Robertson Davies - The Manticore

"Yes, though I had almost forgotten that was what I came for."

"Your general health is much improved? You sleep better?"

"Yes."

"And you will not be surprised or angry when I say you are a much pleasanter, easier person?"

"But if I go on – what then?"

"I cannot tell you, because I don't know, and in this sort of work we give no promises."

"Yes, but you have experience of other people. What happens to them?"

"They finish their work, or that part of it that can be done here, with a markedly improved understanding of themselves, and that means of much that goes beyond self. They are in better command of their abilities. They are more fully themselves."

"Happier, in fact."

"I do not promise happiness, and I don't know what it is. You New World people are, what is the word, hipped on the idea of happiness, as if it were a constant and measurable thing, and settled and excused everything. If it is anything at all it is a by-product of other conditions of life, and some people whose lives do not appear to be at all enviable, or indeed admirable, are happy. Forget about happiness."

"Then you can't, or won't, tell me what I would be working for?"

"No, because the answer lies in you, not in me. I can help, of course. I can put the questions in such a way as to draw forth your answer, but I do not know what your answer will be. Let me put it this way: the work you have been doing here during the past year has told you who you are; further work would aim at showing you what you are."

"More mystification. I thought we had got past all that. For weeks it seems to me that we have been talking nothing but common sense."

"Oh, my dear Mr. Staunton, that is unworthy of you! Are you still scampering back to that primitive state of mind where you suppose psychology must be divorced from common sense? Well – let me see what I can do. Your dreams – We have worked through some dozens of your dreams, and I think you are now convinced that they are not just incomprehensible gases that get into your head during sleep. Recall your dream of the night before you first came to me. What was that enclosed, private place where you commanded such respect, from which you walked out into strange country? Who was the woman you met, who talked in an unknown language? Now don't say it was me, because you had never met me then, and though dreams may reflect deep concerns and thus may hint at the future, they are not second sight. After some exploration, you came to the top of a staircase that led downward, and some commonplace people discouraged you from going down, though you sensed there was treasure there. Your decision now is whether or not you are going to descend the staircase and find the treasure."

"How do I know it will be a treasure?"

"Because your other recurrent dream, where you are the little prince in the tower, shows you as the guardian of a treasure. And you manage to keep your treasure. But who are all those frightening figures who menace it? We should certainly encounter them. And why are you a prince, and a child? – Tell me, did you dream last night?"

"Yes. A very odd dream. It reminded me of Knopwood because it was Biblical in style. I dreamed I was standing on a plain, talking with my father. I was aware it was Father, though his face was turned away. He was very affectionate and simple in his manner, as I don't think I ever knew him to be in his life. The odd thing was that I couldn't really see his face. He wore an ordinary business suit. Then suddenly he turned from me and flew up into the air, and the astonishing thing was that as he rose, his trousers came down, and I saw his naked backside."

"And what are your associations?"

"Well, obviously it's the passage in Exodus where God promises Moses that he shall see Him, but must not see His face; and what Moses sees is God's back parts. As a child I always thought it funny for God to show His rump. Funny, but also terribly real and true. like those extraordinary people in the Bible who swore a solemn oath clutching one another's testicles. But does it mean that I have seen the weakness, the shameful part of my father's nature because he gave so much of himself into the keeping of Denyse and because Denyse was so unworthy to treat him properly? I've done what I can with it, but nothing rings true."

"Of course not, because you have neglected one of the chief principles of what I have been able to tell you about the significance of dreams. That again is understandable, for when the dream is important and has something new to tell us, we often forget temporarily what we know to be true. But we have always agreed, haven't we, that figures in dreams, whoever or whatever they may look like, are aspects of the dreamer? So who is this father with the obscured face and the naked buttocks?"

"I suppose he is my idea of a father – my own father?"

"He is something we would have to talk about if you decided to go on to a deeper stage in the investigation of yourself. Because your real father, your historical father, the man whom you last saw lying so pitiably on the dock with his face obscured in filth, and then so dishevelled in his coffin with his face destroyed by your stepmother's ambitious meddling, is by no means the same thing as the archetype of fatherhood you carry in the depths of your being, and which comes from – well, for the present we won't attempt to say where. Now tell me, have you had any of those demanding, humiliating sessions in Mr. Justice Staunton's court during the past few weeks? You haven't mentioned them."

"No. They don't seem to have been necessary recently."

"I thought that might be so. Well, my friend, you know now how very peculiar dreams are, and you know that they are not liars. But I don't believe you have found out yet that they sometimes like a little joke. And this is one. I believe that you have, in a literal sense, seen the end of Mr. Justice Staunton. The old Troll King has lost his trappings. No court, no robes, a sense of kindliness and concern, a revelation of that part of his anatomy he keeps nearest to the honoured Bench, and which nobody has ever attempted to invest with awe or dignity, and then – gone! If he should come again, as he well may, at least you have advanced so far that you have seen him with his trousers down… Our hour is finished. If you wish to arrange further appointments, will you let me know sometime in the week between Christmas and the New Year? I wish you a very happy holiday."

Dec. 17, Wed.: Wretched letter from Netty this morning. Was feeling particularly well because of Dr. Johanna's saying on Monday that I had finished my anamnesis so far as she thought it necessary to go; extraordinary flood of energy and cheerfulness. Now this.

Seven pages of her big script, like tangled barbed wire, the upshot of which is that Meritorious Matey has at last done what I always expected him to do – revealed himself as a two-bit crook and opportunist. Has fiddled trust funds which somehow lay in his clutch; she doesn't say how and probably doesn't know. But she is certain he has been wronged. Of course he is her brother and the apple of her eye and Netty is nothing if not loyal, as the Staunton family knows to its cost – and also, I suppose, to its extraordinary benefit. One must be fair.

But how can I be fair to Matey? He has always been the deserving, hard-working fellow with his own way to make, while I have hardly been able to swallow for the weight of the silver spoon in my mouth. Certainly this is how Netty has put it to me, and when Father refused to take Matey into Alpha and wouldn't let Matey's firm handle the audit of Castor, she thought we were bowelless ingrates and oppressors. But Father smelled Matey as no good, and so did I, because of the way he sponged on Netty when he had no need. And now Netty begs me to return to Canada as soon as possible and undertake Matey's defence. "You have spent your talents on many a scoundrel, and you ought to be ready to see that a wronged honest boy is righted before the world"; that is how she puts it. And: "I've never asked you or the family for a thing and God knows what I've done for the Stauntons through thick and thin, and some things will never be known, but now I'm begging you on my bended knees."