The Royal Physician's Visit

by Per Olov Enquist

  It seemed to them that she possessed enormous strength, and her breach of modesty, her naked body, and her infuriated attack had also scared them.

  But she understood at once what had happened. They had frightened Christian out of his wits. Yet Christian was her only hope.

  She tore open the door to his bedchamber and saw at once the small figure huddled at the head of the bed and she understood. He had wrapped the sheet around himself, covering him completely, covering his face and body and legs, and if it hadn’t been for the hesitant rocking motion, she might have thought a wrapped-up statue had been placed there, white and swathed in a wrinkled sheet.

  Like a white mummy, rocking hesitantly and nervously, concealed and yet at her mercy.

  Rantzau stopped in the doorway and signaled to the soldiers to remain outside.

  She went over to the small, trembling, white-clad mummy on the bed.

  “Christian,” she shouted.”I want to talk to you! Now!”

  No answer, just those hesitant twitches under the white sheet.

  She sat down on the edge of the bed and tried to speak calmly, although she was breathing hard and found it difficult to control her voice.

  “Christian,” she said so softly that Rantzau over in the doorway wouldn’t be able to hear her. “I don’t like what you’ve been signing, but it doesn’t matter, they tricked you, but you must save the child! Damn it, you must save the child; what were you thinking? I know that you can hear me, you have to listen to what I’m saying, I forgive you for signing the documents, but you must save the child! Otherwise they’re going to take the child away from us and you know what will happen then, you know what will happen, you must save the child!”

  Suddenly she turned to Rantzau in the doorway and practically roared, “GET OUT OF HERE, YOU DAMNED RAT, THE QUEEN IS SPEAKING TO YOU!!” but then in an entreating whisper she went back to talking to Christian. “Ohhh … Christian,” she whispered,”you think I hate you, but that’s not true, I’ve actually always liked you, yes it’s true, it’s true, listen to me, I know you’re listening! I could have loved you if we’d been given a chance, but it wasn’t possible in this damned madhouse, IN THIS CRAZY MADHOUSE!!!” she screamed at Rantzau, and then went back to whispering,”Things could have been so splendid for us, somewhere else, if only we, it would have been splendid, Christian, if only they hadn’t forced you to service me like a cow, it wasn’t your fault, it wasn’t your fault but you must think of the child, Christian, and don’t just hide there, I know you’re listening! DON’T JUST HIDE THERE, but I’m a human being and not a cow, and you must save the girl, they want to put her to death, I know it, just because she’s Struensee’s child and you know that too, YOU KNOW IT and you never objected, you wanted it too, you wanted it yourself, I just wanted to hurt you a little so you would notice I existed, so you would see, just a little bit, then we could have, Christian, we could have, but you have to save the child, I’ve actually always liked you, things could have been so splendid for us, Christian, do you hear what I’m saying, Christian, ANSWER ME CHRISTIAN you have to answer CHRISTIAN you’ve always tried to hide, you can’t hide from me SO ANSWER ME CHRISTIAN!!!”

  And then she tore the sheet off his body.

  But it wasn’t Christian. It was the little black page Moranti, who stared at her with big eyes wide with terror.

  She stared back at him, as if paralyzed.

  “Bring her,” Rantzau told the soldiers.

  As she passed Rantzau in the doorway, she stopped, gave him a long look, and said quite calmly:

  “In the very bottom circle of hell, where traitors are banished, you will be tormented for all eternity. And I’m glad. That’s the only thing that truly, truly pleases me right now.”

  And to this he could find no reply.

  She was allowed to take the little girl along in the coach to Kronborg Castle. It was nine in the morning when they drove out of the city through Nørreport. They drove along Kongevejen toward Hirschholm, but past it.

  In the coach they had sent along the lady-in-waiting who was her least favorite.

  Caroline Mathilde put the little girl to her breast to nurse. Only then did she begin to cry.

  The rumor spread rapidly, and to make the rumor official that the King had been rescued from Struensee’s murderous attack, Guldberg ordered the King to make an appearance.

  A glass carriage was summoned, pulled by six white horses, with twelve courtiers on horseback to escort the carriage. They rode for two and a half hours through the streets of Copenhagen. In the carriage sat only Christian and Crown Prince Frederik.

  The Crown Prince was radiantly happy, drooling and gaping as always, and waving to the cheering masses. Christian sat huddled in a corner of the carriage, pale as a corpse, terror-stricken, staring at his hands.

  Tremendous rejoicing.

  5.

  That night Copenhagen exploded.

  It was the triumphant procession with the six white horses and the terrified, rescued, and utterly humiliated King that unleashed it all. Suddenly it was so clear: a revolution had taken place and had been defeated, the Royal Physician’s brief visit in the vacuum of power was at an end, the Danish revolution was over, the German was imprisoned, the German was in chains, the old regime—or was it the new one?—had been overthrown, and everyone knew that they were at a real turning point in history; and insanity broke loose.

  It started with a few mob riots; the Norwegian sailors, who several months earlier had so peacefully marched back from Hirschholm after meeting the charming little Queen, these Norwegian sailors found that no rules or laws existed anymore. The police and the military seemed to have vanished from the streets, and the path to the whorehouses and taverns lay open. They started with the whorehouses. The reason for this, they said, was that the Evil People under Struensee’s leadership, who so nearly robbed Little Father of his life, had been the Protectors of the Whorehouses.

  The whorehouse regime was over. The hour for revenge had arrived.

  Because it was Little Father, the King, the Good Ruler, the one they always referred to as their foremost protector up north in Norway, it was he who had been saved. Now Little Father was saved. Little Father’s eyes had been opened and he had denounced his evil friends. Now the whorehouses would be cleansed. These five hundred Norwegian sailors led the way, and no one stopped them. Then the spark was ignited everywhere, and the masses poured out:the poor, those who had never dreamed of a revolution but were now offered the comfort of violence, without punishment, without meaning. They revolted, but with no purpose other than the excuse of purity. Sin would be assaulted, and purity would thus be reinstated. The bordello windows were broken and the doors smashed open, the furniture was tossed out, the nymphs were raped free of charge and ran screaming and half dressed through the streets. Within twenty-four hours sixty bordellos were crushed, destroyed, burned down; out of sheer momentum several thoroughly respectable houses were also ravaged in error, along with respectable women, as part of the flood of collective insanity that swept through Copenhagen that day.

  It was as if pietistic decency had been given a collective release and spread its vengeful seed over the decadence of Struensee’s Copenhagen. They began, typically enough, with Gabel the German, who was in charge of serving liquor in Rosenborg Garden, which was opened to the public by Struensee’s decree and which, during the long summer and warm fall of 1771, had been the center of debauchery for the Copenhagen populace. Gabel’s house was thought to be the center of this lechery, from which the contagion of sin emanated; Struensee and his cohorts had undoubtedly fornicated there; it had to be cleansed. Gabel himself escaped with his life, but the temple was indeed cleansed of the hawkers. The palace itself was sacred and would not be touched or stormed, but other places associated with the palace and the court were attacked. The house belonging to the Italian actors became the next target; it was cleansed, but at least a few of the actors were not assaulted because it was said that Little Fat
her had made use of them, and thus they were to some extent sacred objects. Others, however, were deliberately assaulted as a tribute to Little Father; but the reason for all the violence was no longer clear, nothing was. It was as if the hatred for the court, and the respect for the court unleashed a great furious confused rape of Copenhagen. Something had happened up there among the rulers, something scandalous and obscene, and now a cleansing was permitted, and the cleansing was being done; they were permitted to desecrate and purify, and the liquor was free and was consumed, and revenge was demanded—for something, perhaps for a thousand-year-old injustice, or for Struensee’s injustice, which came to be the symbol for all injustice. Schimmelman’s palace was cleansed, for unclear reasons though they had something to do with Struensee and Sin. And suddenly all of Copenhagen became a drunken, destroying, raping hell; fires burned all over, the streets were full of glass, not one of the hundreds of taverns remained untouched. No police anywhere. No military called out. It was as if those behind the coup, the Dowager Queen and the victors, wanted to say: With this great, dissolute, and vengeful celebration, sin in the Danish capital will now be burned away.

  God would allow it. God would use this great unleashed savagery of the people as a tool for cleansing the whorehouses, the taverns, and all the havens of fornication that were used by those who had brought down morality and decency.

  It lasted for two days and two nights. Then the riots slowly collapsed, as if from exhaustion, or sorrow. Something was over. The people had taken vengeance on what had existed. The era of the Enlightenment criminals was over. But their exhaustion also contained a great sorrow; there would no longer be any open and illuminated parks, and the theater and entertainments would be banned, and purity would reign, along with piety, and that was as it should be. Things would no longer be as amusing. But this was necessary.

  A kind of sorrow. That was it. A kind of righteous, wrathful sorrow. And the new regime, which was decent, would not punish the people for this vengeful but strangely desperate sorrow.

  On the third day the police began to appear in the streets, and it was over.

  The Queen, under heavy guard, with eight dragoons on horseback, was taken to Kronborg Castle. Inside the coach only the Queen, the little child, and one lady-in-waiting, who was now her entire retinue.

  An officer sat on the seat beside the coachman, keeping his saber drawn.

  Commandant von Hauch, in all haste, had lit fires to warm up several rooms in Hamlet’s old castle. It had been a bitterly cold winter, with many storms sweeping in from Øresund, and he was unprepared. The Queen said nothing but held the child pressed close to her body and pulled tight her fur coat, which she refused to take off.

  In the evening she stood for a long time at the window facing south and looked toward Copenhagen. Only once did she say anything to her lady-in-waiting. She asked her what the strange, faintly flickering light in the sky due south was from.

  “It’s Copenhagen lit up,” her lady-in-waiting told her. “The people are celebrating their release from the oppressor Struensee and his cohorts.”

  The Queen spun around and gave her lady-in-waiting a box on the ear. Then she burst into tears and begged her forgiveness, but she went back to the window and, with the sleeping child held close, she stared for a long time into the darkness and at the faint glow of the illuminated Copenhagen.

  CHAPTER 16

  THE CLOISTER

  1.

  IF HE BENT his legs at an angle and slowly lowered them, he could hardly feel the shackles, and the chains were about three yards long so that he could move. In truth, they weren’t actually necessary, because how could he flee? Where shall we flee from Your visage and where shall I seek my refuge Lord God in this hour of need—the old passages from the Bible lessons with his gloomy father, Adam Struensee, had cropped up, absurdly enough; how could he be remembering that? Wasn’t it all so terribly long ago? But the torment of the chains had a greater effect on his mind; it had taken him very little time to become accustomed to the physical pain. He had made an effort to be courteous. It was important to remain calm and not show despair or criticism. They had been respectfully businesslike; he was quite firm about this and repeated it often, and they had treated him well, he would like to emphasize this. But at night when the cold came seeping in, as if it were his terror that had frozen solid inside him like a block of ice, at night he didn’t have the strength to be positive and good-natured. Then he could no longer pretend. Occasionally it would also occur in the daytime, when he looked up at the utterly meaningless ceiling and saw the drops of moisture gathering for an onslaught, finally letting go and attacking; then his hands would shake so badly he couldn’t control them, then came a torture that was worse than not knowing what had happened to Caroline Mathilde and the child or whether she would be able to save him, O God, you who do not exist, who do not exist, I ask you whether they will subject me to an intense examination and whether the nails will puncture my testicles and whether I will be able to endure it, but otherwise everything was quite satisfactory, the food was good and flavorful, the servants of the guardhouse kindly, and he found no reason whatsoever to criticize or complain about the way he had been treated, in fact he had expressed to the commandant his surprise at the humane treatment, at the way he was treated but to think the journey never took place that would have taken me to the distant East Indies, where doctors are sorely needed, and if only I had left them in Altona, and this constant harping, and the same thing at night, and then the nightmares about Sergeant Mörl started appearing, the way they had for Christian; he began to understand what Christian had dreamed about, the nightmares about Mörl, the nightmares, it was not like resting in the wounds of the Lamb, instead they stuck nails into him and he screamed in wild desperation, Christian had said, but he was quite calm and obliging and now and then he even managed to tell the guards little jests, which he believed were generally appreciated.

  On the third day Guldberg came to visit.

  Guldberg asked him whether everything was satisfactory, to which he answered in the affirmative. Guldberg had brought along a list of possessions that had been confiscated and asked him to verify that it was correct. It was the list that began with “35 Danish ducats,” continued with “a jar of toothpaste” (in Danish!), and ended with “One Comb,” with the odd comment that “Struensee almost always wears his hair pinned up with a comb fastened to it in back like a Woman”; he pretended not to see the comment but merely verified the list and nodded his approval.

  He hadn’t brought much with him at the time of his arrest. They had suddenly stood there in the flickering light and he had simply thought: This is inescapable. It’s inevitable. He didn’t even remember how it all happened. He was stunned with fear.

  Guldberg asked Struensee how he had received the wounds on his head. He didn’t reply. Guldberg then repeated the question. Guldberg said that according to the guards’ report, Struensee had tried to take his own life by throwing himself headfirst against the stone wall.

  “I know a way to increase your will to live,” said Guldberg, “in this new situation.”

  He then handed Struensee a book. It was The Life Story of a Converted Freethinker, written by Ove Guldberg, published in 1760.

  Struensee thanked him.

  “But why?” he asked after a long silence.

  And then he added:

  “I’m going to die anyway. We both know that.”

  “Yes, we know that,” said Guldberg.

  “Then why are you here?”

  It was such a strange meeting.

  Guldberg seemed concerned about Struensee’s welfare, he was worried about the apathy shown by the prisoner. He wandered around the prison cell, nosing around like a dog, restless, worried; yes, it was as if a much-beloved dog had been given a new doghouse and the dog’s master was now inspecting it with displeasure. Guldberg ordered a chair to be brought in and sat down. They looked at each other.

  Shamelessly, thought St
ruensee. “Shamelessly” he is looking at me.

  “A modest text,” said Guldberg in a friendly voice, “written during my days at Sorø Academy. But it contains an interesting conversion story.”

  “I’m not afraid to die,” said Struensee. “And I’m very difficult to convert.”

  “Don’t say that,” replied Guldberg.

  Right before he left, Guldberg handed a picture to Struensee. It was a copper engraving depicting Caroline Mathilde and Struensee’s little daughter, the Princess, at about four months old.

  “What do you want?” asked Struensee.

  “Think the matter over,” said Guldberg.

  “What do you want?” Struensee repeated.

  Two days later Guldberg came back.

  “The days are short and the light is poor,” said Struensee. “Ihaven’t been able to read the book. I haven’t even started.”

  “I understand,” said Guldberg. “Are you thinking of starting?”

  “I repeat that I’m difficult to convert,” said Struensee.

  That was in the afternoon, the cell was very cold, they could both see their breath.

  “I want you to take a good long look at the picture of the little girl,” said Guldberg. “A bastard child. But very sweet and charming.”

  Then he left.

  What was his intention?

  Those brief, regularly repeated visits. Otherwise nothing but silence. The guards told him nothing, the windows of the cell were high up, the book he had been given was the only thing to read, aside from the Bible. Finally, almost in anger, he began reading Guldberg’s tract. It was a touching story, nearly excruciating in its gray plainness, the language like a sermon, the story without drama. It described a thoroughly good person, intelligent, forthright, with many friends and loved by all, and how this man was lured into freethinking. Later he realized the error of his ways.

  That was all.