Pilgrim

by Timothy Findley

When I came here first, he wrote, to the Burghölzli Clinic at Zürich, it was an entry into a monastery world, a submission to a vow to believe only in what was probable, average, commonplace, barren of meaning; to renounce everything strange and significant and reduce anything extraordinary to the banal. Henceforth there were only surfaces that hid nothing—Furtwängler’s cursory “get it done!” Menken’s “all there is, is what there is!” My own “the Moon! The Moon!” Only beginnings without continuations, knowledge that shrank to ever smaller circles, oppressively narrow horizons and the unending desert of routine…

  He reached for the decanter and refilled his emptied glass—emptied but once—and relit a cheroot that had died in the ashtray. But these were mere distractions. The brandy burned where it should and the smoke reopened his throat and the smell of the sulphurous match-end made him wipe his eyes yet again.

  And once more—the pen.

  For six months I locked myself within these monastic walls in order to get accustomed to the life and spirit of the asylum—and I read through the fifty volumes—fifty!—of the Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie from its very beginnings, in order to acquaint myself with the psychiatric mentality. I wanted to know how the human mind reacted to the sight of its own destruction, for psychiatry seemed to me an articulate expression of that biological reaction which seizes upon the so-called healthy mind in the presence of mental illness.

  And yet…And yet…

  The pen stuttered.

  Jung set it aside, and wrote only in his mind.

  The realization of self is all there is or can be or should be. The I that is in everyone, struggling to achieve breath.

  The I in me. The I in Pilgrim. The I in Blavinskeya. The I in Emma. The I in that child already lying in our bed in Emma’s belly.

  The I in Sybil Quartermaine’s avalanche. The I in Pilgrim’s butterfly.

  Yes! The butterfly had been as real as I am, sitting here—reaching for its mountains beyond the window. And I—that blind I—did not see it and yet, thank God, the I in Pilgrim did, and it was he who opened the window and set it free.

  Jung closed his eyes and removed his glasses and set them down away from the light.

  “I do believe him,” he whispered. “I do believe. For if I could not, I would perish untried.”

  10

  Pilgrim, too, sat alone late that evening. He had pulled the curtains aside and was watching from his bedroom window as the Moon began her climb. The Moon, however, was not in his thoughts. There, another subject had risen, baffling at first, being unbidden.

  …then there was the tale of the industrious rabbit. His name was Peter and his mother was a widow by the name of Josephine. He had three sisters: Mopsy, Flopsy and Cottontail. There was also a cousin whose name was…

  Barnaby?

  No. That doesn’t seem right—though the B is correct. I think.

  Bobby?

  No. That can’t be it. Not Bobby Rabbit. Bobby Rabbit does not sound right, though Peter does and Mopsy, Flopsy, Josephine and Cottontail. These are true rabbit names and…

  Barraclough.

  Barraclough Rabbit. That is plausible. There was that boy—that young man at Christ’s who lived on lettuce. Lettuce, peas and cabbages—a panacea of greens. Barracloe—Barra-cluff. He was always being teased—and, more than teased, ragged—even made to wear a sign around his neck that read:

  My name is Barra-

  What-you-choose.

  I know not how

  To say it.

  But if you rag me

  Long enough,

  I will confess to

  Barra-cluff.

  And if you let

  Your urine flow

  Upon my shoes, I’m

  Barra-cloe.

  Boys were ever so. Thus and so. The makers of schoolyard wars that spilled out into the playing fields and on to Waterloo. Poor old Barraclough. He might have been a Belgian battlefield himself for all the good it did him. Then he went out and died in the Sudan at Omdurman. Wherever that might be.

  And all because he ate lettuce.

  He wanted to be a playwright. Had wanted to be another Ibsen.

  Ibsen.

  Of all the absurd and wonderful…As if an Englishman could be an Ibsen. And yet, he was—he had been dedicated to it: to the truth and the plain realities of life as life is lived.

  Why, I would slam all the doors from here to kingdom come if I had my chance! he would say. If Ibsen hadn’t slammed them all before me. Slam all the doors—not just a doll’s house door. And nurture all the wild ducks in the whole wide world! Yes—and I would fire off all the guns, even though they say people never do such things…But Hedda did—and she was right. Right, because other women had faced such choices and done such things. But now, for every Hedda who fires a gun, there must be a multitude who need not do it—need not die. Yes, Pilgrim! Yes! Do you not believe it? I do. I do. That’s why plays are written—or should be written. To break the bonds. To set us free of one another and all the silly, stifling, killing rules we live by. And that’s what I would do—and will do, one day—if I’m given half a chance!

  And so to Omdurman. And death.

  Barraclough.

  But that’s not it.

  Brainerd?

  Hardly.

  Beverly?

  Possibly.

  Beverly Rabbit and his cousin Peter. Yes, it could be. Didn’t he end up marrying one of Peter’s sisters? I think so.

  But no. It was still not right.

  Pilgrim took The Tale of Peter Rabbit from its place in the top drawer of the bureau and glanced inside the cover. Temple Pryde, he read. Her book, with love from Mommy, Christmas, 1905. He kept it hidden in amongst his handkerchiefs for fear some other erudite reader might find it and steal it away. Just as Peter had ventured into Mister McGregor’s garden in the hopes of stealing some lettuce, anyone with half a mind to expand his horizons would spy and abscond with and cherish this book.

  There was Peter in his blue jacket and his black slippers.

  Possibly the finest novel written in the English language, Pilgrim thought. Entirely possible.

  All the requisite qualities had been laid out in order. Tension. Jeopardy. A quest. Poverty. Striving. Deceit and Truthfulness. Crime and Punishment. Problem and Resolution. Not to say, a morality tale, and something of a love story—if sad. For hadn’t Josephine Rabbit been widowed with four young children to raise and her husband baked in a pie by a veritable Medea?

  Well—not quite.

  But still, an evil figure—and a force to contend with in the world of rabbits…the redoubtable, hideous, nightmare figure of Mrs McGregor, with her spoons and pans and knives. And Mister McGregor himself, with everything a man could imagine standing at hand with which to kill a poor fellow.

  And all for the love of a cabbage leaf and a hankering for French beans and radishes.

  Barraclough. Cabbage. Boy-wars. Waterloo. Omdurman.

  You eats what you’re given, sonny. Take it or starve.

  Pilgrim thumbed the little book in his hand.

  Beloved. Or is that stupid—sentimental—mad?

  A grown man—a child’s treasure. A child’s first encounter, perhaps, with harsh reality. Certainly the first such encounter for a child of privilege. A child ensconced and barricaded in a nursery world of cosy fires and cambric tea, of toy soldiers, storytelling, cosseting and the long stairs down to one’s parents and the adult world.

  I must have had some such book myself, though I don’t remember what it was. The Fables of Aesop, perhaps…

  He smiled.

  Of all the many childhoods I’ve had access to, none remains clarified in memory. I know that I have lain in darkened cellars and in lighted toy-strewn attics—in castles, cottages and caves—and there are glimmers still in my mind of the view from a mother’s arms or a father’s shoulders. How many mothers—how many fathers—all of whom I should mourn, if I were a proper human being. But I am not. Am not and never ha
ve been. I slept, or so it seems, through all my childhoods—every one—though I remember other children who must have been my siblings or companions—a brother in Florence—a sister in Spain—a boy somewhere in Greece…But otherwise, it seems I slept. And while asleep, I dreamt.

  No one understands. The only childhood I’ve ever truly known—or at least that I can identify, outside of my dreams—was gleaned by watching the childhood of others. Of Temple, Toby, Kate, Cassandra…Antigone…Astyanax…To say I have been a long time aborning is not to grasp the half of it. All these childhoods and not a single nursery of one’s own to remember.

  I slept. I woke. And was found. Always found. A foundling. As Sybil found me. Lying beneath a tree. A chestnut? An oak? I don’t remember.

  Eighteen. Eighteen years old. I was always eighteen at birth. Or so it seemed. Whatever had happened before then was just a dream.

  Perhaps this was funny. Amusing. He smiled, but could not laugh out loud. Not quite.

  It might have been interesting to remember, absolutely, being a child—not just to dream a childhood. To have held this book in my own small hand. To have pierced the meaning of the words with my own child’s eyes. To have placed my finger, thus and so, upon the phrases…

  It was a blue jacket with brass buttons, quite new.

  And:

  Peter asked her the way to the gate…

  And:

  Mister McGregor hung up the little jacket and the shoes for a scarecrow to frighten the blackbirds.

  And:

  His mother put him to bed, and made some camomile tea; and she gave a dose of it to Peter!

  “One table-spoonful to be taken at bed-time.”

  Pilgrim smoothed the pages and closed the book.

  Barnaby? Bobby? Barraclough?

  If I had a cousin whose name began with B, what might I want it to be?

  Benedict, perhaps. Or Benedick.

  The traitor, Arnold—or Shakespeare’s wonder man of words, the jealous bachelor—like me. All this time—and married only as a woman.

  But surely I would not want my cousin to be a traitor—just because his name begins with B?

  I’m not so sure. A traitor knows where he stands. The rest of us waffle and put on shows of patriotism. Better to settle once and for all on the other side of the fence. At least it means that a person has a choice—that his conscience is alive and that he’s capable of argument. Just to be born an American—an Englishman—a Greek—means nothing, until you make the choice to be so. Everyone should be given the opportunity of being born in opposition to one’s beliefs. Mere patriotism is bondage.

  So much for Benedict Arnold.

  So much for Benedict Bunny.

  No. So much for rejecting Benedict Bunny out of hand.

  And Cousin Benedick? I might opt for him, but for one flaw. He married.

  Pilgrim set the book aside and sat on the bed.

  Poor old Barraclough. At Omdurman.

  Empire.

  He glanced aside at the cover.

  Blue coat. Brass buttons. Radishes. Robin. Handle of a spade. Slippered toes.

  The robin singing. Peter ecstatic—nibbling. And string beans a-growing. And the earth turned over—hoed and healthy. Resplendent. And the robin, with one foot raised and Peter, with one foot crossed upon the other—the very image of song. The very image of contentment.

  And each intruding in another’s empire: Mister McGregor’s garden.

  Why did it all sound so familiar?

  “Let me stake this land and set out my cabbages,” Pilgrim said to the Moon beyond the window. “These, my cabbages, are flags—my flags—and with these flags I claim this land. My land. And if you enter here, to trifle with my flags and my intentions—my wife will bake you in a pie…”

  He smiled and closed his eyes.

  Shut out the Moon—it has no flags, but one day it shall—and Barraclough will die up there, sure as fate. For the love of cabbages andlettuce.

  Cousin Benedict, I salute you. I am on the other side of this argument already, having witnessed too many warlords claiming their gardens with a cannon.

  What—oh, what, what, what was his name?

  Benedict? Benedick? Abou Ben Adhem?

  Pilgrim smiled.

  Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini…?

  Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord…

  Peter Rabbit.

  And now she is gone, who was my last finder—who came to me beneath a tree and said: are you lost—and may I help you find your way?

  And in her hand she carried a book—a childhood book like this—the Brothers Grimm.

  I am twelve, she said. And really too old to be reading fairy tales. But it was on the shelf and I couldn’t sleep and so…Do you know the story of Hansel and Gretel?

  And I said: No. My name is Pilgrim.

  And she was Sybil—whose daughter Temple, twenty-five years later, presented me with The Tale of Peter Rabbit.

  Temple Pryde, he read again. Her book, with love from Mommy, Christmas, 1905.

  Barraclough. Cabbages. Empire. Death.

  If only I could remember…

  He turned out the light and lay down, drawing the covers up to his chin.

  I will lie here and the name will come to me.

  Brahms. Beethoven. Bach. Boccherini. Bellerophon. Baal. Beëlzebub. Bacon. Bleat. Brontosaurus. Barrie. Barnum. Belloc. Blake. Borgia. Bulwer-Lytton. Benjamin…

  Benjamin. Ah, yes. My cousin Benjamin. I bid you welcome.

  In his mind’s eye, Temple stood as she had that afternoon at the train station—black-bowed Alice beside her—and her brothers and sisters towering over her. Her mother, Sybil, had died—been killed. Was gone. Truly gone—into the woods with Hansel and Gretel, where he and Sybil had met all those years ago—and who was to know if he would ever be allowed to follow?

  11

  The Moon was full that night and Tatiana Blavinskeya could not sleep. She was dressed as she might have been when preparing to go on stage as Queen of the Wilis in the second act of Giselle. Her rounded arms were bare, except that streamers of pale chiffon were loosely stretched from shoulder to wrist. Beneath her calf-length skirts she wore her best white stockings and her waist was tightly bound with a pale green taffeta sash whose bow ends looked like wings. Her hair was plaited and wound from ear to ear across the back of her head. She had tied green ribbons to her wrists and she held a pair of pointe shoes in her lap.

  She was seated by her window, staring up at the Moon—which had risen over the heights behind the Clinic and was now shining down so brightly that every new leaf on every tree could be counted.

  Sister Dora sat on the bed, afraid to leave her patient alone in such a wistful mood. All evening long, the Countess had been playing with her costumes—dragging them one by one from the armoire and the steamer trunk in the corner, holding each one up for inspection in the mirror and laying them aside on the bed, the backs of chairs and even on the floor.

  Princess Florine’s feathered bodice for the Bluebird pas de deux from Sleeping Beauty. The scarlet, high-waisted tutu—and the fan!—for the Don Quixote variations. The butterfly wings from Papillons. The Sugar Plum Fairy’s violet and purple costume from The Nutcracker, with its faux-amethyst coronet and wand. Three swans—two white, one black—and the Princess Aurora herself: “Imperial Russia in all its glory! Regard the beading here and here and here! And this! My favourite, favourite, favourite! Set in Moonlight—danced by the light of the Moon—Myrthe, Queen of the Wilis! Oh—if we could only find an audience—an orchestra—a corps—I would dance till dawn!”

  Blavinskeya regarded herself in the full-length mirror. “You may not understand,” she said, “how I had to beg for the role of Myrthe. I have not the body for it, you see. And yet it was my greatest triumph. By tradition, she is tall—and I am not. By tradition, she is slim as a fall of water, which I am not…” She smiled. “By tradition, she is cold—which I was not. But, oh, I wanted…I wanted…I had
to dance her. And I begged them to give her to me—and I danced her for them and they relented. They had to!” She laughed. “I was magnificent!” She subsided. “Magnificent.” She whispered, “because I, too, had died a virgin…”

  Sister Dora always kept a sedative standing by—a vial of ether, another of laudanum. But she was reluctant to apply them except in the gravest emergencies. Tonight, however, she had already sat with the Countess for three hours into the dark and now it was two o’clock and there was no sign of abatement. The Countess was already breathless—in spite of being seated. It was as if she had just returned from a performance.

  “We dance as the dead,” Blavinskeya said in her Russian-accented German. “And all by Moonlight. All by the light of the Moon. We are the dead young virgins who have perished before their marriage vows. And yet…it is the living who watch us. The living who watch.”

  Blavinskeya leaned down and pulled her pointe shoes onto her feet—one and then the other, rising to adjust their “comfort.” “Comfort is never the right word for pointe shoes,” she explained. “They are agony personified. Invented in hell—by a man, of course. Nonetheless, over time your feet adapt to them. Each moulds the other—the foot the shoe, the shoe the foot—and a certain ease can be achieved. But never comfort.”

  She adjusted the ribbons, wrapping them more tightly around her ankles, tying them neatly and giving each a pat of satisfaction with her chubby hand.

  “Bon! Je suis prête. Let us go—and I will dance in the Moonlight.”

  Blavinskeya started past Sister Dora, snatching up a cashmere shawl as she went, and made for the door.

  “But, madame!”

  “No time for buts, Schwester dear. We are for the gardens. Follow me.”

  Saying this, Blavinskeya was already out in the corridor and marching towards the stairs.

  Sister Dora, struggling to disentangle herself from a white swan, a black swan and a scarlet tutu, discovered to her dismay as she rose to her feet that her left leg had fallen asleep.

  “Damn! Damnation!”

  She fell to her knees and scrambled up again, following as best she could Myrthe, Queen of the Wilis, limping along the corridor and down the stairs, across the entrance hall and past the dozing concierge into the foyer and beyond the foyer, through the doors and into the night.