The Lost Prince (58 page)

Jodl had agreed to accompany them to the Swiss border, providing that final measure of support. She knew that their parting at the border would be difficult. Ever attentive to his responsibilities as protector, Jodl had arranged for an associate from the Swiss national police, also retired, to accompany Eleanor and Arnauld and young Standish until they reached the care of Dr. Jung in Zurich. Although he never mentioned his concern, he knew that those disturbeds returning from the war, such as this man they were returning to civilization, had the capacity for aberrant behavior or even violence, and he wanted a watchful eye kept on their companion at all times.

“My counterpart from the Swiss national police will be at your side,” he said. “He is a good man. You will have an easy go from here, Frau Burden.”

“Come with us to Zurich,” she said in a burst of spontaneity to her steadfast companion. “You can meet Dr. Jung.”

“Thank you,” he said, trying to maintain his reserve. “But my assignment is completed. I will return to my own city, to my other duties.”

For a moment she entertained teasing him for his staunch rectitude, but thought better of it. How she had grown to love this man of great strength. Again, wordlessly she looked into the retired policeman’s face. “We shall miss you,” she settled for. “This is a sad parting.”

Jodl nodded. And now, for the last detail of closure, he held out the suitcase he had guarded carefully during their whole time together, the lifeline of the operation. “And now this,” he said dutifully.

She paused, eyeing the offering, and then held out her hand, palm first. “No,” she said softly, and Jodl began to protest. “You keep it.”

“You must take it,” he said.

“No,” she repeated, looking him square in the eye, this time with supreme tenderness. “Fräulein Tatlock’s kitchen,” she said. “It will need support, and a treasurer.”

Franz Jodl paused before he spoke again. A man who weighed his
words carefully, he weighed these words with special care. “I wish that my sons had had such an advocate.”

Eleanor held the man’s eyes for a long, sacred moment. “They had it,” she said finally. “In their father.” She moved to him and kissed him on both cheeks, then held on for a long moment. “Be well, my trusted champion.”

“Be well,” he repeated.

No further words were exchanged, and Jodl, ever the watchful sentinel, stood in his place on the station platform as Eleanor, her charge, and her young son disappeared through the doorway of the train car. She watched him through the cabin window as the train began to move and at the last moment waved, then she turned to the two passengers beside her, one small and one grown, but both totally dependent on her alone now.

BECAUSE OF THE BOY

C
arl Jung had arranged for Arnauld to be admitted under his specific care to Burghölzli, the psychiatric hospital of the University of Zurich, where he had begun his career and made his name. The hospital had been founded in the 1860s as a facility specifically for the humane treatment of mental patients, one of the first and best in Europe. “Your Arnauld could not have landed in a better place,” the doctor said.

“That was the intention,” Eleanor replied.

Eleanor had arranged to stay in Zurich with Standish until she felt a proper diagnosis had been made and a path toward restoration had been established, a process, Jung assured her, that would be accomplished in just a few days. She was eager to return home to her daughters and Frank as soon as possible, but she awaited one more crucial step.

To her great relief, Eleanor found a message waiting upon her arrival in Zurich that all was as it should be in Boston, and the girls were well and eager for their mother’s return.

“I shall stay until the staff has had a chance for a thorough evaluation and you are able to report,” she told Jung, who agreed to the wisdom of the plan, and indeed within a few days he was ready. “Your friend Arnauld is an extreme case, as you know,” he said seriously. “He has lost his ability to relate to the world. It is, as you suggest, a case of severe repression of war experience, what the English call shell shock. There was perhaps head trauma, brain damage at its root that caused his present state, one from which some poor souls never emerge. He has dissociated, unable to sleep
and unable to return to full consciousness. His reaction to the horrors of war is extreme, granted, but not highly unusual. He has gone deep inside, and it will be our task to try to entice him back to our world. He is a deeply tormented man, not shut off from feeling, as it appears, but feeling too much.”

“There is hope?” she said, halfway between a statement and a question.

“It is too early to establish that one way or the other. We can only progress one step at a time. The first step is a thorough neurological examination.”

“And is there no way to establish a prognosis and a schedule of recovery?” Eleanor asked, openly concerned.

“You have brought him this far, and by so doing have saved his life. You did your job, and heroically. Now we and time will have to do ours.”

“You can lead him out of this?” Eleanor said.

“We begin with that premise. Full recovery will always be our goal. The human mind is complex, and it protects itself in complex ways. Your friend Arnauld has sealed himself behind a great door. We will now attempt to untie the Gordian knot securing it. It will be done strand by strand. That is the only way.”

When she visited that first day, Arnauld had been moved to his own private room. “This will be his arena,” Jung said, “the place where he will find himself.”

She returned every day, and on the last she placed in his hand a single slim black volume and pressed both his hands around it until he had it firmly in his grip. “I must leave you,” she said. “I must tend to my family. But I leave you with this book, as part of me,” she added with firmness. “It will be your guide out.”

Still unable to speak or acknowledge much from the outside world, Arnauld took the gift and clutched it tightly, pulling it to his chest. His lips moved and he seemed to mouth once again those syllables that had become familiar to anyone who had spent time with him. The book that from that moment onward was rarely out of his hands was titled
City of Music
by Jonathan Trumpp. She took her young son by the hand and led him out of the room.

Eleanor knew from a telegraph message from Jodl that he had been successful in his last task and that Arnauld’s parents would be arriving in
Zurich on a train from Vienna in the early afternoon, the final step she was waiting for. She arranged for a driver to take her and Standish to the train station so that she would be there to greet the couple when they disembarked.

Herr Esterhazy and his wife looked expectant and somewhat awed by the whole turn of events. “This is an extraordinary surprise,” he said to Eleanor once they had said their greetings and the driver was loading their bags into the car. “You will have to pardon us if we are a bit out of sorts.”

“We had lost our son,” Frau Esterhazy said. “Now, we hear, he is found.”

“He has been found,” Eleanor said with calm authority. “I can only guess what you are feeling. He does not express much right now, you realize.”

“But he is alive,” Herr Esterhazy said. “That is the miracle.”

They talked quietly about how Eleanor and her companion Herr Jodl had searched through the war zone, and the parents had many questions. “Did you know,” Frau Esterhazy said, “when you were with us?”

“I knew that I had to search for him,” Eleanor said.

“By what inspiration?” Herr Esterhazy said with a look of profound puzzlement. “The rest of us accepted the reports.”

“I know it is difficult,” Eleanor said, “and I didn’t wish to give you false hope. But somehow I just knew.”

“Was it because of the boy?” Arnauld’s mother said. “Was it because of your young Standish?”

Eleanor smiled at her, not missing the full depth of implication in the question. “How do you mean?”

“Was it because of your son that you wished that Arnauld be alive?”

“Yes,” Eleanor said, considering the question. “Yes, I suppose it was.”

“Well,” said the father, reaching out with his hand and touching Eleanor’s for just an instant. “We are overwhelmed with gratitude for what you did.” He looked into her eyes. “You alone.”

Eleanor paused for a moment to acknowledge the father’s sentiment. “Our sole purpose now,” she said finally, “is to make him well again.”

“You believe it is possible?” the mother asked with a look of deep concern. Obviously, Jodl had given them a frank description of their son’s condition. “It is almost too much.”

Eleanor smiled again and nodded. “Yes,” she said gently. “I do believe. And he is in extraordinary hands with Dr. Jung.”

Eleanor walked with the parents to the door of Arnauld’s room, as a white-coated doctor opened it and ushered them in. For a moment, the parents kept their distance and looked stunned, not moving, not daring to accept what they were seeing in this shell of a man sitting in pajamas at the edge of his bed. Eleanor could feel the tension from the unspoken fear that all of them carried but did not acknowledge: that this might be a horrible and cruel mistake. Without breathing, she watched the faces of the two parents, in that moment thinking,
What if they recoil with “This is not our son”?
Time stopped.

Then the mother stepped forward toward the man who looked vacantly and straight ahead, with no sign of recognition in his blank stare. For a moment she scrutinized the empty stare. Then she spoke in no more than a whisper.

The father came forward and stood close to his wife. “Arnauld,” the mother said, and hesitated before laying the back of her hand gently on his cheek. “My son.”

The sitting man did not move. He looked up in the direction of the voice, and it would not be exaggeration to say that he gave no sign.

THE MISSING PIECE

I
t was late afternoon when they were together at the Burghölzli. Frau Esterhazy approached Eleanor and asked if there was a place where they could be alone, and the two of them walked together to a small garden area out a side door. They sat on a small bench, and Frau Esterhazy spoke. “When I thought we had lost our son, I wrote you that letter. I thought you needed to know Arnauld’s extraordinary origins.”

“You were kind to include me,” Eleanor said. “I found the revelations very powerful. They are for me most assuredly the missing piece.”

“We thought our son was dead.” Her voice faltered, and Frau Esterhazy paused to collect herself. “You were vitally important to him. We thought that at the very least you should know.”

“And now that he has been found, do you wish you had not written the letter?”

“No one knows,” the mother said. “It must remain that way. But I am not sorry that I wrote it all to you.”

“I understand.”

“At the time of his birth, we thought it a necessity. For his safety. The baby was being searched for. You understand.”

“Yes, I understand. The situation was very precarious.”

“Now—”

“Now you wish his secret to remain secret.” Frau Esterhazy nodded silently. “You think it sacred information.” The mother nodded silently again. Eleanor waited until the older woman’s eyes rose to meet hers. “I
know of that sacredness, and I will share what I know with no one. You can trust that.”

Arnauld Esterhazy’s mother nodded. “Thank you,” she said. “I suspected that I did not need to mention it now, or later. Herr Esterhazy and I know that our son will never be the same again, but still we are happy to have him alive.”

“I believe that he will return in all ways.”

“You have strong faith, Frau Burden. That has brought you here in the first place, and we are grateful beyond words for it. Now that faith tells you that he can be brought all the way back.”

“It does,” Eleanor said.

“We do not have your faith perhaps, but we are still happy that he is alive.”

“There is more—” Eleanor began, and stopped. “There is something you can share with me now. When you told me, back when you thought Arnauld lost, did you have a reason?”

“I think you know the reason,” the mother said.

“It was because of Standish? Because of my son?” Again, Frau Esterhazy said nothing, only nodded with the slightest movement of her head. “Arnauld is to be very important in my son’s life. I know that to be true.”

“I hope that is to be true.”

“It is,” Eleanor said. “It absolutely is.”

“We shall cling to that hope then,” Arnauld’s mother said with a profound sincerity. “We shall cling to your faith.” Then she went quiet, lost in thought for a long moment. “Your son,” she said. “Your Standish. He reminds me so—”

“Arnauld will return to Boston. I just know that. He will be the great teacher of my son and others.”

A gentle calm had come into Frau Esterhazy’s face. “We can all wish for that,” she said. “It is something to hope for.”

And as the two women sat quietly together in the garden of the Zurich hospital, Eleanor could not help reconstructing in her mind the remarkable letter from Frau Esterhazy that explained so much, and would remain a secret between them.