignificant German doctor from Altona, was merely one of life’s small workmen whose task it was to scrape away the filth of life from all those people with his knife. He did not think “scalpel”; that was too sharp and ominous. It was linked to the autopsies when he cut open the suicides or those who had been executed. No, he had pictured it as the simple knife of a workman. To cut in order to expose life’s pure wood. Like a workman.
To scrape, with the knife of a workman. To scrape away the filth of life. So that the surface of the wood became pure, veined, and alive.
But Diderot’s greeting from Voltaire contained something else.
He hadn’t used the word “duty.” But that’s what he meant. And Struensee would wake up at night in his room in that ghastly, ice-cold palace and lie still, staring up at the ceiling and suddenly think: Perhaps I am the one, and this is the moment that will never come again, but if power seizes hold of me, I will be lost and doomed to destruction and I don’t want that; it made him breathe faster, almost in agony, and he began to think that this was a responsibility, that it was a tremendous responsibility, and that this moment would never come again. This moment that was Copenhagen.
That HE was the one!!!
It was as if he saw the aperture of history open, and he knew that it was the aperture of life, and he was the only one who could step through this opening. Perhaps, just perhaps, it was his duty.
And he was tremendously frightened.
He had not wanted to describe the King’s situation to Rantzau. It had suddenly felt slippery. Rantzau was a slippery man. He hadn’t seen this before, not at the Ascheberg Gardens, not during those marvelous summer evenings in Rousseau’s hut, but now he could clearly feel how slippery it was.
He wanted to keep him out of it.
“Complicated?” Rantzau asked.
“He dreams of creating light,” Struensee told him. “And the kingdom of reason. And I fear that I may be able to help him.”
“Fear?” said Rantzau.
“Yes, I am afraid.”
“Excellent,” Rantzau said in an odd tone of voice. “The kingdom of reason. Reason. And the Queen?”
“A strange woman.”
“Just as long as reason doesn’t kill the hydra of passion,” Rantzau said casually.
Linked to this was an event that had taken place three days earlier.
Afterward Struensee feared that he had misinterpreted it. But it was precisely the … complicated … nature of the situation that had preoccupied him for several days.
It was perhaps because of this event that he used the word “complicated” with Rantzau.
This is what happened.
Christian and Struensee were alone in the King’s study. The dog, as usual, was sitting on the King’s knee; Christian was signing with one hand a series of documents that Struensee, at the King’s request, had reworked, from a purely linguistic point of view.
This was the agreement they had reached. Struensee wrote everything. He insisted, however, that this was merely a purely linguistic reworking. Christian slowly and ceremoniously signed his name, now and then muttering to himself.
“What outrage this will provoke. Bernstorff. Guldberg. Guldberg will know his place. Will now have to know his place!! I will destroy. The cabinet. Everything.”
Struensee cautiously observed him but said nothing, since he had become quite familiar with the King’s manic litanies about destruction, the Phoenix, and the cleansing of the temple.
“Smash! Everything to bits!!! Isn’t that right, Struensee? I have the right idea, don’t I!!”
Struensee then said in a calm and quiet voice:
“Yes, Your Majesty. Something must be done with this rotting kingdom.”
“A light! From the North!”
He kissed the dog, something that often revolted Struensee, and continued:
“The temple must be cleansed! Total destruction!!! You’re with me, aren’t you?!!!”
Everything up to that point was very familiar. But Struensee, who felt a momentary weariness at the King’s outburst, muttered softly, more or less to himself:
The Royal Physician's Visit Page 13
