Mesmerized

by Alissa Walser, Jamie Bulloch

Genres: Historical Fiction; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Mozart's Vienna. A crucible for scientific experimentation and courtly intrigue, as Europe's finest minds vie for imperial favour. In a colourful, chaotic private hospital that echoes with the shrieks of hysterical patients, Franz Anton Mesmer is developing a series of controversial cure-alls for body and mind. When he is asked to help restore the sight of a blind musical prodigy favoured by the Empress herself, he senses that fame, and even immortality, is within his grasp. Mesmer knows that he will have to gain her trust if he is to open her eyes. But at what cost to her fragile talent? And will their intimacy result in scandal?

Release date: June 7, 2012

Publisher: MacLehose Press

Print pages: 187

Sample

20 January, 1777

On this winter morning the most famous doctor in the city, his dog in tow, climbs the stairs from the dormitory wing to his treatment rooms. The honey-brown steps can be negotiated with comfortable strides, or it’s an easy rhythmical trot for paws. In this house there are no steep and narrow steps. As had been the case in his parents’ house. There, he always used to climb down through a gap in the planks to the floor below as if he were on a ladder – apart from when he fell and bruised himself.

He’d rather have stayed in bed, of course. Outside it’s pitch black and cold. But he has an important patient to visit, perhaps the most important of his career. He is to examine the blind daughter of the Imperial–Royal court official, Herr Paradis. His wife has requested a house visit. It’s because of this step up in his career that he’s on his feet so early. And climbing these stairs, which were not designed for the early riser. The extravagant width, the mere hint of a spiral – suggesting a never-ending snail shell – evoke a harmony which can only be appreciated by someone who’s enjoyed a good sleep. He has not. It’s something of a consolation that Kaline, the housemaid, has already lit the lamps and stoves, but only if she keeps out of sight. If he could just play some music. Since he got married he’s been living in this most splendid of houses, with so many rooms that there’s even one specifically for his instrument, and yet he cannot play now. A good day always begins with music. Five minutes on his glass armonica is enough. Mozart, Haydn or Gluck, or just running his fingers along the instrument until they find their own melody, and brushing gently over the keyboard like a cat playing in the snow. Then the day will pass in a similarly gentle fashion.

But Anna, his wife, is asleep, the patients are asleep, everyone’s asleep, the entire household. Kaline has probably gone back to sleep too. It would be just like her. The moment she sits down – on the kitchen bench beside the range, or on the stool in the washing room – she falls into a deep sleep. Only a couple of days ago he even caught her napping in the drawing room. Reclining on one of the cushions she looked like a tiny animal with closed eyes. Or a slender plant. A flower startled out of its sleep. He would have liked to have gazed longer at her faintly arched eyelids. There’s something so innocent, defenceless about closed eyes. But he had to wake her. In a situation like that his wife became loud very quickly, far too loud for an unsuspecting, sleeping girl. He spoke her name, but Kaline did not wake up. He did not want to touch her, so he stood there and started blowing on her face until she opened her eyes. Anna was standing in the doorway, unnoticed, and so it rapidly got loud after all, so loud that sleeping was no longer an option. Her ranting banished all sleep into the furthest corners of the house. Down into the dark vaults of the cellar. And up high, even higher than the servants’ bedrooms, up into that minuscule space immediately beneath the roof. A cubby hole that looked as if it had been made from spiders’ webs, where the windows were nailed up because of the pigeons. There, sleep was still sleep, this most natural of states for human beings. And the most fitting. After all, human existence begins in sleep. And why did nature conceive human beings if not to sustain her existence? And which state could be more fitting for this than sleep? Mesmer’s theory: people wake up to eat and drink so they can go back to sleep without starving. Human beings wake up so they can sleep.

Only he is different. He sleeps to work. He has to be up with the birds, no, well before them. When his day begins no bird is dreaming yet of the sun. And what does sun mean here, what does bird mean? Vienna in January. Neither sun, nor birds. Crows, yes, birds from the raven family. Large blackish-grey Russian crows which in the soupy Viennese fog are hard to distinguish from the grey stone of the houses. And they’re forever squabbling over food.

Surprisingly, his wife thinks exactly the same way about sleep as he does. Anna even goes so far as to say that getting up before ten is bad for one’s health. And a person in bad health is not to God’s liking. And she says this in such a way that not even the empress’s personal physician, Störck, would dare meet her gaze. Herr Prof. Dr Anton von Störck. Who is endlessly warning his students about sleep and idleness. And hadn’t Mesmer the student found this subject particularly appealing? He, a student and over thirty years old. His doctorate not until he was thirty-three. The eternal student, a type his parents had often ridiculed. And a type they had lumped him in with, too. It wasn’t nice. He had, in fact, studied for an eternity. First theology, then mathematics, then law and philosophy, then medicine. The classic combination. Perfect. Nobody could accuse him of laziness. Even though he had always slept well. But Professor Störck does not differentiate between sleeping and lazing around. Just as he does not differentiate between Mesmer’s new method and the things dreamed up by occultists, astrologers and charlatans. Störck did accept his doctoral dissertation. Even though he gulped when reading the title. De planetarum influxu in corpus humanum. The influence of the planets on the human body. Mesmer explained that it wasn’t about horoscopes, but a scientific investigation into the effects the heavenly bodies have on earth. In the end Störck had been reasonably convinced. At least enough to make him put his signature beneath his work. Since then Mesmer had been able to call himself a Doctor of Medicine.

Why was he thinking of Herr von Störck so early in the morning? There could be no more miserable way of starting the day than with the thought of his old professor. A man he once had trusted so much that he’d even made him, on Anna’s wishes, a witness at their wedding. Now he’ll never be rid of the man. And what’s more this thought seldom comes alone. As in real life, unpleasantness breeds with unpleasantness to produce more unpleasantness. Which is particularly unpleasant on the stomach at such an early hour. He thinks of Prof. Ingenhousz from London, the renowned scientist who inoculated against the pox, member of the Royal Academy. He made the following public statement about Mesmer’s discovery: Only the genius of an Englishman would be a capable of making such a discovery, and so there could not be any substance to it. And now Mr Ingenious is inoculating the Viennese against the pox! Without giving a damn about the consequences. And Dr Barth, the renowned cataract surgeon, and all the rest of them. The entire medical fraternity who refuse to take him, but most of all his new healing method, seriously. Who want to crush him. Thinking about them at this very moment, on this early morning, he thinks, is like poisoning oneself. Thoughts, he thinks, are like medicine. Take the wrong dose and you perish.

He trots through the large treatment room. The dog, delighted by the change in pace, leaps up at him. He fends it off with one hand while the other feels for the key to his laboratory in the pocket of his smoking jacket. And finds a small leather bag – empty. The girl would know where the key is, but where is the girl? If he calls her, he’ll wake the entire house. Cursing quietly he makes his way to the back corridor. The laboratory door – it’s wide open!

The key to the most secret, most important room in the house is in the lock! On the inside. God only knows who did that. It’s lucky for Kaline that she’s enveloped by sleep. The dog, in front as always, is already at the telescope. And looking very pleased. The powerful wagging of that tail! How he smiles. His smiling dog. How ludicrous, he thinks, watching dog hairs float in the air, towards the microscope. Although he loves his dog’s friendly face, he shoos it out nonetheless. Then his eyes wander over his familiar instruments, the telescope, the electrostatic generator, to the wall where the magnets are hanging like hunting trophies once did in his father’s forester’s lodge. Oblong, oval, round, kidney-shaped and heart-shaped. Lined up beside each other they fill the space, no gaps. Which means they’re all there, none is missing.

He takes a deep breath. Fetches a fresh doctor’s coat from the cupboard, the pike-grey silk one as befits the occasion. With gold braid. And then white stockings. He exchanges the smoking jacket for fresh clothes and dabs some flower water on his brow. Takes from the wall two oval magnets and the heart-shaped one, brings them to the wooden table by the window, gives them a rub with a silk cloth.

It’s been stormy and snowing all night. In the light of the courtyard lamp he can see that snow is still falling. Tiny, isolated flakes floating in the pool of light, as if they never wanted to touch the ground, but rather dance in the air forever. Like Mistress Ossine, whirled around by her anxieties like a snowflake in the wind.

She’ll have had another diabolical night, no doubt. I was lonely at night. And my loneliness let the devil in. Those are her words. This is how Mistress Ossine articulates that she cannot speak better than she can think, and she cannot think better than her own grandmother.

But he, why has he got her flaky phrases dancing around in his head? It should be the other way round. His should be dancing around in her head. Nothing is as it should be on this early morning. Words from somewhere flash through his mind as if they were independent. He doesn’t trust them. Words that seem to have no footing. Snatched from old, ancient air. Imprecise. Untrue. Words he has to translate in order to recognize himself.

When Mistress Ossine speaks of the devil it means she hasn’t been able to sleep. She’s been tossing and turning in her bed. Headache. Plus a hysterical fever. She’s vomited and vomited till dawn.

All of which means she’ll be calling for him every five minutes. In short, Mistress Ossine’s diabolical night means Mesmer has a hellish day before him. Especially as the world consists of more than just Mistress Ossine. The new patient is called Maria Theresia. Her father, the court secretary, is a music lover. She herself is a virtuoso pianist. The family’s well-known throughout the city. Even the empress knows her. And adores her. Maria Theresia. He will cure her. One thing follows another.

He places the magnets into the small bags lined with light-blue silk and pulls tight the drawstrings at the top. Two go into his doctor’s bag, one into the inside pocket of his doctor’s coat. He rearranges the material around his chest. He doesn’t want anybody to notice anything. He doesn’t want anybody to ask why he, the doctor, who treats sick people with magnets, is carrying a magnet next to his body. Is he ill himself, perhaps? A sick man trying to cure sick people? Highly suspect! He doesn’t wish to have to explain anything. They’re uneducated, they cannot understand him. Unlike his colleagues. They could understand. But they don’t want to. Not Herr von Stuck-in-the-mud, and certainly not Dr Ingenious. He didn’t even want to understand when Mesmer cured Mistress Ossine before his very eyes.

A pig had broken out of its pen and galloped through the narrow alleyways of Vienna in a panic, almost colliding head on with Mistress Ossine. When they brought her to Mesmer she was unconscious. A good opportunity to demonstrate his abilities. He’d called for Ingenhousz to try to convince him that the magnetic principle was real. He didn’t think that he would actually come and do exactly what Mesmer told him to, without question. But Ingenhousz chose one white china cup at random from six on the table and handed it to Mesmer so that the latter could transfer to it the magnetic power. Then Ingenhousz took all the cups to the unconscious girl in the room next-door. When she came into contact with the magnetic cup, her hand jerked back in pain. Ingenhousz repeated the experiment with all six cups. But the young girl only reacted to the magnetic one. Eventually she woke up and felt weak, but otherwise fine. Prof. Ingenhousz could scarcely believe it. Shook his head, said, incredible, saying it over and over again, as if he couldn’t believe his own eyes. Until he admitted that he was convinced. Which meant that Mesmer was even more surprised when a few days later Ingenhousz made it known publicly that he had been witness to a fraudulent demonstration. A trick set up between Mesmer and a patient.

When Mistress Ossine, who was now walking with confidence again through the narrow alleyways of Vienna, learned that she’d been accused of setting up a hoax, her old convulsions returned. Mesmer had admitted her to his hospital.

Herr Dr Ingenious is not interested in healthy people. In fact he can’t abide them. He is attracted by the sick, with their bad and even worse symptoms, which he explains to them at great length. But what use are explanations? Isn’t it enough to provide a cure? The Herr Dr is like all people. The flames of his vanity are easily fanned, but he is slow to warm to the truth. The truth is: a magnet gives power. Mesmer doesn’t need to prove this. He can feel it.

Through the window he can see the cook crossing the courtyard. Perhaps it’s later than he thought. His watch, where is his watch? He’s going to be late. Kaline. Where’s Kaline? The cook. No, asking the cook the time is like asking a raven for a piece of cheese.

The coachman is already waiting. For him. Out in the cold. He puts on his large black woollen coat, loops a thick woollen scarf around his neck. Dabs on some more rosewater, behind the ears this time, and carefully closes the door behind him. The dog greets him as if it hadn’t seen him in days. It follows him outside. Once in the courtyard it goes its own way. Padding towards the stables, its paws in the fresh whiteness. Like black notes on white paper, Mesmer thinks. A melody enters his head. In the courtyard the snow muffles all sounds except for snow sounds. Mesmer’s footsteps make such a loud crunch that he stops, alarmed, and looks up at his wife’s bedroom. Upstairs, silence. What luck. Luck and silence, old bedfellows. But of course none of those ambitious types will take his word on this. They all assume that behind everything lies the incomprehensible. Which needs to be made comprehensible. He continues on tiptoe to the carriage. Into the splendid winter scene with two black horses in front of a sleigh. Two fully harnessed horses chew, turn their heads and then return to the oats in the sacks hanging by their mouths. The picture lacks a coachman. Other people are happy in their own company. But not him. He could embrace the horses, lean his head on their warm necks, stroke their croups. Horses do not drain power. On the contrary. They give power. But the new patient. And her father, the court secretary. An Imperial–Royal court secretary cannot do business with an unpunctual doctor or one who smells of horses.

All officials are the same. The more punctual and perfumed you are when you meet them, the more graciously they receive you. And what more could you wish for than to be received graciously? More graciously than graciously. Most graciously.

Hands in coat pockets, he gently walks on the spot. His right hand makes a major discovery: a watch on a chain. And when he pulls it out, there’s no longer any hurry. And no sooner has the urgency vanished than everything goes like clockwork. The coachman hurries through the door of a neighbouring building, letting it slam shut behind him. Mesmer thinks this haste is mere pretence. After all, the coachman’s sated expression suggests he has enjoyed a leisurely breakfast. And now, as he bids good morning to Mesmer, he takes the horses’ breakfast away.

To the city centre, Mesmer says. He can drop him off at the Roter Turm. He’ll walk from there to that house with the long name. What was it called? Schab den …

Zum Schab den Rüssel, the coachman says, cracking the whip until the horses get moving.

Usually the Danube catches the first rays of the morning sun and takes hold of the last ones in the evening. Today, however, the snow has turned the Danube black. The Danube is a clock. It lets you tell the time, weather and season. He could organize his life by the Danube. By rivers in general, by bodies of water, by rising and falling tides. Which follow the movements of the planets. The constellations of the sun and moon. They influence the world. Everything we are made of, solid and liquid. He has studied the old writings, read Galileo, Gassendi, Kepler, Descartes. And he has studied nature, its wild gestures. The oceans – ebb and fl. . .