The Royal Physician's Visit

by Per Olov Enquist

  “What do you mean?”

  “The German doctor doesn’t understand that freedom can also be used against him. If you give freedom to the people, pamphlets will be written. Perhaps also against him. Against you, I mean. If you are his friend.”

  “And what will these pamphlets say?” Rantzau then asked. “What do you think? Or do you know?”

  “The people are so unpredictable. Perhaps free pamphlets will be written that tell the truth, and incite the ignorant masses.”

  Rantzau did not reply.

  “Against you,” Guldberg repeated.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The masses, unfortunately, don’t understand the blessings of the Enlightenment. Unfortunately. For you. The masses are only interested in filth. In rumors.”

  “What rumors?” asked Rantzau, now very cold and on his guard.

  “You know very well what rumors.”

  Guldberg looked at him with his calm wolf eyes, and for a moment felt something like triumph. Only the most insignificant and scorned, such as himself, were fearless. He knew that this frightened Rantzau. This Rantzau, with his contempt for honors, customs, and for upstarts. How he despised, in his heart, his friend Struensee! The upstart Struensee! It was quite obvious.

  He despised upstarts. Including Guldberg himself. The son of an undertaker from Horsens. Although the difference was that Guldberg felt no fear. That was why they could stand there, an upstart from Horsens and a Count and Enlightenment fool, like two enemies who hated each other, and Guldberg could say everything in a calm voice, as if there were no danger. As if Struensee’s power were merely an amusing or alarming parenthesis in history; and he knew that Rantzau knew what fear was.

  “What rumors?” Rantzau repeated.

  “The rumors about Struensee,” replied Guldberg in his dry voice, “saying that the young, wanton Queen has now opened her legs to him. All we need is proof. But we shall get it.”

  Rantzau stared at Guldberg, dumbstruck, as if he couldn’t comprehend that anyone would utter such an absurd accusation.

  “How dare you!” he said at last.

  “That’s the difference, Count Rantzau. That’s the difference between you and me. I dare. And I assume,” said Guldberg in a thoroughly neutral tone of voice before he turned around to leave, “that very soon you will be forced to choose sides.”

  3.

  He lay quite still inside her and waited for the beat of her pulse.

  He had begun to understand that the most intense pleasure was found when he waited for the beat of her pulse deep inside her, when their membranes breathed and moved in time, softly, pulsating. That was the most fantastic thing. He had enjoyed learning to wait for her. She had never needed to say anything, he had learned it almost at once. He could lie quite still, for a long time, with his member deep inside her, and listen to the membranes of her sex as though their bodies had vanished and only their sex remained. He almost didn’t move at all, lay still, their bodies gone as well as their thoughts, they were both completely focused on listening to their pulse and the rhythm. Nothing existed but her moist, soft membranes, she moved her pelvis almost imperceptibly, infinitely slowly, he probed with his member inside of her as if it was the sensitive tip of a tongue that was searching for something, and he would lie still and wait; it was for the beat of her pulse, as if inside her he was searching for her pulsating surfaces that would throb in time with his own member, then he would move cautiously; he waited, there would be a moment when he could feel how she contracted and then relaxed, contracted and relaxed, his member lay waiting inside her narrow sheath, and then he could feel a sort of rhythm, a sort of pulse. If he waited, her pulse would come, and when he found it, everything would happen to the same rhythm as the inner beat of her pulse. She lay with her eyes closed beneath him, and he could feel her waiting for the beat of her pulse, they were both waiting, he deep inside her, but their bodies no longer seemed to exist and instead everything existed inside of her, membrane against membrane, membranes that gently, imperceptibly swelled and sank back and searched for the beat of her pulse, that slowly adjusted to each other and moved in unison, very slowly, and when he felt how her membranes and his member shared the same breath, he would slowly begin to move, in the rhythm, which sometimes would vanish, and then he would have to lie still again until he found the beat of her pulse, and then his member could breathe in the same tempo as her membranes again, slowly; it was this slow waiting for the pulse of the secret membranes that she had taught him, he didn’t understand how she could know, but when the rhythm came and the membranes breathed in unison, they could slowly start to move and an unbelievable pleasure would come, and they would vanish into the same slow, drawn-out breathing.

  Very quiet. Awaiting the inner beat of her pulse, the rhythm, and then their bodies would disappear and everything existed solely inside of her, and he breathed with his member in the same slow beat as her membranes, and he had never experienced anything like it before.

  He had slept with many women, and she was not the most beautiful. But none of them had taught him to wait for the rhythm of the membranes and the inner pulse of the body.

  They arranged the placement of their rooms to make sneaking back and forth easier, and during the winter their caution diminished when they made love. They also went riding together more often, in the cold, in lightly falling snow, across the frozen fields. They began riding along the shore.

  She rode along the water’s edge, making the ice on the shore crackle, with her hair flowing and without a care in the world.

  She weighed a fraction of an ounce, and only the weight of the horse prevented her from flying. Why should she protect her face from the driving snow when she was a bird? She could see farther ahead than ever before, past the dunes of Sjælland and past the coast of Norway and on toward Iceland and even all the way to the towering glaciers of the North Pole.

  She would remember that winter; and Struensee on his horse followed close, very close behind her, along the shore, utterly silent, but close to her every thought.

  On February 6, 1771, she informed Struensee that she was with child.

  They had made love. Then she told him, afterward.

  “I am with child,” she said.“And we know that it’s yours.”

  * * *

  She discovered that she wanted to make love every day.

  Her desire would grow each morning, and by twelve o’clock it was enormous; at that moment it was urgent and at its peak, and she wanted him to interrupt his work and join her in a short conference during which she would be briefed on the work he had accomplished that morning.

  And so it came to be quite natural. Before that, nothing was natural; now it had become natural.

  He adapted accordingly. At first with surprise, then with great joy since he found that his body shared her joy and that her desire aroused his desire. That’s how it was. He would never have imagined that her desire could arouse his own in that way. He thought that desire was only the forbidden. There was that too. But the fact that desire and the forbidden, which for her became natural and grew each day so that by noon her desire was burning and uncontrollable, that this natural desire could be relieved each day—that surprised him.

  It was much later that he began to feel the fear.

  They made love in her bedchamber and afterward she would lie in his arms with her eyes closed, smiling like a little girl who had conceived his desire and given birth to it and now lay with his desire in her arms , as if it were her child, which she now possessed wholly and completely. It was much later that he began to feel the fear. And yet he said:

  “We must be careful. I know that people are talking. And they’ll talk about the child too. We must be careful.”

  “No,” she said.

  “No?”

  “Because I’m no longer afraid of anything.”

  What could he say to that?

  “I knew it,” she said. “I knew all along, absolutely, that yo
u were the one. From the first moment I saw you and felt frightened by you and thought that you were an enemy who had to be destroyed. But that was a sign. A sign in your body that was burned into me, like a branding iron on an animal. I knew it.”

  “You’re not an animal,” he said. “But we must be careful.”

  “You’ll come tomorrow?” she said without listening. “You’ll come tomorrow at the same time?”

  “And if I don’t come, because it’s too dangerous?”

  She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to open them.

  “It is dangerous. You know that. Oh, just imagine if I said that you had violated me. Oh, what if I started to shout for them? And to sob and say that you had violated me. And they took you and executed you and broke you on the wheel, and me too. No, not me. They would banish me. But I won’t shout, my beloved. Because you’re mine, and I have you, and we’ll make love every day.”

  He didn’t want to reply. She turned toward him with her eyes closed, caressing his arms and chest, at last sliding her hand down toward his member. He had seen this once in his secret dreams, how her hand closed around his member, and now it was true, and he knew that this hand possessed a terrible seduction and power that he never could have imagined, and that it was not only his member around which her hand was wrapped, but also around himself, that she seemed stronger than he ever would have suspected, and that this filled him with desire but also with something that did not yet, but perhaps soon might, resemble fear.

  “My beloved,” he murmured, “I would never have suspected that your body had … such a …”

  “Such a … ?”

  “… such a great talent for love.”

  She opened her eyes and smiled at him. She knew this was true. It had gone inconceivably quickly.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  He could feel his desire rising. He didn’t know whether he wanted to. He knew only that she had him in her power, and that his desire rose and that something frightened him, but he didn’t yet know what it was.

  “My beloved,” he whispered,“what shall we do?”

  “This,” she said. “Always.”

  He didn’t reply. Soon he would once again cross the utterly forbidden boundary; it was different now, but he didn’t know in what way.

  “And you will never be free of me,” she whispered, her voice so low that he almost didn’t hear her. “Because you are burned into me. Like a branding iron on an animal.”

  But he did hear her. And perhaps it was at that moment—just as she let him slip inside her again and they once more began to listen for the secret pulsebeats which would ultimately draw them together in their tremendous rhythm—that he felt the first glimmer of fear.

  Once she lay naked beside him for a long time, letting her fingers glide through his blond hair, and then with a little smile she said:

  “You will be my right hand.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  And playfully, but confidently, she whispered:

  “A hand. A hand does what the head wishes, isn’t that true? And I have so many ideas.”

  Why had he felt fear?

  Sometimes he would think: I should have climbed out of Christian’s coach in Altona. And gone back to my own life.

  One morning, very early, as Struensee was on his way to work, the King, in his dressing gown with his hair disheveled and wearing no socks or shoes, came running to catch up with him in the Marble Corridor, grabbed hold of his arm, and insisted that he listen.

  They sat down in a deserted drawing room. After a while the King grew calmer, his ragged breathing became normal, and he confided to Struensee what he called “a secret that revealed itself last night as I was being ridden by the torments.”

  What the King told him was as follows.

  There was a secret circle of seven men. They had been chosen by God to foment evil in the world. They were the seven apostles of evil. He himself was one of them. The horrible thing was that he could feel love only for someone who also belonged to this circle. If he felt love, it meant that this person also belonged to the seven angels of evil. Last night he had clearly understood, and he felt great dread, and since he felt love for Struensee he now wanted to ask whether this was true, and whether Struensee actually belonged to this secret circle of evil.

  Struensee tried to calm the King, asking him to tell more about his “dream.” Christian then began muttering, as usual, becoming incoherent, but suddenly he said that the dream had also confirmed that there was a woman who in some secret way ruled the universe.

  Struensee asked him what he meant by this.

  The King could not answer the question. He simply repeated that a woman ruled the universe, that a circle of seven evil men was responsible for all evil deeds, that he was one of them, but perhaps he could be saved by the woman who ruled the whole universe; and she would then become his benefactress.

  He stared at Struensee for a long time, and asked:

  “But aren’t you one of The Seven?”

  Struensee merely shook his head. At that, the King asked, with despair in his voice:

  “Then why do I love you?”

  It was early in April 1771.

  King Christian VII, his consort Queen Caroline Mathilde, and the Royal Physician J. F. Struensee were having tea at Fredensborg Castle on the little balcony that faced the palace park.

  Struensee was talking about the park’s ideology. He praised its fabulous design, with pathways forming a labyrinth, and the way the hedges concealed the symmetry of the layout. He pointed out that the labyrinth had been designed so that there was only one point from which the logic of the park’s plan was visible. Down there everything was confusion, lanes and corridors that led to dead ends, cul-de-sacs, and chaos. But from a single point everything became clear, logical, and sensible. It was from the balcony where they now sat. It was the Ruler’s balcony. It was the only point from which any coherence was apparent. This viewpoint, which was that of reason and coherence, was accessible only to the Ruler.

  The Queen asked with a smile what this meant. He elucidated further.

  “The Ruler’s viewpoint. Which is that of power.”

  “Does it seem … enticing?”

  He answered her by smiling. After a brief pause she leaned toward him and whispered close to his ear, so that the King couldn’t hear:

  “You’re forgetting one thing. That you are in my power.”

  4.

  He would remember that conversation, and the threat.

  The Ruler’s balcony was a vantage point, and it gave coherence to the symmetry of the labyrinth, but that was all. The other connections remained chaotic.

  Early summer arrived, and the decision was made to spend the summer at Hirschholm Castle. The packing had begun. Struensee and the Queen had agreed on this. The King was not consulted, but would comply.

  He found it natural not to be consulted but to be allowed to go along, and he agreed.

  The following was what happened on the day before their departure.

  From the balcony, where he was now sitting alone, Christian watched the two young lovers disappear on their horses, going off on their daily ride, and he suddenly felt very alone. He called for Moranti, but he was nowhere to be found.

  He went inside.

  There was the dog, the schnauzer. He was sleeping on the floor in a corner of the room. Christian lay down on the floor with his head on the dog’s body; but after a few minutes the dog got up, went to another corner of the room, and lay down there.

  Christian followed and once more lay down with the dog’s body as his pillow; the dog got up again and moved to another corner.

  Christian stayed where he was, staring up at the ceiling. This time he didn’t go after the dog. He smiled tentatively at the ceiling; there were cherubs up there, adorning the transition between wall and ceiling. He tried hard to ensure that his smile would be calm and friendly, not contorted; the cherubs gave him an inquisitive look. From th
e other corner of the room he heard the dog’s voice, which muttered to him not to annoy the cherubs. He stopped smiling.

  He decided to go out; he was determined to find the center of the labyrinth, because a message was waiting for him there.

  He was convinced that it was there in the center of the labyrinth. For a long time he had not received any word from The Seven; he had asked Struensee, but the doctor refused to answer his question. But if Struensee also belonged to The Seven, then the two of them were co-conspirators, and he had someone to confide in. He was sure that Struensee was one of them. He loved him, after all; that was the sign.

  Perhaps Moranti also belonged to The Seven, and the dog too; then there were four of them. He had now identified four of them.

  Three remained. Caterine? But she was the Sovereign of the Universe; no, three remained, but he couldn’t find three more. Not three whom he loved. Where were they? And the dog was not a sure thing; he loved the dog, and whenever the dog talked to him, he was almost convinced, but the dog seemed to express only love, submission, and indifference. He wasn’t sure about the dog. But the dog did talk to him; that made him unique. Otherwise dogs couldn’t talk. It was absurd to imagine animals talking, an impossibility. But since the dog did talk, it was a sign. It was a sign that was almost clear, but only almost.

  He wasn’t sure about the dog.

  The Seven would cleanse the temple of impurity. And then he himself would rise up like the Phoenix. This was the smoldering fire of the Enlightenment. Hence The Seven. Evil was necessary to create purity.

  It was not entirely clear how all of this fit together. But he believed it was true. The Seven were fallen angels from heaven. He had to find out what he was supposed to do. A sign. A message. It was undoubtedly in the center of the labyrinth, a message from The Seven, or from the Sovereign of the Universe.