Human Traces Read online

  ‘To think of ourselves as atoms in an infinite universe is in fact not really possible; it is just not how we experience life – which we feel as something linear and driven to an end. So either we have the science wrong, or we are merely encountering the limits of our toy consciousness. I believe the latter, and I hope I have shown you what a small, simplified and metaphorical sample of reality our consciousness really offers us, with its one-dimensional time and shadow “I” in its tiny inward theatre.

  ‘But we may evolve and we may change; and that, as I have said before, is how the insoluble knots and mysteries of life are eventually resolved, not by the finding of an “answer”, but by the development of a perspective in which the problems no longer exist. We do not lose much sleep over the eternal conundra of the domestic cat . . . It is not that we could not “understand” them, I suppose, if they were described to us, it is more that they would seem beside the point.

  ‘Yet, what glory is there in our very own cat’s-eye view of the world, our one-degree peephole on the sphere of reality! As I remarked to the gentleman who left, the chances of such richness, of Shakespeare and Mozart, developing from a submicroscopic mutation are so minute as to be beyond calculation. From that mathematical fact, you may deduce, like my critic who left the hall and like Alfred Russel Wallace before him, that such an improbable change must therefore necessarily have involved the interference of a higher outside force; or you may believe, like Charles Darwin and like me, that the biological laws of evolution cannot be selectively breached. Whatever you believe in your hearts, ladies and gentlemen, I ask you to believe with me that either conclusion must logically lead you to see that we are the most fortunate species ever to have lived or that it is possible to conceive of existing – ever, in this universe or in any other; and that it is our duty each day therefore to appreciate our astonishing good fortune by caring for the insane who pay the price for all of us, and by turning our own healthy lives, so near as we can manage it, day by day, into an extended rapture.’

  Thomas gathered his notes and descended stiffly from the podium, rubbing his hand over the small of his back, where the muscles had gone into spasm from his long standing. He walked down the aisle of the hall, grey-haired now in his fiftieth year, between the rows of silent people who averted their embarrassed eyes, until he reached his wife. She took his arm and led him out into the courtyard where the fountain played. He slumped down onto the stone rim. Kitty sat down beside him and placed her arm round his shoulders.

  ‘They did not believe me,’ he said.

  ‘I believed you, Thomas.’

  ‘I know I am right, but I did not convince them.’

  ‘It was good, it was noble, it was very fine.’

  He did not reply.

  ‘“O, young Lochinvar”,’ she murmured. ‘It is a hard life, Thomas, as I think I told you once before.’ She stroked his hair. ‘“He rode all unarmed and he rode all alone . . .”’

  XXI

  JACQUES DID NOT speak to Thomas for a year after his lecture, and nothing Sonia could say would persuade him otherwise.

  She stood in for him at the morning meetings, while the informal exchanges at the end of the day, which had in any case become less regular, ceased altogether. He asked her to organise his diary so that while Thomas’s consultations started on the hour, his own began at half past; he dined in his house and refused several invitations from Kitty to join her and Thomas. On the occasions when they saw one another in the course of their work, he merely nodded silently in Thomas’s direction.

  It had been his loud footsteps that Thomas had heard leaving the hall after his opening remarks about the Viennese School. What Jacques could not forgive was what he took to be a kind of gloating. Many years ago he had failed to diagnose a largely asymptomatic condition in one patient, believing some lower abdominal pain to be of mental rather than uterine origin. It was hardly a crime, and the cysts had proved harmless. For fifteen years he had lived with the daily reminder of his mistake; he had watched Katharina become one of the principal forces in the sanatorium that was his life’s work. She had been meticulously friendly to him; indeed, he was actually prepared to believe what she had once told him – that her delight at being well again was such that she never gave a thought to the ‘little false start’ in her treatment. Why would she care about that, when the schloss had successfully cured her in the end? The lightness of her spirit was a reproach to him, however; and he could not help noticing that the winter months were a trial to her, bringing fevers and throat infections, even though, since there was no cure to offer, an earlier diagnosis of her rheumatic fever would not have helped.

  Why then, with his healthy twins, his gaily ungrudging wife and the stimulus of his own theories to sustain him, had Thomas chosen to preface the presentation of his philosophical and medical position with an attack on a school of thought he knew had been both attractive and painful to his partner? It was not necessary for the explanation of his own thinking that other systems first be shown wanting or demolished. It was quite possible to have a biological view of Olivier’s disease, and to link it – albeit speculatively – to questions of consciousness and evolution, while at the same time allowing room for a more psychological view of the basis of some nervous symptoms. Indeed, Jacques himself believed in the co-existence of the two schools of thought; the holy grail still remained to be found at the point where they intersected. He himself had so far failed, but so had Thomas.

  The lecture had been reported in the local papers in quite sensational terms, as though Darwin had not published sixty years before, but its reception in the medical press had been quieter. Their reports pointed out the gaps in the hypothesis, chiefly the lack of evidence that schizophrenia was evenly spread through different populations; others questioned Darwin’s belief that Homo sapiens had necessarily originated in Africa, close to his nearest obvious relatives. There was unhappiness about the extent to which it had been established that human inheritance followed the model of Mendel and his garden peas. Above all, Thomas’s theory seemed to offer no therapeutic hope, since the particles of inheritance responsible for the condition could not be identified, let alone modified. His suggestion that evolution might be the best cure for psychosis was held to be frivolous. Although the learned journals declared themselves impressed by the range of connections he had made, and largely convinced on the question of brain asymmetry, they were concerned by the extent to which Thomas relied on British authorities, and none was sufficiently convinced by the underlying scientific argument to offer to reprint the lecture. A popular science magazine in London did run an edited version, but it seemed that, as far as the college of opinion that made up the European school was concerned, Thomas remained marginal and eccentric; it was as though after twenty-five years with a microscope he had emerged as he went in, as little more than an amateur of Shakespeare, with scientific longings.

  Jacques took no pleasure in the relative failure of Thomas’s venture; failure was a condition of being a mad-doctor, so he had expected little else. He could not lose the feeling, however, that Thomas had tried to trample on him, to use him as a step up for his own ambitions, and the feeling of betrayal was like an ulcer burning out his belly.

  In his own life, he felt he had reached an impasse. The last survivor of his original family, he could now go quietly into the final decade of his working life, thence into comfortable old age; or he could survey the landscape and decide to move onward. He had withstood the worst that life could offer, death and humiliation, and although he could feel a coarsening in the texture of himself, he felt no diminution of energy or desire. If life, as it appeared, was only this vain struggle before the endless dark, then he might as well be bold.

  For five years he had been friends with Roya and had checked his feelings for her by refusing to acknowledge them. It was not the kind of simple repression or displacement he had diagnosed in Katharina; it was more subtle than that, in that he was aware of the process of repressi
on. He wasconscious of what was unconscious, and when he allowed himself a glimpse, it was frighteningly primitive; but even at such rare moments of honesty, he never dignified the emotion with the name of ‘love’. Sonia was the woman he loved; she was all he had ever wanted and he would no more forsake her than he would trade Daniel for a hypothetical daughter. The sensation of Roya’s presence was something quite different: it played across his nerves in an exquisite way, the baseness of his half-acknowledged desires so at odds with, yet so complementary to, her youth and femininity.

  Yet it seemed to him that it was more also than that: she was a fragment from another world, a glimpse of some paradise withheld, and if he did not somehow claim his kinship with her, then all his lives, in past and future time, would be for ever disconnected. Once he had allowed this knowledge into his mind, it assumed command, and his normal thoughts became subordinate.

  In the spring he had received a firmer invitation from Hofrat Drobesch to his ‘Modern World Colloquium, 1910’, and in the second week of June he set out for the village near Bad Ischl where Drobesch had his summer house. His train arrived earlier than he had expected, and although he spent some time looking round the town, he found himself feeling agitated and furtive; he wanted to be at the lake house ahead of the others. He asked a cab driver at the station how long it would take them, and decided to leave straight away.

  As they bounced over the cobbles, then left the town on dry summer roads, Jacques found that his mind seemed empty. On long journeys he usually read medical books as part of his never-ending education; when his eyes grew tired, he would close them and try to piece together what he had learned, to see if it illuminated what he already knew. Then he spoke to himself, silently, explaining his knowledge, noting the gaps in his understanding, either mentally or in a small black notebook – like a constant, thinking engine.

  On this warm evening, however, he seemed incapable of thought; he inhaled the smell of the unharvested fields, he sometimes heard the cattle and the birds over the rumble of the carriage, and was content to be borne along in this animal state. He felt helpless and impelled.

  When the cab arrived at the top of a drive, the hedgerows heavy, the track overgrown, he climbed down and paid the driver. The name of the house was inscribed on a stone by the wayside, and he pushed open the gate. A minute’s walk brought him to a courtyard with an arch covered in wistaria; through it was a large house on which the pink paint was peeling. He walked round the side and found himself looking down over sloping gardens to a huge lake, shimmering and empty in the evening sun. There was a boathouse and a wooden jetty; on the far side of the water, the woods grew down to the shore, with no sign of habitation. Returning to the house, he found a key beneath an old stone water trough in the courtyard and opened the side door. He was in a hall, leading to the kitchens, from which he walked across into the main part of the house. The air was trapped by the closed windows, and he could smell plaster, the wood of the floorboards and dried flowers. He called out, but it was clear from the silence and the feeling of the house that there was no one there.

  He climbed the stairs and found himself on a wide landing with three different passageways opening from it. He took the one that he thought would lead to the bedrooms overlooking the lake, calculated which room would have the best view and knocked at the door. There was, as he expected, no answer, so he turned the handle and went in. A brass bed with a faded floral cover had been recently made up, to judge from the starched white linen he could see on the bolster. It was a large room with two painted wooden chests and a wardrobe; through its windows, the lake lay empty and glistening.

  The cupboard door swung open easily. He had feared to find – he did not know what: men’s clothes, suits, children’s things; but the hung row of dresses and skirts reassured him. He pulled them out one by one until he had come across at least five or six he knew werehers. His heart was lumbering in his chest and his hand was shaking. He saw a corner of purple on white and pulled out a skirt. Before he could stop himself, he had wrenched it from its hanger and lifted the material to his face, where he inhaled a smell of cotton, soap and rosewater. He ran the fabric over his tongue, as though he might taste her. Then, in a panic of haste, he went to the chest and pulled open the top drawer. It was full of papers: bills and receipts from local tradesmen, some old photographs, a man – perhaps her father – with a white moustache standing in front of a building with a minaret. He pushed the drawer shut and went to the other chest. He wrenched at the brass handle and thrust his hand inside, into softness. The clean underclothes were unsorted, as though the maid had merely thrown them in after they came back from the laundry. Jacques lifted a handful, soft straps and stockings trailing from between his fingers, and pressed a piece of lace to the skin of his lips. He breathed in and filled his lungs with her. He glanced round at the open doorway, but there was still no one there.

  The house party was under way by seven in the evening, as carriages dropped the visitors at the top of the drive. Hofrat Drobesch addressed his guests in what he called the ‘summer room’, a conservatory that overlooked the lake.

  ‘Dear colleagues and friends, you are most welcome to our Colloquium and I trust that your accommodation is comfortable. This is a most informal venture and we have a very limited staff, but I hope you will feel free to ask if we can make your stay more pleasant. Although our conversation will be serious, I would like you to view the weekend in other ways as a holiday – an outdoor holiday or a hike, if you will, in which you should feel free to make your own arrangements. Should you wish literally to go for a walk or an excursion, the kitchen can provide a modest picnic for you. My wife or I can advise you on the best paths and views.’

  Drobesch then began to outline what the themes of the weekend would be. He was a man who enjoyed talking; in fact, Jacques noticed, he actually listened to himself as he talked, and his speech was punctuated by notes of unconvincing modesty: ‘If you would not think it presumptuous . . .’; ‘if you would permit me to say . . .’; or on two or three occasions: ‘How shall I put this?’ – a hesitation followed by a phrase he had clearly worked out before.

  Roya sat beside him, her hands folded in the lap of her lilac dress, a pair of black slippers with pearl decorations occasionally visible when she shifted her weight on the wicker chair of the ‘summer room’. Her black hair was loose to her bare shoulders.

  Around him, Jacques saw assembled various men he knew by face or reputation: among them, two politicians, a diplomat, a newspaper editor, an astronomer from the university in Vienna, a banker and a playwright.

  ‘. . . at the start of this new century, a time, I feel confident, that will at last see an end to bloodshed in Europe,’ said Drobesch, ‘an end to the wars and squabbling which so disfigured our continent in the last hundred years. This is a time when, if I may say so, the work of scientists as much as of philosophers gives us leave to hope that we will shortly be in a position to give clear and certain answers to almost all the problems that have troubled us for so long. How did we get here and what makes us who we are? Of what is the universe made? How old is it? What is the future and how do we bend it to our civilised will? From the worlds of theoretical physics, biology, astronomy, psychology as well’ – here he inclined his head graciously to the playwright – ‘as from literature, the answers are coming in an irresistible flow, so that soon, dear friends, I feel sure we shall be in a position to offer a unifying theory that will satisfy our deepest intellectual cravings and will be our legacy to future generations.’

  Jacques caught Roya’s eye as the speech concluded; her expression remained one of impassive attention to her husband. She applauded briefly with the others when he finished. Jacques lit a cigar and went out onto the terrace, where a man in a short white coat was handing round drinks.

  As he looked down at the view, he was aware of someone behind him, and knew, without needing to look, that it was she, though he did not at once turn round. He was surprised by how ca
lm he felt: incapable of thought again, and relieved to be so.

  ‘Are you settled in all right?’

  There was a non-committal hand on his sleeve, and he turned to smile at her.

  ‘Yes. Thank you. Amaid showed me to my room. Itis a lovely house.’

  ‘It has been in my husband’s family for a long time. I am afraid it is rather run-down and too cold to use in winter. But he and his brothers like it just as it is, and they refuse to do any work to it.’

  ‘It has charm. How are you, Roya?’

  ‘I am very well. But how are you, dear doctor?’

  He searched her face for some sign of humour or complicity, but the mask was impenetrable; he saw how young her skin was, still unlined, but with a slight flush in the neck above the collar of her dress – rose flooding gold.

  ‘I am all right.’ His own voice sounded hoarse and abrupt.

  ‘Have you had time to explore?’

  ‘I . . . Yes, I got here a little early, as you know. I let myself in before the servants arrived. I hope that was all right.’

  ‘Of course. It is what I intended. And was everything to your liking?’

  ‘I . . . Yes. Very much so.’

  ‘I think you are blushing, Doctor.’

  Jacques put his hand to his face. It was true. He coughed and tried to reassert his dignity. ‘I have not blushed since . . . Not since I was a boy and was caught showing off to the local curé about how much I knew about biology. I was just making it up.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘I feel hot. It is a warm evening.’

  He smiled and, to his delight, she smiled back into his eyes. Could it be that she suspected, or knew what he had done?

  ‘Perhaps tomorrow,’ she said.

  ‘Tomorrow what?’

  ‘Perhaps tomorrow,’ said Roya, mildly, but still looking into his eyes, ‘you may conclude your exploration.’