Finally, I think I have her launched on the crucial part of the story, the one which should take us to the graveyard where the bodies are buried. I use the words in a metaphorical sense; but I have the uneasy sense that the metaphor is very close to fact.
I am not well acquainted with the demi-monde. When I was young in Paris, my poverty, my Puritan upbringing and my fear of infection kept me tolerably chaste. In my better years I have managed to find some diversions from monogamy; but I have never had enough money to indulge in the diversions or perversions of the rich – which in any case are not widely available in Zurich! However, I know enough of the gilded world to understand that it protects its privacy very well, and that Magda Liliane Kardoss von Gamsfeld may be exaggerating her risky follies to conceal a far graver matter.
There is another possibility which I must not dismiss: that she is suffering as I am from a progressive fragmentation of the personality, so that it seems that all the beasts of the subconscious are set free to threaten her. In this case, it is quite possible that all I am hearing is an elaborate fairy tale.
We have not even begun to analyse her dream. I am hoping that what she is about to tell me will illuminate some of its meanings. As she begins her narrative, I notice a distinct change of style. She is no longer reliving the sensuous joys of childhood and trying to make me a vicarious partner. Now she is a young adult – sharing her delight in travel and intellectual discovery.
“Papa gave me Padua as ancient princes gave territories and domains to their sons. He made me aware that the gift was a precious one, a share of his own youth. He had studied medicine at ‘Il Bo’ when Padua was still a Habsburg city, where Austrian police patrolled the alleys and Metternich’s spies mingled with the plotters of the Risorgimento at the Caffè Pedrocchi. Because Papa was young and Hungarian he had no time at all for Austrians, Czechs, Slovaks or Croats, and gave all his sympathies to the Italian cause. Because he fell constantly in love with Italian women, married and unmarried, he became an assiduous and practised plotter. He had a fund of tall stories about hairbreadth escapes from jealous husbands and zealous agents of the Emperor. We arrived, the three of us, just after Ferragosto, to find an apartment and complete the formalities for sojourn permits and my admission to the university. Papa lodged us in the best hotel, hired a coachman to attend us every day and set out to display my new inheritance: Venice, Vicenza, the Euganean hills, all the summer splendours of the Lombard plain – and Padua itself, the city of St. Anthony the Wonderworker, of Livy and Petrarch, Boccaccio and Tasso and the greatest names in medical history.
“Papa boasted that he could walk the city blindfold and recite all its glories like a litany: ‘Giotto and Mantegna painted here. Erasmus lectured in philosophy, Vesalius taught anatomy, Fracastorius proposed the first valid theory of contagion, Morgagni described renal tuberculosis and hemiplegic lesions, Leonardo da Vinci made anatomical drawings for texts by Marcantonio della Torre!’”
She breaks off, embarrassed by her own eloquent recitation. I encourage her eagerly.
“Please go on! You are wakening to a wider world. The experience is important and exciting. So, you fell in love with Padua?”
“With the city – and all over again with Papa. The room in my heart which had been closed since the day he forced me to go back to school was opened once more.”
“And once more you were lovers?”
“No. I had a new role now. I was the son with whom he could share the experiences of his own youth.”
“And you enjoyed that?”
“Of course. It seemed to complete things between us.”
“Did your father prescribe the role, or did you just adopt it instinctively?”
She thinks about that for a while and then admits reluctantly:
“I would say Papa prescribed it – not in so many words, he never did that – but by indirection, yes.”
“How, exactly?”
“Well, first there was the question how I, a woman, would fit into the rough-and-tumble of medical school. Not that women students were unknown in Padua. There’s the statue of a woman at the top of the main staircase: Lucrezia Cornaro, daughter of a noble family, who defended her thesis as Doctor of Letters in the great hall. But medical school was something else! So, Papa grinned at me in that funny way of his and said: ‘Personally, I’d suggest a mannish look, a la George Sand! This is the age of the dandies. You’ll look damned attractive in trousers. They’ll think you’re odd of course; but after a month you’ll be part of the scenery – and you won’t have their hands up your skirts at inconvenient moments. As a matter of fact, I know just the woman who can fit you out. She’s the wardrobe mistress at the Fenice in Venice. She designs clothes for Duse!’ So that was how I came to wear my first trouser suit, to understand how much Papa had wanted a son – and how complicated was the love he bore for me.”
“Did you feel comfortable in male clothes?”
“They weren’t male clothes. They were mannish in cut. That’s all. But yes, I felt comfortable; I still do – but now of course I’m in fashion.”
“Did you enjoy the masquerade?”
“It wasn’t a masquerade. It was – how shall I say it? – an expression of attitude. I wanted to work on equal terms with male students. I wanted to be as much of a son as I could to Papa. Does that sound so strange?”
I wish I could tell her that to me, Carl Gustav Jung, it is not strange at all but disturbingly familiar. She who faces me at this moment is my Salome to the life: daughter, lover, protector – son too, perhaps. Is that what the snake means in my dream? I press my patient for more details.
“How else did your father prescribe your role as a son?”
This time she gives a small laugh of embarrassment.
“Again it was by indirection. He was worried, he said, about my physical safety. Paduan students were traditionally a rough and roistering lot. In the old days they had a pleasant custom called ‘Chi va li’. Literally it meant ‘Who goes there?’ It was a challenge to any stranger who passed by the wine shops or brothels near ‘Il Bo’. The passer-by had either to pay a tax or be beaten up by drunken scholars. So, Papa decided I had to learn to protect myself. He took me to a salle d’armes run by a Piedmontese called Maestro Arnaldo who taught me the elements of fencing and how to fire a pistol.
“Then Papa bought me a swordstick and a small pocket pistol which he called a derringer. I never used the swordstick; Lily kept that by her for protection in the apartment. The pistol came in useful on a few occasions – once with a very drunken Englishman on a boat ride down the Brenta!
“Apart from that, Papa provided me with certain male privileges: a member’s card for the Club della Caccia where Lily and I could always hire a mount, an entree to a gambling salon in Venice, which was also a place of rendezvous for lovers or lonely hearts, and a comfortable credit arrangement with the local office of the Banco Padovano. As for other entertainment, Papa told me: ‘You’ll have to find your own. If you’re ever stupid enough to get pregnant, come straight home to me. At least you’ll get a clean job and no reproaches!’”
“A clean job and no reproaches.” I seize on the phrase and try to force her to examine it with me. “Doesn’t that strike you as terribly cold blooded from a father to a daughter – or even to a son! Didn’t he teach you any morality at all?”
She ponders the question for a few seconds, then answers with a shrug:
“Some, I suppose; but it was all very simple and pragmatic. Don’t lie, because you’ll trip yourself up in the end. Why steal? You have more than you can use – and besides you lose friends and end up in gaol. As for sex, it’s a game until you want to marry and have children; but if you play in the mud, you’ll get dirty. That was about the size of it.”
“Does that still satisfy you?”
“No; but it’s all I have. I have no religious sense at all. Apparently you have. That’s why Gianni recommended you.”
“Gianni?” The name eludes me for an instant. Then I remember: “Oh yes! Our Italian colleague. What’s his name?”
“Di Malvasia. Your wife remembers him quite well. They were dinner companions at Weimar. He’s a Roman Catholic. He’s also homosexual and he let his family talk him into marriage. He’s very unhappy; but he claims that his religion has helped him to come to terms with the situation. Do you believe that’s possible?”
“Most certainly it’s possible.”
“I wish you’d explain how. Gianni tried, but I felt he was a rather biased witness. With him the important thing was that you could confess your sins to a priest and be sure you were forgiven by God. It’s very comforting; but how can anyone believe a thing like that?”
We have touched on this matter before, but briefly and tentatively. Now she has brought me back to it. I am not sure whether she wants to create a diversion, or whether she is genuinely seeking enlightenment. In either case, I must offer her a reasonable answer. I begin on a light note.
“Let’s see how well they trained you in Padua. Let’s define the terms. What is religion? Give it to me simply and plainly, as you understand it.”
She ponders a moment and then with more than a hint of mischief in her smile accepts the challenge.
“Very well, doctor. Incominciamo . . . let’s begin! Religio: a Latin noun. Generic meaning: a bond, a duty, an obligation to reverence. Religion: a system of belief and worship. Examples: Christianity, animism, Islam. Enough?”
“You’re doing very well, dear colleague.”
“Then will you give me a definition in return?”
“If I can.”
“What is insanity?”
“Again a word of Latin derivation. Sanus, healthy. Insanus, unhealthy. Generic meaning: not of sound mind, mentally deranged. However, in common speech, the word is loosely used to cover a whole variety of symptoms, from simple hysteria to fixed delusional states or violent dementia. May I now ask the point of the question?”
“Let’s put the two definitions together: religion and insanity. Let’s take a concrete example to test our logic. Gianni di Malvasia believes in God, the Roman Catholic Church, auricular confession – the whole book! You believe in a god. You don’t know who or what he is; but you carve your belief over the lintel of your door. ‘Called or uncalled, the god will be present.’ Me? I believe none of that: no god, no Church, nothing but what I see, smell, hear and touch. Now we can’t all be right. One of us, at least, has to be insane by definition: victim of a fixed delusional state. Which one is it? Gianni, me or you?”
“The answer, dear colleague, is simple. None of us is insane. The definitions are inadequate and the logic is defective.”
The words are hardly out of my mouth when I realise that I have made a ghastly mistake. I have let her trap me into an academic argument for which I am in no wise prepared. If I allow it to continue in these scholastic terms, we shall both end with our heads against a brick wall – and she will be the one still laughing. For once, it seems, I am forced into an act of humility. I have to admit my own ignorance. I am, however, still vain enough to dress it up as wisdom. I get out my sketch pad and a heavy black pencil. I have her stand behind my chair. As she leans over my shoulder, her perfume envelops me, the nearness of her body excites me. I draw a semicircle. Then, I draw three little stick figures – man, woman and child – standing on the straight line of the diameter. I explain the illustration.
“This is man’s simplest and most primitive concept of himself and his habitat. He lives on a flat earth under a domed sky. The earth is full of creatures, great and small. The sky has the sun by day, the moon and stars by night and an ever-changing pattern of clouds out of which come thunder and lightning and rain. Between the earth and the sky, the winds blow, balmy or blustery, according to the season. Man and his partner, woman, are animals who dream, animals who ask questions. Who lives up there beyond the clouds? If we walk far enough, will we fall off the edge of the land? Who made us? What happens when we die? What makes the thunder and lightning? Man and woman have no answers; so they invent them. They make fairy tales, myths which they pass on to their children. On the myths, their children build religions, systems of belief; they construct rituals, constitute authorities. They make images of their gods, build temples to enshrine them and symbolise their presence in human affairs. And everything fits nicely, everything works, until the system is overworked or overburdened by events. If the king becomes a tyrant, his people revolt and kill him. If pestilence strikes the land and the god is blind to all the offerings laid at his feet, then he is tumbled from his pedestal, his shrine is laid waste and the puzzled tribe looks for a new protector.”
Suddenly she draws very close to me. Her hands touch my cheeks, then cover my eyes. Her lips brush my ear as she whispers:
“You’re a very clever man, Doctor Jung. I wonder if you believe the half of it?”
A moment later she is back in her chair, demure as a schoolgirl waiting for praise or reproof. I decline to offer either. I finish my little homily, though a little less rhetorically than I began it.
“And that’s the state you find yourself in now. The ethics of Eden don’t work in the big world. The song birds have disappeared; now there are only vultures and carrion crows. Papa isn’t there any more, and the other men you meet don’t want to take his place. For that matter, neither do I!”
Instantly she is in a fury. I half expect her to leap from the chair and strike me. I note with clinical concern how swiftly the change occurs, how hard she has to battle to control herself. I smile and try to placate her.
“Don’t be angry, please! I’m not mocking you. I like to be caressed – especially by a beautiful woman. But it wasn’t me you were playing peekaboo with; you were re-enacting a scene: happy days in Padua with Papa.”
She jerks up her head, in that now familiar gesture of defiance.
“Not all of them were happy! Don’t believe that! In the end Lily and I were glad to see the back of him.”
“Why?”
“For the first time in my life I saw him drunk and violent. It shocked me. What shocked me more was that Lily could handle him and I couldn’t. He wouldn’t let me near him; he threatened to kill me if I touched him.”
“Don’t you think we should talk about that?”
She gives me a pale, unsteady smile and points to my sketch.
“It isn’t a pretty story like yours.”
I dare not tell her now that my story is a fairy tale, a myth. It never happened. Man is a fierce and dangerous animal, ugly in rage, brutal in rut, desperate in death. The only hopeful thing about him is the angel-spirit that peeps sometimes from his savage eyes, that teaches, all too rarely, a gentleness to his lethal hand.