Pilgrim (4 page)
Still, there was no way in and no way out of Pilgrim’s mind. It was besieged and all the gates were sealed.
The skies beyond the windows of Doctor Furt-wängler’s office the next morning were bright with sunshine—almost white.
“Tell me your name.”
I have no name.
“Can you not—will you not speak to me?”
Speak? It is useless.
“I am told that you want to die, Mister Pilgrim. If this is truly what you wish, I need to know why.”
You have no need. How can it possibly matter to you?
“Mister Pilgrim?”
Why do you assume that because I do not answer I cannot hear you?
“Doctor Greene informs me that you have attempted to kill yourself before. Is this true?”
Everything is true. Everything—and nothing.
“Well, at least that’s something. You looked the other way. I will accept that, for now, as some kind of answer. And—until you agree to speak and are willing to contradict me—I will assume the answer is
yes: you have tried before.”
Pilgrim sat in the leather chair that Sybil, only last
evening, had occupied. He rubbed the palms of his hands against its arms. Her scent was somewhere in there and he wanted to evoke it.
Moss…lemons…ferns…
“Are you comfortable?”
Yes.
“I want to know why you refuse to speak. Have you lost your voice? If you have, there is treatment we can provide.”
Snow. Mountains. Sky.
“It is perfectly understandable, of course, given the manner in which you attempted to kill yourself…”
Doctor Furtwängler made no bones about the way in which he phrased this. No point pretending they did not both know exactly why Pilgrim was there. To pass it off in some pale, euphemistic way:
the manner in which you came to grief,
perhaps, or
the condition in which you were found
would be an insult. A hanging is a hanging. Suicide is suicide. It is not a synonym for
accident.
Certainly not a synonym for
unfortunate happenstance.
“Given the manner in which you attempted to kill yourself,” he said, “damage may well have been done to your vocal cords. This afternoon, I will have you escorted to the laboratory of Doctor Felix Höver-meyer, an expert in these matters. He will examine you. If there is cause for concern, I trust you will allow him to treat you.”
Avalanche.
“On the other hand, if we have no evidence of trauma in the larynx, I shall persist in asking my questions until, one day, you answer.”
Doctors always love it when you smile. They call it enigmatic. Is that enigmatic enough?
“You clearly understand me.”
Yes.
“I am not your enemy, Mister Pilgrim. You need not resist me. I am here to help.”
Will you help me to your scalpel? Your linden tree with bough of steel? Your hunting knife? Your axe? Your gun?
“You must, I am certain, be aware the circumstances of your recovery were miraculous.”
There are no miracles.
“Do you believe in God?”
I have no gods. There is no God.
“Your man—his name is Forster, I believe—is said to have cut you down, and when he did so, you were already dead.”
Not dead. I cannot die.
“Doctor Greene and Doctor Hammond. I have here copies of their reports. I have spoken more than once to Greene on the telephone. Every effort they extended failed to produce a heartbeat. And in spite of every method of resuscitation, you also failed to breathe. Three hours—four, Mister Pilgrim, without a heartbeat. Five without breathing. Yet here you are and…”
It is not a miracle, Doctor. Death would be the miracle. Not life.
“Would you care to see your friend?”
I have no friends.
“Lady Quartermaine…”
Sybil.
“She is here, and would very much like to talk with you—speak with you. Would you be willing?”
Pilgrim stood up.
He reached across the desk and drew the doctor’s notes towards him, tearing off the top grey page. Then, page in hand, he went to the window.
Furtwängler waited and watched him, motionless.
Pilgrim held the paper up to the light. Spreading it against the glass, he smoothed it with his fingers.
Still, Furtwängler did not move.
Pilgrim pressed his forehead against the page. He pressed so hard, the frosting on the windowpane was melted.
Then he turned and handed the page to Furtwängler.
On it, above the Doctor’s notes, was a pattern—a design.
For a moment, it looked almost like a word—and the word was
NO
.
Its letters were not formed in ink, but in ice. Even as Furtwängler stared at them, they melted and faded away, leaving only the wet blankness of the page.
That evening, Sybil Quartermaine stood staring at a large rectangular parcel that sat on a table beside the bay windows of her sitting-room at the Hôtel Baur au Lac.
Its outer wrapping consisted of thick oiled canvas
tied with tough red cords. Now, the cords were cut—thanks to a hotel footman who had bowed out of the room just moments before. Sybil knew that inside, the parcel’s contents were further shrouded in layers of linen and paper. This she had discovered when she had first opened the package shortly after it had been presented to her just a week before.
Forster had placed it on a table in her temporary rooms at number 18 Cheyne Walk, where she had taken up residence following Pilgrim’s suicide attempt.
Say nothing, m’lady,
he had cautioned her. These had been Pilgrim’s instructions to him—in a note deliberately placed on the floor outside Pilgrim’s bedroom, on the morning Forster had found his employer hanging from the maple tree in the garden. He had been further instructed to give the package to Lady Quartermaine and to destroy the note once he had read and understood its contents—and this he had done.
The parcel had accompanied the rest of Sybil’s luggage to Zürich. Phoebe Peebles, her maid, had seemed puzzled by its presence—but had not dared to ask any questions.
Nor had anyone else. And therefore Sybil Quartermaine was alone in her knowledge that she now possessed a complete set of Pilgrim’s journals. And was unsure what to do about them.
Should she read them? They were his. They were private. But why else would Pilgrim have had them sent to her? Still, what if they revealed more than anyone should know? What if they revealed even more
than Sybil herself already knew? Or wanted to know.
She sighed.
Then she closed her eyes, opened them—and suddenly sat down at the table. She reached for the canvas and began to pull aside its folds. Then the linen. And finally, the paper.
There they sat, bound in leather.
Pilgrim’s writings,
she thought.
Pilgrim’s secrets…
She lifted the top journal and set it on the table before her. Opening it, she began to leaf through the closely written pages, noting how meticulous Pilgrim had been about the margins—all the paragraphs squared on either side. Suddenly, a particular date caught her eye.
By firelight: 2:00 a.m. Sunday, 1st December, 1901. Hartford Pryde.
Henry James is given to lists. He told me this evening in the drawing-room that his journal entries almost inevitably end with columns of names.
“People you’ve met?” I ask him. “Places you’ve been?”
“No, no. Nothing of the kind. People and places I’m waiting to invent. Names, I find, can be so provocative. Take the name
Bleat,
for instance. It occurred to me while riding on a train. What does one think of first?”
“Sheep.”
“Precisely. But it’s someone’s name. Can you see him?”
“None too kindly, I’m afraid. Face like a sheep, I
suppose. Head too close to his shoulders. Small, worried eyes. Hands at his sides. Wearing gloves…”
“Black gloves.” James nodded.
“Black gloves, yes.”
“Black shoes?”
“Yes. With spats.”
“Grey spats, of course. Bleat wears nothing but black and grey, I should think. Never white. Sheep are never truly white.”
“That’s right. Never white.”
I waited. James’s eyes shifted to one side. I wondered if we had done with Bleat, but—no.
“What sort of shape do you see?” he asked me.
“Round,” I said. “Not fat, but round.”
“Not a tall man.”
“No. Not tall at all.”
“But not a dwarf.”
“No. Not a dwarf.”
“And you say he’s
round?”
“Yes. Round. Looks as if he has to lie on the floor in order to put on his overcoat. Rolls himself into it. Can’t do up the buttons.”
“His man must do that for him.”
“That and get him to his feet. Yes.”
“Wears a homburg,” James added.
“Carries it. Never quite sure what to do with it.”
“Black wool collar.”
“Absolutely. Lamb.”
“I suspect he complains a lot.”
“Endlessly, I should think.”
“Wet-eyed…”
“And worried. Yes.”
“Ever met him?”
“Well, no,” I said. “He doesn’t exist.”
“He does now.” James slid his eyes in my direction and gave a childlike smile. Almost smug.
I laughed.
“You see, then, the value of my lists,” he said.
“Indeed I do. I’ve often wondered where writers get their characters’ names.”
“Most come with them,” he said. “Isabel Archer, for instance. I shall never forget the day she walked into my mind and said:
I’m here, now. You may begin.
It was very much as though I were a painter and she had come to sit for me in my studio.”
“
The Portrait of a Lady
.”
“Yes. I knew her instantly by name. She might have left her calling card the day before—a week before. A month. I seemed to have been expecting her arrival. Not that I knew her entirely all at once, but knew that she was fascinating to me. Had drawn me towards her after various sightings—teasing glimpses—anecdotes and rumours of her existence. It seemed, in my head, as though others had spoken of her. As if, you know, she were real and I were the last to hear of her.
Her name is Isabel Archer,
inner voices informed me.
Are you interested?
Yes, I said. Yes.
She comes with a great deal of money,
the voices went on—money—tragedy—intrigue—desolation…I had to stop them while I rushed for paper. And there you have it. Do you understand? A face is seen—a figure—then you hear a name and the gossip in you wants to know it all. The
whole sordid tale. Or sad. Or wonderful. Whatever. Isabel Archer—monied and beautiful—or penniless and plain. Which? An American, of course, caught up in the social coils of sophisticated European treachery and home-grown American greed. And what is to become of her? There she sits before you—smiling and seemingly poised—and that is all you know. And then—you begin to write.”
“You make it sound almost too easy,” I said. I had not enjoyed the story of Isabel Archer, though of course I could not say so. The ending was too painful, however true to life, and I had closed the book with a deep sense of moral frustration. Not that I live a moral life, but I do expect it of others. Don’t we all?
James said: “you need only look around this drawing-room at all the people gathered here to see how difficult it really is. Reading a face. Reading a gesture. What can you tell me of any one of them? Less than you may imagine, Pilgrim—even though you may think you know them by heart. Everyone is a liar—one way or another—to one degree or another. No one
can
tell the truth about themselves. It is quite impossible. Something must always be justified.
Always,
something must be justified. We do each other dreadful harm because we refuse to justify the foibles of others—only our own. And this is sad. And so…” there was an eager light in his eye as he concluded “…that is where I come in. Because I am able to see, articulate and justify the lies of others.”
“And yours, Mister James?” I said. “Your own lies?”
“I have none,” he replied. “None has been left to me. I have betrayed them all on the page.”
“I see.”
“Don’t go away with the wrong impression, Mister Pilgrim. I do not mean there is no deceit in me—only that I no longer lie to myself. I no longer justify. I merely record.”
I believe him. And though it may seem presumptuous, I now forgive him for Isabel Archer’s fate. If he had made the ending I had thought I wanted, he would have betrayed the lot of us by painting
The Portrait of a Lily
—not
a Lady.
As we parted, moving on to other conversations, he said to me: “thank you for Mister Bleat. I hope I shall meet him again.” He smiled. “In town, perhaps.”
“Yes,” I told him. “In town. I shall give him a call, and bring him round.”
“In his overcoat, I trust.”
“In his overcoat, for certain. I shall roll him into it myself.”
Harry Quartermaine took James away to the library, to inspect his collection of antique books. I might have been inclined to join them if I hadn’t noted Harcourt beetling after them. Harcourt the bore. “Harcourt of the Bodleian,” he always says, when introducing himself with, I trust, an inadvertent imitation of Uriah Heep—all tipped over on his toes, bobbing like something dead in the water. And he actually does rub his hands together in the same Heepish manner—as if he
were giving himself a dry wash. I cannot bear the man—nor his prating wife, the dreaded Rose. I can’t imagine why they are here, having watched Sybil suffer their endless presence at Portman Square. It must be Quartermaine who invites them, since he suffers fools so gladly. Fools and connivers. Thieves. Sadly, Harcourt may well have a bequest for the Bodleian of Harry’s antique books before the evening is out.
Eleanor and Stephen Copland were packed off early to the games room with Margot and David. Being cousins and roughly of an age, they have known each other all their lives. The other Quartermaine children—“our Prydes,” as Sybil calls them, using their family name—had been with us briefly at teatime, but Margot and David had been allowed to sit at table in the evening with the adults. Watching them depart—herded away with Susan Copland following—still and apparently ever wearing black—I could not but feel sorry for them all, having lost their father and their uncle two months ago and never knowing why. I suspect that Susan’s having gone with them had to do with her concern that none of the wrong questions be asked, and none of Margot’s irresponsible speculations.