Birth of Love - Softcover

Joanna Kavenna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571245188 ISBN 13: 9780571245185

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2011

Synopsis

Vienna1865: Dr Ignaz Semmelweis has been hounded into a lunatic asylum, ridiculed for his claim that doctors' unwashed hands are the root cause of childbed fever. The deaths of thousands of mothers are on his conscience and his dreams are filled with blood. 2153: humans are birthed and raised in breeding centres, nurtured by strangers and deprived of familial love. Miraculously, a woman conceives, and Prisoner 730004 stands trial for concealing it. London in 2009: Michael Stone's novel about Semmelweis has been published, after years of rejection. But while Michael absorbs his disconcerting success, his estranged mother is dying and asks to see him again. As Michael vacillates, Brigid Hayes, exhausted and uncertain whether she can endure the trials ahead, begins the labour of her second child. A beautifully constructed and immensely powerful work about motherhood that is also a story of rebellion, isolation and the damage done by rigid ideologies.

About this title

About the Author

Joanna Kavenna grew up in various parts of Britain, and has also lived in the USA, France, Germany, Scandinavia and the Baltic States. Her second book, a novel called Inglorious, won the Orange Prize for New Writing. Kavenna's writing has appeared in the London Review of Books, the Guardian and Observer, the Times Literary Supplement among other publications. She has held writing fellowships at St Antony's College, Oxford and St John's College, Cambridge. She currently lives in Cumbria.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Monday August 15th, 1865, Vienna
Dear Professor Wilson,
I am sorry to disturb you from your work; however, I must ask your advice about a most distressing series of meetings I had today at the asylum. As you know, I have been visiting the asylum in Lazarettgasse for some years now, examining the inmates of this accursed place, better to understand the conditions which cause the individual to discard the faculty of reason. Today I met an inmate in such a terrible and per­plexing condition, as to question every notion of lunacy I have thus far elaborated. I have— with reference to the many visits I make to “lunatics”— been developing a theory that what we call madness is often simply a rearrangement of the human personality, or an arrangement which in some way offends more ordinary sensibilities. If we  were to abandon the notion of sanity as strictly distinct from madness we would save many from suffering. We would perceive that madness is a lunar condition, a condition of revelation and vision, and thereby we who have allowed our perceptions to be veiled by conventional observance can sometimes learn from those we refer to as lunatics. There are many forces within the human soul which we refuse to acknowledge, many ancient presences we have turned away from, and I suspect that these often com­mand those we call lunatic, and cause them to behave in a way we cannot understand. This is my unpop u lar theory; yet I dis­covered today a case as resistant to my theorizing as to more pop u lar theories of madness. The man is in dire need of help.
I arrived at the asylum this morning at 9:00 a.m. and rang the bell. The door was opened, as usual, by one of the burly orderlies, who ushered me into the anteroom. The room is intended to appear homely; there are some armchairs and bookshelves with innocuous books of the hour upon them, and at the center of the room, above the fi replace, is a medio­cre painting of the Alps. Everything is superfi cially nonde­script; yet I always think as I stand there, it is the room in which so many of the inmates are committed by their families, and are taken away wailing and pleading, in horrible fear.
Herr Meyer soon arrived, who is in charge of the asylum. He is always very smart and efficient, yet over the years I have come to regard him as an unpleasant man, quite brutalized by his work, or perhaps drawn to it precisely because of the vicious elements of his nature. He smells of cruelty, and his eyes are sharp and vigilant. His manner is sly, and I generally acknowledge him with a cursory good day and proceed to my business. This morning, however, he was rather excited— licking his lips, even, with a thick pink tongue— and he said, “A very interesting case, the case of Herr S. Came  here two weeks ago. Consigned to our care by some friends. A violent and incontinent man.”
“What manner of lunatic is he?” I asked.
“Well- spoken. Clearly once an educated man. Accuses him­self of murder. And others, too. He cannot give you precise names, however; he finds it hard to recall specifi c details. This is an aspect of his madness. You should see him for yourself,” he said, nodding in his insidious conspiratorial manner.
“I should be glad to. Do you have any more information about him?”
Herr Meyer adopted his most self- important tone. “Oh, I cannot reveal the further details to you, my good man. The family has asked me to maintain the strictest secrecy around Herr S. His identity must remain obscure to outsiders such as you. You surely understand, that my first concern is the pro­tection of my patients and their families?”
I responded with the briefest of nods, and he, smirking a little, led me through the asylum, where there  were rooms furnished with the damned, and then dark corridors lined with cells. There may be worse places on earth than Vienna’s public asy­lum but at present I cannot imagine what corner of the globe might hold them. Its corridors echo with a ragged chorus— each madman finding his own discord, some of them little more than whoops and cackles, others strident and jangling. They rail, oh how they rail against those who sent them  here, and those who have not come for them, and they know— at one level I believe they know— that they have been aban­doned. The ones who do not talk, they turn expressions of such despair upon you, it is hard to think that they are beyond all comprehension. As we entered the communal rooms I was briefly held back by the smell of feces and decay— but I have long been visiting these mad houses, and have sadly grown accustomed to this noxious atmosphere and all the suffering to which it attests. (Indeed I believe these poor individuals are hastened to their ends by the severity of the atmosphere in which they exist, that it is quite impossible for any human to be cured in these conditions, and the asylums in their present state must only ever be a prison for the lunatic. I have been campaigning along these lines for a few years, but my efforts have so far been in vain.) As we walked I recognized a num­ber of the long- term residents— an aging man in a grimy black suit, a tattered handkerchief in his pocket, one boot off and one boot on. He would meander around, saying very little, and then he would stop on one leg, or he would take ten skip­ping steps and then two broad strides, like a child playing a game. He was hesitating in the middle of the room, until Herr Meyer pushed him roughly aside. We passed another fellow I had seen many times before, a prematurely aged man with matted blond hair, who talked incessantly, mostly of colors, as if he were the author of a meticulous system—“And there is the red. And there is the black and the blue. And there is the purple. And now the red once more . . .” and so on. I have talked sev­eral times to this man, hoping to discern his system, if one exists, but I have not yet understood it. He sounded as if he came from Salzburg, and I had been told that no one came to visit him. He, too, received the rough edge of Herr Meyer’s shoulder, because he presumed to approach us, and thus rebuffed, turned away. “Now the black, and then the blue . . .”
Herr Meyer kept giving me odious smiles, as if we  were shar­ing a marvelous joke. “I demand a hearing, I demand a hear­ing,” said one of them as I passed, while Meyer snorted as if this was a sublime quip and ushered me on. His absolute and abiding assumption was that these people were worthless, subhuman, simply because their reason had failed. Men such as Meyer perceive their asylums as private kingdoms, gov­erned by their own brutal laws, and they treat the inmates like animals, for the most part, as if madness has deprived them of all humanity. Despite all the reforms in our legislation this continues to be the orthodoxy in many such places. I some­times suspect that were Herr Meyer deprived of his fi efdom, he would himself fall out of the realm of the “sane” and be instantly confined himself. Indeed one must observe that it is a very debased civilization which allows Herr Meyer to be grand arbiter over such fragile human souls!
Water trickled down the walls, a steady drip, and I thought of those lunatics with this constant noise in their ears, and all the remorseless ways in which they were stripped of dignity and deprived of any hope of recovery. We entered an area in which the inmates were confined to cells, and everything was cast into shadow, the sounds indistinct, though no less miser­able. Now Herr Meyer stopped at a cell, and with a sardonic flourish, opened the door. A man was sitting in the corner, in chains. The cell was so dark I could hardly distinguish his fea­tures. He seemed from what little I could discern to be blunt- featured and stocky, and he was sitting very quietly, staring into space. Herr Meyer rattled his keys, and said in his leering way, “Herr S, there’s someone to see you.” He addressed the patient as if he had no claim to any form of kindness, and Herr S refused to respond. I wondered if he could not endure the nature of his confinement, and thereby refused to acknowl­edge his keeper. Or if his madness took him in the catatonic way and made him mute.
“Oh Herr S,” said Meyer, in a taunting tone, and I said, “That is enough, I will speak to this man alone, thank you.”
“He’s chained up and cannot trouble you,” said Herr Meyer, unabashed and still presuming to be conspiratorial. Then he removed himself, and I turned to consider the man before me.
For the first few minutes Herr S did not look up. He seemed to be deep in thought and I hesitated to disturb him. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom I perceived his hair had fallen out in clumps, and his skin was drawn tight, like that of a reptile. His hands  were covered in scratches, and there was a livid bruise on his forehead, a swelling on his mouth; testi­fying— I imagined— to the rough treatment he had already received from Herr Meyer’s attendants.
After a time I said “Herr S” again, and he lifted his head. Even then he stared into space, as if he did not see me.
“Herr S, as it seems I must call you, my name is Robert von Lucius,” I said. “From time to time I visit the occupants of this asylum, the better to understand their conditions. I do not believe that the mad are beyond redemption and must be sequestered and ruined. I believe that many of those described as mad have greater access than I to the most profound mys­teries of the human spirit, if only I could understand them bet­ter. For this reason, I am regarded with suspicion by some of my contemporaries. I do not care for their good opinion, except where their censure prevents me from doing my work. I would like to talk to you, if that is acceptable.”
Once more he said nothing,...

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0571245188
• ISBN 13: 9780571245185
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 308