Joanna Kavenna - The Birth of Love

‘You feel you have been traduced?’

‘I feel I am guilty indeed, mired in blood. But somehow I have been unfairly judged nonetheless.’

‘Do you want to become well again?’ I said.

‘But what is well?’

‘That is a very pertinent question, Herr S. You are right to query my idle expression. I mean do you want to leave this place?’

‘How will I leave? They have confined me here. To be rid of me. I am quite sure they want to be rid of me.’

‘Who are they, to your mind?’

‘I do not know. I know they have acted decisively. I am aware I am ill, and I think I have done many dreadful things. Aside from the crimes of which I am rightly accused — oh somewhere I am accused, I know — I have done dreadful things to other people, and — oh my wife!’ And now his features were mangled by longing and grief, and he twisted in his chair.

‘You remember your wife?’

‘I am not sure. I think I … I think perhaps I dealt foully with my wife. I have — I think I was, oh I remember another woman, someone I fled to. But I was not fleeing from my wife, I was trying to hide myself.’

‘But it is not your wife you see in these dreams?’

‘No no, it is not her face.’

‘Perhaps it is an aspect of your wife you see. Or an aspect of this other woman you speak of.’

‘No! No, that is quite wrong.’ And now he was terse, as if I was being obtuse and must be castigated. ‘This woman who visits me here has nothing to do with my wife! And why do you presume to mention her?’

‘You were telling me just now about her. That you see her frequently, and that you could not tell me her name.’ He paused for a moment, and passed a hand across his eyes, as if trying to clear his vision. I said, ‘Do you remember if you have a family?’

‘Children?’

‘Yes, do you think you have children?’

‘I think I have many beautiful children but I am not sure.’

‘When did you last see your family?’

‘I do not know. I cannot remember.’

‘Do you have any idea where they might be?’

‘No, I do not. And must I die without seeing them again?’

And now the man suffered a substantial collapse, and for a while he sobbed wildly, and I said nothing. I sat in his gloomy vicious cell, the darkness seeping from the corners, and waited. When his sobs appeared to be diminishing, I said quietly, ‘Herr S, you are not dying.’ I said this, though I knew nothing of his condition. My intention by such a remark was simply to calm him, so I might continue to speak with him. But I am afraid my words gave him hope, and he lifted his ravaged face and said, ‘You are sure?’

‘I am not sure, but I do not think you are dying,’ I said. ‘But please do not take me as any sort of an authority. I am not, as I said before, a medical man.’

‘No, I think you are not, after all,’ he said, looking at me carefully, as if he was seeing me clearly for the first time. I submitted myself to his gaze — I was there, assessing and observing him; it seemed only fair to permit him to do the same in return. He stared at me in silence for a time, and then he said, slowly, still in a contemplative mood, ‘It is as if I have lost a portion of my brain. My thoughts run into holes. Do you understand?’

‘I do understand.’

‘They are very far away, I know that. My wife is a good and virtuous woman.’

‘Do you think she knows you are here?’

‘I hope she does not.’

*

There was a pause, and then he said, still quite calmly, as if he were expounding a scientific theory, ‘When I dream of blood I think because I crave blood and love blood in the dream then I must have in the past been a bloodthirsty man. In the dream I am drinking blood. So I must have thirsted after blood and this is why — or one of the reasons — I think I committed a crime. I think I have spent years in a deep reverie, a criminal reverie and in this deranged state I have committed acts of violence and now I have fallen out of that reverie and yet I cannot remember my former actions. As if I have experienced two lives in one body.’

‘But you say that you are also looking for something in the blood?’

‘I am delving into the blood,’ he said, and he briefly stopped wringing his hands and instead made a horrible grasping gesture, as if he were probing deep within something, his hands opening and shutting and finding only empty air. ‘I must find it … I must … I must drag it out …’

*

Now he stopped this delving and fell silent again. His hands for one brief unnerving moment were entirely still, and the clanking of the chains stopped, and the dank cell was silent. Then he began to wring his hands again, and the jangling resumed.

*

‘You remember elements of your past but it seems there are significant gaps in your recall,’ I said. ‘The one place you remembered was the General Hospital. Perhaps they will know you there. I would be glad to make enquiries, if you did not mind me doing so.’

‘I am not sure that is a good idea. If they do know me then you too would be their enemy.’

‘I do not think I would. Besides, it does not matter.’

‘You do not know how powerful they are, how they will unite to destroy you.’

*

We had reached something of an impasse. He was deep in the domain of the symbolic, and though I was content to observe him in this domain — it is always a privilege and a matter for awe to witness the human mind unmasked, disgorging mysteries — I also felt a great sense of curiosity about his true identity. I wondered what he had done, and if there had truly been a campaign of any sort to dismantle his reputation. I wondered about the real or symbolic nature of his Great Reversal, the moment when all he had worked to achieve was undone. I wondered if he must have experienced a particular shock, the final catalyst, which had thrust him from the lucid realm into twilight and dream. I did not know. I was torn, indeed, between a suspicion that it might be most comfortable for him to remain in this twilight state, in the ‘wolf-light’ as Homer so beautifully describes it, and my own urge to draw him into the daylight. I was not sure if he wanted to return to the harsh glare of day. It had made him dreadfully unhappy to stand there, I imagined. Illuminated by the glances of other men, until they had turned away from him. I must confess that I did not know what to do, and was deep in thought when he turned to me and said, ‘What did they tell you my name was?’

‘Herr S, that is all Herr Meyer would say to me.’

‘Do not speak of that man,’ he entreated, with all the trembling desperation of before. In the wolf-light, Herr Meyer loomed large, like a monster conjured from the darkest reaches of the human soul, and I apologised for my thoughtlessness. I had no desire to torment this poor man. Yet he had quickly recovered, and was saying, in a neutral tone, ‘My surname then begins with S, perhaps. I wonder what it could be?’

‘You really do not remember?’

‘I am afraid I do not.’

*

He had lost himself. The man had lost his very name, and a man without a name — well, he is indeed in limbo. The nameless man has symbolically reverted to the time before we are named, when we are residing in the womb or perhaps drifting in the spirit world, waiting to be summoned to earth. You are a scientific man, Professor Wilson, and will think all this nonsense, I suspect. It is just my way of alluding to mysteries which might otherwise be inexpressible. Herr S had his own theory, and he was saying, ‘I have no name because I am a malefactor. I should have a number, not a name. Because of the crimes I have committed. We should all be stripped of our names.’

I was preparing another question, when he suddenly said, ‘Klein.’