Antal Szerb - Journey by Moonlight

“Tie this round your neck when you go to sleep. The smell of garlic is very good for the nerves.”

Mihály burst out laughing.

“Doctor, even I have read Dracula. I know what garlic is supposed to do: keep the vampire at bay, who sucks human blood in the night.”

“That’s right. I’m glad you understand. Because there’s no point in your insisting that the dead don’t exist in some form or other. They are what is making you ill. They visit you and suck your life out. Medical science can’t help you with that.”

“Then take your garlic back home. My dead can’t be kept away by that sort of thing. They’re inside me.”

“Naturally. Nowadays they work with psychological instruments. But their nature hasn’t changed in the least. It’s just that you have to be on your guard against them.”

“Leave me in peace,” said Mihály, with mild exasperation. “Tell me that I have cerebral anaemia and prescribe iron tonic and bromide for my nerves. That’s what you’re supposed to do.”

“Of course it is. I can’t do anything more for you. Medicine can’t help against the dead. But there are stronger, supernatural weapons … ”

“You know I’m not superstitious. Superstition only works if you believe in it … ”

“That’s a very outmoded point of view. At any rate, why not try it? You’ve nothing to lose.”

“Of course not. Just my self-respect, my pride, my integrity as a rational being.”

“Those are long meaningless words. You really should try. You should go to Gubbio. There is a monk up there, in the Sant’ Ubaldo monastery, who works miracles.”

“Gubbio? You spoke to me about it once before. If I remember rightly, you said that you had some supernatural experience there.”

“Yes. And now I will tell you about it, because the story might persuade you. It’s about that very monk.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“You know how I was a city doctor in Gubbio before I came to the hospital here. One day I was called out to a patient who seemed to be suffering from some deep-seated nervous condition. She lived in the Via dei Consoli, one of those completely medieval streets, in a dark old house. She was a young woman, not from Gubbio, not even Italian, I don’t know in fact what her nationality could have been, but she spoke excellent English. A very good-looking woman. The people of the house, where she lived as a paying guest, explained after a while that she was suffering from hallucinations. She had the fixed idea that at night the door of the dead was open.”

“The what?”

“The door of the dead. You see, these old houses in Gubbio had two doorways, the usual one for the living, and next to it a second one, rather narrower, for the dead. This door is opened only when a corpse is taken out of the house. Then they wall it up again, so that the dead won’t return. Because they know that the dead can only come back in the way they went out. The door isn’t on the same level as the paving, but about a metre higher, so you can pass a coffin out to people standing in the street. The woman I mentioned lived in one of these houses. One night she was woken by the realisation that the door of the dead was open, and someone was coming in, someone she greatly loved, who had been dead a long time. And from then on the dead person came every night.”

“But it would be easy to cure that. She would simply have to move house.”

“That’s what we said, but she didn’t want to move. She was very happy to be visited by the dead person. She just slept all day, as you do, and waited for the night. Meanwhile she was rapidly losing weight, and the people of the house were very worried about her. And they weren’t exactly pleased about a dead man calling at the house every night. It was a rather patrician family with strict moral views. The truth was, they had sent for me so that I would use my authority as a doctor to make her leave.”

“And what did you do?”

“I tried to explain to her that she was having hallucinations, and that she should seek a cure. But she laughed at me. “How could I be having hallucinations,” she asked, “when he’s here every night, truly, beyond all doubt, just as you are now? If you don’t believe me, stay here tonight.”

“This was not exactly what I would have wanted, because I am perhaps a little too impressionable in these matters, but I really had no alternative than to stay, out of my duty as a doctor. The waiting was not otherwise unpleasant. The woman was neither terrified or crazed. She was remarkably calm, indeed rather cheerful. In fact, though I don’t wish to seem boastful, her behaviour was frankly quite flirtatious towards me … I almost forgot why I was there, and that midnight was approaching. Just before midnight she suddenly seized my hand, took a night-light in the other, and led me down to the ground floor room, the one into which the door of the dead opened.

“I have to admit I did not see the dead man. But that was my fault. I was too scared to wait. I just felt that it was getting horribly cold, and the flame from the wick was guttering in the draught. And I felt — somehow I felt this with my whole body — that there was someone else in the room. And I tell you sincerely, this was more than I could bear. I rushed out of the room, all the way home, shut the door, and buried my head in the eiderdown. Of course you will tell me that I had succumbed to her powers of suggestion. It could be … ”

“And what happened to her?”

“Ah, I was just coming to that. When they realised that a doctor, or rather my sort of doctor, was no use, they called in Father Severinus, from the Sant’ Ubaldo monastery. This Father Severinus was a very special and holy person. He had turned up in Gubbio from some faraway country, no-one could discover which. He was rarely seen in the town. Apart from major festivals or funerals he never left the mountain, where he lived his life of strict self-denial. However he was now somehow prevailed upon to come down and visit the disturbed woman. The meeting between them, they say, was harrowing and dramatic. When she caught sight of him she screamed and collapsed. Father Severinus himself turned pale and staggered on his feet. It seems he realised what a difficult case it would be. But he did succeed in the end.”

“How?”

“That I don’t know. It seems he exorcised the ghost. After he’d talked with her for a full hour in some strange tongue, he went back up the mountain. She calmed down and left Gubbio. And after that nobody ever saw her again, or the ghost.”

“Very interesting. But tell me,” asked Mihály, giving way to a sudden suspicion, “this Father Severinus, did he really come from some foreign country? Do you honestly not know where he was from?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t. Nobody does.”

“What sort of person, I mean, in outward appearance?”

“Quite tall, rather gaunt. As monks usually are.”

“And he is still up there, in the monastery?”

“Yes. You should go and see him. Only he can help someone in your condition.”

Mihály thought profoundly. Life was full of inexplicable coincidences. This Father Severinus could be Ervin, and the woman Éva, haunted by the memory of Tamás …

“You know what, doctor? Tomorrow I’ll go to Gubbio. For your sake, because you are such a kind person. And because, as an amateur of religious history, I am curious about these doors of the dead.”

Ellesley was delighted with this outcome.

The next day Mihály packed his things. When Millicent arrived to visit him he told her: “I have to travel to Gubbio. The doctor says that only there will I get better.”

“Truly? Then I’m afraid it means we shall have to part. I’m staying on here for a time in Foligno. I really love this place. And at first I was so angry with that Frenchman, who tricked me into coming here, do you remember? But now I don’t mind. And the doctor is such a nice man.”