Human Traces (53 page)

Tears erupted from his eyes as he thought of Sonia; anguish and fear squeezed his belly when he pictured what might happen if his awful act was discovered. He walked up and down the orchard, twisting and turning as the waves of remorse and exultation alternated; but somewhere in the confusion he felt he could discern a hard, small voice that told him not to repine, to recognise what kind of being he was and to survive. "Do you think," said Kitty one day, 'that your brother is growing a little... How can I put it? Eccentric?" "Thomas?" said Sonia. "Well, he has always been inclined that way. Why do you ask?" "He seems a little forgetful at times. Distracted. When he shaves, he sometimes misses a patch on one cheek, but he doesn't seem to notice." Sonia smiled. They were sitting in her ofEce and both were tired of filing patients' reports. "As a boy he was very unpredictable, moody, rash, peculiar. But he had charm and he could be sensible if it was truly necessary. He was clever. He seemed to have his rashness under control." "Yes," said Kitty. "I remember watching him once at dinner in the schloss, making himself pleasant to some of the patients. He was joining in their conversation and the two young women seemed rather flattered. Then I suddenly heard something in his voice which made me see he thought the whole thing was the most tremendous joke. He was playing with them." "Oh dear, I know that feeling," said Sonia. "I remember when we were children. Sometimes when I had put my most heartfelt feelings into words I used to look in his eyes and see that all along he had been miles ahead of me and had just lingered, as it were, to humour me. It used to make me very cross." "But he never said anything unkind?" "No. No. Thomas has never been unkind. It was just that I felt a fool. And to be honest, I think I felt a little sorry for him. I wondered what he was finding so far out ahead there. I thought he must be lonely." "Yet when I first met him," said Kitty, 'he was not like that at all. He was very earnest." "He changed," said Sonia. "It is as simple as that. People do change. I think that in mad-doctoring he found something commensurate with his capacity to keep ahead. Rather too much so, in a way' "So he stopped playing with people." "Yes. I mean, he would still tease Fraulein Fuchs or Fraulein Haas without them noticing it. Or me, sometimes. But I think that his sense of being superior or one step ahead was something he lost after being an undergraduate. It is the besetting sin of student hood after all. I think he left it in the county asylum. What he saw there changed him." "You see," said Kitty, 'what I so loved about him, what I love still, was that passion he had. There was no compromise. On the question of what makes us mad or how to cure these illnesses he was so earnest. He wanted to be the saviour and believed he would be. He sincerely thought he would discover things that would change the way we see ourselves. And he saw nothing funny in that belief that self-belief. Everything else was funny to him, though. Hans, Josef, Daisy. You and me. His world was quite divided." Sonia sighed. "I know. For years I worried about him. I thought that his irresponsible side would surface and get us all into trouble. I remember he told me once how he had smuggled Daisy out from the asylum one night. It was a terrible thing to do. He risked his professional life to say nothing of the consequences for her. Then when he was travelling round Europe with those rich families he claimed he was learning languages, and indeed he was, but somehow I felt "You felt he must be enjoying the Italian Riviera," said Kitty. "Exactly. I am sure he did. But once we arrived in Carinthia, I saw the depth of his seriousness. He became admirably disciplined. The hours that he and Franz would work in that wretched cellar. I never dreamed he had it in him. It quite ruined his eyesight. About the time you met him, he had become... So admirable. A man so committed to his destiny." Kitty smiled. "He was sublime." "I suppose he was. He was so kind. I think of the hours he spent with Olivier. The patience with which he listened and searched for clues from a man who was clearly beyond help. The gentleness he showed towards him. It makes you want to weep." Kitty coughed. "I suppose that each of us may have a great moment in our life a month, a year when we are most fully what we are meant to be." "Yes," said Sonia. "I believe so. Mine is with Daniel." "Of course. But now. Poor Thomas. He is frustrated. He is disappointed. If only he were ten years older, he could retire in the knowledge that he had done everything a man could do. But I fear he will find it hard to fill the time." "Yes," said Sonia. "He may revert to his old ways. His old mischief." "Out of boredom." "Perhaps." "And Jacques," said Kitty. "Has he changed much?" Sonia sighed. "Well, of course. I am so unhappy that he cannot end this absurd feud with Thomas." "I know. It is heartbreaking. Thomas was appalled at first. He tried everything to apologise and explain. But now I fear that his heart is hardening. He feels he has done all he can to make the peace." "It is too sad. When you think how much they loved each other." "Don't despair, Sonia. I can to some extent make Thomas do what I want. I will not allow him to neglect his duty to Jacques." "But Jacques has changed," said Sonia. "That's the trouble. The years wear you down. It is like erosion. It is slow and invisible, but eventually the cliff will take on a new shape. Jacques was diffident when I first knew him. He told me he felt "provisional" and dishonest in some way. But he was also very romantic, Kitty." "I can believe it. He still is. I see the way the young female patients and the nurses look at him." "I know. He became very confident. Suddenly. When we were in Paris. It was not just that he had faith in his own abilities, like Thomas. He believed his greatness was imminent. Any day! He was so happy. And then... And then it failed to happen. It was very difficult for him to settle just for being another "nerve specialist", as he sarcastically puts it." "But you have reassured him." "Of course. He became a very impressive man. His fluency in English and German, his appetite for work. The number of books he read. He, too, had a golden period and I have tried to tell him that all that work is not wasted, that he is a wonderful doctor." "Does he believe you?" "It is hard to say. He does not appreciate the success of the sanatorium. He sees such success as vulgar, merely "fashionable". The trouble is that I fear he has become dismissive of the thoughts and feelings of others." "Don't be upset, Sonia. We will make them friends again." "Oh, Kitty, if you only knew. When you have been as unhappy as he was in his childhood, you may never be whole. He made a wonderful life through the effort of his mind and will. But I know that in some way he still thinks the first experience he had of life is the true one the one to which he is fated to return. Motherless, loveless, his brother mad, in a dark, dark world. I worry that in some way he must feel that that is what life is really like, and that all the years in between have been an illusion." Kitty laid her hand on Sonia's arm. "We will make sure he is all right. We will do what we have to do to make certain that that view does not prevail." "Of course," said Sonia, sniffing, 'there is also this awful question of inheritance." "What do you mean?" "Olivier's disease. It is possible that Daniel may develop it." "Surely the chances are against it, even if it is in the family." "Yes, they are. I expect that Daniel will be all right. But do you know what haunts Jacques, what makes him lie awake at night?" "What?" "He thinks that perhaps his mother also suffered from it. That is why no one ever talked about her after she died. The only words he ever heard used to describe her were "strange" and "difficult"." "I am so sorry, Sonia. But we will never know, will we? And is it not better that way?" "No, I think he would love to know. He cannot be at peace until he does." A week after the "Modern World Colloquium', Jacques and Sonia received an invitation to dine at the Drobesches'. Jacques had not seen Roya since he reeled from her bedroom, and it was with trepidation that he pulled the bell handle on the large town house. He had never lied and never been an actor in his life; he expected to stumble and be unmasked; he did not see how it could be otherwise. They were, as usual, shown upstairs, to the large drawing room, where a dozen notables were standing round the fireplace listening to Drobesch. Roya stepped out of the circle to come and greet them; as she approached, the light from the candles in the chandelier caught the purple print flowers in her long skirt. Jacques shrivelled as he watched Sonia's guilelessly polite greeting. At dinner, the men, by Drobesch custom, were required to rotate two places clockwise after the soup, to avoid what the host referred to as the 'municipal tram theory' of entertaining a reference to the improbability of finding oneself entertained by being stuck between two strangers. The second rotation came with the dessert, and brought Jacques, by an inevitable arithmetic, next to Roya. The candlelight was reflected in the silver bracelet at the cuff of her ruched cream blouse. Across the table was a man who did something important in a Viennese bank, though no one had been able to establish quite what, since his modesty was so grandly self-effacing that it conveyed no information at all. Jacques glanced up the table, where Sonia was listening attentively to an opposition politician expounding hotly on the Balkan issue. As the banker turned aside, Jacques turned to his hostess. "And how are you, Frau Drobesch?" "Very well, Doctor." "How elegant you look." "Thank you. I have never worn this skirt in town before. It is more of an informal, country garment." "But it is very charming. It complements the blouse. "Jacques could not believe the serpentine duplicity with which he heard himself speak. "Thank you. It is so warm at the moment that I thought a little informality would ' "Indeed. Very warm." "And how is your work progressing? Do you find yourself often in town?" The banker had now returned his attention to them, and Jacques made some stiff reply about the local hospital. All the time he was thinking of Roya's bedroom, of her turning round naked in the afternoon sun, a vision that occupied his waking and his sleeping thoughts. Although he was intoxicated by desire, he was aware of the danger of what he was doing and repelled by its dishonesty. He could not stop himself, however. He admired Roya's calm mendacity; he was drawn, whether he liked it or not, into a conspiracy of two, and since the happy continuance of his life depended on the success of their deception, he was bound to feel more and more warmly towards his fellow-conspirator. In a way, he admired her; and like Adam and Eve exiled from the Garden, they were nothing if not a pair. He found that he had quite properly received and accepted an offer to call in for tea the following Thursday after his clinic. He did not ask, because he already knew, whether Drobesch would be there or absent in Vienna. He was relieved to be outside again after dinner, back in the normal night-time street beneath the gas lamp; to be with Sonia again in the trap going back to the station for the last train to the cable-car. He held her hand in the back, beneath a rug, and felt the sin of his betrayal. Yet all Thursday morning at the hospital he was in a state of anguished excitement. A scientific part of him was curious that a man of his age could be so febrile; he would have thought such passionate feelings belonged to youth. At no point in his five hours at the hospital did his desire slacken; he saw outpatients, visited inpatients, dictated notes, had a meeting with resident physicians and at no moment was his mind free of an image of Roya; at any time he would have been ready to make love to her. He ached for her all morning. Such ardour is exhausting, he thought, as he finally left the hospital and began the walk across town. As a young man he had experienced lust as an inconvenience. Some Paris students had little girlfriends who would sleep with them in return for having their rent paid and being taken dancing once a week, but although some of the girls were charming, some of the boys fell in love and the arrangement could be carried off with dignity, it was essentially a kind of prostitution that his Breton soul could not approve. When he himself had erotic feelings towards some girl, he merely sat up longer, read more, and arrived earlier at the dissecting room; he extirpated the impulses. Although there was a sweetness about such longings, a joyous urge selected by nature, he had come to hate them because they could never be satisfied, they must always be denied. The rich lady whose lower abdomen he palpated, running his hands over her soft skin, beneath her silk drawers, once feeling the curl of fine hair snag beneath his fingernails as his touch moved from the inguinal crease... He had thought of cadavers on the slab to distract himself; after all, that was how he had learned anatomy. One such lady even took his hand and rubbed his fingers through the hot, parted flesh, but he hated her for it. And other women, a nurse called Isabelle at the Salpetriere, such a kind girl with dark brown eyes and a friendly manner who clearly liked him... But he must not kindle hope or desire in her, because he would never love her, could not marry her and his feelings for her were merely base. He was vigorous and alive, but circumstances had conspired to exclude him from this natural activity, which seemed reserved to other people to married men, to those who visited whores or those who somehow could find a moral code in themselves and in their lovers that permitted it. Lust for him was frustration: they were coterminous. Everything had changed with Sonia, when his desires were licenced by marriage, but above all by the respect he felt towards her and his sense that his instincts were pure and honourable. When he sometimes felt desire for other women, he had little difficulty in stifling it, because it seemed trivial. But in the long years of their marriage, he supposed, his amorous feelings had become respectable, bound up with childbirth and family, had turned into a token of his respectful affection; somehow they had moved over in his mind, and left vacant a plot where the old weeds of lust had taken root. What he felt as he rang Roya s doorbell was the dark and furtive desire of the very young man he had once been; it was the lust of fantasies too shameful to name, which now appeared to be on the verge, at this late stage in his life, of being enacted. So it proved, when Roya herself answered the door and within moments had