My Heart Laid Bare Part 30

Dr. Liebknecht smiles. Even as the man insinuates himself into her soul. "Yes. 'Rosamund.' A fetchingly feminine name-and excellent disguise."

POOR MRS. BENDER it's whispered at the noonday meal can no longer raise her head from her pillow, she's desperate to play bridge in her bed, her estranged family has come to fetch her home but she refuses to leave for the Parris Clinic is her home now, Dr. Bies and Dr. Liebknecht have given her hope where there's been no hope. Everywhere else, she tells Rosamund, is Death.

CRIMINALS, ROSAMUND THINKS spitefully.

She'll telephone her father's uncle Morgan Grille who's a judge of the state supreme court, she'll report criminal activities at the Parris Clinic, Mrs. Bender's talon fingers digging into her arm and the woman's terrified eyes, can will and destiny be one? can we ardently wish what will obliterate us? Quick, before it's too late! (The rumor is that Mrs. Bender has left $1 million to the Parris Clinic though in her final days she'd despaired of maintaining the Discipline and pleaded to be forgiven by her doctors she'd adored, for disappointing them.) "You shouldn't pa.s.s severe judgment on yourself, Rosamund," Liebknecht informs her, "for being unable to love. For, to love, we must love someone-an object. But who is a worthy object? In this chaotic world, where? It's your excellent instinct that guides you, forbidding you to love insignificant people who don't deserve your love."

Rosamund laughs harshly, and fumbles to light a cigarette. Dr. Liebknecht doesn't a.s.sist her. "But I won't love you. Worthy as you are."

MIDSUMMER. THE NOCTURNAL insects sing of Death, of Death, yet new patients arrive at the Clinic: a tremulous white-haired woman in a wheelchair, an obese youth ostentatiously carrying a volume of Swinburne's poems, twin sisters of fifty years of age perky as young partridges, bangs in a fringe on their foreheads. I am not ill-I am well. I am not ill-I am well. The prayerful chant arises from the cloistered sick as from a galaxy of nocturnal insects desperately singing against the end of time.

The muted voices of America, Rosamund thinks. I am not ill-but make me well! Help me to live forever.

How many casualties of the War. This new desperation not to die.

As for Rosamund: she's airy and transparent, rising above the surface of the earth like mist above the Hudson River in the early morning. She's hard, hot, sharp as an ice pick, an instrument made for jabbing and drawing blood.

"I can't love you. You're too old. Older than my father. And I don't trust you. Worthy as you are."

YET IT'S HER own Wish that has made her ill, so it is her own Wish that will make her well.

And make her his.

SHE COMPLAINS OF melancholia, fatigue, dizziness and loss of appet.i.te, she's torn up the postcard from Rome signed with both her father's and stepmother's names, she's torn up the copies of her quarterly bills at the Parris Clinic she receives (which are marked PAID IN FULL, for of course her father pays for everything), she's stunned when Dr. Liebknecht prescribes for her what no other doctor has ever prescribed: muscular labor, exertion. "Rosamund. Stand up. Go out of here, and hike to the top of that hill. Bring me a handful of wildflowers from the crest of that hill. Now, before the sun is too hot. Hurry." Clapping his hands at her as you'd urge on a dog.

Rosamund laughs, shocked. Rosamund refuses.

Yet within the hour on her feet, eager, excited, in st.u.r.dy walking shoes, a long-sleeved shirt to protect her arms, trousers comfortable as a man's, Dr. Liebknecht's panama hat on her head and her sleek black hair caught back in a careless chignon. Lean-hipped, flat-bosomed, she might be a young man. She's walking fast, in dread of being joined by another patient. She's half trotting. Hurrying. Swinging her arms. Smiling with the exertion. Beginning to pant. Trickles of sweat beneath her arms. Her head throbs, her blood pulses hard, bright, blinding. She hikes one mile, two miles, nearly three miles in hilly terrain, much of the way steeply uphill. The farthest distance Rosamund has ever hiked. She's happy! She's never been so happy! If her heart bursts it will be the doctor's fault. If she collapses and has to be carried back to the Clinic on a stretcher by attendants it will be his fault. Breathing the sharp scent of pine needles she's never breathed before, like this. Sun-heated gra.s.ses. Murmur and buzz of insects. The high sweet cries of birds. At the crest of the hill she picks Queen Anne's lace, blue heal-all and wild asters, tough-stemmed flowers to bring back to Dr. Liebknecht as a love-offering. For of course she loves him.

Shading her eyes gazing over the wild land falling beneath her to the wooded banks of the great river. How happy she is, how free! Her legs ache, she isn't used to such exertion, yet how happy she is knowing she can do this at any time, hike to the top of this hill, or any hill. From this perspective the buildings and grounds of the Parris Clinic that have been the entire world to her for months are hardly visible.

SHE LEAVES THE ragged, already withering bouquet in a jar in tepid water on the doorstep of Dr. Liebknecht's residence. And avoids him for the remainder of that day, and all of the next day, and the next.

IN THE PRIVACY of his office (dim slatted sunshine, a rustling of amorous birds in the ivy outside the window) he speaks suddenly from the heart, as Rosamund has never heard any man speak before, or any woman.

He loves her, he says.

And he believes that she might love him.

Rosamund, stricken, claps her hands over her ears. "No. I don't want to hear this."

Shall she confess: in the night she embraces herself with a lover's ardent arm that is his arm; his head on the pillow gently nudges hers.

Shall she confess: she is bitterly jealous of all his life that isn't this single moment.

She whispers, "No. It's too late for me."

He tells her she must listen to no one except him. She must believe no one except him. For she knows that he loves her, and will make her his bride-"For this is our common destiny, Rosamund."

In the privacy of his office (the blinds drawn, a sudden silence outside the window) he rises to take her hands in his; to restore warmth to her hands that have gone cold; her eyelids flutter, she doesn't dare look up at him, where his face should be there's blindness, an intensification of light; she stammers, protesting it's too late, she isn't worthy, if he knew her innermost soul he wouldn't love her.

But he seems not to hear. Gripping her hands to quiet her, he stoops over her and presses his lips against her forehead.

"I tell you, Rosamund-it's so. We love each other, and we will be wed. This is our destiny."

I will not, thinks Rosamund.

I will not, thinks Rosamund. Her heart tripping on the edge of running wild.

But now she encounters the man everywhere on the grounds of the Parris Clinic. Walking swiftly in the early morning mist she sees him ascending the hill before her so she has no choice but to follow. Miles away beside the rapidly moving, vast river she sees him farther along the tangled bank, beckoning to her. No I will not. Yes. I don't believe in destiny! In the slightly shabby English garden among the topiary hedges, along the graveled front drive between rows of stately poplars she sees him . . . turning quickly aside before he summons her to him. For now suddenly the man is everywhere. Close beside her in her bed, and in the hot lulling bath where, helpless, she can't escape. "I love you, Rosamund. For only I know how you've suffered. How your soul devours itself. How, yearning to die, you yearn to live. And we will be wed-you have only to consent."

But no she will not consent. For the man is too old: in his early sixties. And it's wrong of him, unprofessional, unethical, to speak in such a way to one of his patients. To touch, to kiss, to make his claim. To cause murmurous, excited talk among the other patients, a number of whom are in love with him . . . their envious eyes s.n.a.t.c.hing after Rosamund. As a young girl she'd stealthily entered her parents' bedrooms (which were joined by a common door, never in Rosamund's memory open) and in their absence she'd dared to explore their lavish clothes closets, their numerous bureau drawers and even their bedclothes . . . now and then discovering an item that mystified and intrigued her like a rosary of exquisite carved ivory beads amid her mother's lingerie, a small gold snuffbox engraved with a stranger's initials in a pocket of one of her father's coats, a dog-eared copy of Kate Chopin's outlawed novel The Awakening amid the piles of mostly unread books on her mother's bedside table. So too in Moses Liebknecht's office which Rosamund boldly entered late one afternoon, finding it unlocked, and empty, she'd hurriedly examined desk drawers, shelves, a cabinet, searching for precisely what she didn't know and coming away disappointed for the man had few possessions apparently, little to identify him save a supply of meticulously wrapped Cuban cigars and a small black notebook of codified inscriptions in pencil covering page after page; and, on the bookshelves behind his desk, the Collected Works of William James . . . Rosamund paged through two or three of these volumes, risking discovery by Liebknecht, her heart pounding buoyantly with the audacity of her behavior, yet deciding not to care, for a book is meant to be public property surely, to be shared even with the ill. Many pages were annotated, in pencil; in the margins were exclamation points, question marks, and stars; at the front of a volume t.i.tled The Will to Believe there was an inscription in ink Truth is the "cash-value" of an idea. Truth is a process that "happens to an idea."

Could this be so? Was this devastating cynicism, or simple American wisdom? Rosamund returned the volume to the shelf in exactly the place it had been, smiling. How much easier life, if one could believe so. Choosing beliefs for any weather, as one chooses hats, gloves, wraps, boots. As one chose's one's destiny, and did not wait to be chosen.

HAVING HAD NO word from Arthur Grille in weeks, Rosamund begins writing him. Cascades of letters, repentant and chagrined. I am "cured" at last of my hateful maladies. I am ready to re-enter the world. She writes to her father and to other relatives, copying pa.s.sages from one letter to another as if transcribing poetry. Will you ever forgive me? I am ashamed of my behavior these many years. I can't explain now that I am well why I so clung to my sickness as if my sickness were myself.

The letters are signed, sealed, carried by Rosamund to a mailbox at the end of the gravelled drive. She doesn't trust any of the servants at the Clinic. (Yet can she trust the mailman?) Though she sends a dozen or more letters, she receives no replies; except an envelope addressed to MISS ROSAMUND GRILLE, sealed but with no stamp, which she opens quickly in the privacy of her room- Dearest Rosamund,

You have only to consent. I am waiting.

L.

In early September, Rosamund insists upon speaking with Dr. Bies, though Dr. Liebknecht is her therapist. She takes a good deal of time with her toilette, fashioning her hair into a pa.s.sably neat chignon, dabbing powder onto her pale face, selecting attractive clothing and jewelry. Wondering, with a stab of shame, how she'd ever been indifferent to her appearance.

Telling the heavyset turtle-eyed physician that she wasn't ill, she was well-exactly as she'd been promised. "And I want to be discharged from the Clinic as quickly as possible."

Dr. Bies smiles politely, as if he's heard these words many times before. "Miss Grille, I'm afraid that isn't possible. We are accountable solely to your guardian. You've been, you know, committed."

"A voluntary commitment," Rosamund says, trying to remain calm. "Surely that makes a difference?"

"Your father will be contacting us soon, I'm sure. Perhaps we can speak with him on the phone. Unless he's still in Europe, traveling."

"But-how recently have you heard from him? I haven't had a letter or a card in weeks."

"Naturally the Clinic issues monthly reports, quite detailed reports, on its patients," Dr. Bies says, "and naturally it's our hope and our expectation that guardians will respond, apart from merely meeting their financial obligations. But we rarely receive personal letters, if that's your question. And never from gentlemen as busy as Arthur Grille."

"But what do you tell Father in your reports?"

"Our reports, as you must know, Miss Grille, are confidential. But very thorough and responsible."

"May I see mine?"

Dr. Bies lifts his hands in a gesture of helpless gallantry.

"Impossible, Miss Grille! As you must know. For, as I've explained, our Clinic is accountable solely to your guardian."

"And if my guardian has abandoned me?" Rosamund asks, her voice rising. "If everyone in the outside world has abandoned me?"

"Your guardian hasn't abandoned you, Miss Grille. Please don't worry. Mr. Grille's financial accountant in Manhattan has never been late with a single payment, and raises no questions at all."

Rosamund sits quietly. A pulse beats at her temple. She tells herself of course she isn't trapped in this place, if she wishes she can escape . . . can't she? From time to time patients more disturbed than she, more desperate, more rebellious, have slipped away from their residences, disappeared into the woods . . . only to turn up again a day or two later, subdued, drowsy with medication . . . looking as if they'd never been away, nor had had a thought of being away. She says, matter-of-factly, as if they weren't physician and patient but equals, "You see, Doctor-I am not ill, I am well. As you and Dr. Liebknecht have promised. It seemed to have happened suddenly, but I suppose it may have happened by degrees. I am well, and I was well all along. There was a kind of veil over my eyes, like spite. A wish to hurt the person closest to me-myself. But now I see the truth of my situation-the truth that has happened to me. For my Wish was turned against myself, and now-as you've promised-my Wish has made me well. And so I want to be discharged. I insist upon being discharged. You must write to my father, to inform him."

"I shall note it on your September report without fail, Miss Grille."

"No more quickly than that? If you could locate Father, you might telegraph him. Obviously he must be in touch with his financial advisors. His broker, his banker. His accountant. For, as I've explained, I'm well now; I don't want to remain with sick people. My life is pa.s.sing rapidly by!"

There's an ebony-handled penknife on Dr. Bies's desk amid a scattering of envelopes and papers. The stiletto-like blade glitters invitingly. Dr. Bies's languid turtle-eyes observe the knife, and the distance from it to Miss Rosamund Grille as she sits perhaps three feet away, beginning to rock in her seat; he's a shrewd fellow, deceptive in his bulk. "I would not, my dear, if I were you," he confides, lowering his voice as if another party might be listening, "-for then you would be put back into restraints, and suffer a relapse."

"But my life-"

"Why yes, it's true for all of mankind," Dr. Bies says, with an air of finality, "-life rapidly pa.s.ses by. 'The fact of having been born is a bad augury for immortality'-as George Santayana, at one time a patient of mine, has said."

Rosamund says, rising unsteadily to her feet, "Dr. Liebknecht would agree that I'm well. Ask him. He might write to my father. And of course I'll write. I have written."

"Yes."

Dr. Bies is standing, Buddha-like, behind his desk; he makes a nearly imperceptible signal to one of the burly male attendants who's been standing a respectful distance behind Rosamund, waiting to escort her back across the quadrangle to her residence. From somewhere close by, a bell is ringing. It's time for the midday meal. An enormous meal, formally served in the dining room, which will last for well over an hour. Rosamund feels a sensation of nausea, repugnance. She has to resist the impulse to clutch at her head, loosen her hair. She has to resist the impulse to shove and scratch at the attendant who, gently but firmly, unmistakably firmly, has taken hold of her forearm to lead her away.

"I am well, and I was well. All along! I'd deceived myself. It was my Wish-as you've said. But now-my Wish is to be well. And I am well. Please, Dr. Bies-"

Earnestly, hands clasped at his midriff, Dr. Bies says, "It's helpful of you to write letters, Miss Grille. As many as you like, and to whom you like. The Honorable Morgan Grille of the state supreme court in Albany is a relative of yours, I believe? His elder daughter was a patient of ours too, some years ago. Letter writing, like the keeping of a journal, is, for women, excellent therapy. It will keep your mind active, and fill up the hours. And, you know, Rosamund-we'll be delighted to mail your letters for you. It's no trouble at all."

BY NIGHT SHE tries to escape the Clinic's vast grounds. In a hooded coat, in rubber-soled boots, a scarf tied tightly around her head she tramps the woods for hours, in panic, in delirium, It is my own Wish that confines me, it will be my own Wish that sets me free, in the end exhausted, lost, circling back toward the Clinic which rises like a ruin out of the darkness, like a nocturnal animal panting at the edge of the lawn seeing, in Dr. Liebknecht's residence, a solitary lamp burning. She wonders if he, her lover, examines her letters too, or only Bies; or if her letters are read at all or merely disposed of.

He sends her his thoughts. Kindly, yet persistent.

You have only to give your consent, Rosamund. I pledge to love you forever.

She has no choice but to think of the man as her lover. Though he's nothing like her previous lovers.

She discovers gifts from him: a silken cord tied in an elegant, complex knot, left on her pillow; a bouquet of violets in an ink bottle filled with water, on her windowsill; a volume of verse by Christina Rossetti t.i.tled Goblin Market, which Rosamund reads avidly, with delight and incomprehension; and an emerald ring in an antique silver setting, which, waking one afternoon in the languor of the hot-sulfur bath, she discovers on the third finger of her left hand. As if it had always been there. "But whose ring has this been?" Rosamund vexes herself, wondering. "A former Mrs. Liebknecht? A mother. A grandmother? A daughter?"

For she's young enough to be Liebknecht's daughter of course.

Almost, she has to inquire: Is she this man's daughter?

She walks in the woods, at the edge of the marshy pond. It's autumn now, an exhilarating taste to the wind, though cold, making tears stream down her cheeks. Marsh gra.s.ses, cattails, Jerusalem artichokes grow in profusion, making a high keening melodic sound in the wind. Moses Liebknecht observes her from a short distance, vigilant to see that she comes to no harm. Tall and erect and courtly he stands, handsome for a man of his years; his clean-shaven face slightly flushed as if heated; eyes silvery-bright with alertness, expectation; his hair, graying, shading into white, brushed thick against the crown of his head. Rosamund calls to him, "I see you, Dr. Liebknecht. You aren't hidden from me. I respect you and I honor you but I don't love you. I don't want to love any man."

Dr. Liebknecht doesn't reply. When Rosamund looks up, squinting-there's no one there.

Yet in fact you do love me, Rosamund. Your Wish is for us to be one: man and wife: a destiny you dare not resist.

She runs from him, she's not a woman to succ.u.mb to fantasies, hallucinations. She's an intelligent young woman! She's of the new generation of young women who have come of age in the early years of the twentieth century, she's attended college . . . until growing bored with books, lectures, routine . . . she isn't her mother and she certainly isn't her grandmother and yet . . . who is she, exactly? Venus Aphrodite guides us in such mysteries, and Venus Aphrodite is never to be comprehended. So Moses Liebknecht's voice a.s.sures her. She protests, "But-my father will object." He says, dryly, But "Father" will always object. It is the curse of being "Father."

. . . Which day is this so strangely warm in the sun, biting-cold in shade, a fierce autumn sky and sepia light suffusing the tall juniper pines through which she runs like a dream gliding in and out of consciousness; in stealth making her way to the marshy edge of the pond, and into the pond, cold numbing water to her knees, to her thighs, she's wearing flannel trousers, rubber-soled boots, a suede jacket and no gloves, bareheaded, and now the water rises to the pit of her belly, how fresh how chill how clear the surface of the water after days of November rain washing away debris floating in the pond and now the water is to her waist . . . she's stumbling, her feet sinking in the mud, I am not ill I am well, I am not ill I am well, she is determined to escape her lover, she is determined to escape love, unworthy of love, a mutilated woman like all women seeing beneath her a half-woman cut in two at the waist, reflected in the pond's surface glaring as a black mirror, a woman with no face, a woman with no eyes, rippling and quivering reflected in the depths of the sky, and everywhere the blinding blaze of sunshine so powerful she must shut her eyes. It is my Wish that has made me ill, now it is my Wish that has made me well, and made me free.

"AND THE LIGHT SHINETH IN DARKNESS"

His head, his head!-jammed with broken gla.s.s, slivers of memory!-and his soul of which he'd been so absurdly proud in constant danger now of dribbling down his elegantly tailored pants leg, an old man's shameful urine.

From which she will save him.

She, who's young. A remarkable woman. His creation, you might say. As a G.o.d might fashion out of mud, sticks, pebbles, minerals a shapely figure and breathe life into it, and suddenly-It lives! And he'll suffuse her with strength, where there's been weakness. And he'll impregnate her with children, where there's been barrenness. Children to replace his lost children. Children to replace the children who've betrayed him. And the miracle will happen again.

"For Nature is never exhausted," Abraham Licht thinks. "It is only we who wear out-some of us. Through a failure of imagination."

BUT HE HASN'T worn out. Despite the bitter shocks, disappointments and trials of recent years.

For only consider: he has boldly reentered The Game though on all sides of him, in these vertiginous 1920's, other, younger men are embarked upon The Game in their various uncharted-unconscionable-ways. On all sides there are fortunes to be reaped, and destinies to be claimed. Suddenly there are so many more Americans . . . so many more compet.i.tors . . . yet also customers, clients, patients. A vast seething sea of hungry souls. Ever more waves of immigrants from Europe and Asia; ever more waves of babies, from out of the inexhaustible void; and, wonder of wonders, older men and women living longer-and demanding to live longer, and ever longer. Mortality isn't a consumer product but health, beauty, longevity are.

The ultimate consumer product which affluent Americans (of whom there are more and more, with each pa.s.sing month) will clamor to buy.

Like Abraham Licht himself who, a few years ago, unknown to even Katrina and Esther, traveled to Manhattan to the office of the renowned urologist Victor Lespina.s.se and arranged for a sensitive, and very costly operation; an operation that has resulted, Abraham Licht thinks, in a rejuvenation of body and spirit; for as Dr. Lespina.s.se says gravely, "A man is as old-or as young-as his glands."

It may even be, a man is his glands.