Joanna Kavenna - The Birth of Love

The year is 1865 and Ignaz Semmelweis is dragged along the corridor though he struggles violently, kicks and shouts.

At one point he forces himself out of their arms and starts to run.

Then they seize him again, and this time they beat him, so hard he thinks they might kill him.

There is a foot stamping on him from above.

He is choking on blood.

The Vienna General Hospital will vouch for me, he is try ing to tell them. I have many powerful friends in Vienna, but then he remembers no one will vouch for him.

He is alone and they have tied his arms. They throw him into a room. A room stinking of human fear and sweat and dung, with a man somewhere crying, I am the Christ. I am the Christ.

The year is 2153 and Prisoner 730004 is forced into a cell. She wonders if everyone else has been captured. Or if they are dead already. ‘This is for your own protection,’ says a guard, as he thumps her in the spine, so she falls to the ground. Then he locks the door against her, though she runs to the grille and begs him to release her. She hears his footsteps fading away.

The year is 2009 and Brigid feels the birthing pains deep within her and knows it has begun …

Monday August 15th, 1865, Vienna

*

Dear Professor Wilson,

I am sorry to disturb you from your work; however, I must ask your advice about a most distressing series of meetings I had today at the asylum. As you know, I have been visiting the asylum in Lazarettgasse for some years now, examining the inmates of this accursed place, better to understand the conditions which cause the individual to discard the faculty of reason. Today I met an inmate in such a terrible and perplexing condition, as to question every notion of lunacy I have thus far elaborated. I have — with reference to the many visits I make to ‘lunatics’ — been developing a theory that what we call madness is often simply a rearrangement of the human personality, or an arrangement which in some way offends more ordinary sensibilities. If we were to abandon the notion of sanity as strictly distinct from madness we would save many from suffering. We would perceive that madness is a lunar condition, a condition of revelation and vision and thereby we who have allowed our perceptions to be veiled by conventional observance can sometimes learn from those we refer to as lunatics. There are many forces within the human soul which we refuse to acknowledge, many ancient presences we have turned away from, and I suspect that these often command those we call lunatic, and cause them to behave in a way we cannot understand. This is my unpopular theory; yet I discovered today a case as resistant to my theorising as to more popular theories of madness. The man is in dire need of help.

*

I arrived at the asylum this morning at 9.00 a.m., and rang the bell. The door was opened, as usual, by one of the burly orderlies, who ushered me into the anteroom. The room is intended to appear homely; there are some armchairs and bookshelves with innocuous books of the hour upon them, and at the centre of the room, above the fireplace, is a mediocre painting of the Alps. Everything is superficially nondescript; yet, I always think as I stand there, it is the room in which so many of the inmates are committed by their families, and are taken away wailing and pleading, in horrible fear. Herr Meyer soon arrived, who is in charge of the asylum. He is always very smart and efficient, yet over the years I have come to regard him as an unpleasant man, quite brutalised by his work, or perhaps drawn to it precisely because of the vicious elements of his nature. He smells of cruelty, and his eyes are sharp and vigilant. His manner is sly, and I generally acknowledge him with a cursory good day and proceed to my business. This morning however he was rather excited — licking his lips, even, with a thick pink tongue — and he said, ‘A very interesting case, the case of Herr S. Came here two weeks ago. Consigned to our care by some friends. A violent and incontinent man.’

‘What manner of lunatic is he?’ I asked.

‘Well spoken. Clearly once an educated man. Accuses himself of murder. And others too. He cannot give you precise names however; he finds it hard to recall specific details. This is an aspect of his madness. You should see him for yourself,’ he said, nodding in his insidious conspiratorial manner.

‘I should be glad to. Do you have any more information about him?’

Herr Meyer adopted his most self-important tone. ‘Oh I cannot reveal the further details to you, my good man. The family has asked me to maintain the strictest secrecy around Herr S. His identity must remain obscure to outsiders such as you. You surely understand, that my first concern is the protection of my patients and their families?’

*

I responded with the briefest of nods, and he, smirking a little, led me through the asylum, where there were rooms furnished with the damned, and then dark corridors lined with cells. There may be worse places on earth than Vienna’s public asylum but at present I cannot imagine what corner of the globe might hold them. Its corridors echo with a ragged chorus — each madman finding his own discord, some of them little more than whoops and cackles, others strident and jangling. They rail, oh how they rail against those who sent them here, and those who have not come for them, and they know — at one level I believe they know — that they have been abandoned. The ones who do not talk, they turn expressions of such despair upon you, it is hard to think that they are beyond all comprehension. As we entered the communal rooms I was briefly held back by the smell of faeces and decay — but I have long been visiting these madhouses, and have sadly grown accustomed to this noxious atmosphere and all the suffering to which it attests. (Indeed I believe these poor individuals are hastened to their ends by the severity of the atmosphere in which they exist, that it is quite impossible for any human to be cured in these conditions, and the asylums in their present state must only ever be a prison for the lunatic. I have been campaigning along these lines for a few years, but my efforts have so far been in vain). As we walked I recognised a number of the long-term residents — an ageing man in a grimy black suit, a tattered handkerchief in his pocket, one boot off and one boot on. He would meander around, saying very little, and then he would stop on one leg, or he would take ten skipping steps and then two broad strides, like a child playing a game. He was hesitating in the middle of the room, until Herr Meyer pushed him roughly aside. We passed another fellow I had seen many times before, a prematurely aged man with matted blond hair, who talked incessantly, mostly of colours, as if he were the author of a meticulous system — ‘And there is the red. And there is the black and the blue. And there is the purple. And now the red once more …’ and so on. I have talked several times to this man, hoping to discern his system, if one exists, but I have not yet understood it. He sounded as if he came from Salzburg, and I had been told that no one came to visit him. He, too, received the rough edge of Herr Meyer’s shoulder, because he presumed to approach us, and, thus rebuffed, he turned away. ‘Now the black, and then the blue …’