Pilgrim (17 page)

Then from beneath his cloak, the pilgrim produces a satchel and the dogs lean further in towards him, some of them scrambling over others, all of them quivering with anticipation.

Whatever he gives them, it is certainly food because they fall upon it ravenously, yelping and baying for more until the satchel is completely emptied.

From their fires, the citizens turn to watch—in silence. The man may be a universal target for their scorn and even their fury—
that any food should be given to dogs!
But no one speaks.

The pilgrim perhaps is known to them. Certainly the dogs know him.

He turns then and walks away into the centre of the Piazza where the one grieving dog remains—having not risen or even moved during the feeding.

It raises its head, though it still does not rise from its prone position. The two gaze at one another. The pilgrim kneels.

What has happened here? Something has happened. What?

The dog does not move. The pilgrim holds out his hand. The dog subsides, but will not give up its place.

The man goes over to the nearest group of scavengers and opens his purse. A boy steps forward and, taking up a firebrand, follows the pilgrim back to the dog.

Because of the light from the torch it is possible now to see the pilgrim’s face.

He wears a cap on the back of his head. His hair, quite long, is a dark, rich red—the colour of Tuscan earth—and it shines with streaks of white or grey. He wears his beard in the fashion affected by the kings of France and Spain—shaped and cropped like a conté outline of his jaw and mouth and cheeks. His eyes are large and widely spaced and his nose—as one might have said if he had been a drawing or a painting:
is in the style of Lorenzo the Magnificent.
Indeed, this pilgrim might be a Medici returning to claim his city. A princely authority informs every move and gesture he makes, as if he were born to be obeyed.

While the boy watches, the pilgrim removes his cloak and lays it on the ground beside the dog.

He then sits down on top of the cloak and draws a notebook from a pocket in his long, woven coat. A notebook. And a crayon.

The boy stands closer. The torchlight flares and throws itself down across the page, where it rests on the pilgrim’s knees.

And then the pilgrim begins to draw.

I have seen this page,
Jung read.
Both to my wonder
—
and my sorrow
—
I have seen it. It shows the head and shoulders and the forepaws of a grieving dog. It also shows
a brutally severed hand. And in the hand, a piece of bread.

Beneath this, written at a later time perhaps, in that curious mirror-imaged script for which he was famous, there is this notation:

Hand of a Florentine woman—drawn by torchlight on the night of February 6th, 1497. Dog would not leave her. Died there by morning. The woman’s sleeve of dark blue cotton. One button made of wood.

This was my first encounter with Leonardo.

5

Ten minutes later, Jung was still staring blindly at the page.

Leonardo.

Of course. Who else would Pilgrim be writing about in fifteenth-century Florence?

And surely that drawing had been reproduced in his book about da Vinci, the first original Leonardo that Pilgrim had ever seen—to judge from his final notation. And perhaps the first time he had ever laid eyes on the artist’s famous backward writing.

Jung reached out and turned off the lamp. Dawn had come and gone. The sun had risen.

He was cold. He could read no more. Young Angelo would have to wait. To have met Leonardo was enough.

He pulled up the collar of his robe and sat there
for a moment hugging his sides and grieving for the woman, dead now four hundred and fifteen years.

One button made of wood.

He glanced down at the journal, its page sitting open, waiting to be turned.

No. Not now. Not yet. Enough. Enough.

Taking his half-filled tumbler of brandy, Jung rose and moved to the window.

Had Emma slept through all that turmoil?

What a curious question. What a curious notion. How curious it was to imagine she had witnessed the scene he had just finished reading—that she had heard its gusts of wind, its clatter of horses’ hooves, its barking dogs—and seen its leaping shadows.

On the other hand, it seemed to him the scene had played itself out as if he himself had looked from the windows and seen the figure striding like a pilgrim into the light. Leonardo.

Jung heard the girl passing through the hallway beyond the open door.

Dear heaven
—
what was her name
?
Her name
? She was new. Frau Emmenthal had hired her only last week. And how could he forget her name? It had been impressed upon him so many times with so much courtesy—repeated eight times a day! Smiling—bobbing—speaking softly:
I am…I am…I am…
the girl had told him.

“Dammit, who are you?”

She was carrying a tray of bread and chocolate to Emma, and stopped in the doorway, mystified. The doctor had spoken, but surely not to her.

She peered into the shadows behind her to see who else might be present.

“Me, sir?”

“Yes. You.”

“I am Lotte, Herr Doktor. Charlotte, the new girl. Frau Emmenthal…”

“Ah, yes.” Now what to say? He was making a fool of himself. “Have I seen you before?”

Now, even more of a fool.

“Yes, Herr Doktor. I have been here one whole week.”

“Is there any more of that chocolate in the kitchen?”

“Yes, Herr Doktor.”

“Good. Then bring that tray in here and fix up another for Frau Doktor Jung.”

“Yes, sir.”

Lotte, whose honey hair was woven in a plait that hung down her back, came past him with the tray and set it on the library table amongst a horde of books. At once, she scrambled away.

A clock struck.

Seven.

There would be no sleep. Only bread and chocolate—a pleasant shave—
I will trim my moustache
—take a luxurious bath and move straight on to Pilgrim himself.

Filling his cup, Jung smiled. What an image!
Straight on to Pilgrim without putting on my clothes!
And look—it was snowing again.

Swallowing the first long draught of cocoa, he closed his eyes and conjured the image of his steaming, naked
self rising from the bath and moving through a silent fall of snow.

I shall carry my notebook, of course. And my pen. And perhaps a staff.

A staff. That’s right.

The perfect image of a naked pilgrim.

6

In the Music Room—so-called because it had been set aside for patients for whom music provided therapy—there were twenty-one windows. Seven and seven and seven. Tall and narrow.

At nine o’clock on the morning Jung had been reading the Pilgrim journal, he stood in this room with his back to the door which led to the corridor. The snow beyond the windows fell as if the clouds were counting out pennies—huge, white ghosts of pennies from the days when pennies were the size of pocket-watches. Or so Jung thought he remembered.

Two clocks were ticking, but not in time—in counterpoint.

A grand piano stood in one corner, its lid raised expectantly. A cello, shrouded, leaned against one wall—despondent, abandoned. Three violins rested invisible inside their cases sitting on three gold chairs.

Will no one come?

A cluster of music stands was gathered in a corner. Gossips.
Have you heard…? Did you know…
? Two flutes, an oboe and a clarinet, also encased, had been
laid on a shelf—and on the shelf beneath them, neatly piled, scores by Bach and Mozart lying on their sides. Schumann’s
Piano Concerto in A Minor
stood upright, turned towards the wall. In another corner, what might have been a giant’s boxed ear turned out to be a harp.

Jung had booked the Music Room through Fräulein Unger. Having telephoned the superintendent, she was then dispatched to Suite 306 where Kessler was instructed to bring Mister Pilgrim downstairs at nine o’clock.

It was now twenty minutes past the hour. Had Kessler misunderstood? Had Fräulein Unger misinformed him?

Jung inspected the pictures and pages laid out on a mile-long table—the table set in such a way that when he was seated there, his back would be to the brightest windows.

A mile-long table. Half a mile. Well
—
it is long, at any rate.
To think of its true length was to fail to do it justice. The point was to make an impression—to overwhelm the patient with the dimensions of reality.

As for the light, it was not that he wanted to baffle Pilgrim regarding his identity—but when he spoke, his voice must be disembodied. His intention was to confront Pilgrim directly by indirect means—namely, his word-and-image-association test. Jung delighted in paradoxical phrases such as
direct confrontation by indirect means
. However nonsensical it might sound, it was in fact a precise description of how the test worked.
Here is what is
—
a word
—
an object
—
an image
—
what do you make of it?

Furtwängler scoffed at this technique, which Jung had devised—or, more precisely, was in the process of devising by trial and error. In the course of a given session, Jung would speak single words, short phrases, sound images—
bang! bang! bang!
—the patient having been instructed to respond with the first thought that entered his head. On some occasions, saying nothing, Jung would hold up pictures—drawings, photographs, paintings—and wait for a reaction. A patient’s silence, Jung was learning, could be just as telling as a verbal response.

Nervous for whatever reason, Jung went over to the piano and sat down.

What?

Something simple. His mother’s lullaby, perhaps—if only he could remember the tune. His fingers wandered over the keys, but the tune was fugitive. Perhaps the truth was, Jung did not want to remember it. He played only chords.

All at once he heard Kessler’s voice.

“There’s no one here,” the orderly said. “On the other hand, we’re late. Perhaps he’s gone.”

Jung stood up.

“Good morning,” he said in English.

Kessler clicked his heels and nodded.

Pilgrim, seated in his Bath chair, was silent.

Jung came forward, smiling.

“Surely you heard the music,” he said. “Perhaps the piano is haunted. Do you believe in ghosts, Mister Pilgrim?”

Pilgrim looked away.

Jung flicked his fingers at Kessler.

Kessler nodded and departed, closing the door behind him.

Jung went behind the mile-long table.

“Why don’t you join me?” he said.

Pilgrim did not move.

“I have something here I think you would like to see.”

Still silent, Pilgrim closed his eyes. He might have been listening to music.

“I am looking at a human hand,” Jung said. “Not my own. Another.”

Pilgrim did not stir.

“A woman’s hand.”

The clocks ticked.

Sunlight made its way across the floor in Pilgrim’s direction. Like an animal, it nosed his leather slippers; trousers; knees.

“You’ve seen this hand, I think,” said Jung, the very model of nonchalance. “A woman’s hand, curving inward…”

He waited.

Then he said: “holding…”

The wind blew. It rattled the windows.

Someone wants in
, Pilgrim thought.

Jung deliberately fluttered the piece of paper in his hand.

“It’s only a drawing,” he said. “Not a real hand.” He maintained the easy tone already established.
None of this,
it implied,
is of any real importance. I simply thought it would amuse you

.

Pilgrim’s eyes began to open in the fashion of a dozing cat whose slitted eyes feign sleep.

Jung waved the paper to and fro.

“Are you afraid of paper, Mister Pilgrim? Pages? Notebooks? Sketches?” Jung took up other sheets of paper and shook them all together the way he might have shaken out a piece of cloth to rid it of dust. “Are you frightened? And if so—why?”

He set all the pages aside but one.

Pilgrim lowered his chin and gazed at his hands, resting in his lap.

“In this drawing, Mister Pilgrim,” Jung said, “the artist must have had some reason to choose this particular hand as his subject. What do you think that reason might be?”

The hand is beautiful.

“Do you recall that I said the hand was curving inward, holding…?”

Curving inward. Holding
.

Pilgrim opened his mouth, shaping his lips as if to frame a word—but he made no sound.

Jung stood up and closed the distance between himself, the Bath chair and its passenger.

Pilgrim could see the doctor’s shoes, the bottoms of his trousers and the white, unbuttoned skirts of his smock. Pressed against these skirts, a piece of paper. Blank. Quite blank.

There is nothing there.

He’s lying.

No hand, and therefore nothing in it.

Nothing holds nothing
.

Jung began to reverse the page and to hold it out.

The gesture began so slowly, Pilgrim barely realized it was being made. A breeze had entered the room—a draught—and the paper shimmered—blinding him.

He flung his arm across his face.

“Mister Pilgrim?”

Jung stepped further forward and, taking Pilgrim’s raised arm in his hand, he lowered it.

All of these gestures might have been choreographed—the Doctor and his patient as dancers moving to numbers.

Jung placed the piece of paper in Pilgrim’s hand.

“Look at it,” he said, but gently. “Don’t be afraid. Just look.”

Pilgrim slowly lowered his head. He lifted the page and brought it into focus.

For a moment he stared at the image without expression.