Pilgrim

by Timothy Findley

  Manolo slowly waved his arms in the water. “I am not of God,” he said dreamily, smoothing the surface. “I am a shepherd only of sheep.”

  “But the sheep are of God,” said Teresa. “We are all of God.”

  “Not I,” he said. “So broken. God was not present at my birth. And when Don Pedro—your uncle—took me to Avila to receive the Virgin’s blessing in the Cathedral there, I came away as I had entered—on my sticks.”

  Teresa threw a stone into the water. “God is everywhere,” she said.

  Manolo looked away.

  “He is with that stone as it sinks,” Teresa went on. “And with every bird as it rises.” She sat down and spread her skirts. She was dressed in what appeared to be the habit of a Carmelite nun. The difference was that her hair, which had a reddish tinge, fell freely to her shoulders and beyond. On her feet, there were sandals and at her waist a rosary hung from a twisted silken cord.

  “I believe in God the Father. And I believe God the Father believes in me…” she said. And smiled. “And I know that God the Father believes in you. He believes in all of us. One day, you will know this. He is everywhere—in everyone.”

  Teresa’s mother, Doña Beatriz, had died five years earlier, when Teresa had been thirteen. They had shared a love of romance and of romantic notions concerning everything from literature to music to what one wore and how one presented oneself in a world where, one day, a husband must be won. That was then. Teresa de Cepeda had grown up feasting on chivalry, martyrdom and all noble causes. At the age of six, she had set out with her brother Rodrigo, who was ten, to seek martyrdom amongst the Moors of North Africa. Don Pedro had spied the lost children by chance on the road to Salamanca and had returned them to their parents.

  This was the pattern of Teresa’s beliefs. To find the Holy Grail, to sail with the great explorers to America and the Orient, to climb through the sky to find the Almighty or to dig through the earth and drag the Devil into the light of day. She read poetry. She read novels. She dressed as Queen Isabella. She affected the robes of the Carmelites. She experimented with theatrical, even whorish cosmetics—and had once dyed her hair with henna. But the discovery of self had not so much to do with one’s destination as with one’s capacity to achieve it. Clearly, for Teresa de Cepeda, God was at the far end of all these dreamings—but could one reach Him?

  She also suffered the dizzying heights of levitation. And worse, she suffered the fiery visions of epilepsy. She was prone to fainting; she endlessly fasted; she retired to her bed; she prayed on her knees for hours on end and then abruptly turned her back on her own sanctuary and went out riding with her brothers into the high Sierra, where she would gallop out of sight and not come home till nightfall.

  She was a gross of contradictions, but equally, she never did anything with less than total dedication. Nothing was frivolous. Fun and games were serious occupations. And her love of God was so great, her devotion to prayer so rigid that her father Don Alonso feared he would lose his only daughter to a convent.

  In the months prior to her arrival in la tierra dorada, she had been extremely ill and a cause for great concern. She had been a paying guest in Avila’s Convent of Our Lady of Grace. The nuns there were of the Augustinian order and renowned as teachers. Teresa’s acceptance of their teachings was polite and scholarly—but guarded. She took and privatized what was agreeable and quietly discarded the rest. And then, all at once, she fell ill and was so gravely sick, the nuns feared for her life.

  Don Alonso and his sons came to the convent and took Teresa home, where slowly she began to recover. There were, however, relapses and she was greatly weakened. It was then that her father brought her to Don Pedro, in order that she might convalesce in the sun and the air and the golden light of la tierra dorada.

  Now, as Teresa sat on the shore of Las Aguas with Perro at her feet and Manolo standing Baptist-like in the water, a braying sound was heard.

  “Oh, dear Heaven!” Teresa exclaimed and jumped to her feet. “My poor Picaro! I forgot all about him.”

  But she need not have worried. Burros are not adventurous and he would not have wandered off. He had, in fact, found his way down through the trees and safely past the sheep to where his mistress sat on the grass in the sun.

  “Picaro,” she cried and threw her arms around his neck. “I am so sorry, my Picaro.” She turned to Manolo, laughed and said: “he is my rascal, and I love him.” She kissed the burro between his ears. “He carries me everywhere—and I left him all alone up there. Oh, I am so very, very sorry.”

  “Bring him here and let him drink.”

  Teresa led Picaro forward and watched him wade out towards Manolo, where he threw his head back and brayed with the sheer joy of the cool water all about him. At the sound of his voice, the cicadas stopped singing and the pelicans almost took flight, but decided he was harmless and resettled.

  Looking around her at the hills, the lake, the sky, the woods, the sheep, the dog, the burro, the birds and the naked man, Teresa said to Manolo: “here is God Himself. This place and all of us together, we are God.”

  From the trees on the opposite shore, a flight of ring-necked doves rose up into the air with a dusty clap of wings, circled three times above the lake and flew away into the hills.

  “It is true,” Teresa said. “What I tell you is true. God Himself just said so.”

  5

  T.

  Carved into the bark of a tree.

  T.

  Jung sat back.

  It was Emma who had made the connection. As her pregnancy had proceeded, she had become increasingly engrossed in reading Pilgrim’s journals—most of which still languished locked in their drawer in Jung’s study. Carl Gustav had finally given her the key and asked her to read more of them for him, since time had filled up with other aspects of his inquiry into Pilgrim’s life and his involvement with other patients. So long as the journals were not removed from his study and were always returned to their place after reading, he agreed she could have access to them. To this, Emma had been faithful.

  Perhaps, however, there was also an element of intimidation in Jung’s confrontation with the journals. This, at least, was Emma’s interpretation. She had watched him withdraw from them over the past few days and had concluded that they were too “personal” for him—too insistent on a single storyline told from one man’s point of view, leaving no room for the kind of exploration Carl Gustav found in personal confrontation. Speaking of another patient, he had once told Emma that “the man, not the work, is my purview.” He was speaking of an artist—a painter—and had concluded that “some men hide in what they create in a deliberate attempt to remain unknown.” Emma’s reaction to this had been: “well? Does it matter? Art is not about the artist. Art is about itself.”

  Jung had merely shrugged.

  Three days after he and Archie Menken had discovered the carved T, Emma had led Carl Gustav to the journals and showed him some of the passages she had been reading, pointing out the references to trees, kingfishers and Teresa.

  Teresa.

  Clearly, this was a figure Jung recognized. But one he mistrusted. She had been a mystic—an improbable mystic at that, and more than likely the perpetrator of hoaxes. Levitation, for instance. Hokum, he had snorted—a word he had learned from Archie.

  Emma insisted it was simply part of who Teresa was. People had seen it happening while she was at prayer.

  “A person could pay to have such witnesses,” Jung said that night as they lay in their bed with the covers thrown back. “I’m merely postulating,” he added. “Merely speculating.”

  “Would you speculate and postulate on the subject of Haeckel’s findings?”

  “Once, yes. But not any more.”

  “Because you now believe.”

  “Because I now believe.”

  “And where is your proof?”

  “Proof?”

  “Proof. You insist that Teresa prove she was the victim of levitation…”
>
  “Stop saying victim!”

  “Very well. You insist that Teresa prove that when she prayed, she rose towards God. But couldn’t it just be allegorical? This was Teresa’s whole desire: to rise into God’s presence—His absolute, literal presence. She called God His Majesty and to rise to that place where He exists—where He is, was all that mattered—isn’t that the perfect representation of levitation? Isn’t it? I cannot for the life of me understand why you have a problem with this.”

  “She was a charlatan.”

  “She was a Catholic—that’s what you mean. She was a Catholic and she believed. And you are a lapsed Protestant—because of your God-forsaken father’s God-forsaken ministry—and you believe nothing. Your basic problem, my dear one, is that you hate and distrust anyone—anyone—who believes in God. And maybe even anyone who believes in anything.”

  “Why are you angry?”

  “I’m not angry. I’m just asking. Pay attention to the line you’re following. You don’t want to admit you know who this woman is because you don’t want to admit Mister Pilgrim has the jump on you.”

  “The jump on me? What the hell does that mean? The jump on me! Please!”

  Emma shifted to one side, placing her back before him.

  “You don’t like anyone to challenge you, my dear one,” she said, “my darling. You don’t want Mister Pilgrim to know beyond doubt what you don’t know at all—that he knew and understood a saint—something you may never do. May I put it this way? In Mister Pilgrim’s case, you may be the student and he might be the teacher.”

  She settled her shoulders and shifted one hand towards her belly, letting it rest without inquisitory intent on the child enfolded there.

  “Imagine yourself without questions,” she said. “Put yourself in her place—Teresa’s. She had no questions. She merely—only—waited. This was her wonder: not to predetermine—not to say it will be thus and so—not to know. She did not demand to know, Carl Gustav. And you demand to know. This way, you are a monster.”

  Jung bellied over towards her.

  Monster?

  “I love you,” he said—not knowing he would say it.

  “I’ll think about it,” said Emma. And smiled.

  Jung fitted his hand to her left and uppermost buttock. He began to scrabble at her nightdress.

  “You have never been taken from behind,” he said, amazed by his own voice—by its sudden, previously undisclosed lasciviousness. Pure, unadulterated lasciviousness. No disguises. No I’m your husband. No let’s pretend.

  He undid the ties of his pyjama trousers and slid them away towards his thighs.

  I’m going to rape you, he thought. I’m going to take you every way a man can take a woman. You will be busy here for hours.

  “Carl Gustav?”

  “Yes?”

  She had spoken. How dare she?

  “Take your hand off my buttock.”

  Jung deferred. His hand moved. He hardly seemed to be its master. It simply left its place. He hung back, tumescent and confused.

  “God is,” said Emma, nearing sleep. “You do know that, don’t you.”

  Did he? Maybe. Though he hated the idea of saying so, he knew that Someone was there—or Something. If there was no one there, his own yearnings for articulation would be meaningless.

  “Yes,” he said. Whispered.

  “What is certainty?” Emma asked.

  “Knowing nothing,” said Jung.

  “Good,” Emma sighed. “You’re learning.” She moved farther off. “Do you want me to speculate on an orgasm with my hand? Or is it a certainty without my participation?”

  Jung grunted. Oh, why won’t she suck it for me, he thought.

  He began to reach for sleep. It was there like a fish at the end of his line. Any moment I will net it and be gone.

  What a thoroughly pleasant image. To be standing in his waders down at the far end of the lake on a bright September morning. Sunrise and sunfish. Cool air, cool waters.

  Kingfisher.

  What is certainty? Emma had asked him. Knowing nothing, he had answered.

  The fish are there—but will one find them?

  The sunlight sparkled on the water. Just for a moment, it blinded him.

  And God?

  He drifted.

  God is in the blinding.

  True. True. Possibly true.

  There was a nibble on his hook.

  Doubt less, believe more, the Grand Inquisitor said. A few moments ago, Carl Gustav, you considered achieving levitation.

  Never.

  Almost sleeping.

  Never? Then what is your definition of an orgasm? What else can it be but a rising to another level of existence? You should think about that.

  Maybe.

  Maybe? Be less doubting, fisherman. The truth is, you have souls to catch—forgive the pun. I have a dreadful sense of humour. Perhaps I should have said you have spirits to catch. But this is true. Emma’s little fish. Pilgrim’s lost centre. Blavinskeya’s Moon. Your own lost faith…

  True. Maybe true.

  Good night, Carl Gustav.

  Yes. Good night. You old bastard.

  He smiled.

  Good night—just the right words. A good night in spite of the fact that Emma had refused him.

  Would he ever force himself on her? Force himself in the merciless sense? He thought not. Not because of what she might think of him—never that—but of what he would think of himself. He did not really care what she thought of him, so long as she did not lose her respect for him as…

  An artist?

  Where had that word come from?

  He had meant scientist. As long as she did not lose her respect for him as a scientist.

  One day the whole world would acknowledge his greatness. His scientific pioneering, his discoveries and his staking of new territories.

  There was comfort in this.

  No. He would never force himself on Emma. He need not even ask her. She would come back begging for more. In the meantime, there would be others while he fastened his hold on the ultimate goal—the rightness of his genius.

  This way, he found sleep.

  In the morning, when Emma woke, Carl Gustav had left. She had heard nothing—sensed nothing of his departure. And yet, when she made her own way to the bathroom, the evidence of his presence having preceded hers was everywhere. The laundry hamper was overflowing with damp towels. The smells of soap and of the lemon-lime cologne with which her husband freshened his handkerchiefs were fresh as if he had left the room only seconds before her entrance. The mirror still bore traces of steam.

  Low down in the right-hand corner of the glass, the letter Thad been drawn by Jung’s finger. Rather large. Very important.

  T. Teresa. Tree.

  Emma wondered how she could bring him to tolerate this difficult woman. This saint. Bring him to her and instruct him in the meaning of her unique genius.

  No. Never instruct. He refused instruction unless he had requested it.

  Pilgrim’s journals were filled with revelations. Leonardo, the Mona Lisa. Dogs called Perro and Agamemnon. Rapes and seductions. Findings and losses. Spanish sheep and sheep in dreams. Mister Bleat and Henry James. Shepherds, saints and golden landscapes. Kingfishers, pelicans, doves and eagles…And at the centre of it all, this tall lonely man who never wrote of loving or of being loved unless it was to tell another’s story, not his own.

  Or were they his own, these stories, Emma wondered. Had he imagined them—created them or did he honestly believe he had experienced them? And if so, how? In dreams? Daydreams? Were they fictions or were they facts?

  But the care with which he had set them down went far beyond mere dreams and daydreams. Carl Gustav said that Mister Pilgrim sometimes spoke in his sleep—sometimes enunciating with perfect clarity, even to the point of giving dictation. This in itself was of very great interest, given the nature of dreams.

  Carl Gustav had a theory that what was experienced in dream
s was tantamount to reality—that the terror of nightmares could equal the terror of true events. That a man who dreamt of being buried alive might just as well have truly been buried alive because the effect on him was the same. Survival of either the nightmare or the reality left the same psychic scars. This way, many patients had to be sedated with chloral hydrate or comforted with ether until they were convinced their doctors, nurses and orderlies were not intent on returning them to the grave.

  And yet, Mister Pilgrim himself had a longing for the grave he could not achieve. How sad he was—this great tall man. Emma had seen him from a distance, walking in the snow with Lady Quartermaine. His hair was now turning white, Carl Gustav had told her, and his loneliness increasing. Long hours were spent in the Music Room listening to recordings of Mozart, Beethoven, Verdi and Puccini—or seated at the piano stumbling through the music of Schumann and Schubert. And always he would rise and stomp out if someone came to disturb his privacy. Much repressed anger—many sudden storms in this great, tall man.

  Emma returned to the bedroom and put on her wrapper. She would spend the morning in Carl Gustav’s study, unlock the magic drawer (for so it seemed to her, now) and finish the story set in the sun of la tierra dorada. Even as she descended the stairs, with one hand on the bannister and the other on her child, she imagined that she could hear the distant barking of a dog and the dusty wings of a flight of pelicans.

  6

  Horsemen rode out along la Mujer every three days to leave supplies for the shepherds and cowherds who were in charge of Don Pedro’s sheep and cattle. Bread, wine, onions, cheese and olives were the staples of the diet thus achieved, to which the herders then added dried beans of various kinds and game—when birds and rabbits had been killed—or on very rare occasions, a wild boar. The cowherds ate in groups—the shepherds, for the most part, alone.

  Campfires were built. Men slept on the ground using rough blankets and pillows made up of saddles, boots or a rolled garment. Each shepherd had his dog—or two. The cowherds had dogs, a few horses and burros amongst the cattle because the burros’ presence warded off marauding wolves. On occasion—perhaps every five to six weeks—the men and dogs were replaced by others, affording a holiday of two to three days.