The Lost Prince (42 page)

“You are very forthright, my dear Eleanor, a most endearing quality. And you have shown great courage in accepting this proposed journey into the war zone.”

“And you are changing the subject”—she took a sip of claret—“which I shall allow.” And she paused for the subject to change. “As for me,” she continued, “I am simply doing what is expected.”

“Expected of the hero,” Jung said, smiling admiringly. “Your inner strength is very much on display, and very much admired, I might add. It is your inner masculine, I think you have caught me saying.”

Eleanor smiled. “Your animus theory,” she said. “The inner masculine in every woman, the unresolved father, I believe you have also said.” She was quoting him.

“Do you not agree?” Jung said. “Most women spend a lifetime trying to understand the image of their father within them.”

“And that is the cause of a certain assertive, sometimes strident tone.”

“Well,” Jung said, staring with piercing eyes, “is it not?”

“That is difficult to see in oneself. You make it sound fearsome.”

“The animus in a strong, high-spirited woman, that uncontrolled masculine force? It is fearsome, something most men cannot handle. It is the Amazon fierceness that makes us cower.”

“Like the Medusa, you have said. It turns men to stone.”

“Well?” Jung said. “Look at you. You are convinced that the reports of Esterhazy’s death are inaccurate, and you have traveled three thousand miles to find him. No one, no evidence, has been able to dissuade you.”

She looked serious. “You think my quest is irrational, animus-deceived, as you call it, my unresolved father image.”

Jung said nothing, as if her very question proved his point. “Well?”

Eleanor looked uneasy. “You think my strong will is often greater than what is called for. That in strong women this animus, the unresolved masculine, overreacts.”

Jung smiled. “Yes, I have observed that.”

“But I am also realistic,” she said, and she reached way back into her past, to her previous time in Vienna, the city she was now reentering.

“I know you are also realistic,” he said. “I have known that for some time, since our idyll at Putnam Camp.”

“William James pointed out that my faith was strong, that of a fundamentalist,” she said. “He found some amusement, I think, in my ‘absolute certainty,’ as he called it.”

“And you hear that strong, true voice speaking to you from time to time?”

She could not deny it. “I do.”

“You know then why you are here.”

“I do. I am called, I think you would say,” she said. “I believe what I believe.”

“Well then, I rest my case.” She could see on his face a look of admiration. Not knowing of the journal, he attributed her strength and certitude, she knew, to his new discovery of the animus. “That belief is now taking you on this quest. It will take you as far as the underworld perhaps, and you are not fearful.”

“Oh, I am plenty fearful, but I simply know what needs to be done.”

“And that you are the only one who can do it?”

“Well, yes,” she said. “Can you name another?”

“Point well taken. No, there is no one else who believes as you believe. You see, that is heroic, a perfect example of the animus. You are Marlow searching for Kurtz.”

“Ah,
Heart of Darkness
again,” she said. “That sounds a little grand. I am simply going into the war zone to find Arnauld. I know he cannot be dead.”

“How do you know this?”

“I can’t account for it, but I do
know
he is not dead.”

“You see, you are very courageous. There is no other way to account for it.”

“But still you think it folly? A fool’s errand.”

Jung smiled at her admiringly. “My dear, it is indeed grand. Grand and admirable, and perhaps even folly, I don’t know, and I worry that you will discover as fact what is already accepted.”

“That Arnauld is dead.”

“That is it,” he said. “I do know something in all this, and it is that if I were similarly lost in war, my situation hopeless, you are precisely the person I would want searching for me. And that is why I give this effort of yours my support.” He raised his wineglass. “And I salute you, my dear, determined friend.”

The next night she and Jung dined alone, as had become their tradition, after Standish had gone to bed with the Jung children, and Emma had left them to their conversations. “You are concerned about me,” he said with his usual matter-of-fact directness after raising a glass of claret in toast.

“I thought perhaps you had gone too far—”

“You feared that I was showing signs of a psychosis. You are not the only one with those concerns. It is said that I have internalized the chaos that war has brought.”

“And there is reason for that concern?”

“And there is on your part?”

Eleanor took the question with seriousness. “Your writings and your paintings, they have shown a depth and intensity we are not accustomed to.”

“They resemble the work of my schizophrenic patients, it is said.”

Eleanor laughed. “And for good reason,” she said. “The concern seems legitimate.”

“And you worry about me the way you worry about your Harvard friend who corresponds with his inner voices.”

“I do,” she said. “I do worry about my colleague Will Honeycutt, I have to admit, and I do worry about you.” She paused, giving the matter some little consideration. “But the presence of voices in your lives, and the responses, do make both of you interesting.”

That brought a smile to Jung. “I hope to meet your interesting colleague someday, your Mr. Will Honeycutt. I owe him a great deal.”

Eleanor only nodded slowly.

They were alone now in the spacious living room, the Küsnacht air crisp and cool and the house silent. She had asked if she could see the Red Book, the large leather-bound volume he had had made just for the purposes of recording dreams and reflections.

“I do show it,” he said. “We shall move to the study.”

She stood before the larger volume on its wooden stand beside the settee, and she turned the pages slowly, running her fingers over the beautiful colored drawings and careful calligraphy, each page full of exacting detail.

“These are beautiful,” she said, “done so painstakingly.”

“I began with the black volumes”—he pointed to a collection of three smaller black leather volumes on his desk—“but then finalized them with the drawings and calligraphy.”

“Well, this is just exquisite; I had no idea you were such an artist.”

“Nor did I,” Jung said with a wry smile.

She had not planned to tell him the whole story perhaps, but in the still quiet of his study, having just been allowed to see his Red Book, a feeling of intimacy came over her. “I have something to tell you. Something I have shared with no one but William James.”

Knowing that he had the ability to create such moments of intimate trust with people, especially women, the Swiss doctor would not have been surprised, and he certainly knew how to lean forward and present a posture of welcome. He said nothing except, “Please.”

And she began. “In the year 1897, the year after my graduation from college, I traveled to Vienna to write ‘something of significance,’ my headmistress called it, about music. And while there, I fell into the thrall of a remarkable American, an older man from San Francisco, one whose presence there involved unusual circumstance, you would say. In the future, the sound recordings of the Victrola will become greatly enhanced and expanded with electricity, so that musicians and instruments can be amplified to fill great auditoriums and athletic stadiums, bringing great popular fame to musicians and performers.”

“And this mysterious man from San Francisco is to be one of such great fame?”

“Yes,” Eleanor said.

“And he was from another time?”

Eleanor nodded, looking down.

“From a time in the future?” Jung said. There was a warmth in his voice. Carl Jung, this man who understood complexity, showed nothing but acceptance in his eyes.

She nodded again, then continued. “While in this remarkable man’s company and under his influence, I experienced the world in ways I had never experienced it before, and I made discoveries about myself—admitted things actually—that changed my life forever. He held back nothing. I lost my innocence, one would say, and I gained much, too much perhaps. When I left Vienna after this experience, much sadder but much wiser, as they say—far far wiser—I carried with me a journal this remarkable man had carefully prepared during his time in Vienna, and I have used that journal as my guide from that time forward. That is how I know certain things about the future and how I have known to take certain actions—certain investments, marriage to Frank Burden, the recruiting of Arnauld Esterhazy to St. Gregory’s, all of which have brought about my very good fortune.”

“All of that prescribed in this journal you brought with you from Vienna?” There was directness but still nothing judgmental in his tone.

Again, Eleanor lowered her head solemnly and nodded slowly. “All part of the commitment I made back then, all carried out with great purpose.”

“It has brought you great good fortune,” Jung said, obvious in slowly absorbing what he was hearing. “Your investments.”

“Yes, and much consternation, I must add. I have been blessed, and I have been cursed.”

After she finished this small exposition, Jung sat without speaking, a look of the deepest compassion on his face. “Oh my,” he said finally, in a kind of awe. “That explains a great deal. And it raises many questions, as you know. Many questions.”

“I know it is a great deal to take in right now, in one sitting. There will be time for questions. But right now I just wanted you to know the rough outline of the story.”

“And why you are here right now?” he asked.

“And why I am here right now.”

“It is how you and you alone know for certain that Arnauld Esterhazy cannot be dead.”

“It is.”

Then he looked deep into her eyes. “And if he is dead?” Jung said, barely able to pose the question.

Eleanor bowed her head in silence. “You may think that I have not confronted that possibility.”

“To the contrary, my dear Eleanor, I know of your courage and your integrity.”

“If Arnauld is dead—” She faltered, needing to collect herself for a moment. “To answer your question, I would be devastated,” she said in a whisper. “It would be devastating, and it would be a relief. I would lose my purpose in life—” She stopped, barely able to continue. “And I could become normal again, like everyone else.”

“And you would not have to carry this weight any longer.”

“I would not,” she said with her head still down.

“And that would be the devastation, and the relief.”

“Yes.” She nodded, holding for a moment in silence the comfort of being in the presence of someone—one of the few in the world perhaps—who could understand. Then she looked up, a characteristic steely resolve returning to her eyes. “But he is not dead,” she said, now with a renewed conviction. “I know he is not dead, and I shall find him.”

“And that journal?” Jung said. “It is your holy book, your scripture.”

The words caught her by surprise for a moment. “That is funny,” she said. “That is what William James called it, when he heard.” Then she looked into her friend’s intense kind eyes. “Yes, it is my holy scripture.”

“In adherence to it, you are a fundamentalist.”

“Yes, that is what William James observed,” she said. “In that adherence, that is how I am a fundamentalist, about the literal nature of what is written.”

“And this man in Vienna years ago, the man from San Francisco, what of him? You believe that he really had traveled in time? Like H. G. Wells,” he said.

“Yes, like H. G. Wells,” Eleanor said, smiling at the reference, “but with no time machine, and with no way to get back.”

Jung looked serious, giving the words some thought. “There was no way to return?” he said, and Eleanor nodded. “Did he die in Vienna?” he asked, and she nodded solemnly. “Were you with him?”

Eleanor did not answer. “It is strange,” she said after the moment’s
pause, “he had long conversations with your Dr. Freud, all recorded with great care in the journal.” She paused again and pointed at the red leather volume open beside them. “Not unlike that book.”