Human Traces Read online

  It was clear to Thomas that Olivier had put a vast amount of emotional energy into understanding the world as it appeared to him; not only energy, but reason and creative intellect as well. These mental faculties were clearly separate from the perceptual area of his brain which told him that there was a woman at his shoulder and a creature on his thigh, where he occasionally made dismissive, brushing movements.

  ‘. . . and I can understand the contents of books I have not read, because I have been chosen,’ Olivier was saying.

  ‘Do you know by whom you have been chosen?’

  Olivier considered. ‘Do you know that the fire in the sky is how God cleansed the world of sin?’

  ‘No, I did not know that.’

  ‘Really? It’s quite simple. I have the powers of blessing, they were given to me.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘By God. You see, when a cloud forms, there is a slow increase of pressure from the vapour gathering inside. If this bears down too hard, you will have thunder. That is how mankind first came down from Heaven.’

  ‘In a cloud?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you been to Heaven?’

  Olivier’s fingers were moving very rapidly through their rhythm. ‘Yes, I have been to Heaven.’

  ‘What happened there?’

  ‘Jesus held me.’

  ‘Jesus held you?’

  ‘Yes. In his arms.’

  Thomas said nothing, hoping Olivier would continue, but then saw him glance up, as though listening to another voice.

  ‘What else happened in Heaven?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You were telling me about Heaven. How Jesus took you in his arms. What else happened there?’

  Olivier rocked slowly backward and forward on his chair. When Thomas had first begun his conversations with him (he hesitated to call it ‘treatment’), Olivier had been tirelessly expository, extremely patient in his explanations of the universe he inhabited; often he seemed enthusiastic about it, eager to share with Thomas its wonders and its laws. No one had ever taken the time to ask him before, and he seemed to enjoy talking about it. These days, he was a little less lively, Thomas noticed, and that was something he had observed with patients suffering from the same disease in the county asylum. By the time they reached the age of about forty, they began to lose the fight to make a cogent world; they seemed less able to make even workaday connections. Sometimes Thomas pictured the inside of their brains as being something like the network of twigs and branches in an oak tree, though perhaps a million times more dense. He watched them when their faces grew puzzled and their speech slowed down; the logic became tenuous; the content of the sentences began to loop, repeat and trail off into non-sequiturs. He pictured the misrouting of electrical impulses over all those years, the auditory area chronically aflame with non-existent voices; he imagined the damage done by years of short-circuit in the brain, the build-up and overspill of chemicals at the point of electrical exchange; and in his mind’s eye he saw not local ‘lesions’ but entire pathways burned away, like the landscape after the scorched-earth retreat of a vandal army.

  ‘Olivier?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What else happened in Heaven?’

  Olivier brushed vigorously at his trouser legs. ‘I was given the powers of speaking languages, the gift of tongues.’

  ‘And do you speak other languages?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Which languages?’

  ‘I speak German. I speak the High German, the proper German. It is called Royal German, not the other one, which is the Nasal German. You know, because that is spoken through the nose. It’s a different language. I learned that from my mother.’

  ‘Your mother?’

  ‘Yes. My real mother is Joan of Arc. We are descended from Jesus Christ. The Sovereign has given me the genealogy, I have it all written down.’

  ‘So are you also related to the Virgin Mary?’

  ‘No, no. She was not his mother. No, no. Elisabeth was his real mother, the mother of John the Baptist. Mary was not Jesus’s real mother. I can trace my lineage back to Adam.’

  ‘Have you ever been to the Garden of Eden?’

  ‘Eden, eaten. Not eaten.’

  ‘Would you like to? Is there anything we can do to make you feel happier? Do you like your room in the schloss? It is a good view, isn’t it? Across the lake?’

  Olivier looked puzzled.

  ‘Why are you here, Olivier? What are you doing here?’

  ‘I have been sent here for some reason.’ He seemed to regain some of the old enthusiasm, and a little of the donnish quality returned. ‘You see, there is a formula by which I have worked out the number of cells in my brain and in this way I am unique. My thoughts are in fact recorded for posterity. And I think that is why I am here.’

  ‘I meant here, in this building, in this part of Austria-Hungary.’

  Olivier said nothing. He was lost again.

  ‘How old are you, Olivier?’

  ‘I am twenty. I am twenty years old.’

  Thomas knew that this was the age at which he had been removed from home and sent to the asylum by old Rebière.

  ‘And do you have any brothers and sisters?’

  ‘Yes, I have a brother.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘He is . . . He is . . . I don’t know how old he is.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘He is . . . He is at school.’

  Thomas stood up. ‘I have spoken to you enough this morning.’ He laid his hand on Olivier’s arm. ‘I think you should go for a walk in the sunshine and then have something nice to eat at lunch.’

  He escorted Olivier to the door and watched as Daisy took him out beneath the stairs into the cloister, his fingers still fluttering in their rapid pattern of touch.

  XII

  IN THE SPRING of the new year Thomas became uneasily aware of one of Jacques’s patients, a fair-haired young woman, fashionably dressed, with a healthy, trim physique but a weary, troubled manner. He saw her walk rapidly from her room on the first floor above the courtyard through the cloister to the dining room and exchanged pleasantries with her as she passed by; she smiled and returned his greetings in a clear, soft voice, but there was something about her demeanour that troubled him. She appeared feverish, he thought; there were sometimes spots of colour in her cheeks. He noticed these when he saw her emerging from Jacques’s room after a protracted consultation, but he was inclined to ascribe it to the rigours of the interview: hysterical or neurotic patients were frequently embarrassed or upset by the content of what they had revealed.

  Thomas’s misgivings, however, would not leave him. He found himself fascinated by this woman, with her agile movements that seemed to mask pain, her loose fair curls neatly held back from the skin of her face and the reading glasses she removed if she felt she was being watched in the courtyard or in the dining room; he was intrigued by the way her expensive clothes seemed at odds with a rather studious manner. He was also anxious that she might be seriously unwell, and one morning brought up her case with Jacques.

  ‘Ah yes,’ he said. ‘Fräulein Katharina. She is a very fascinating problem, I think. She has made good progress and she will shortly be leaving us. I am writing up her casenotes because I am hoping to read a paper to the autumn meeting of the Psychiatric Association in Vienna. I shall have to ask her permission of course and find another name for her. Why do you want to know?’

  ‘She intrigues me.’

  ‘She is an intriguing woman. In some ways a textbook case of hysteria, I think, but with interesting complications.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you would allow me to read your case history?’

  ‘I was trying to pluck up the courage to ask you to do just that. I would value your opinion very much indeed. As soon as I have finished it, I shall pass it over.’

  Thomas decided to ask Sonia if she knew any more about this Fräulein Katharina, but when he went up t
o her apartment he could find no trace of her.

  Sonia was sitting in her favourite seat beneath the cedar tree, looking up to the mountains. The previous afternoon, she had gone into town on the pretext of visiting some tradesmen, but had made a secret visit to the gynaecologist, who had confirmed what she believed: that she was three months pregnant.

  At the age of thirty-seven, she felt it might be her last chance. The doctor assured her that he could see no reason why she should miscarry a second time, but did urge her to rest each morning for as long as she could. Sheepishly, because she was worried that Jacques might think her idle, she explained to him what the gynaecologist had said.

  ‘And the reason I must rest, my love,’ she said, ‘is that I am expecting a child.’

  She watched his dark eyes carefully as she broke the news, and she saw tears rise up the iris, tremble on the lower lid, then run in two unchecked lines down his cheeks. He reached out his arms and held her close to his chest, with a comically exaggerated care, as though already aware of a third person between them. He made her undress and lie down on the bed, so that he could run his hand over her belly and kiss it.

  Sonia looked down from the pillows. ‘How big is he now, do you think?’

  Jacques bent his thumb in half and pointed to the top joint. ‘About this long, I think. He has a head and limbs. A large head, small arms and legs.’

  ‘Does he have a brain?’

  ‘Not much yet.’

  ‘Oh dear, do you think he is a simpleton?’

  ‘No, I think he will take after his mother.’

  ‘Stop it. What else can you tell me about him?’

  ‘He is sleeping a lot. He is very warm and happy in there.’

  ‘Oh, I love him so much, don’t you?’

  Jacques laughed.

  ‘I mean it,’ said Sonia. ‘He is a perfect sweetheart.’

  ‘Will he be English or French?’

  ‘I don’t know. Ask him.’

  Jacques placed his lips on Sonia’s belly and spoke in German, then French, then English; then he put his ear to the skin, where a thin brown pigmentation was already starting to make a line.

  ‘He says he is an Englishman because he loves his mother best.’

  ‘Good boy. What a charmer. And what does he like doing?’

  ‘He likes sleeping. Wait a minute. I’ll ask him. He says he would like to play cricket.’

  ‘I feel I know him already,’ said Sonia. She grew suddenly serious. ‘I have known him all my life, since I was a child. He has been there since before I was born.’

  She began at once to cry, the sobs taking over her body, as she came to see the enormity of what she said, of this life about to happen, something eternal, returning from a land unknown.

  Thomas had to be told the news, so that he would know why Sonia was resting on her bed in the morning rather than working in the office. He was moved by her happiness, and his own; he felt that Sonia’s life might now move on towards its appointed purpose and fulfilment.

  That evening, when his last consultation was over, he swivelled his desk chair round and put his feet up on the windowsill, so that he could look out over the lawn. It was a pity his father was not alive to see Sonia’s child, he thought, to see how she had redeemed her fortunes.

  There was a knock on the door. ‘There you are, Thomas,’ said Jacques. ‘I have been looking for you. My paper on Fräulein Katharina. I finished it last night and I need to send it off before the end of the week. Do you think you might have ten minutes to glance through it?’

  ‘I shall do it now.’

  ‘Bear in mind that it’s only a draft. I have written it in German and have tried to give it a fairly authoritative tone for the benefit of the audience.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Thomas. ‘I shall not expect to hear your own Breton voice in it.’

  ‘No. Though the science and the resolution are certainly mine. It’s on the blotter on my desk. It is held together with a pin.’

  Jacques’s consulting room had a faint odour of cigars from the indulgence he allowed himself each evening when the last patient had gone. There was a large blue and white pot full of hydrangeas on a windowsill and a vase of cut flowers on the desk. The bookshelves were lined with the astonishing extent of his German and French reading, much of it in cheap or second-hand editions, but the shredding rug on the oak boards managed to give the room a homely rather than intimidating feel.

  Thomas took the pinned papers from the desk, went over to the window and pushed back the folded wooden shutter so the light fell across his shoulder as he began to read.

  FRÄULEIN KATHARINA VON A

  In the early summer of 189–, a patient was referred to me by a physician in private practice in Vienna. A young woman, aged twenty-five years, Fräulein Katharina von A had been complaining for some time of severe lower abdominal pain, accompanied by infrequent vomiting. She had been wrongly diagnosed by a doctor inVienna as suffering from uterine fibroids, when she was too young for such a condition typically to have developed and had experienced no increase in menstrual flow; in fact, as later became apparent under more careful examination, she had suffered an intermittent amenorrhoea.

  Fräulein Katharina gave the impression on first meeting of being a young person of outstanding character. Her father was a businessman of considerable means, and Katharina had passed an apparently uneventful childhood in the company of her younger brother and sister, to whom she appeared tenderly devoted; indeed, in speaking of her family, and in particular of her father, she invariably displayed a most natural and pleasing affection. Her mother was English, though had spent a great deal of her own youth in Ceylon, where her father worked as a tea planter; she had met and married Herr von A in London in 1869, and Katharina was born the following year in Vienna, where the family retained a house even when the father’s work necessitated their temporary removal to Hanover and to the Baltic states.

  Of a little above average height and with a fair colouring characteristic of her Prussian and English descent, on her first visit to my consulting rooms Fräulein Katharina in many ways presented a picture of youthful vigour. On a close visual examination, I found the epidermis to be fine, with a scattering of reddish-brown maculae on legs, arms and lower back, typical in one of such colouring; the areolae were unusually thin, barely discrete in texture from the surrounding skin. She informed me that she had practised archery as a hobby, and the effects of the sport were visible in a somewhat enlarged brachialis of the right arm and a firmness of the extensor and flexor muscles. She had recently been on a walking holiday in the Eastern Alps, where she had climbed in the HoheTauern range, at heights of more than two thousand metres. There was a minor development in the adductor and quadriceps; the pelvis appeared fairly narrow and there was no excess tissue on the gluteus maximus.

  The patient spoke with a soft but clear voice; it was apparent from the first consultation that she was a person of considerable education and self-possession. However, in addition to lower abdominal pain, she reported chronic joint pain in the shoulders, elbows and fingers. She had also suffered a form of spasm in the shoulders, and, on infrequent occasions, in the hips and face: the symptoms she described were similar to those found in Sydenham’s chorea, though she said they recurred less and less often and was inclined to treat them as a closed episode.

  The pains in her joints had been attributed by her family physician to an excess of secretarial work undertaken for her father, whose failing health had obliged him to work more and more from the family house in an affluent part ofVienna instead of going into his company’s office. I was not initially in a position to confirm or reject this diagnosis, but I did note that she reported that the pains recurred regardless of whether or not she had been working at her desk; and that the amount of secretarial work she was obliged to do had dramatically diminished, for the simple reason that her father had recently died of an infection of the heart.

  Since the age of seventeen, Fräulein K
atharina had suffered from right-sided occipital headaches, though she had been largely cured of these by an oculist in Vienna, who diagnosed a moderately severe astigmatism, a common abnormality of vision from which her father also suffered. Katharina wore small, silver-rimmed glasses for close work of any kind. She assured me that she only needed them if she was required to concentrate her eyesight for any length of time; indeed, she exhibited some aversion to wearing them, but I attributed this to feminine vanity, she being in other respects a manifestly modest and serious-minded young woman. She still suffered from stinging in the eyes if she was tired or upset, regardless of whether or not she had been using her reading-glasses. Her eyes in other respects appeared normal when I tested for diplopia and the Argyll Robertson sign.

  Her health as a child had generally been good, though she had had a tendency to infections of the throat, which had caused her to lose many weeks at school. At the time of our first consultation, she had a minor irregularity of the pulse and her temperature was elevated a degree above normal. This she attributed to a mild chill she had caught in the coach on the way to the sanatorium, and since the pyrexia was absent on our second meeting, I was inclined to accept her own diagnosis.

  The patient seemed bemused by her symptoms, particularly the degree and variety of abdominal and joint pain from which she was suffering. I have frequently observed that patients with organic illness are able to give, according to their powers of self-expression, a more or less coherent and consistent account of the sensation of pain they are experiencing; they can say, for instance, whether it is throbbing or stabbing, twisting or dull. Neurasthenic patients, on the other hand, often devote many minutes to trying to describe the discomfort and generally seem dissatisfied with their own efforts, even when they are people of superior lucidity. The present patient fell into neither category, but, while clearly distressed by her pain, spoke of it in a detached and cool manner which made me suspect that her attention was in fact more passionately engaged elsewhere, on issues of which the pains in her joints and lower abdomen might be little more than representations.