Nicholas Meyer (14 page)

Sleep was impossible. Even had I not been able to hear the detective's piercing screams and wails through the walls, the simple knowledge of the torture he was enduring was enough to keep me awake.

Was it worth it? Was there no other way of saving him except by so severe a trial that he might die in attempting to live? I am not a praying man, and I sensed the hypocrisy of my gesture; nevertheless, I knelt and grovelled before the Creator of all things—whoever and whatever he might be—and begged him in the humblest terms that came to mind to spare my friend. I cannot say with certainty what effect my prayers had on Holmes; but they proved sufficiently distracting to ease me into a fitful sleep.

On the fourth day following the onset of his fever and delirium, Sherlock Holmes woke, seemingly calm and with a normal temperature.

As I entered the room, assuming Paula's place, he eyed me with a mellow languor.

"Watson?" he asked, in a voice so feeble that I should never have taken it for his. "Is that you?"

I assured him that it was, drew up a chair next to the bed, examined him, and informed him that his fever had broken.

"Oh?" His reply was listless.

"Yes. You are on your way to recovery, my dear fellow."

"Oh."

He continued to stare at me, or past me rather, with a vacant expression and no seeming knowledge of where he was and no curiosity about how he came to be there.

He did not object when I took his pulse, which was fearfully weak, but steady; nor did he resist the tray that Frau Freud herself brought up to him. He ate sparingly and only with much nagging

encouragement. He apparently wished to eat, yet he had to be reminded the food was before him. This lethargic turn of events, following as it did his violent outbursts and fevered delirium, I found more sinister than anything that had preceded it.

It was not to Freud's liking, either, when he returned from his rounds and inspected his resident patient.

He frowned and walked to the window through which could be seen the spires of St. Stephen's—a view, by the way, he cordially loathed. I patted Holmes's hand reassuringly and joined the doctor at the window.

"Well?"

"He appears to have thrown off the addiction," Freud said quietly, in a neutral voice. "He may of course resume it at any time. Such is the curse of enslavement to drugs. It would be interesting to know," he added, with seeming irrelevancy, "how he became involved with cocaine."

"I have always known him to keep it about his rooms," I answered truthfully. "He says he takes it because of boredom, lack of activity."

Freud turned and smiled at me, his features displaying the infinite and nameless wisdom and

compassion I had noticed the moment I first set eyes on him.

"That is not the reason a man pursues such a path to destruction," said he softly. "However—"

"What is it that worries you?" I demanded, trying to keep my own voice down. "You say we have weaned him from the fiend."

"Temporarily," Freud repeated, returning to the window, "but we appear also to have weaned him from his spirit. There is an old proverb that suggests that the cure is sometimes more deadly than the disease."

"But what could we do?" I expostulated. "Allow him to poison himself?"

Freud turned round again with a finger on his lips. "I know." He patted my shoulder and walked back to where the patient lay.

"How do you feel?" he enquired gently, smiling down at my friend. Holmes glanced up at him, and then his eyes glazed over, staring into nothingness.

"Not well."

"Do you remember Professor Moriarty?"

"My evil genius?" The faintest trace of a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

"What about him?"

"I know what you want me to say, Doctor. Very well, I shall oblige you: the only time Professor Moriarty truly occupied the role of my evil genius was when it took him three weeks to make clear to me the mysteries of elementary calculus."

"I am not so much interested in your saying it," the doctor responded quietly, "but in your understanding it to be true."

There was a pause.

"I understand it," Holmes whispered at length. In that almost inaudible reply was all the exhausted humiliation and suffering it is possible for a human being to know. Even Freud, who could be as dogged as Holmes, when he felt the occasion demanded it, was loath to break the long silence which followed this terrible confession.

It was Holmes himself who finally brought his reverie to an end; gazing about the room, he espied me, and his features came to life. "Watson? Come closer, old friend. You are my old friend, are you not?" he added, uncertainly.

"You know I am."

"Ah, yes." He eased back onto the pillows from the sitting posture he had made such an effort to assume, and regarded me with a troubled expression clouding bis usually keen grey eyes. "I do not remember much of the past few days," he began, but I cut him off with a gesture of my hand.

"It is over and done with. Do not think about what has happened. It is over."

"I say I do not remember much," he persisted tenaciously, "but I do seem to recall screaming at you, hurling all sorts of epithets in your direction." He smiled in what was meant to be ingratiating self-deprecation. "Did I do that, Watson? Or did I just imagine it?"

"You just imagined it, my dear fellow. Lie back now."

"Because if I did do that," he pursued, obeying my instructions, "I want you to know that I did not mean it. Do you hear me? I did not mean it. I remember distinctly calling you Iscariot. Will you forgive me for that monstrous calumny? Will you?"

"Holmes, I beg of you!"

"You'd better leave him now," Freud interposed, laying a hand on my shoulder. "He is going to sleep."

I rose and fled from the room, my eyes blind with tears.

*9*—Concerning a Game of Tennis and a Violin

As Sigmund Freud had warned me, though Holmes no longer appeared to crave cocaine, vigilance

regarding the drug and possible access to it must remain as strict as before. I had briefly entertained the notion of returning to England, conceiving that the worst was over—which Dr. Freud assured me it was

—but he pleaded with me to remain. Holmes's spirits were still alarmingly low, it was still difficult to get him to eat, and it was still impossible yet to send him back to his own world; he so plainly needed a friend that I consented to stay a while.

Another exchange of telegrams took place between my wife and me, during which I outlined the

situation and begged her indulgence and she, for her part, responded all warmth and encouragement, saying that the practice was being ably cared for by Cullingworth and that she would inform Mycroft Holmes of his brother's progress.

Holmes's progress, however, was minimal. If he took no further interest in the drug, neither did he evince curiosity regarding anything else. We forced him to eat and cajoled him into taking strolls in the parks near the Hofburg. On these occasions he promenaded dutifully, though he kept his eyes on the ground before him and looked almost nowhere else. I did not know whether to be pleased or not by this development; certainly it was in character with the Holmes I knew so well, who rarely noticed scenery and much preferred to study footprints. Yet when I endeavoured to draw him out on the subject, and asked him what he was able to deduce from the ground, he responded with a tired injunction not to patronize him, and said no more.

He now took his meals with the rest of the household, sitting silent through all attempts we made at conversation, and eating little. Dr. Freud's discussion of other patients appeared to hold no interest for him whatever, and I am afraid I was so preoccupied with Holmes's slightest reactions that I scarcely heard anything of the doctor's cases, either. I have a dim recollection that he referred to them by the strangest names, sometimes alluding to the "Rat Man" or the "Wolf Man," and sometimes to a person called "Anna O." I understood him to be protecting the true identities of these people for reasons of professional discretion, yet I do think he betrayed an otherwise latent sense of humour in the sobriquets he applied to describe them, or at least a real talent for anthropomorphic association. Often, falling asleep with my thoughts idly touching on this and that, I have recalled those snatches of table talk in the Freud home and smiled to think of the man who looked like a rat and the one who resembled a wolf. And what of Anna O? Was she perhaps sensationally rotund?

Curiously, the only member of the household who appeared to elicit any positive response in Holmes was another Anna, Freud's small daughter. She was an adorable child (I am not normally fond of children),* intelligent and also engaging. After the first day, Holmes's fits lost whatever terror they had once held for her and she approached him quite freely. With some instinct of her own, she was always quiet in her advances, but they were advances nonetheless. Once, after supper, she offered to show him her doll collection. With a grave demeanour, punctiliously polite, Holmes accepted her invitation and they withdrew to the cupboard where the figures were assembled. I was on the point of rising from my chair and following them when Freud signalled to me to remain where I was.

* Does his declaration suggest a reason why Watson never mentions his children, not even to state that he fathered any?

"We must not suffocate him with our attentions," he smiled.

"Nor Anna," laughed Frau Freud, and rang for more coffee.

The next morning, as I lay in my bed rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I was startled to hear the sound of voices from the next room. I looked at my watch on the night-table and ascertained that it was not quite eight. From the sounds downstairs I knew Paula to be in the kitchen and the rest of the family not yet awake. Who could it be?

Silently I stole towards the door of our adjoining rooms and peeped through the crack. Holmes was sitting up in bed talking quietly with little Anna, who had seated herself at the foot of it. I could not make it out but the conversation appeared to be a pleasant one, the child posing questions and Holmes doing his best to answer them. Once I heard him chuckle and I crept back from the door lest some inadvertent sound on my part disturb their rapport.

Following breakfast, Holmes elected to remain in the study with the object of reading some of the Dostoievski (should he come upon any in French translation), rather than accompany us to the

Maumberg, Freud's exclusive club, for some indoor tennis.

"Dr. Watson will confirm my utter disregard of exercise for its own sake," he said, smiling, as we hesitated at the door, urging him once more to join us. "You really must not ascribe my staying behind to any motives connected with my illness."

Freud decided not to insist, and leaving Holmes in the care of the ladies—Frau Freud, Paula, and little Anna—we set forth.

The Maumberg, located south of the Hofburg, was a rather different club from those I knew in London.

It was primarily a place for exercise, the cafes of the city supplying the social and intellectual deficiencies of the institution.

There was a restaurant and bar, to be sure, but Freud was not in the habit of lingering at either or socializing with the members. He enjoyed a game of tennis, he told me, and simply used the club's courts for their elementary recreational purpose. I was not a tennis player, myself (my arm* having made the question of playing an impossibility), but I wished to see the club and to escape, for a little while, the dreary influence of Holmes's battle which had kept me in constant attendance and

depression. Dr. Freud had no doubt sensed this in extending his kind invitation.

* Arm? This manuscript does not resolve our doubts concerning the famous Afghan wound.

The tennis courts were enclosed in a huge wrought-iron structure rather like a green-house. Enormous skylights permitted the sun to brighten the place, while from within it was heated for comfort during the cold months. The courts themselves were constructed of highly polished wood that reverberated in a roaring cacophony as the balls from several simultaneous games struck the flooring.

As we entered the dressing-room where the doctor kept his tennis costume, we passed a group of young fellows who were drinking beer from tall tapered glasses, their feet propped on benches and towels draped carelessly about their necks. We walked by. I heard one of their number choke on his drink and laugh.

"
Juden
in the Maumberg! I say, this place has gone to the dogs since last I set foot here."

Freud, walking ahead of me, stopped and faced the young man, who pretended to be absorbed in

conversation with another companion, though indeed they could neither of them suppress their

giggling. When he turned to us with a blandly inquisitive expression, I could not but start at his features. His otherwise handsomely cold countenance was made positively sinister by a hideous, livid sabre cut on his left cheek. Indeed, his entire face was transformed by this dreadful wound into something quite malignant, and his icy, unblinking eyes gave him the unpleasant air of a great nodding bird of prey. He was not yet thirty, but the wickedness in that face was ageless.

"Were you referring to me?" Freud demanded quietly, stepping up to where he sat lounging.

"I beg your pardon?" He was all innocence, and his cruel mouth was wreathed in smiles, but his eyes remained expressionless.

"It might interest you to know,
mein Herr
, that since you have last set foot here—which apparently was never, since you appear totally ignorant of the composition of this club, to say nothing of its manners—

the membership has become more than a third Jewish." He spun on his heel to go, leaving a trail of good-humoured laughter in his wake. The young man with the scar flushed crimson and listened with bent head to the whisperings of his companion as his eyes followed the departing figure of Freud.

"Dr. Freud, is it?" he called after him suddenly. "Not the same Dr. Freud who was asked to leave the staff of the Allgemeines Krankenhaus because of his charming assertion that young men sleep with their mothers? By the way, Doctor, did you sleep with your mother?"