The Royal Physician's Visit

by Per Olov Enquist

He dashed, staggering and lurching, into the labyrinth of pruned hedges, trying to remember the picture he had of the corridors, the picture from up on the balcony where chaos was reason.

  After a while he began walking more slowly. He was breathing hard, and he knew that he had to calm down. He veered to the left, to the right, his picture of the labyrinth’s design was quite clear, he was sure that it was quite clear. After a few minutes he came to a cul-de-sac. The hedge stood like a wall before him; he turned around, took a right, then another right. Now the picture in his mind was less clear, but he tried to muster his courage, and suddenly started running again. Once more he was gasping for breath. When he began to sweat, he tore off his wig and kept running; it was easier that way.

  The picture in his mind had now vanished.

  There was no longer any sense of clarity. The walls around him were green and thorny. He stopped. He had to be very close to the center. In the center there was clarity. He stood quite still, listening. No birds, not a sound; he glanced down at his hand, his hand was bleeding, he didn’t know how it had happened. He knew that he was very close to the center. In the center he would find the message, or Caterine.

  Absolute silence. Why wasn’t a single bird singing?

  Suddenly he heard a voice whispering. He stood motionless. He recognized the voice; it came from the other side of the wall of hedges, from a place that had to be the center.

  “Here it is,” said the voice. “Come here.”

  It was beyond all doubt Caterine’s voice.

  He tried to see through the hedge, but it was impossible. It was completely quiet now, but there was no longer any doubt, it was Caterine’s voice, and she was on the other side. He caught his breath, he had to be very calm now, but he had to get through. He took a step inside the hedge, trying to bend the branches aside. They were thorny, and he suddenly understood that this was going to hurt badly, but he was calm now, this had to be done, he had to be strong, hard. He had to be invulnerable. There was no other way. The first few inches were easy, then the hedge wall was very thick; he leaned forward, as if he wanted to fall through. And he did fall forward but the resistance was strong. The thorns cut like small swords across his face, they stung; he tried to raise his arms to free himself, but then he just fell forward even more. Now the hedge was extremely dense, and he must be very close to the middle of the labyrinth, but he still couldn’t see through. Desperately he kicked his legs, his body was shoved a little bit farther, but there the branches were even thicker, it was impossible to bend them aside, they were no longer branches but trunks. He tried to stand up but made it only halfway. His hands were burning, his face was burning. Mechanically he fought with the branches, but there were thorns everywhere, the tiny knives kept on stinging his skin, he screamed for a moment but controlled himself and tried once more to stand up. But he couldn’t.

  He hung there, imprisoned. Blood ran down his face. He started to sob. It was utterly silent. Caterine’s voice could no longer be heard. He was very close to the center, he knew that, but imprisoned.

  The courtiers who saw him enter the labyrinth had grown uneasy, and after an hour a search was launched. They found him lying inside the hedge; only one foot was sticking out. Help was summoned. The King was freed, but he refused to stand up.

  He seemed completely apathetic. In a weak voice, however, he commanded that Guldberg be called.

  Guldberg arrived.

  The blood had dried on the King’s face, arms, and hands, but he lay motionless on the ground, staring straight up. Guldberg ordered a stretcher to be brought and told the attendants to withdraw so that he could speak with the King.

  Guldberg sat down near the King, covered his chest with his own cloak, and tried to hide his agitation by speaking to Christian in a whisper.

  At first, because of his agitation, which made his lips tremble violently, he whispered so softly that Christian couldn’t hear him. Gradually he became audible. “Your Majesty,” he whispered,“don’t be afraid, I will save you from this degradation, I love you, all these immoral” (and here his whispering grew stronger) “all these immoral people degrade us, but revenge will destroy them. They despise us, they look down on those of us who are insignificant, but we will cut away these limbs of sin from the body of Denmark. The wine treader’s time will come. They laugh at us and scoff at us, but they have scoffed at us for the last time; God’s vengeance will destroy them, and we, Your Majesty, I will be your … we will …”

  Suddenly Christian was jolted out of his apathy; he stared at Guldberg and sat up.

  “We?!!!”he shouted, staring at Guldberg like a madman. “US??? Who are you talking about? Are you crazy, crazy?!!! I am God’s chosen one, and you dare to … you dare to …”

  Guldberg cringed, as if from a whip, and silently bowed his head.

  Then the King slowly got to his feet, and Guldberg would never forget that sight: the boy with his head and face covered with black, congealed blood, his hair straggly and matted, his clothes torn to shreds. Yes, in appearance he looked the very image of a madman covered in blood and filth; and yet, and yet, he now seemed to possess a composure and authority as if he were not mad but rather God’s chosen one.

  Perhaps he was a human being after all.

  Christian signaled for Guldberg to rise. He gave Guldberg his cloak. And he said in a very calm and firm voice:

  “You are the only one who knows where she is.”

  He didn’t wait for a reply but continued:

  “I want you today to draw up a certificate of pardon. And I will sign it. Myself. Not Struensee. I myself.”

  “Who is to be pardoned, Your Majesty?” Guldberg asked.

  “Bottine Caterine.”

  And to that voice no objections could be raised, and no questions could be asked. Then the courtiers arrived with the stretcher. But it wasn’t needed; Christian walked on his own, unassisted, out of the labyrinth.

  CHAPTER 11

  THE CHILD OF THE REVOLUTION

  1.

  THEY BATHED AND bandaged Christian’s wounds, they postponed the departure for Hirschholm for three days, they made up an explanation for the King’s unfortunate fall into a rosebush; everything gradually returned to normal. The packing was resumed along with the other preparations, and by ten in the morning the expedition was ready to leave for Hirschholm.

  The whole court would not be going. Only a small group was included, yet it was large enough. An enormous amount of baggage filled twenty-four coaches in all; the number of attendants was considered small, a total of eighteen; in addition, there was a handful of soldiers (several of whom were apparently sent home after the first week), as well as the kitchen staff. At the center were the royal couple, Struensee, and the little Crown Prince, who was now three. That was the extent of the very small group.

  Except for Enevold Brandt. He was the King’s “nursemaid,” as malicious rumor had it. In addition, several mistresses of the lower officials. And two carpenters.

  At departure time, it was quite evident from the Queen’s figure that she was pregnant. The court talked of nothing else. No one had any doubts who the father was.

  * * *

  On that morning four coaches stood waiting in the palace courtyard when Rantzau sought out Struensee to have “an urgent conversation,” as he put it.

  First he asked whether it was intended that he should accompany them. Struensee replied, with a friendly bow:“If you wish.”

  “Do you want me to come with you?” was the immediate response from Rantzau, who seemed strangely tense and restrained. They regarded each other warily.

  No answer.

  Rantzau thought he had correctly interpreted the silence. He asked, “quite bluntly,” whether it would be wise at this time to spend the summer and perhaps even the autumn at Hirschholm with such a small retinue. Struensee asked what he meant by this question. Rantzau replied that there was unrest in the country. That the flood of decrees and reforms now flowing from Struensee’s
hand (and he deliberately used that expression, “from Struensee’s hand,” because he was quite familiar with the King’s state of mind and besides, he was no idiot)—these reforms were no doubt beneficial for the country. They were often wise, well intentioned, and occasionally in keeping with the very best principles of reason. No doubt about it. In short, very well formulated. But, also in short , numerous! Almost too many to count!

  The country was not prepared for this, or at least the administration wasn’t! Ergo, it was highly dangerous both for Struensee and for all of his friends. But, Rantzau continued without giving Struensee even a second to interrupt or reply, why such breakneck imprudence? Wasn’t this flood of reforms, this in truth revolutionary wave that was now rising up over the kingdom of Denmark, wasn’t this sudden revolution a good reason, or at any rate a tactically good reason, for Struensee and the King—but above all Struensee!!!—to stay somewhat closer to the enemy’s camp?

  In order to observe their enemies to some extent. Or rather: the thoughts and deeds of the enemy troops.

  It was an astonishing outpouring.

  “In brief, is it wise to leave?” he concluded.

  “That was far from brief,” Struensee replied. “And I can’t tell whether the person speaking is friend or foe.”

  “I’m the one speaking,” said Rantzau. “A friend. Perhaps your only friend.”

  “My only friend,” said Struensee. “My only friend? That sounds ominous.”

  That was the tone. Formal, and fundamentally hostile. A long silence followed.

  “Do you remember Altona?” Struensee said at last in a low voice.

  “Yes, I remember. That was a very long time ago, it seems to me.”

  “Three years? Is that so long ago?”

  “You’ve changed,” was Rantzau’s chilly reply.

  “I haven’t changed,” said Struensee. “Not I. In Altona we agreed about almost everything. In fact, I admired you. You had read everything. And you taught me a great deal. For that I am grateful. I was so young back then.”

  “But now you’re old and wise. And no longer feel any admiration.”

  “Now I’m transforming reality.”

  “Transforming reality?”

  “Yes. In practice. Not just in theory.”

  “I seem to hear a note of contempt,” said Rantzau. “‘Not just in theory.’”

  “If I knew where you stood, I would answer.”

  “Something ‘real.’ No theories. No desk speculations. And what is the latest … real thing?”

  It was an unpleasant conversation. And the coaches were waiting. Struensee slowly stretched out his hand for the documents stacked on the table, and picked them up, as if to show them to Rantzau. But he didn’t. He merely looked, silent and joyless, at the communiqués in his hand, and for a moment he felt as if a great sorrow, or an overwhelming weariness, had seized hold of him.

  “I was working last night,” he said.

  “Yes, they say you work hard at night.”

  Struensee pretended not to hear the insinuation.

  He couldn’t be candid with Rantzau. He couldn’t mention anything about the slipperiness. But something about what Rantzau had said made him ill at ease. It was the old feeling cropping up, the feeling of inferiority compared to his brilliant colleagues at the Ascheberg Gardens.

  The silent doctor from Altona among his brilliant friends. Perhaps they hadn’t understood the real reason for his silence.

  Perhaps now they did. He was the unlawful practitioner who had been inexplicably elevated! That was what Rantzau was hinting at. You’re not good enough. You were silent because you had nothing to say. You should have stayed in Altona.

  And it was true. Sometimes he saw his life as a series of points lined up on a piece of paper, a long list of numbered tasks, that someone else had tallied up, someone else!!! His life enumerated in order of priority, with number one through twelve, like on a clock face, as the most important; then thirteen through twenty-four, like the twenty-four hours in a day; followed by twenty-five through one hundred, in a long cyclical curve with all the lesser but important tasks. And next to every single number, after completing the work, he was supposed to put a double checkmark: the patient has been treated. And when his life was over the final accounts would be drawn up, and clarity established. And he could go home.

  The changes checked off, the tasks completed, the patients treated, then statistics and a report summarizing his experiences.

  But where were the patients here? They were out there, but he had never met them. He had to rely on theories that someone else had devised: the brilliant men, those who were better read, the remarkable philosophers; theories that his friends in Rousseau’s hut had mastered so splendidly.

  The patients in Danish society, which he was now about to revolutionize, he would have to imagine—like the small heads he once sketched when he was writing his dissertation about aberrant motions of the body. They were the people inside the machine. Because it had to be possible, he always thought as he lay awake at night and sensed the Monstrous Danish Royal Palace like a lead weight on his chest, possible! possible!!! both to penetrate and to master the mechanism, and to see the people.

  The human being was not a machine, rather, it was inside the machine. That was the trick. To master the machine. Then the faces he had drawn would smile gratefully and kindly at him. But the difficult thing, the truly difficult thing, was that they didn’t seem to be grateful. Those small, wicked heads between the points, the ones that were checked off! finished! solved!!! Those peering faces were spiteful and malicious and ungrateful.

  Above all they were not his friends. Society was a machine, and the faces were malicious. No, there was no longer any clarity.

  He was now looking at his friend Rantzau, whom he knew might be an enemy. Or what was worse, a traitor. Yes, Altona was definitely far away.

  “This week the ‘real’ thing,” he began slowly, “is the abolition of the law against adultery, as well as reductions in the redundant pensions to public officials, and the prohibition of torture; I am preparing the transfer of Øresund tariffs from the Royal Treasury to the state, establishment of a welfare fund for illegitimate children, who will be christened in accordance with church ceremonies, and …”

  “And what about adscription? Or are you going to settle for legislating morality?”

  There was the face between the paragraphs again; suspicious, laughing maliciously. Adscription was a big issue! The biggest of them all! It belonged among the twenty-four points; no, among the twelve! the twelve!!! that made up the numbers of the clock. He left the boy on the wooden horse to a merciless death and ran after the coach in the dusk; he was afraid. In some ways he had run away from the greatest of all challenges: serfdom. Inside the coach he stubbornly told himself that the important thing was for him to survive.

  And be able to act with resolve. Issue decrees. Yes. And act. With resolve.

  What he was now doing was just the small part: morals. He was legislating for improved morals, he was legislating to make the good human being emerge; no, that was wrong, it was just the opposite. It was impossible to legislate away the evil person. “Morals cannot be improved with police laws,” was what he had actually written.

  Yet, and he knew this was his weak point, he was spending a great deal of time on morals, customs, prohibitions, and spiritual freedom.

  Was it because the other part was so difficult?

  “Adscription?” Rantzau repeated, ruthlessly.

  “Soon,” he replied.

  “How?”

  “Reverdil,” he began hesitantly, “who was the King’s tutor; he made a plan before he was banished. I’ve written to him, asking him to return.”

  “The little Jew,” said Rantzau in a sober but hostile tone of voice, “the despicable little Jew. So he’s the one who will free the Danish peasants. Do you know how many enemies that will make you?”

  Struensee put the documents back on the table.
It was pointless to continue this conversation. Rantzau bowed without a word, turned, and walked toward the door. But before he pulled it shut behind him, the last of the malicious faces appeared: from Rantzau, who called himself Struensee’s last friend, and perhaps in some sense he was, the great teacher of theory, who now looked at him so critically, his friend, or former friend if indeed he ever was.

  “You no longer have many friends. And to spend the summer at Hirschholm is madness. But you have another problem.”

  “And what is that?” asked Struensee.

  “You lack the ability to choose the proper enemies.”

  2.

  They were not fleeing, they would later think, but then why such frantic haste, such swift movements, such laughter, slamming doors?

  They were not fleeing, merely departing for the wonderful summer at Hirschholm.

  The coaches were loaded. On the first day only four coaches were to leave. The next day the rest of the enormous amount of baggage would follow. Living a simple country life required extensive organization.

  In the first coach rode the Queen, Struensee, King Christian VII, the Negro page Moranti, and the King’s dog.

  They traveled in silence.

  Christian was quite calm. He regarded his fellow passengers with a secretive smile which they could not interpret. He was sure of that. He was thinking that if Caroline Mathilde were not sitting with them right now, listening, then four of The Seven would have been all alone in the coach. And then he could have safely asked advice from Struensee, Moranti, or the dog, the three he loved, about the time of overwhelming difficulty and hardship that lay ahead.

  Of this he was certain. Also that advice and instructions from his Benefactor, the Sovereign of the Universe, would not be forthcoming for some time.

  Once upon a time a castle stood here. That’s how it has to be said: Here it stood, and here it was swallowed up by the Danish revolution. And nothing is left of it.

  Hirschholm Castle was situated on an island. The castle was surrounded by water, it stood in the middle of a lake, and at night the water was covered with the sleeping birds she loved so much, especially when they slept wrapped in their dreams. It took half a century to build the castle, and it wasn’t actually completed until 1746. It was magnificent and beautiful, a Nordic Versailles, but the same thing happened to the castle as happens to very brief dreams: it lasted only one summer, the summer of 1771. After that the dream was over, and the castle stood alone and deserted and slowly sank into decay.