Fünfundzwanzig Juni, Bavaria—Dear Uncle John, We’re leaving Bad Wörishofen for Budapest tomorrow. Hymanfinger has arranged for Mum to be treated by Dr. Zoltan Zarday. Perhaps you’ve heard of him, the celebrated Persuasionist? His remedy consists of a series of talks with the patient. He asks questions and then explains the cause of the disease. The force of his logic is said to persuade people back to health. It sounds unmedical, I admit, but the results speak for themselves. Mum feels certain he can cure her. In any case we can learn Hungarian. I’m getting perfectly tired of Wie lange sind Sie schon hier? Also, I believe Zoltan Zarday is a Friend.
It was five days before food stayed down. Kardleigh insisted there had been no post for him, though of course there was prep. Moss brought him books from his cupboard, things he’d tracked down on her mention but not yet read. The Ash Wednesday poem made no sense, but it caused him to shed tears, such was his weakness. As for Miss Sayers, he’d never heard of the woman, but if her Lord Peter could turn a jailhouse interview to seduction, what could really be impossible?
Upon release from the Tower, he found only one letter in his pigeonhole, from his mother. Three days were the longest he’d gone without hearing from the girl; now six? Stepping on the bottom row, he reached for the back of his pigeonhole. There had always been a gap, but was it wider? He sought out Fardley. There was a chink, he explained, between his pigeonhole and the wall. Was it possible anything had fallen? Fardley stiffened: There was nothing skew-whiff about pigeonholes. Attached to wall. Wouldn’t move until the Day of Judgment. The end of time. Fardley had a line in repetitions, but just as the man searched for another apocalypse, inspiration struck and he shifted his fish and chips, revealing the tray for Grieves’s evening post. If the young master had exercised a bit of patience, Fardley said, he would have found his pigeonhole full in less than an hour, for here were three, correction four, letters to his name.
The library stairs taxed his strength. He sat by the window, breathless.
The first two were dated four days earlier, the third and fourth afterwards. She’d changed to envelopes bearing a stripe. Both of the earliest began in medias res—which the first? All postmarked Budapest and concerning, it seemed, the fabled Zoltan Zarday.
He said he was leaving in ten days’ time for a lecturing tour, but the treatment takes two months, at minimum.
It took persuasion to get past his secretary, a young man with some French. (If the girl had unleashed a fraction of the whirlwind she’d been at the Academy, Gray reckoned the lad had little chance.)
My mother would be a quick patient, Dr. Zarday. She has experience with persuasion.
(Asterisk, to her correspondent: Friends were called Quakers, which was what her family were. They operated by persuasion.)
Can you see, now, why I knew Zoltan Zarday was the one?
The Hungarian resisted, but she was up to the challenge. If he could not accept her mother, she asked that he refer them to another persuasionist. Alas, he replied, he was unique, which was why his schedule did not permit—
She could come anytime, I said, day or night. I confessed I’d taken a horrible gamble, that when Mum had learned the Kneipping was a failure, she wanted to go home, and the only way I could get her to try Budapest was to tell a little (well, substantial) lie and say my godfather had written him and that he’d agreed to take her on.
The next envelope picked up with descriptions of a consulting room, a high-ceilinged apartment on the first floor, oil paintings, a tiled stove diffusing the last of the day’s heat. She described the man’s inscrutable response to her throwing down the gauntlet and more or less insulting him (in another post?); their adjournment to a cukrászda (meaning?) that overlooked the Danube; crimson chairs in wrought-iron, a table covered in crumbs (café?).
Have you ever tasted Hungarian kavet, Miss Líoht?
She asked him to call her Cordelia. His closest friends, he said, called him Zarday. (Where were her mother and governess at the time?) He smoked a pipe: description, accouterments. He discoursed: we Magyars this, we Magyars that; a castle that withstood Tartars, Turks, and even the feeble plot of Bela Kun (cracking name for a villain, noted); Matyas Cathedral made mosque by the Ottomans (Had she taken notes or was this from memory?), now finally restored. There, statue of Saint Stephen—martyr? No, king. Coffee, pastries (names, she confessed, copied later from a menu); how to drink kavet: in tiny glasses, all at once, with a toast, Eggy-Sah-Gara.
Letter three broke off there. She couldn’t have teased him more if she tried. The tea bell rang. He ignored it. Letter four:
There’s a constant ache in my ribs. You’d laugh if you saw me. Here she is finally being treated by Zoltan Zarday, we’re in the most beautiful city, and all I can think of is my grandparents’ cottage in Drayton Fen where we lived when I was small. There was a smell in the air a few nights ago, near the river, that reminded me, and now all I want is England.
They were doing bits of The Odyssey in Greek. Nostos, homecoming; nostalgia, longing for same.
The way I see it, we’ll be home before summer’s end, I’ll go back to school, and Da will have been frightened enough that he’ll come home and be good to her. He loves her better when he’s been away, and if she would only believe in him, everything would work out.
Up the side margin:
I think there’s a good chance I can make this happen.
Page two, dated next morning:
I keep imagining you reaching into your pigeonholes and taking down my letters. You hide them in those secret pockets of your jacket until you can sneak up to our Chair Loft. Sometimes I read my horrible script and try to imagine you looking at it. Deciphering? Scornful of its mess? Can you smell the sausages they make in the restaurant downstairs? What about my mother’s verbena toilet water? What becomes of my letters once you’ve read them? I suppose they start to smell of mildew and cabbage. I still haven’t been able to eat cabbage (was it called chin flab??) since. And I haven’t laughed like that.
The papers she touched could escape Budapest; for the price of a stamp, they chugged to the sea, boarded a packet across the Channel and the night mail to Yorkshire, where Fardley’s stained fingers sorted them by House. The words her pen had scraped into the page, thoughts captured by the swirl of her ink, these alone had a passport to nostos.
Uncle John, You’re making my work more difficult than ever. I’ve stopped showing her the articles you send. The Lancet put her into tears most of the evening! She already has Miss Murgatroyd pestering her. (I can tell you’ve been writing her, too, though she won’t admit it.) Whatever it is that you’re trying to accomplish, please stop, if only for my sake.
John had written his publisher and negotiated terms for delivery: excerpt in September, finished manuscript by April. Arguments could be revived, new evidence sought, fresh avenues explored. Chaos might drive war, politics, and human intercourse, but it need not prevail everywhere.
You mustn’t believe a thing Miss M says. She distrusts Zoltan Zarday because Mum is usually in a delicate state when she returns from her treatment, but it’s helping her. You must trust me. She has more energy than she’s had in weeks and most importantly, she adores him.
He had never tolerated drivel from his students, even from the thickest of the Third, and he would not tolerate it elsewhere. If necessary, he would begin the book over from scratch. If necessary, he would write ten letters a day across the Channel. If necessary, he would forgo sleep entirely.
I can’t believe you’d take Miss M’s word over mine! Zoltan Zarday is a gifted physician. He has not “exerted unfair influence over an infirm woman.” And he most certainly never “brainwashed” me in our first meeting!
Term finished in less than three weeks. He would prepare his reports in advance and take the first train south.
I know Miss Murgatroyd is respectable and well meaning, but if only you could see the change in Mum since we’ve come to Budapest, you’d believe in Zoltan Zarday. He’s a good man. I mean a man actually filled with goodness. He wears a thick beard like a Viking. She likes to tease him about it, and today she told him she was going to bring soap and razor to shave it herself. Apparently his reply was, “You like boyish men, Margaret?”
He would leave behind the pitiful reserve that had shackled him, the pigeonhearted tact, the failure of nerve. He’d arrive on their doorstep and set down his bags. He would speak, and they would listen!
I suppose it was inevitable, Tommy Gray.
It had become habit—letters daily, begun any which place.
Miss M unveiled her diagnosis today: auto-intoxication, brought on by a weak colon. She and my mother are so churlish with one another. My mother wouldn’t care a fig for M’s opinion if it didn’t include criticism of ZZ, who we all know is holier than St. Matyas.
Miss M had called the girl naive and deluded. He nearly gasped reading it. Who would dare?
“Cordelia, dear, philosophies like those of Zoltan Zarday are the product of unhealthy dissipations. What those people call Internal Consciousness is nothing more than a gruesome and abnormal self-absorption.”
Even his mother would loathe this old trout. He burned to give her a piece of his mind.
Uncle John, There is no need to think of coming to Budapest! What does it matter whether Hymanfinger recommended Dr. Zarday or not? Mum’s eating more than ever, and in three days we’ll be moving on to Switzerland, where she’ll be under the constant supervision of a renowned medical staff. In the third place, it would give her a desperate scare if you dropped everything and came here. She’d think she was dying!
A bargain had been struck with the Hungarian, or so he gathered (lost lacuna?). Zoltan Zarday had made arrangements for them to take the Cure at a sanatorium convenient to his lecture tour (not, please God, near Hans Castorp). He had promised to pass by and see his patient, but now, it seemed, the indomitable Miss Murgatroyd had made her last stand. Mrs. Líoht must be told the truth about the Hungarian’s qualifications, Miss M insisted. She must be told that dear Mr. Grieves had not recommended him. If necessary, Miss M would summon Mr. Grieves herself.
The installment ended abruptly, and he had to wait two days for a short page, backdated, describing not her clash with the governess, but her tour of local houses of worship. I went to three churches today, even a Jewish one. She didn’t explain what she’d done in those places except to say she was listening for messages. Three churches that day, two the day before, but no Almighty wire.
The envelopes lost their stripe and acquired Swiss postage. Would you know, Tommy Gray, it happened just as it always does when you most need help. At the Gellert Baths (Budapest), she’d discovered a leaflet in English. The governess, in turn, read it with relish, and its essay by an English physician expressed her views to a T. With it, Miss M approached her employer. “For example, Margaret dear, here is some literature about a simple home remedy, Carmola, recommended by a Dr. Light, guaranteed to resolve digestive ripples within two days.” The mother thought it a cruel joke and responded in kind. Elle a reçu leur congé. (Footnote, in pencil—Carmola Ltd her father’s business, Carmola his product though he’d never touch it himself; of course he wasn’t a physician, but you had to say so in the medicine business.) The governess was bewildered. Elle a fondu en larmes. She never understood the bait she’d taken. Elle était mise au vert. She failed to recognize English spellings of Irish surnames. Elle est maintenant hors de page. She failed to recognize the assassin’s knife when wielded by a girl she thought innocent. J’en ai fait mon deuil. The mother’s position, Gray thought, was like Hans Castorp’s sled. Il n’y a si bonne compagnie qui ne se quitte. High on a slope skidding down to a grave.
The Gimmelwald Heilanstalt, John gathered, was the genuine article. His goddaughter’s handwriting had come under control, and Meg wrote him three lines daily. Their calm prose calmed him in turn: The establishment perched on a cliff in the Alps. From any window, gray-and-white granite reared into the clouds. At night, the air hissed with waterfalls. A godly, righteous, and sober life after all the mess. Absent the governess, recalled home by family crisis, his goddaughter had become her mother’s companion, more sister, she claimed, than daughter. She was on hand during the indoctrination. She took notes at lectures on Right Living. She reminded her mother how long to inhale, how quickly to exhale, what position to assume while breathing, how many layers of rug to maintain around which limbs. She chided her for sitting indoors, a vice apparently known as Being Unfaithful to the Cure. The hours were the hours of childhood in that regime whose sole aim appeared to be the pacification of the physical machine.
The weather here is splendid. Everything is tidy and correct. We have hopes for a rapid recovery. The San director has a fondness for maxims, but even if il m’agace les dents, it’s a small sacrifice for so great a cure. Until tomorrow, Uncle John, chew your food.
July 13, night—Sometimes I’m afraid that I don’t quite love her. Sometimes I want to strike her, or cut her, though of course I love her, more than myself!
Script small as a whisper:
Today I thought what a relief it will be to stay in one place when she dies.
Large and shouting:
I can’t believe I even wrote those words. I deserve not to have a mother.
The yellow Swiss letters seemed too poisonous to keep, but what could be done with them? If he burned them, their ash would drift into the air, and if caught by a wind, return to her. If he buried them like a mummy, protected them with a curse, who could say some enterprising robber wouldn’t dig them up again? What chemistry made dynamite inert?
July 17, dawn—There’s an American doctor everyone whispers about, a man called Felix Rush, just as notorious as you’d imagine. Dr. Himenflingher once said he’s no better than an exterminator. He has a new treatment called Penicillin, which has cured many things but which Himenflingher said has a 98 percent chance of killing you first. You can see Dr. Rush on the front of this month’s Journal de Médecine. Khaki trousers, wilderness, caption: Aux grands maux les grands remèdes.
Great ills, great remedies.
4pm east wing toilet—This morning she had another attack, brought on by her first evaluation. They said she’d made no progress and that it was her fault for resisting the Cure. She made me wire Zoltan Zarday, but there’s been no reply. After lunch, she announced we were leaving, and then, while she was arranging the train, the San director called me into his office and said if she didn’t commit to perfect rest she would be dead in six weeks! She says if she doesn’t hear from Zoltan Zarday by suppertime, we’ll go to Felix Rush in Paris. She’s a young woman!
King’s Lynn, Norfolk, 22 July—My dear Crusoe, The enclosed parcel should address some of your questions. The volumes belong to one of our junior surgeons, but there’s no rush to return. You may be vexed that I’ve taken the liberty, but as my son likes to say, hard cheese. You can pay me back by finishing your book.
Will you be at the same address during the holidays? Our own will be sadly curtailed this year. We’ve always gone with my family to Norway for the month of August, but this year my father (having retired from work and left the family business in my brother’s unreliable hands) has insisted on taking my mother around the Aegean. Thus, we’ll be spending the holidays at home, the boy no doubt brooding, but I within reach of my husband’s library, which may well contain materials of use. (Don’t bother protesting, I shall send what I see fit.) Perhaps you’d come down and cheer us up for a time, or at least sort the boy out?
I was sorry not to be able to come north for your Patron’s Day celebrations, and your descriptions of the day have only increased my regret. The Wilberforce you mention, is he the same whose exploits on the cricket pitch are peppering the newspapers? I do recall that my son was very fond of him. He must have written to Wilberforce every day of his first holiday home. I remember thinking how absurd it was that, after all the fuss about wanting to be removed, he then couldn’t seem to tear himself away. Wilberforce wrote to him a good deal as well, if I recall, but by the summer holidays the friendship had faded. I do hope his studies this term have improved him. A repetition of Easter would be more than I could bear. I’ve no idea how you tolerate boys of this age, though I suppose men have their methods unknown to mothers, and rightly so. Whatever the case, and whatever the temper, I await your next and remain, your faithful, Friday.
John finished his coffee both pleased and uneasy at this first of two morning letters. Her parcel contained three books and several journals, all of which he’d have to skim and return before his departure tomorrow. His term reports lay finished on the desk. Tomorrow night he would board the train and travel to wherever this latest envelope detailed. He’d thought to save it for later, but perhaps before lessons there was just enough time …
Uncle John, Of course, there was a telephone at the San, but patients weren’t allowed to use it. At any rate, we’ve left Switzerland and are sightseeing on the Continent. We’re quite fed up with doctors, and before you say it, Mum hasn’t resigned herself to anything. We’ve decided to travel “impromptu” for a time, so I can’t give you an address beyond the poste restante below. Sorry we can’t join up with you next week, but Mum is in good hands. Please don’t worry. Cordelia.
p.s. John, darling, everything is well. Will write in a few weeks. Try to be cheerful and enjoy the summer holidays. Love, Meg.
He shoved the letter under the blotter as if leather could silence its contents. Could she really slip again from his—a dose was needed, something from the decanter on a spoon to see him through the morning. It wasn’t his practice, but desperate times …
The day stretched before him, a tiresome, severe suspense. The headache threatened again as John began his last lesson, a presentation with photographs to the Fifth on recent excavations in Minos. He had looked forward to it for some time, but when the hour came, the material felt as dry and irrelevant as Ozymandias. He mentally indexed, as boys asked questions, through his diary in search of someone he could ring, wire, write, some tendril he could send out to retrieve them. After lessons he jostled through the crowds to his study, bargaining with the Almighty if he still existed. If he would deliver them both safely to John’s hands, John would remain forever faithful—to the woman, to the girl. He would break off all other correspondences. He would dedicate himself to their protection, expecting nothing in return. He would embrace the life of an ascetic, if only, if only …
The end-of-term speeches were interminable, so Moss stood with Carter in the narthex, scrounging breeze as it came. Carter and Swinton were leaving, and Moss had been promoted to Head Boy.
—You’re a natural, Carter said. They’ll follow you. But when you’re Head of House you can’t have grudges.
Moss knew he was blushing; it never looked good on him.
—I gave you dorms last night, Carter said, because of your—
—I’d’ve volunteered anyway—
—your thing with him.
—Please.
Halton had landed himself in hot water on the very last evening of term. Crighton claimed it was deliberate, a transparent plea for the attention Moss had denied him since Patron’s Day.
—You weren’t there, Carter said. You didn’t see how desperate he—
—Don’t tell me.
—Halton’s a good egg. He could do a lot for the House. But if you don’t throw him a bone, I reckon he’ll make your life hell.
—And so I charge you, Jamie was saying, to recall Whitman’s words as you leave us, some for a short while, some for longer, and go the unknown ways, O Pioneers, our Pioneers!
Hear-hears flooded the chapel as John watched from the alcove. Jamie looked as he always did, radiant and easy. The organ began, and the back of his throat yearned for the drop that would calm it. How was it that love should settle in him so fiercely and unsuitably? To be sure, the life of a monk—bachelor schoolmaster, what difference?—was his only recourse now.
Gray set his tuck box in the quad to await the next fleet of station cabs. All the pulses of the world, all the joyous, all the sorrowing, these are of us, they are with us; we to-day’s procession heading, we the route for travel clearing. He would be clearing no routes. Norway, steamships, midnight sun with the London cousins—canceled. His procession headed only to Swan Cottage and the woman marrying his godfather, the woman whose vapid correspondence was an offense to real letters. Six weeks without one? Six weeks of purgatory, and at such a juncture! It was like reading three-quarters of a Dickens novel and then having it snatched away just as the plot had begun to unwind.
Fardley emerged from the House—carrying an empty mail tray. Hermes! Good Hermes did not forget his heir, but winged on the last breath with one final gift … Pigeonholes, envelope—France! He ran for the cab, and at the station boarded a carriage with boys he knew lived north. They got off at Selby, and at last he ran his knife beneath the blessed blue flap:
Paris—TG, If ever you were my friend, you’ll do as I ask and tell no one. The train leaves soon which will take us to Le Havre, and from there to New York, America. Dr. Felix Rush has a clinic in Asheville, North Carolina, where my mother will begin treatment at once. If only Zoltan Zarday had answered our wire! I’d thought, once, that he was different, and for a while he actually seemed it, but when I think of him now with his kavet, his beard, his old-fashioned bowler hat, I almost—oh, forget it, he doesn’t matter anymore.
Be on the lookout for a parcel I posted through the morning mail. I rescued the contents from a rubbish bin and cannot keep them, for obvious reasons. If I have any favors left with you, I ask this: write to my neighbor Mrs. Kneesworth (The Grange, Museum Street, Saffron Walden, Essex) and tell her what has occurred. In case you are tempted to speak to my godfather, don’t. I will write him once we arrive safely in America. If I had the time, I would write a book to you, my truest, most trusted friend, but as the cab is here, goodbye will have to do. My best wishes and most sincere thanks. With love.