Pilgrim (20 page)
“I took them this morning,” Jung said, “and brought them in to be developed by Vallabreque. I just got them back half an hour ago.”
“Jürgen Vallabreque?”
“How many Vallabreques you think we have working here? Eighty? Of course Jürgen, you…”
“Say it, C.G. Get it out of your system.”
“You idiot.”
“Thank you. I’ve long thought you thought so.”
“Oh—for God’s sake—look at the photographs!”
Jung stood up, polished off his bourbon and went around the desk to pour more from the bottle. This placed him behind Archie Menken’s right shoulder.
Archie drew the lamp closer and laid the photographs out on his blotter—four and four. For almost a minute he studied them, one by one.
Three daffodils—three Lady-Quartermaine-Pilgrims—one Psyche—one motor car (a Daimler).
Finally, Jung said: “notice anything?”
“Well,” Archie said—and drifted. Then he said: “they’re really quite good.”
“Not that. Anything unusual?”
Archie looked at each of the images again.
Jung said: “you got a magnifying glass?”
“No.” And then: “Lady-What’s-her-name looks a bit sad. Is that what you mean? Not well?”
“True—but not what I’m looking for.”
Archie scanned each photograph, holding them one by one close under the light.
Jung leaned in above him.
“Well?”
“Nothing in the daffodil pictures, I presume.”
“No.”
“All the same flower? They really are excellent. You could publish them. The snow—the shadows…”
“Not the daffodil pictures.”
Archie set them aside.
“Psyche?”
“Partly.”
“She’s in four of them—three with Lady What’s-it and Pilgrim—one solo.”
“Yes.”
“Well—her wings are covered with ice. That’s clear. And…”
“Look at Pilgrim.”
Archie laid the three photographs of What’s-her-name
and Pilgrim directly beneath the lamp, stood and bent over them.
“Anything?” Jung asked.
“No.”
And then: “well…”
And then: “in this one…”
Archie picked up the centre photograph and held it closer—crossing to the windows where the light was natural—winter white, less yellow.
“Well…” he said at last, “in this one, there’s something on Pilgrim’s shoulder that isn’t in the others.”
“Thank God,” Jung said, and suddenly sat down in Archie’s chair.
“Why
thank God
?”
“Because it means I’m not crazy.”
Archie laughed. “Not crazy because there’s something on Pilgrim’s shoulder?”
“Tell me what it is.”
“I can’t. It’s too faint.”
“Look again. Look again.”
“Really, C.G., this is ridiculous.”
“L
OOK AGAIN
!”
Archie, stunned by Jung’s sudden vehemence, said nothing and turned back to the window with the photograph.
Then he said: “it looks…like a butterfly. Of course, it can’t be. Probably snow—but it looks like a butterfly.”
Jung closed his eyes and clapped his hands together, locking them in place against his lips.
Archie brought the picture back to the desk and laid it down amongst the others.
“So?” he said. “What is it?”
Jung said nothing.
He stood up, unclasped his hands and gathered the photographs, placed them in his pocket, finished his bourbon, made his way to the door, waved and said: “thank you, Mister Menken.”
Then he left.
Archie sat down.
“It can’t be a butterfly,” he said out loud. “It can’t be.”
But it was.
The following day, at noon, Jung did return to Küsnacht for his lunch.
“
Psyche:
” Emma read from the textbook beside her soup plate, “
personification of a soul filled with the passion of love, and as such conceived in the form of a small winged maiden, or at other times, a butterfly
.”
Emma looked towards the window, where Jung stood gazing out at his daffodil. “There,” she said. “Is that what you wanted?”
“Thank you. Yes.”
His voice was barely more than a whisper.
Then he said: “tell me you see it there, as I do.”
Emma glanced at the contentious photograph, raising a magnifying glass to bring it more clearly into focus. “Yes,” she said. “I see it.”
“Archie thinks it’s just a bit of snow.”
“I thought that myself at first,” Emma told him. “After all, it is frigid out there. How could a butterfly survive? Don’t they hibernate or something when it’s cold. They’re immobilized. Where can it possibly have come from?”
“Psyche.”
Emma almost smiled. She closed the book and took up her soup spoon. Carl Gustav’s back all at once looked rather touching. Sad.
Surely he can’t really believe this,
she thought. And then:
but he does. He believes—or wants to believe—that Psyche’s statue somehow generated the butterfly on Mister Pilgrim’s shoulder. Which, of course, is nonsense and quite impossible.
“Come and eat,” she said. “Have you any more patients today?”
“Yes. One.”
“I see. Well, eat. It will build you up.”
Jung sat down and opened his napkin, tucking it into his collar the way a child might do. Or a peasant.
“Leveritch and his bears,” he said.
“Dear me. Mister Leveritch is so energetic. Are you sure you’re up to it? You look tired.”
“I am tired. But I’m up to it. I have to be. So long as he doesn’t sic his dogs on me.”
“I thought you said he’d given that up.”
“Depends how paranoid he is. For a week, now, yes—there have been no dogs.”
Otto Leveritch believed that he lived in a bear pit. It was probable the image came from the fact he was raised in Berne. Legend had it that, when Berne was
founded in the twelfth century, the founder had declared it would be named after the first creature killed in the next hunt. Thus, the city’s coat of arms displays a bear.
Dancing bears, caged bears, pitted bears and baited bears. These were Leveritch’s constant companions—and he, from time to time, was one of them. At the worst of times, he was attacked by dogs—so he believed—and during these incidents he had to be restrained. Jung had once been intrigued by the poor man’s predicament, but now, having treated him for three months, he found his sessions with Leveritch exhausting. Too many dogs.
“What time is it now?” he asked.
“Not quite one. Stop fretting. Eat. You must take time to live.”
Jung raised his empty spoon and lowered it.
Emma watched him, feigning interest in the garden beyond the windows.
It will be all right
, she thought.
It will be all right. It will pass.
Bears and dogs and butterflies. Men who should be dead but who wouldn’t die. Women who lived on the Moon. This was the life he had chosen and she must keep him alive to live it. The worst of it—moments like this—would pass. He was overworked and overwrought, and over…what? He was
overextended
—that was the word. His reach had exceeded his grasp. But still, he was there—and watching him proudly, she thought:
he will find his way through. He always has.
D
REAM
:
Perhaps there was music. It seemed so. Someone singing.
Leonardo went to the windows, his doublet loosened, all its buttons undone and the ties of his shirt hanging free. The ribbon was gone from his hair and his belt thrown aside.
His back was firelit, the wine-coloured velvet of his doublet streaked with orange as if the flames were fingers and had scratched him.
Come here.
Gherardini hesitated.
Come here. I want to show you something.
What?
Come and see. Come along.
Gherardini remained rooted beside the table, staring down at the drawings of the nude young man.
My brother.
Was this how it happened? A seemingly casual invitation—
come here
—and the lamps beginning to gutter, the firelight reaching out across the floor and the smell of iris root, rosemary and oranges on everything.
Gherardini made his way to the window. Leonardo’s arm, all at once, was around his shoulder.
There. You see? The Mass is over.
Cloaked and hooded figures were pouring from the open doors of Santa Maria Novella.
Leonardo’s arm descended to Gherardini’s waist.
I’m tired. You must help me.
I don’t know how.
What a feeble thing to say. Of course you know how.
Leonardo leaned forward and kissed the young man’s lips. As he did this, pulling Gherardini closer, his free hand fumbled with the strings of Gherardini’s doublet.
Gherardini pulled away.
I have a knife.
Leonardo stood back amazed, but smiling.
A knife
?
Yes.
You must be crazy. What have I done? What have I done I haven’t done a dozen times before?
You don’t understand. I’m afraid.
But you’ve never been afraid. Never. Never. Not of me.
You don’t understand! I’m not…
Not what? Not in love with me?
Leonardo laughed.
Gherardini glanced at the Piazza. The dog was dead. The mourners had dispersed. The doors of the church were closed. The fires still burned, but all the people sitting in their light were already bending into sleep. Nothing human showed in their collective silhouette, which might as well have been a view of hills and mountains seen from a distance.
Leonardo’s hand fell once again on Gherardini’s shoulder.
I always began by taking you from behind. Remember? Standing. Just like this.
He pressed himself insistently against Gherardini’s
back and forced the fingers of his free hand into the boy’s mouth, crooning.
There, there, there. You like this, yes?
His lips pressed hard against Gherardini’s left ear. With his left hand, he pulled away the boy’s doublet, dropping it to one side, reaching at once for the strings that bound Gherardini’s hose to his waist.
You smell just the same
, the voice said.
Your hair, your neck, your skin.
Leonardo took Gherardini’s hand and laid its palm on his own erect penis.
D
ON’T
!
Gherardini spun on Leonardo and struck him in the face.
Leonardo struck back and the force of the blow caused Gherardini to fall.
Leonardo reached down, lifted the boy to his feet and tore his shirt away.
Gherardini’s hands flew up in self-defence.
Leonardo struck him twice in the face. Twice—and then again.
The boy’s arms were crossed, his elbows pressed against his chest. Leonardo’s voice was barely audible.
No one says
don’t
to me. No one. Get on your knees and beg my forgiveness.
The boy sagged.
I’m sorry.
Say it again. And properly.
I am sorry, Master.
Stand up.
Gherardini could not move.
S
TAND UP
!
Leonardo seized the boy’s hair and dragged him to his feet. Then he took him by the arm and pulled him to the table, where he threw him down and, seizing his hose, stripped it off, boots and all, and flung it into the fire.
Gherardini moved one hand to his groin. He closed his eyes.
It was too late.
Leonardo had already seen and turned away.
Gherardini sat up.
“I tried to tell you,” she said. “But you wouldn’t listen.”
Jung read this at midnight, sitting in his study wearing pyjamas and robe. Blindly, he reached for his cheroots, freed one from the case and struck a match.
Barely aware of what he was doing, he lifted the lighted match towards his lips and only just managed to stop himself before he put it into his mouth.
“Agh!” he said. “Dammit all!”
Standing, he filled his tumbler with brandy.
You’re behaving like a drunkard, Carl Gustav.
Who cares? I need it. Besides, I’m perfectly sober.
Setting oneself on fire is hardly an act of sobriety. My, my…One whole tumblerful of brandy. You won’t be sober for long.
Leave me alone.
You drink too much, Carl Gustav. You oughtn’t. Such a fine mind…
“Oh, for God’s sake leave me alone!”
Jung’s words rattled the windowpanes.
Who are you talking to, Carl Gustav? There’s no one here but thee and me.
Ghosts.
There are no ghosts.
If you say so.
I say so.
Jung sat down and drank. Then he glanced at Pilgrim’s infuriating journal with its infuriating story written out in his infuriating hand insinuating infuriating horrors about one of the greatest men who had ever walked the face of the earth and doing it all in a manner so calm and unreflective that it read like pornographic dictation taken down in a courtroom.
And now, this. One more twist.
“
I tried to tell you,” she said.
She said. She said. She said.
All along it’s been about some god-damned woman!
Now, now. Nothing wrong with women. Why don’t you go on reading and find out who she is?
I don’t want to know who she is. She’s a god-damned imposter.
There’s that word again, Carl Gustav. You really shouldn’t descend into these tirades. They’re unbecoming.
I don’t care. I don’t
god-damn well
care!
Clearly. But you should. You’re slipping. By the way, it
hasn’t gone without notice that, while you read, you developed what we used to call at University
a wandering hand.
You recall the phrase? Description of a young man’s self-absorption—politely referred to as self-abuse.