Part 30 (1/2)

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 s.h.i.+rt 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 suns.h.i.+ne, 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, fas.h.i.+oning 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.”