They were sitting in the backseat of one of David Dunbar Buick’s limousines, and Arnauld, looking mature and poised, was telling her about his new appointment at St. Gregory’s, European history teacher for the first class, the most prestigious assignment on the faculty.
“It is a great honor,” she said. “And one well deserved.”
“They think me fully recovered,” he said. His eyes were clear; his hand was steady.
“I am happy to have this moment alone,” Eleanor said on their way to Dexter School. She felt a great warmth sitting beside him.
“I was lost,” he said. “You came to save me.”
“You remembered that?”
“I remember,” he said. “I remember that the war was folly. We have lost so much. The world as we knew it fell apart.”
“And that is what you will teach the boys?” she asked.
“I shall teach the boys what we lost.”
“And you remember your time here, the night before you left, that summer of 1914?”
He put his head down. “I remember,” he said in little more than a whisper. “I remember,” he repeated, and then shook his head. “The thought of it kept me alive during the war. But I fear.”
“You fear what?” she said.
“I fear I violated the trust, I intruded myself.”
“Oh, no,” she said with an unrestrained burst, breaking through the formality for a moment, her hand shooting out to touch his arm. “Oh my, no, dearest Arnauld. It was completely and utterly my wish. You must always know that.”
And suddenly they were at Dexter School. “And what is this event?” Arnauld asked. “I know it is important to Standish.”
“It is the treasured Iroquois Cup, the most important event of a Dexter boy’s year,” Eleanor explained. “It instills in them the spirit of competition.”
“It is what the older boys at St. Gregory’s engage in,” Arnauld said. “I wondered where they learned it.”
“From an early age,” Eleanor continued. “There are two teams here, the Mohawks and the Oneidas, and at the end of the fall the winner in points will be given the Iroquois Cup. Standish is an Oneida, as was his father, Frank Burden, before him.”
“American boys throw themselves into these rivalries,” Arnauld said. “It is superb.”
Eleanor and Arnauld were then standing on the sidelines, watching. The boys, fifth and sixth graders, were dressed in the colors of their teams, blue for the Mohawks and red for the Oneidas. Each boy had tucked into his waistband a yellow sash. The game was tied. “One play remaining,” came a cry from the bench. At first there seemed to be only chaos, and then from the middle of the confusion of flying bodies one red-shirted boy emerged darting and twisting and dancing from side to side.
“It is Standish,” burst from Arnauld.
The boy kept spinning and dodging, and then with what seemed like a superhuman burst of speed, he threw his arms into the air and crossed the goal line. What followed for the Oneida team was absolute bedlam. They swarmed toward the victorious runner and enveloped him in hurling and flying bodies, all chanting.
“What is it?” Arnauld said.
“They are saying, ‘Dilly, Dilly,’” Eleanor said. “The boys have begun calling him Dilly.”
Arnauld and Eleanor watched in delight and amazement as young Standish Burden was tossed about in the middle of the pile. Eleanor reached out then and patted his arm and felt again the warmth of closeness. She saw that Arnauld was completely absorbed in watching the boy in this glorious moment.
“Dilly,” he said. “The boy will be called Dilly.”
And Eleanor concluded her description of her dream with the observation that she woke up with a feeling of great contentment. “That is the vision,” she wrote, “but I have no idea how to bring it to fruition.”
64
ROWING HOME
Before Will Honeycutt left for Zurich, he discussed details with Eleanor. “The Hyperion Fund will cover the expenses, I assume,” he said.
“Of course,” Eleanor said. “This is exactly what all we have done is for.”
“I have a plan,” Will said with a newfound authority, “and I will execute it myself. But when I am finished, I will be coming home, and someone will have to follow through back in Vienna. Someone will have to be with him day and night to reintroduce him to the full life he had in Vienna, and to guard against his slipping back.”
“I understand,” Eleanor said. “And I know the perfect person, after you have done your part.”
And Will Honeycutt asked that he be able to take some special items. “I will need some supporting tools. I would like your copy of Chapman’s Odyssey,” he said. “And Standish’s picture book of that story. And as many of Arnauld’s letters as I may have.” She agreed and made a packet of the requested items and added it to his baggage.
“And that romantic Italian photograph?” Will said at the end of the packing process. She had nearly forgotten about it, but found it among Arnauld’s papers.
“I have not been able to understand this image,” she said, handing it over.
“This photograph is very important,” he said. “He kept it in a place of honor.”
“And its significance?” she asked.
“Don’t you see?” Will Honeycutt said, as if explaining some obvious but important point in atomic science. “It is his image of himself, his ideal self, the archetypal lover, the one trapped inside, as Miggo says. And this”—he pointed to the beautiful fashionable woman—“we all know who this is.”
She went silent for a moment, and then suddenly it all became clear and she stared at the image of the lovers in stunned silence. “His Beatrice,” she said in little more than a whisper.
“Of course it is,” Will Honeycutt said, oblivious to her reaction, lifting the photograph and adding it to his packed materials. “And it will come in handy, added to my other tools,” he said in conclusion.
When the United States entered the war in 1917, like many men his age, Will had been too old to volunteer, so he dedicated himself to reading a good deal about the war and about the ordeals of those who did go. When he discovered that his friend Arnauld was suffering from what he deduced was shell shock, he found in his research a relevant report by a British psychiatrist. A soldier who suffered a battle neurosis, the report said in essence, had not lost his reason, but was laboring under the weight of too much reason: It was not that his senses were not functioning; they were functioning with painful efficiency.
Armed with that simple notion, he met with Dr. Jung when he arrived in Zurich and explained that he wanted to work with Arnauld, that he thought he had an answer, and Jung was impressed by his determination.
“I am not a physician,” he explained, “I am a physicist. I want to know how systems work at the atomic level. I am like the medieval alchemists, always looking for the prima materia.”
“I understand,” Jung said, with great seriousness. “And you believe that you know how your friend Arnauld’s system worked in shutting down, at this, the prima materia level?”
“I do, sir,” Will Honeycutt said with the unearthly intensity in his eyes.
“The human mind is very complex,” Jung said, cautioning the neophyte.
“I relish complex problems, sir,” Will Honeycutt said.
Jung wrote Eleanor. “Young Honeycutt’s intervention, as it were, can do no harm,” he said. “At first we all balked at his lack of psychological training, but then, his manner won us all over, and no other avenues in sight, we acceded, admitting that the rest of us are stuck. He sees through to what none of us are able to see, ventures where none of us are willing to venture, to what he calls the prima materia. It is fascinating to watch. He pursues like a fox after a rabbit, descending at times into the abyss to rescue his friend. Arnauld is fortunate perhaps that his friend has come along. One of the doctors is writing a paper. Arnauld’s case could well become renowned in the treatment of battle trauma. Everyone was impressed
by your Will Honeycutt’s bearing. He seemed to have taken on the persona of an experienced aged and wise practitioner.” And back in Boston, when Eleanor read that last sentence, she smiled and knew exactly what was happening. Will Honeycutt was having conversations with William James.
It was on only his second day, after he had read the medical report and assessed the arrangements at the Burghölzli, that Will Honeycutt announced that he intended to have Arnauld Esterhazy rowing. He set out to find a source of a single shell somewhere between the Zurich waterfront and Jung’s house at Küsnacht, where he was told by a number of sources that there were possibilities. He found by the end of the day a friend of the hospital’s director who rowed on the lake regularly.
Mornings on the Zürichsee, he observed, were usually glassy smooth, the wind and waves not picking up until midafternoon. So on his third morning, he drove with Arnauld Esterhazy and an accompanying doctor, a neurology resident named Knoffler, who seemed to be in charge of Arnauld’s “recreation,” to a small boathouse and dock five kilometers from the hospital.
“We’ll get him into the boat,” Will said, not revealing what he hoped would transpire. “We’ll just see what happens.”
Arnauld approached the excursion as he did everything, with a genial half smile and a blank gaze. Will Honeycutt helped him out of his clothes and into shorts and a rowing jersey. The patient did not resist. Then the two observers carried the single-seated boat to the dockside and dropped it into the water, Arnauld following behind, watching with no apparent interest or emotion.
The two observers got him into his seat in the shell and placed his hands on the oars. “We will just let him sit and get accustomed,” Will said, again revealing none of what he hoped for. Will gave the shell a little shove, and it drifted away from the dock, bringing a look of alarm to Dr. Knoffler’s face.
“Don’t worry,” Will Honeycutt said, pointing to the dinghy tied alongside the dock. “We have that.”
Arnauld sat without moving, hands on the oars, as the shell drifted out onto the lake. Then, ever so slightly, he began moving his hands, first one, then the other, lifting each oar from the still, clear blue Alpine water. In a slight, uncoordinated effort the movement propelled the boat forward, then gradually his legs pushed forward and then retracted in the seat until both oars began pulling up and then hitting the water at the same time. The shell began to slide away out into the deep, and Dr. Knoffler made a quick movement toward the dinghy. Will Honeycutt reached out a hand to stop him.
“Don’t worry,” Will said, as both men could see the shell picking up speed, and the rower beginning to slide up and back in the seat and the oars beginning to move in rhythm. Now, a good thirty meters from where the two observers stood, the rower and boat seemed to have found an easy fluidity that propelled the shell across the glassy surface.
“We must follow,” the doctor said, now making a move toward the automobile.
Again, Will held out his hand to stop him. “Don’t worry,” he repeated. “Arnauld knows what he is doing.” And Will looked at his watch. “We have forty-five minutes.”
“I need to call the hospital,” Dr. Knoffler said, fully agitated.
And Will said he could do that if he wished, but it was not necessary. “Let us go find a coffee.”
Dr. Knoffler got into the automobile to do what he could to follow the small speck of oars and rower along the lakeside, and Will found a coffee in a nearby café.
On schedule, Will was back on the dock, where Dr. Knoffler was joined now by another doctor from the hospital, both frowning and looking alarmed.
“Look,” Will said, pointing off across the glassy blue lake. There coming toward them was the tiny speck of a two-oared boat, gliding across the surface. As it came closer, they could see the smooth muscles of the rower in totally synchronized movements. Will Honeycutt looked at his watch and said coolly, “Forty-five minutes.” The two doctors watched, now in a combination of relief and approbation.
As Arnauld approached the dock, they saw on his face the same blank look they all were accustomed to, but this time it had the slightest hint of something new beneath it, something like euphoria.
When Will met with Dr. Jung that afternoon at his house in Küsnacht, he was the one with the look of euphoria on his face.
“There is life in there,” he said in a burst of enthusiasm, recounting the details of the morning boating exercise.
Dr. Jung looked concerned for a moment, obviously reluctant to deflate the younger man’s hopes. “Muscle memory,” he said finally. “It is not what it appears to be.” And then he looked serious. “Did you read the reports?”
By then, Will had begun reading to Arnauld. “That is my plan,” he had said to Jung the day he arrived. “Arnauld has gone into a deep introverted paralysis.” The American used language he knew the Swiss doctor would understand. “His feminine has been severely wounded, his anima. It has been imprisoned deep within, and it is my job to go in and retrieve it. I intend to read to him until he comes out. I think you will find me tireless in that regard.”
Jung smiled at him patiently, not rejecting what Will had to say but not accepting it either, having in his hand by then a letter from his friend Eleanor, a full description of this “eccentric genius,” Will Honeycutt from Boston, who ought to be given a chance.
“I intend to read to him day and night, from his own writings, his beloved Homer, and from that small black volume he has been clutching in his hands ever since Mrs. Burden left.”
“Ah,” Jung said, “City of Music.”
“Yes,” Will Honeycutt said, “City of Music by Mr. Jonathan Trumpp.”
So Will Honeycutt read to his Viennese friend every day, all day and into the night, reading over and over the man’s letters to his friends and his parents, the works of Homer in an English translation, and the work from his cherished little black book City of Music, and on the rare occasions when he did tire, he found a Burghölzli intern to keep up the pace. Arnauld seemed to listen attentively to whatever was being read, responding to none of it.
On the third day of this reading regimen, Will Honeycutt said to his unresponsive friend, “Now, I have a treat for you.” He held out the child’s picture book of the Odyssey that was dear to Eleanor’s son. “This is from Standish,” Will said. “He thinks you will like it very much.”
He opened the book slowly and laid it in Arnauld’s lap. Arnauld did not move, and Will began turning the pages, looking for some sign of attention. “Look here,” he said, as he came to young Standish’s favorite page. “Here is the Cyclops,” the reader said, and Arnauld’s eyes seemed to flicker for just an instant. “And here is Odysseus escaping under the belly of one of the sheep.” Again, just the hint of a recognition. It was an exercise that would be practiced every day.
“Herr Esterhazy seems to follow with special care the pages of the children’s book of the Odyssey as Honeycutt turns each page and points out the story behind each drawing,” one of the nurses reported to Jung in the second week. “One can almost make out a smile on the patient’s face as he follows along with the mythic adventures.”
But Jung remained unimpressed.
It was during these first few days that Will Honeycutt introduced his friend Arnauld to the three-ring binder and the typewriter, which he had acquired from the Burghölzli administration. “You will write,” he said to his friend, as more of a command than a suggestion. “Every day. You will write a page and then use this hole punch”—he held up the hole punch he had found—“and place the page in the binder. If you rewrite a page, adding more detail, you will drop the former page into this box. And you will call this expanding and evolving volume your Random Notes.” Will left nothing to chance.
Arnauld barely acknowledged the commands, but we do have evidence that he began the process in a very rudimentary fashion. Since none of the pages are dated, we do not know the timing, but from the complexity of thought expressed alone, we can establish the sequence. The ver
y first page, the one at the very bottom of the box of discarded pages, contains only two words: “ARNAULD WIEN.” The next sheet in the pile reads, “ARNAULD WIEN MUSIK MALEN SKULPTUR CAFÉ.” And on what we can assume was the third day, on the third typed page we read, “MY NAME IS ARNAULD. I GREW UP IN VIENNA, A CITY OF MUSIC, PAINTING, AND CAFÉ LIFE.” And from that page forward, all the entries were written in English. And finally, after a few more rudimentary pages found in order in the box, there is the page that remained permanently in place at the front of the volume, as the second page of what was to be called, per Eleanor’s instructions, his Random Notes.
My name is Arnauld Esterhazy, and I grew up in Vienna at a time of cultural fulfillment for this magical city. During my young adult life, all manner of human endeavor had evolved and flourished to a point of what we would consider later a zenith, and much of this cultural zenith came to life for my friends and me in the cafés, which in our city were abundant. My personal choice and that of many of my friends was the Café Central. During that time, a group of my associates—painters, sculptors, musicians, historians, and thinkers of all sorts—formed a movement we called the Secession, and it made our city one of the centers of intellectual life in Europe, certainly the most—we believed—original and creative of all Europe. For myself personally, I was more of an observer than a participant, and I shall use these pages to describe what I witnessed during this extraordinary time, so that others might benefit as I have from the brilliance of the era.
When asked later by one of the doctors, “Why do you write in English, Herr Esterhazy?” the patient Arnauld responded, reportedly, “Because Korzeniowski wrote in English.”
The Lost Prince Page 44
