The Birth of Love (5 page)

‘What were they supporting?’

‘His theory about how puerperal sepsis is spread by the hands of doctors. It has been generally refuted, and anyway, it does not much concern me, as I am a surgeon.
Professor Semmelweis’s focus is the woman in labour and after labour.’

‘What is his theory?’

‘A colleague once suggested it is rather like the example of Columbus’s egg. It is not a work of grave complexity. Perhaps he might have persuaded his colleagues to adopt it, purely as a cautionary measure, had he not been so bombastic. Yet his manner angered Johann Klein, Professor Johann Klein, who was the head of the lying-in department of the hospital. Yes, the theory, you are anxiously waiting, and I really must attend to my business, concerns the washing of hands in chlorinated lime solution. Professor Semmelweis talks of, now what was the expression – ah yes, “cadaverous particles” – festering particles derived from the bodies of those who have recently died of puerperal sepsis. Infection, he claimed, could be carried from a dead body to a living body through these particles. You know it is still quite usual for students and doctors to perform autopsies of women who have died in childbirth shortly before they go to examine the lying-in patients in the First Division. And Professor Semmelweis proposed that these doctors and students must wash their hands in chlorinated lime solution after they had dealt with corpses and before they conducted an internal examination of a living woman. He claimed this would prevent puerperal sepsis.’

‘And did it?’

‘The theory has never been proven by experiment or systematic investigation. Professor Semmelweis however is adamant that it is the solution. He is adamant that those who refuse to adopt his preventative measures are wilfully slaying their patients.’

‘So this is why he was cast out?’

Professor Zurbruck was pacing the room, in a long-limbed, leisurely manner, and now he came to rest – staring at me with his sunken eyes, and placing a long hand upon his desk. ‘He was not cast out, my good fellow. He has behaved very strangely. He fled from Vienna many years ago. It was something about debts, I think; I cannot remember the details. I think he went back to his native Budapest. That is perhaps right. You must remember I have never known the man well. Yes, I heard he reigned supreme over a lying-in ward somewhere in the Hungarian Lands, though his techniques infuriated many of his colleagues. He is a hectoring angry man, you may have noticed.’

‘He is much reduced.’

‘I am sorry to hear that.’

‘So his wife and children are in Budapest now?’

‘I do not know where they are, I am afraid. This is all I know of the man. Now I really must go. Perhaps it would be useful for your further enquiries if I refer you to my colleague – Professor Hebra. I think he knew Professor Semmelweis well. Professor Hebra can be found at this address …’

He wrote it down for me on a piece of paper. I thanked him, and he nodded and waved me away. When I hurried to make enquiries of Professor Hebra, I was disappointed to discover that he had gone to Paris for a conference, and would be absent for a week. The lying-in ward, which I went to immediately I had failed to locate Professor Hebra, was equally unhelpful. I pushed open the heavy doors. It was an unusually hot day, and there were hardly any med
ical students in the wards. There were rows of women lying in beds – the blankets moulded around the swollen forms of those who had not yet delivered, and their faces taut with pain. Row upon row of them, about to cross the threshold, not knowing if they would survive. In suspense they lay there, and they had looked up fearfully when I opened the door. I had little time to gaze upon them before a midwife hurried up to inform me I could not stay there. She held up her hands, as if to shield the modesty of these women. So I bowed and turned away. I was pursued along the corridor by a strange volley of sounds, some like war cries, and some like the lowing of cattle. Then I found some terse doctors, who told me they knew nothing of any Semmelweis and hadn’t time to consider the nature of his accusations. When I asked them about chlorinated lime solution, and cadaverous particles, one of them – a stern man of forty or so, who had just come, he said, from delivering a healthy boy, and who had to hurry to advise a midwife on a troublesome birth – said he had heard mention of something of that nature, but it was blatantly apparent – as Professor Klein had always argued – that puerperal sepsis was spread by a foul atmosphere, and all that was required was an extensive ventilation system, such as Professor Klein had installed. ‘Chlorinated lime is simply superfluous, though any man should feel entitled to use it if he wishes,’ he added, and then hurried away to his duties.

Feeling hot and rather tired, I went to take a glass of lemonade in a café nearby. As I reviewed my recent enquiries, I wondered if the best course of action would be to inform Herr S of what I had found and thus – perhaps – prompt
him to further recollections. I suspected I held the key to his human identity, his social existence and the nature of his profession. I was confident further details of his life could be gathered: I had only spoken to one man, and he was no expert on childbirth, and he had already told me a great deal about Professor Semmelweis. Once Professor Hebra returned, he would clarify matters further. Had I the time, I thought, I could make a decent study of this man Semmelweis, and discover something of the controversy over his assertions, the battles he had fought, those colleagues who had supported and later deserted him, and no doubt, in the end, precisely who had committed him to the asylum. I was quite convinced I could hunt much of this information out, if I devoted some time to the case.

Yet I am not a detective, naturally given to harvesting facts, craving resolution simply for the neatness and purity it affords. I was mindful, furthermore, of Herr S’s own reluctance to regain himself, his fear of the harshness of the solar realm. While some might say this was a symptom of his distress, I do maintain that, for some unfortunate individuals, the ‘lunatic’ condition is a respite from reality, and it is plain cruelty to force them to return to the world of absolutes. There had been some moral imperative upon me to ascertain that Herr S was not a murderer – in a sense which would interest the law. This achieved, there was no clear justification for further enquiries, unless they were to the benefit of Herr S himself. More practically, I perceived that for the sake of his reputation, and his family, I must not wander around Vienna proclaiming that he had been placed in an asylum. While I perceive no shame in this epithet ‘mad’, I am aware that for most it carries a terrible stigma, and if
Herr S’s family subscribed to this opinion, I did not want to distress them. Professor Zurbruck I knew to be a man of discretion, for all his ghoulishness, but others might not be so careful.

After much thought, I decided I should refer the dilemma to the man himself, Herr S or Professor Semmelweis. I would inform him of his name and lay the case before him – that I had garnered some other details about him, or rather about his non-lunar existence, and that they could be revealed to him as he chose. I would be directed by his desires, unreasoning though they might be. I hastened back to the asylum, weighted down by the many implications of what I had discovered, uncertain as to the effect my words might have on this desperate man.

I am cursing as I write this last sentence, as there is someone below who I simply must see. I will continue with this letter as soon as possible …

15 August 2009 and London was clad in heat and dust. The day hung still and close; there was no breeze. The tarmac was burning to the touch; everything was harsh and overlit. People were moving, but listlessly; the heat had gradually sapped them. They were walking with their hands at their eyes, trying to block out the sun. From time to time it rained, in violent bursts which made everyone run for cover, though the dampness was a relief all the same. After the rainstorms the city gleamed, as if someone had polished the buildings.

It was barely mid-morning and Brigid Hayes felt already as if she had been awake for a dozen hours. She was smiling at her son, trying to please him, struggling against a latent sense of failure. She was not certain, but she feared this was failure, that she was failing her son. There was a gulf between them: on one side his dynamism, brightness, his vivid urges to do, to consume, to understand; on the other her basic attempts to subsist, to endure the day. He was ambitious, incessantly curious; she was faded, fading before his eyes, though still she was smiling and holding out her hands to him. She had left childbearing late, and so at thirty-nine she set about it zealously, but fearing the worst. Twenty months later, she had Calumn. Seventeen months after his birth, she was expecting another baby, as
yet unnamed. As yet invisible, trapped within her though due any day. This child would be the last, she was sure of that. She had hardly expected to have one child, when she began ‘trying’ three years ago. Two was more than enough. Two was extraordinary, if she took the time to think about it. But she rarely took the time. When she wasn’t dealing with her son and the physical demands of pregnancy she was working, dull copy-editing work but she did it because they needed the money. She had given up her teaching job but now she pored over manuscripts and wrote symbols in the margins. She was precise and disciplined in her work, chaotic and self-critical with her child. It didn’t make any sense.

She was tired and not quite well. At night she could not sleep; she would lie for hours in the dark, waiting for exhaustion to drag her under. She could scarcely breathe or find a comfortable way to lie. So she listened to the nocturnal whispers of the radio, watched the sky change; often it was dawn before she slept. That had ruined her well enough, and then during the days Patrick went out to work and she stumbled around the house. He was worried about her, she knew; he told her she must stay inside, rest whenever she could. Still, the other day she had aimed at defiance, she had grown so bored at home. She had forced Calumn into his pushchair and walked to the local park. After that, she coughed her throat raw; she had scarcely slept at all.

Worst of all, Patrick kept praising her; he said he didn’t know how she managed it all. He was trying to encourage her, though it made her feel alone, too, that her experience
was untranslatable, obscure to him. He did not perceive that she was half-mad with fatigue, and yet she rose each day and knew she must play her part, she must be a mother to her son, she must be measured with him, never raise her voice to him, even when her blood was curdling with frustration. Yet often she felt so happy, so overwhelmed with love – everything was incoherent and ragged and she could not explain it to Patrick; she mostly blamed him when things were hard. She wanted him to experience it too – the relentlessness, how it did not end, and you could never rest, how it was beautiful and it smashed you to pieces at the same time – but he usually came home after Calumn was in bed, found her collapsed and monosyllabic on the sofa. She told herself each day, she must remember, he was a wonderful father, a wonderful husband, this would soon be over – then everything got clouded, this chemical exhaustion took hold of her, and she slipped again.

She felt a low pain in her belly, the sort of grinding cramps she had been experiencing for a day or so. In her complaining body, she was desperate for her pregnancy to end, so she hesitated to question this augury, fearful of misdiagnosing it as labour. She didn’t want to attract any attention from vengeful gods or in any way leave herself open to charges of hubris. She rubbed her belly, felt the baby kick, a palpable swelling which was a foot, a tiny vengeful foot, she thought, because the kick was so hard and probing. A reproach, perhaps. Impatience or apprehension, if a foetus could feel either. The pain was surging within her, and she tried to remember how it had been last time, how it had felt. Then, she had been optimistic; in the
final weeks of her pregnancy she had phoned the hospital at the first sign of a contraction. They had rushed off, she and Patrick, like eager neophytes. They arrived and were sent away again. Braxton Hicks, the midwives told them patiently. The body practising for real labour. Nothing to worry about. Do call if you’re concerned about anything. Three times they tried to scale the ramparts and found the hospital fortified against them. The entrance was barred; she was not ready. When she finally gained access to her sterilised room, things moved efficiently, to a timetable. A nice quick birth, the doctor said.

Another pain, and Brigid breathed more deeply, her instincts beginning to help her. She was planetary in her girth, an ancient breeding cow. She was whole with child, swollen beyond any size that seemed proportionate or reasonable. She was entirely child, she felt; her body had been colonised. It was not herself, as she had been, she had become someone else; it made her uncertain if she really had a self at all. She was surely half-mad, her brain stewed in hormones, yet now she took Calumn in her arms, tickling him under the chin. He turned to her, smiled toothily, said ‘Mamma,’ and she said, ‘Hello baby. Hello, hello lovely baby baby,’ and he said, ‘Ahdoorschnefatibumaha,’ some proto-talk she couldn’t interpret. She kissed his warm soft skin, breathed in the wafting beautiful smell of him, baby shampoo and milk. She kissed him and held him to her, whispering in his ear, telling him how precious he was and how much she loved him. Though she felt spiky and savage within, she never doubted that she loved her son. Her love was infinite; she sensed there was a deep infinite core of love, and then a lesser love, her surface emotion, where
everything got sullied by quotidian demands, and mingled with guilt.

‘…
The Moon
, a novel by Michael Stone … its central subject the … epidemic of childbed fever …,’ she heard the radio say, and that made her shake her head. If Patrick had been here, he would have acted swiftly, banished the voice. Instead the phone was ringing, so she said to Calumn, ‘Come on sweetie, let’s go and see who this is.’ He beamed up at her, made a sound like a siren, his current favourite noise. ‘Nee-nar nee-nar nee-nar,’ said Calumn, as Brigid led him slowly along the corridor, knowing she had twelve rings to get the phone. She caught it on the final ring, heard her mother saying, ‘Hello Brigid,’ as she lifted the handset. Calumn dropped to the floor and began picking at a piece of fluff. Brigid smiled at him. ‘Hi Mum, yes, fluff, Calumn,’ she said. ‘It’s called fluff.’

‘Feeff,’ he said, glancing up at her, seeking her approval.

‘That’s exactly right. How are you, Mum?’

‘Fwuff,’ said Calumn, taking the phone book from a shelf and opening it, glancing down the pages as if in search of something.

‘How are you feeling dear? Any signs?’ her mother was saying. Yes, there was a star above the house last night, Brigid wanted to say, and an old crone shook her stick at me this morning. But she said, ‘No, no signs. I feel as usual.’

‘Oh, it must be awful to be so overdue,’ her mother said. ‘So terribly boring.’

‘It’s not that overdue,’ said Brigid. She had been saying this to everyone for two weeks, ever since her baby had been diagnosed as late. As if there was a deadline, as if they were falling behind. Below her, Calumn was meditatively
tearing at the pages of the phone book, while Brigid watched and couldn’t face bending down to salvage it.

‘You can’t have heard about Dorothy, about poor Dorothy’s baby,’ said her mother.

‘Yes, I did hear. I must send her a card.’

‘You know, she thought like you. And she was much younger. At your age Brigid, you have to take care. You sound terribly tired.’

‘I’m not too bad. I could last another week or two, if necessary.’ She didn’t believe that at all. She had plainly established that it was bad, that she could barely suffer another hour of it. Yet there was something within her, some instinct she couldn’t entirely command, which made her disagree nonetheless. She said, ‘I’ll write Dorothy a card today …’

‘You do understand that it’s another person’s life, don’t you? I always think there are points to make and points to waive, Brigid. Battles to fight and battles to cede.’

‘How are you, Mum?’

‘I’m not the subject under debate, Brigid.’

‘Nee. Nar,’ said Calumn. ‘Aidahadabok.’

‘Look, it’s all fine. I’m fine. That’s right, sweetie, it’s a book,’ said Brigid. Now Calumn dropped the phone book, having torn it to his satisfaction, found a ten-pence piece on the floor and stuffed it into his mouth. There began a mighty struggle between mother and baby for possession of the coin, mother with her fingers in the baby’s mouth, baby throwing back his head, trying to clamp his lips shut. Prising open his mouth she seized the object. He began a screaming protest so she gave him a pen to chew. He sat on the floor, instantly mollified, busy with the wonder and strangeness of a pen.

‘There’s absolutely no need to play the martyr. At your age they would induce you like a shot. Nobody in their right mind would deny you an induction.’

Calumn had dropped the pen and was trying to drag the phone away from her, accompanying his endeavours with insistent little yelps and squeals.

‘What on earth is up with Calumn this morning? Is he ill?’

‘No, no, he’s all right,’ Brigid said, trying to smile at Calumn. ‘He just needs his morning snack. And a friend is coming soon. I’d better go.’

‘Oh, OK. Well, I was phoning to say I’m just at the hairdresser’s. So I can drop round after I finish here.’

‘Really Mum, there’s no need to put yourself out.’

‘Oh no, I’ll just drop round with a couple of things.’

It was improbable; her mother was coming to assess her. Now she took the phone back from Calumn again, tried him with the pen but he shook his head, knocked it out of her hand.

‘What about later, later today? It’s just, I have a friend coming this morning,’ said Brigid, as Calumn’s wails rose in pitch, and he lunged for the phone again.

‘Oh, I won’t stay long,’ said her mother.

Defeated, Brigid put the phone down and turned to her son. She smiled down at him, though he twisted in her arms, kicked against her. ‘Come on sweetie, come on,’ she said. She took his hand and danced him along, ‘Bouncy bouncy bouncy. Bouncy bouncy bouncy boy, look how we’re bouncing along.’ He began to chuckle. He lifted his head and looked delighted again. His energy amazed her, especially now she had slumped so consummately. It made
her glad, that he was so enchanted by everything, so eager to know it, feel it, eat it – his appetites were robust and she admired that. She watched him, from far away – as if he was a beacon on a hill, and she was in the shadows, far below. He was radiant; he really burned with life – and she wondered if this unborn child – kicking now within her, pushing against the prison walls – would be as radiant as her son.

‘Shall we go and have some grub grub?’ she said to Calumn, kissing his ear, and he recognised the words and smiled back. ‘Dah,’ he said, nodding.

‘Let’s bounce into the kitchen,’ she said. Bouncy, bouncy, gub gub, they said – Calumn with his awkward little stomping movements, pausing from time to time to examine some fleck of dust. Gub gub, they said as they passed into the kitchen. The baby world of Calumn required her to communicate in monosyllables, to submit herself to these simplified versions of her own language. ‘Bek bek,’ she said to Calumn though her mother always told her – and would tell her again, no doubt, when she arrived later – that this would stunt his development. ‘I never baby-talked to you,’ her mother would say. ‘That must be why I was such a prodigy,’ Brigid would reply, laughing. Her whole being was tempered for Calumn, maintained at a level he could understand – though sometimes she felt he understood far more than she thought, was even in touch with something primal and significant. She didn’t really know why she thought that but sometimes when he became pensive or when he looked at her as if he could see her more clearly than anyone else, she wondered just what he knew, what he saw.
In the kitchen she grabbed the protesting form of her son, bundled him quickly into his high chair and when he began to kick and flail his arms around she said, ‘Bek bek, gub gub,’ in a loud jovial voice, kissing him. When she gave him a book he flicked through the pages, smashed it on the table then dropped it on the floor. ‘Bek bek, gub gub,’ she and Calumn said to each other, as she put some fruit on a plate and directed it towards his scrabbling hands, and he began to paw at it and drop it and sometimes eat it. Now she had a few minutes, perhaps even ten minutes, while he sat there, playing with his food, so she put water in the kettle, found some chocolate in the fridge and ate it quickly, as her son chewed on a piece of apple. She made some tea, and now she heard the radio again. Brigid listened but only in a distracted way, making encouraging faces at her son and handing him chunks of apple. Occasionally she said, ‘Yum yum,’ pointing at her food, at his food, exaggerating the movements of her mouth so he would think it was fun to eat. And on the radio she heard people talking and didn’t entirely understand them, or she absorbed a few sentences then lost the thread while she said, ‘Yummy scrummy yum,’ to Calumn.

‘ … debut novel by Michael Stone …’ one of the radio voices was saying.

‘A sort of historical novel …’

‘Very loosely defined …’

Brigid put bread in the toaster, drank more tea, said, ‘Yes, sweetie, that’s right, that’s absolutely right. Would you like a piece of toast? Toast and honey, yes? You like a nice piece of toast and honey don’t you?’ she said, as she waited for
the toast to pop up and on the radio another voice said, ‘… yes, a doctor …’