Pilgrim

by Timothy Findley

  “Half the patients—more than half the patients at the Burghölzli are English, Carl Gustav. Why should they not sing English songs?”

  “I didn’t say they shouldn’t. I merely said it was what they were doing.”

  Emma drank from her wine glass, set it aside and went on eating.

  “How could he kill himself when he’d already tried so many ways and failed?” she said. “No. He has found some way back into the world. We shall find him here amongst us. Have you sent someone to the Col d’Albis where Lady Quartermaine perished? He might have gone there.”

  “No. I never thought of that.”

  “You must stop thinking of Mister Pilgrim’s escape as your loss, Carl Gustav, and begin to think of it as his gain. If you were him, knowing what you know, where do you think he would go?”

  “To the ends of the earth,” Jung said—and smiled at last.

  “I don’t think so,” said Emma. “I think he’d go to Paris.”

  “Paris?”

  “Oscar Wilde. Rodin. The Mona Lisa. After all, for Mister Pilgrim, Paris is almost his spiritual home.”

  In the morning, the messenger in green arrived from the Hôtel Baur au Lac and presented Jung with an envelope on which was written: from Dominic Fréjus, plus the address. Inside was Pilgrim’s final message: goodbye—delivered by pigeon post.

  Emma said: “finito. Are you satisfied?”

  Jung said nothing. He was thinking: my prize patient is gone—and my wife is sharpening her knives. I will go into the garden and fill another grave.

  3

  In Paris, on Friday the 28th of June, Pilgrim and Forster registered at the Hôtel Paul de Vere, rue Berger, on the right bank of the Seine, about six blocks from the Louvre.

  The hotel had been selected from a guidebook and offered all the amenities at a modest price. By choosing a middle-class residence rather than one at either end of the social scale, Pilgrim reasoned it would be the last place anyone would expect him to lodge in Paris—if indeed anyone had guessed his destination.

  The journey had taken them seven days in all, their route having been determined by the availability of suitable roads. Most of the roads they travelled had once been cattle paths and sheep tracks, elevated to public highways in the days of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century coaching. The towns and villages they passed through or used as stopping places were amply populated with cafés, restaurants, inns and hotels. From Basel, they had journeyed through Alsace to Belfort and from Belfort through Langres and Chaumont to Troyes.

  At Troyes, they had the car serviced at a livery stable where the blacksmith had taken up a study of automobiles and was extremely knowledgeable on the subject of internal combustion engines.

  While Forster and the blacksmith chatted and the blacksmith cleaned the spark plugs and oiled the crank shaft, Pilgrim went into the stables and revelled in the smell of hay and horses. It was a happy moment in this otherwise anguished episode—a moment to savour and to relish. Hay and horses, he thought, horses and hay. It seems I have loved the smell of them forever.

  His mind slowly formed a previously forgotten picture of himself as a stableboy on a great estate. The word Waterford occurred to him, but all it conjured was glass. And Ireland. If I was Irish once, I wouldn’t mind at all.

  He saw himself elevated to the rank of exercise-boy—of walker, as they said—when he would go out on misted mornings with the dew like ice against his naked ankles. And he would walk the horses one by one with another lad or two, and once the view from the stables and the manor house was obscured by a shroud of fog, the boys would mount their charges and ride out into the morning, full tilt.

  Oh, the feel of them and the smell of them, and me lying out along their necks…the black steeds, the roan steeds, the greys and the rare, rare whites. If I could have it back, it was the best of my lives—the simplest of all I ever had, though I don’t know when it was, or where, precisely…

  Later, he went and leaned against a stone wall in the livery yard and looked off over the farmland fields towards the city of Troyes itself—its fires and its smoke, its roofs and its trees and towers. He narrowed his eyes and conjured another city in another place and time where the sunlit woods of the landscape had been entirely different than this—less lush, more arid—less serene, more troubled. The Royal City of Troy rose up in its majesty from the Truvian steppes descending to the sea and to the Hellespont.

  He played with this image the way a child will play with imagined fairy-tale locales. It was his Camelot and his Atlantis. It was his Emerald City of Oz.

  It had been walled, its walls of enormous height and thickness, and beyond it rose the slopes of foothills leading off through a dusty haze of heat to distant Mount Ida and her sisters. The trees on the surrounding hillsides were plane trees and oaks and in places had been decimated for the building of supplemental battlements and battle-towers and battle-cars and battle-rams, battle-bridges and battleships. Battle—battle—battle—battle…

  Pilgrim closed his eyes.

  He could smell the charcoal burning in the forge behind him. He could hear the sound of hammers.

  Nothing changes, he thought. All our ingenuity and genius have been turned to the making and devising of war machines. We have followed Leonardo into the darkest reaches of his imagination, forgetting that he also promulgated light.

  Pilgrim opened his eyes and looked again at the city in the immediate distance. Troyes. Already it had sprouted factories and industrial warehouses. Buildings of gigantic size and monumental ugliness scarred the approaches to the town. Trains belching smoke and cinders rolled through the meadows, scattering sheep and cows and stampeding horses. A low grey cloud of dusty vapour hung above the rooftops. And it was all…

  The same.

  No wonder the gods are departing, he thought. We have driven them away. Once, every tree out there was holy—every tree and every strand of grass and clod of earth. The very stones were holy and everything that lived, no matter how small or large…every elephant and every ant—every man and every woman. All were holy. Everything—the sea—the sky—the sun—the moon—the wind—the rain—the fairest and the worst of days…All of it gone and only one deaf God, who cannot see, remains—claiming all of creation as His own. If people would invest one hundredth of their devotion to this God in the living brothers and sisters amongst whom they stand, we might have a chance of surviving one another. As it is…

  Pilgrim closed his eyes again and the vista before him vanished. He turned once more to the livery stable and spoke to Forster.

  “We shall make next for Fontainebleu,” he said—a name that had the scent of forests to it and the ring of water falling into water.

  The Renault was ready, and having thanked and paid the blacksmith and waved goodbye to the horses, they continued their journey.

  At Fontainebleu, they had taken a picnic basket organized by Forster into the woods, where they sat amidst ferns and wildflowers, eating breast of chicken sandwiches, pears, Boursault and assorted petits fours while consuming also two bottles of Montrachet.

  Pilgrim had lain back at the end of their meal and let the leafy tent above him lull him into sleep. Forster also rested, but remained awake. Only one sleeper from now on, he decided. We are on our way to danger.

  On waking, Pilgrim had made notes in a book which Forster had secured for him. He wrote down the words: from here to the end, only earth, air, fire and water. Nothing else.

  He had looked at Forster then and said: thank you for being with me, now.

  It was the only semblance of an endearment passed between them, but it meant the world to Forster, who would long remember it.

  The Hôtel Paul de Vere was not very large. It had twenty chambres and did not serve meals. It did offer connecting rooms with a bath and W.C., and a choice of tea, coffee or chocolate with a brioche in the mornings.

  On the first evening, they took their dinner in a nearby restaurant on the rue Berger. The height of summer had p
roduced a good many tourists and the voices around them, besides French, were speaking English, German, Italian, Spanish and the now ubiquitous American.

  “Can you believe it, Calvin?” said one woman. “We’re sittin’ here in a French bee-stro! I never felt so sophisticated in my whole life!”

  The sophisticates were everywhere, and they were by no means all American. Englishmen complained to their male companions that it was incomprehensible that no one on the Continent seemed to understand the source of Britain’s greatness.

  “It’s our stamina,” one insisted.

  “It’s our industry,” said another.

  “It’s our dedication to bringing civilization to the poor benighted niggers of the world,” said a third.

  It is our bloody-mindedness, Pilgrim muttered to himself.

  When the coffee and cognac arrived, Forster ventured: “may one know, sir, why we have chosen Paris?”

  Pilgrim laid his left hand on the white tablecloth, spreading his fingers as wide as they would go. With his other hand, he made a circular motion around the rim of his glass, wetting one finger in his mouth to facilitate the gesture.

  “We are here to abduct a certain lady,” he said.

  To Forster, this was pure Sherlockese. A thrill passed through him. He was, indeed, to play the role of Doctor Watson.

  As if in tribute to the character he was about to assume, he fingered his moustache.

  “And what lady might that be, sir?” he asked.

  “Madonna Elisabetta del Giocondo,” said Pilgrim. “La Gioconda.”

  The Mona Lisa.

  Forster paled.

  “But we can’t, sir. They won’t allow it.”

  Pilgrim smiled.

  “Of course they won’t allow it,” he said. “Why would they? She is the greatest treasure in the whole of France. And one day soon, she will be ours.”

  Forster stared and then forced himself to look away. Say nothing, he told himself. Say not a word.

  Pilgrim drank from his glass and said: “a most pleasant evening, Forster. Thoroughly enjoyable.”

  Forster said: “yes, sir. Indeed.”

  4

  On the morning of Saturday, June 29th, Pilgrim and Forster arrived at the Louvre, where Pilgrim soon recognized a distinct difference in the presentation of the paintings from his last encounter with them three years earlier. Many of the greatest amongst them had been put behind glass. This had been done at the request of the Louvre’s curators, and had been decreed by the Director of National Museums, a man whose name was Théophile Homolle. This unprecedented glazing of works in oil had been generated by an increase over the past few years of vandalism and accidental damage. A Rubens had been daubed with excrement (no permanent effect); a Botticelli had been slashed with a knife (repairable); and a Giotto had been found partially cut from its frame in an obviously thwarted attempt to steal it (no noticeable harm).

  In spite of the fact that each of these works was salvaged, there were growing fears that a successful attempt at theft or an even more disastrous attempt at outright destruction would result in irreparable losses. Glass, it seemed, was the only answer. Strangely, no one instigated an increase in security staff.

  When the newly glazed paintings had been rehung, there was something of a public outcry. How can one view the pictures if all one can see is oneself! And: the Louvre has a new hall of mirrors that rivals Versailles!

  Shame on Homolle and his lackeys! read one headline, and in the item that followed, the Minister and his curators were accused of glazing the Mona Lisa in order to mask the fact that the original had been stolen or damaged and had been replaced by a fake. Homolle’s response to this was to issue a statement to the effect that you might as well pretend one could steal the towers of Notre Dame de Paris! In a few days’ time, he would regret these words.

  Because of the influx of tourists from abroad, the Louvre was inundated with visitors. By ten o’clock in the morning, Pilgrim and Forster could barely move when they entered the overcrowded Salon Carré, where the Mona Lisa was hung between Correggio’s Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine and Titian’s Allegory of Alfonso d’Avalos.

  As it turned out, though it had been primarily the Mona Lisa that drew such large numbers of people, there was another spectacle taking place in the Salon which kept them there for an uncharacteristically long time. A man was shaving.

  Forster ascertained that the man’s name was Roland Dorgelés. M. Dorgelés was a Parisian novelist of some repute. He and his valet had arrived with the appropriate paraphernalia at about 9:45 a.m. There was a camp stool, a bowl, a jug of hot water, a razor, brush and shaving soap and a large white towel in which the writer had draped himself.

  His “mirror” was a glazed self-portrait by Rembrandt. The scene was both amusing and outrageous—and was intended by Dorgelés as his protest against the glass-covered paintings. It certainly caught the attention of the press, where the novelist would be depicted at his toilette in several cartoons.

  Pilgrim, shadowed by Forster, moved through the room at an enforced leisurely pace because of the crowds. He was determined to be seen, and to have Forster seen, by as many of the security guards as possible. He had also announced himself by name as he entered the museum and had presented his card, requesting that it be delivered to the chief curator, whose name was Emile Moncrieff. Moncrieff would recognize the name instantly—which was Pilgrim’s intention.

  He barely glanced at the Mona Lisa, noting at once that the portrait was now behind glass. This worried him. One could not simply smash the glass and pull away the painting. One would have to work from the rear of the frame.

  It had been his initial intention to destroy her on the spot. But this presented the problem of a quick arrest and, if nothing else, a forced return to Zürich. This would not do. There were other works of art to destroy. There was a whole world of chaos he wanted to achieve. He must at all costs remain at large.

  He had told Forster at breakfast that one essential result of their Saturday-morning visit—besides the impressing of their presence on the staff—was the memorization of distances between the entrance to the Salon Carré, its exit and what lay beyond that exit—the various escape routes. He was physically aware of his age and knew that he would not be able to manage running for any great period of time, especially if stairs were to be involved.

  It had occurred to him that, while Forster escaped with the painting, he himself might saunter away from the event and still achieve the streets before the theft was discovered. It was at this juncture that he intended to take advantage of his knowing that the Louvre was always closed on Mondays.

  Before leaving, he approached one of the uniformed staff and inquired if Monsieur Moncrieff were available. The answer being yes, Pilgrim and Forster were ushered into the executive quarters and told to wait. Within minutes, Moncrieff appeared—an overly effusive, scented and coiffed man in his forties, who greeted Pilgrim like a long-lost friend. They had, of course, never met—except by reputation. The chief curator on Pilgrim’s earlier journeys to the Louvre had since died and Moncrieff, it appeared, had been his protégé.

  Speaking French, Pilgrim wondered politely if Monsieur Moncrieff would be averse to allowing a private visit on Monday, when—because of the closing—there would be no crowds to stand in the way of Pilgrim’s close scrutiny of one or two paintings about which he intended to write.

  But certainly not. And did M. Pilgrim wish to be attended by M. Moncrieffor one of the other curators in his quest for information?

  On any other occasion, most certainly but for the present, a private viewing would be sufficient.

  Moncrieff invited Pilgrim and Forster into the sanctum of his office, where he wrote and signed a waiver which could be presented on Monday morning at the main entrance.

  Pilgrim was extremely grateful and would never forget Monsieur’s kindness.

  Much hand-shaking and bowing and an offer to summon a cab if one was required.

&nb
sp; Pilgrim said no—that he had his own transportation. His feet.

  Moncrieff escorted them from the executive offices and walked with them to the great courtyard beyond—La Place du Carrousel. In doing so, he said that regrettably, they would not be entirely alone on the Monday morning. Some security staff would of course be in place and—because it was an off day—there were one or two house painters and artisans who came in on such occasions to make repairs and touch up damaged or aging plaster.

  This would be no problem, Pilgrim told the chief curator, but he was grateful for the information.

  At noon, Pilgrim and Forster passed through the portals and out onto the Quai du Louvre, where Pilgrim said: “we shall take our luncheon on the other side. What a splendid day! What a splendid, informative, brilliant day! If only it was the season for oysters, I would eat a dozen!”

  5

  Jung had already driven off to Zürich in the Fiat by the time Emma descended for her breakfast on the morning of Wednesday, July 3rd.

  It was a sultry, midsummer day and at nine o’clock, already windless and humid. Windows had been opened in the hopes that a cool breeze might blow in from the lake, but it was not to be. The air was totally without movement. A thousand candles could have been lighted and not one of them would have been extinguished.

  Lotte had been to the garden and, having asked Frau Emmenthal for permission, had cut a bouquet of one dozen roses—pink and white and red and yellow—which greeted Emma on the breakfast table. Emma, thinking Carl Gustav had placed them there, burst into tears.

  When Lotte appeared with the coffee pot, Emma said: “look what my husband has left me. Aren’t they beautiful. I’m the luckiest woman alive. Someone loves me.”