The Lost Prince (61 page)

Will Honeycutt looked puzzled for a moment, then showed with his eyes that even this most profound point was sinking in. “I understand,” he said tentatively. “That means that eighty or so years from now, you are going to return from Vienna and search for a T. Williams Honeycutt again because the name is written in this book, and once again you are going to find
me,
the wrong one,” he said in conclusion.

“Apparently so,” she said. “Yes.”

“It is so. It is destiny. But, don’t you see, you will do the same thing again. It is the right choice. It was in the past and will be in the future. Over and over. The right one.”

“Yes,” she said, now hesitantly, having followed his scientist’s logic and perhaps acknowledging it for the first time. “The right one.”

“And Arnauld,” he said now with a clear confidence. “Arnauld is the key to the whole thing. In order for the whole story to repeat itself, as it must, Arnauld needs to be back here, back at St. Gregory’s, back in our life.”

“Yes.”

“That,” he said, “is why you risked so much to go find him. And that is why you were successful.”

“Yes,” Eleanor said, now clearly shaken by this continued barrage of logical interpretation. “But then it is destiny. It should happen by itself.”

“No,” Will said quickly. “Not by itself. Don’t you see? You have had to act within it. That’s the whole point.” If possible there was now an even greater intensity in his eyes. “
We
have to act to make destiny unfold. This is a partnership.”

Eleanor shook her head quizzically. “It is a lot to absorb, I know,” she said finally.

“We must create our own destiny. We must act to make the preordained happen. That is our obligation. I must tell you this,” he said, his eyes wide with revelation. “I know my role here. I know that I am not normal.” She tried now to stop him, holding up her hands. “No, no,” he protested. “I must finish. I know that I do not feel empathy or connection the way others do, and I obsess about details. You have been right in pointing out that I am good with the ticker tape but do not care about the people, that I know all about the parts in the automobiles but don’t care
about the drivers. I am not able to care.” He was waving his arms. “I am not able to love.”

“Oh, Will,” she said, trying to intercede.

“No, no,” he said again. “I live in my own world of systems. Systems, systems, always systems. I know this. It is my tragic flaw. But now, just this once, I can do something. I care about you,” he said. “And I care about Arnauld. It is hard to describe or explain, but it is true. Just this once.”

“Oh, Will—” she began, and again he held up his hands, stopping her.

“Therefore,” he said with absolute intensity and absolute clarity, “that is why I must go now to Zurich.”

ELEANOR’S DREAM

I
t was right about that time, perhaps even that night, that Eleanor had the dream. When she awoke from it, she took care to record it in the most minute detail.

The scene seemed to be a number of years in the future, around 1926, when Standish was eleven. Arnauld, now fully restored and teaching again at St. Gregory’s, had agreed to travel to Dexter School, Standish’s school, to watch the closing activity of the fall boys’ competition. Eleanor had scheduled a car and driver to pick Arnauld up at St. Gregory’s, and they would travel together to the game. She found herself looking forward to a rare moment alone with him, acknowledging the pleasure of being near this man who had secretly meant so much to her for so long.

They were sitting in the backseat of one of David Dunbar Buick’s limousines, and Arnauld, looking mature and poised, was telling her about his new appointment at St. Gregory’s, European history teacher for the first class, the most prestigious assignment on the faculty.

“It is a great honor,” she said. “And one well deserved.”

“They think me fully recovered,” he said. His eyes were clear; his hand was steady.

“I am happy to have this moment alone,” Eleanor said on their way to Dexter School. She felt a great warmth sitting beside him.

“I was lost,” he said. “You came to save me.”

“You remembered that?”

“I remember,” he said. “I remember that the war was folly. We have lost so much. The world as we knew it fell apart.”

“And that is what you will teach the boys?” she asked.

“I shall teach the boys what we lost.”

“And you remember your time here, the night before you left, that summer of 1914?”

He put his head down. “I remember,” he said in little more than a whisper. “I remember,” he repeated, and then shook his head. “The thought of it kept me alive during the war. But I fear.”

“You fear what?” she said.

“I fear I violated the trust, I intruded myself.”

“Oh, no,” she said with an unrestrained burst, breaking through the formality for a moment, her hand shooting out to touch his arm. “Oh my, no, dearest Arnauld. It was completely and utterly my wish. You must always know that.”

And suddenly they were at Dexter School. “And what is this event?” Arnauld asked. “I know it is important to Standish.”

“It is the treasured Iroquois Cup, the most important event of a Dexter boy’s year,” Eleanor explained. “It instills in them the spirit of competition.”

“It is what the older boys at St. Gregory’s engage in,” Arnauld said. “I wondered where they learned it.”

“From an early age,” Eleanor continued. “There are two teams here, the Mohawks and the Oneidas, and at the end of the fall the winner in points will be given the Iroquois Cup. Standish is an Oneida, as was his father, Frank Burden, before him.”

“American boys throw themselves into these rivalries,” Arnauld said. “It is superb.”

Eleanor and Arnauld were then standing on the sidelines, watching. The boys, fifth and sixth graders, were dressed in the colors of their teams, blue for the Mohawks and red for the Oneidas. Each boy had tucked into his waistband a yellow sash. The game was tied. “One play remaining,” came a cry from the bench. At first there seemed to be only chaos, and then from the middle of the confusion of flying bodies one red-shirted boy emerged darting and twisting and dancing from side to side.

“It is Standish,” burst from Arnauld.

The boy kept spinning and dodging, and then with what seemed like a superhuman burst of speed, he threw his arms into the air and crossed the goal line. What followed for the Oneida team was absolute bedlam. They swarmed toward the victorious runner and enveloped him in hurling and flying bodies, all chanting.

“What is it?” Arnauld said.

“They are saying, ‘Dilly, Dilly,’” Eleanor said. “The boys have begun calling him Dilly.”

Arnauld and Eleanor watched in delight and amazement as young Standish Burden was tossed about in the middle of the pile. Eleanor reached out then and patted his arm and felt again the warmth of closeness. She saw that Arnauld was completely absorbed in watching the boy in this glorious moment.

“Dilly,” he said. “The boy will be called Dilly.”

And Eleanor concluded her description of her dream with the observation that she woke up with a feeling of great contentment. “That is the vision,” she wrote, “but I have no idea how to bring it to fruition.”

ROWING HOME

B
efore Will Honeycutt left for Zurich, he discussed details with Eleanor. “The Hyperion Fund will cover the expenses, I assume,” he said.

“Of course,” Eleanor said. “This is exactly what all we have done is for.”

“I have a plan,” Will said with a newfound authority, “and I will execute it myself. But when I am finished, I will be coming home, and someone will have to follow through back in Vienna. Someone will have to be with him day and night to reintroduce him to the full life he had in Vienna, and to guard against his slipping back.”

“I understand,” Eleanor said. “And I know the perfect person, after you have done your part.”

And Will Honeycutt asked that he be able to take some special items. “I will need some supporting tools. I would like your copy of Chapman’s
Odyssey,
” he said. “And Standish’s picture book of that story. And as many of Arnauld’s letters as I may have.” She agreed and made a packet of the requested items and added it to his baggage.

“And that romantic Italian photograph?” Will said at the end of the packing process. She had nearly forgotten about it, but found it among Arnauld’s papers.

“I have not been able to understand this image,” she said, handing it over.

“This photograph is very important,” he said. “He kept it in a place of honor.”

“And its significance?” she asked.

“Don’t you see?” Will Honeycutt said, as if explaining some obvious but important point in atomic science. “It is his image of himself, his ideal self, the archetypal lover, the one trapped inside, as Miggo says. And this”—he pointed to the beautiful fashionable woman—“we all know who this is.”

She went silent for a moment, and then suddenly it all became clear and she stared at the image of the lovers in stunned silence. “His Beatrice,” she said in little more than a whisper.

“Of course it is,” Will Honeycutt said, oblivious to her reaction, lifting the photograph and adding it to his packed materials. “And it will come in handy, added to my other tools,” he said in conclusion.

When the United States entered the war in 1917, like many men his age, Will had been too old to volunteer, so he dedicated himself to reading a good deal about the war and about the ordeals of those who did go. When he discovered that his friend Arnauld was suffering from what he deduced was shell shock, he found in his research a relevant report by a British psychiatrist. A soldier who suffered a battle neurosis, the report said in essence, had not lost his reason, but was laboring under the weight of too much reason: It was not that his senses were not functioning; they were functioning with painful efficiency.

Armed with that simple notion, he met with Dr. Jung when he arrived in Zurich and explained that he wanted to work with Arnauld, that he thought he had an answer, and Jung was impressed by his determination.

“I am not a physician,” he explained, “I am a physicist. I want to know how systems work at the atomic level. I am like the medieval alchemists, always looking for the
prima materia.
”

“I understand,” Jung said, with great seriousness. “And you believe that you know how your friend Arnauld’s system worked in shutting down, at this, the
prima materia
level?”

“I do, sir,” Will Honeycutt said with the unearthly intensity in his eyes.

“The human mind is very complex,” Jung said, cautioning the neophyte.

“I relish complex problems, sir,” Will Honeycutt said.

Jung wrote Eleanor. “Young Honeycutt’s intervention, as it were, can do no harm,” he said. “At first we all balked at his lack of psychological
training, but then, his manner won us all over, and no other avenues in sight, we acceded, admitting that the rest of us are stuck. He sees through to what none of us are able to see, ventures where none of us are willing to venture, to what he calls the
prima materia
. It is fascinating to watch. He pursues like a fox after a rabbit, descending at times into the abyss to rescue his friend. Arnauld is fortunate perhaps that his friend has come along. One of the doctors is writing a paper. Arnauld’s case could well become renowned in the treatment of battle trauma. Everyone was impressed by your Will Honeycutt’s bearing. He seemed to have taken on the persona of an experienced aged and wise practitioner.” And back in Boston, when Eleanor read that last sentence, she smiled and knew exactly what was happening. Will Honeycutt was having conversations with William James.

It was on only his second day, after he had read the medical report and assessed the arrangements at the Burghölzli, that Will Honeycutt announced that he intended to have Arnauld Esterhazy rowing. He set out to find a source of a single shell somewhere between the Zurich waterfront and Jung’s house at Küsnacht, where he was told by a number of sources that there were possibilities. He found by the end of the day a friend of the hospital’s director who rowed on the lake regularly.

Mornings on the Zürichsee, he observed, were usually glassy smooth, the wind and waves not picking up until midafternoon. So on his third morning, he drove with Arnauld Esterhazy and an accompanying doctor, a neurology resident named Knoffler, who seemed to be in charge of Arnauld’s “recreation,” to a small boathouse and dock five kilometers from the hospital.

“We’ll get him into the boat,” Will said, not revealing what he hoped would transpire. “We’ll just see what happens.”

Arnauld approached the excursion as he did everything, with a genial half smile and a blank gaze. Will Honeycutt helped him out of his clothes and into shorts and a rowing jersey. The patient did not resist. Then the two observers carried the single-seated boat to the dockside and dropped it into the water, Arnauld following behind, watching with no apparent interest or emotion.

The two observers got him into his seat in the shell and placed his hands on the oars. “We will just let him sit and get accustomed,” Will said, again revealing none of what he hoped for. Will gave the shell a
little shove, and it drifted away from the dock, bringing a look of alarm to Dr. Knoffler’s face.

“Don’t worry,” Will Honeycutt said, pointing to the dinghy tied alongside the dock. “We have that.”

Arnauld sat without moving, hands on the oars, as the shell drifted out onto the lake. Then, ever so slightly, he began moving his hands, first one, then the other, lifting each oar from the still, clear blue Alpine water. In a slight, uncoordinated effort the movement propelled the boat forward, then gradually his legs pushed forward and then retracted in the seat until both oars began pulling up and then hitting the water at the same time. The shell began to slide away out into the deep, and Dr. Knoffler made a quick movement toward the dinghy. Will Honeycutt reached out a hand to stop him.

“Don’t worry,” Will said, as both men could see the shell picking up speed, and the rower beginning to slide up and back in the seat and the oars beginning to move in rhythm. Now, a good thirty meters from where the two observers stood, the rower and boat seemed to have found an easy fluidity that propelled the shell across the glassy surface.