“Is straw,” said a young man’s voice. “Hood stays over eyes, lady. Drink.”
The fingers pushing the straw into her mouth were ghastly pale—white bones against the black cloth of the hood. They smelled metallic, inhuman. She shuddered, trying to pull her head away from the fingers.
“You not like water? It comes from the springs deep under castle. Healthy, mountain mineral cures all sickness—”
The driver cursed angrily in the unintelligible language. The man giving her the water said nothing for a few seconds.
“Here. Drink, lady. Drink.”
Chapter 11
DOWNTOWN MANHATTAN
RUBIN MUSEUM
DECEMBER 6, 2010
Wet snow sluiced under the tires of the taxi pulling up to the curb at 150 West Seventeenth Street.
Betsy paid the Pakistani cabbie, tipping far too much. She chalked it up to her excitement, she was actually about to see Jung’s Red Book—she wanted the entire world to share her excitement, the joy of anticipation.
Forget the analyzing, Path, she told herself. You are on vacation this weekend.
She marched through the sidewalk’s dirty slush, her cheeks burning from the wind gusts rocketing down the city canyons. Betsy was always amazed by how sharp Manhattan’s wind could feel, comparable to the sting of blizzard gusts in the Rockies.
She pushed the glass door open and was embraced by warmth and yellow light. She sighed with delight.
The Rubin Museum exuded the scent of the sacrosanct. Betsy had visited it before, to see the Buddhist mandalas and Tibetan art. When she was at Jungian conferences or visiting friends in New York in the winter, she would often duck into the little private museum for a cup of chai or a curry soup to chase the city chill away.
She often thought of her father here, though he died years before it opened. He would have loved it.
Tonight’s program, however, was the only reason she had flown to New York for the weekend. Carl Jung’s The Red Book—Jung’s illustrated chronicle of his journey of the soul and battle with madness—was on display at the Rubin. This original manuscript had been locked in a Swiss bank vault for fifty years. This was the first time it had ever been seen in public. Along with the book itself, the museum was presenting an extraordinary series of discussions that were virtually public Jungian analyses of prominent artists, writers, intellectuals, and mystics.
Jung, a protégé of Sigmund Freud, had moved further and further away from Freud’s principles. He eschewed his mentor’s rigid adherence to sexual trauma as the root of most mental illness. Jung believed in the collective unconscious, that all humans shared a common pool of ancient knowledge and experience that they were not aware of, but which affected every moment of their lives. Dreams and intuition were valuable tools to not only the psyche but to the soul.
At the age of thirty-eight, in the year 1913, Jung was haunted by his own demons, foreseeing the death and destruction of World War I. His visions tortured him further until he labeled them a “psychosis” or “schizophrenia,” but instead of trying to cure himself, he explored his visions in what he termed “active imagination.” He illustrated his dreams and began keeping a series of notebooks, which were later transcribed into a big red leather bound book, The Red Book.
Each evening discussion in “The Red Book Dialogues” paired a Jungian psychoanalyst with one of the notable guests. The celebrity would be shown an illustration from The Red Book, seeing it for the first time right there on stage, and then the psychoanalyst would ask questions about the viewer’s feelings and interpretations of the drawing.
This particular night the celebrity was a tarot card reader named Rikki Gillette, to be interviewed by Dr. Jane Kilpatrick from the C.G. Jung Institute.
Betsy’s mother was originally going to meet her for this event, but Grace was still engrossed in historical research in Slovakia. Besides, thought Betsy, her mother never “got” Jung. This would be far beyond her comfort zone.
She thought of her father. If only he had lived to see The Red Book tonight.
There were plenty of familiar faces in the crowd. To see the manuscript, written and illustrated by Carl Jung himself, was a psychoanalyst’s version of making the pilgrimage to Mecca.
Betsy waited her turn to peer down at the enormous tome, encased in bulletproof glass. Every few days the pages were turned. She gazed in awe at the twisting colors and bizarre forms on the two selected pages.
Superimposed on a labyrinth of river blue and beige lines was a figure of a—turbaned man?—outlined in red and black. He fell back, staggering from a golden ray of light piercing—his heart? But if it was his heart, why did it look like a club, as on a playing card? His face showed no fear—surprise, perhaps—and…
Betsy leaned closer.
Ecstasy. The man was being touched by the divine.
Others crowded around her, she could smell curry on someone’s breath, perhaps the woman behind her in line. Betsy only then realized that the man was standing on a snake, an angry snake ready to strike.
“Excuse me—may I have a look if you are finished?”
Betsy nodded, but it was agonizing to step away from Jung’s original work. She was thankful that her mother had given her a first edition copy of the book for her birthday a few weeks before.
Betsy joined the slow-moving line into the auditorium. An usher asked her to pick a tarot card from the fanned deck in his hand.
“It’s part of the shtick for tonight,” he said, winking at her. “Hold onto it.”
Betsy turned the card over in her hand. Her breath caught in her throat.
On the card was an illustration of a girl, sitting upright in bed. Her face was cupped in her hands—she was clearly crying or terrified. Above her were nine swords, dangling in the air. The bedspread was covered with zodiac symbols and roses.
Betsy made her way to an empty seat. She pulled out her iPhone and did a quick search:
THE NINE OF SWORDS COMMUNICATES AN INSTANT MESSAGE OF GRIEF, ANGUISH, AND EVEN TERROR.
The lights darkened and the English curator introduced the two guests, analyst and analysand—the fortune-teller who would share her interpretation of one of Jung’s illustrations.
Betsy read on, her eyes glued to the iPhone screen.
IT IS CONSIDERED TO BE UPSETTING AND DISTURBING AS AN OMEN IN A DIVINATORY TAROT READING.
“And would you all be so kind as to turn off your pagers and cell phones? Thank you,” announced the curator.
The man next to her glared at her. She clicked off her phone.
Dr. Kilpatrick presented Rikki Gillette with the illustration. It was the same one that Betsy had studied so intently a few minutes earlier. The audience was shown a projection on the wall: the red and black turbaned man and the maze background.
“Tell me your immediate reaction to seeing this illustration, please.”
“My first reaction is that I want to cry,” Gillette said. She thought a moment longer. “The maze is reminiscent of Van Gogh, his struggle for a way to go…the intercept of madness and of the Heart Chakra.”
“Heart Chakra!” muttered the man next to Betsy. “Yeah, right! New Age—”
“Shh!” hissed a young woman. Betsy noticed her long red hair and its glorious sheen, even in the dark.
Gillette continued. “But I don’t see anguish in the figure’s face. No, I see St. Anthony, a dark walk of the soul. And the piercing light is illuminating, raising the man up.”
“And the snake?” asked Dr. Kilpatrick.
“He is not afraid of it. It is the light that captures him absolutely. If he focuses on the light, the snake is powerless. He is walking a razor line between rational and irrational. His spirit is speaking to him.”
“As a psychic, do you feel a spirit speak to us?” asked Kilpatrick.
“All the time. But you must go to a place of silence to hear it. Not the jabberwocky of language, of social commitments, of things to do. The spirit is giving you clues constantly, if you can just see them, just hear them…”
She looked up from the illustration.
“Each member of the audience was given a tarot card when you came in,” said the fortune-teller. “Look at your card please. Who has the Nine of Swords?”
Betsy turned her card over in her hand.
“I do,” she said, waving it. She stood up. “What does it mean?”
“The tarot is a collection of symbols, deeply mythological and indicative of archetypes,” said Gillette.
Betsy nodded. She knew that, as any Jungian would. But what about this particular illustration? What did it mean? Why did she find it so frightening?
“The Nine of Swords is also called the Lord of Cruelty,” said Gillette. “It means you are or soon will be dealing with family secrets. Secrets you may have sensed. But you have not realized the depth and darkness of what was being withheld from you.”
Betsy’s face began to burn. She felt hundreds of eyes on her.
“There is a lot of pain here.”
Betsy started to speak, but the tarot reader shook her head, continuing. “The content is getting in touch with your overwhelming sense of fear. Is there a Scorpio in your life?” Betsy tried to think. A Scorpio?
“Talk about nightmares!” laughed Gillette, and everyone joined her laughter. “Keep a dream journal,” said Gillette. “And good luck.”
In the question-and-answer session that followed, a distinguished white-haired man stood up across the aisle from Betsy. He was leaning on an elegant walking stick with a silver handle.
“Could you speak to Jung’s theory of synchronicity and its implication in tarot cards, Ms. Gillette?”
There was a murmur of approval from the analysts in the audience. Betsy noted the foreign accent of the man—Eastern European? She wondered if he had studied in Vienna as her father had.
“Synchronicity? The entire universe vibrates to synchronicity, if only we can hear the rich symphony. The first strains of music, created at our beginnings, the notes wafting through space and time, gathering momentum. But it is only the attuned ear that can detect the chorus.”