Bruno wet a washcloth and wrung it out and began to dab away the blood on Anna’s face. He parted her hair. She was still bleeding where her head had hit the wall. “It’ll be okay,” Bruno said. He was looking at the floor when he said it. He’s hurt me more than he meant to, Anna thought. She reached around to touch it but Bruno stopped her. “Lie down.” He leaned Anna slowly back into the now-warm water before turning it off. He pushed her farther down. “We should wash your hair,” Bruno said, reading her thoughts. The water around Anna’s head turned pink. It’s like he’s baptizing me. I’m washed in the blood. Anna didn’t know if she’d been baptized. She never asked her parents and they never said one way or the other so she assumed she hadn’t been. Bruno and Anna had baptized all three of their children, but they’d done it simply out of custom and for the benefit of Ursula, who’d urged them to. Bruno sat Anna back up and gave her a perfunctory shampoo. He rinsed her hair with the handheld sprayer. Anna winced against the pressure of the water and the sting of the soap.
“You’re fine,” Bruno said as he took her face in his hand and, as in the kitchen, turned it back and forth to look at it in the bathroom’s strong light. “You’ll have a bruise.” Anna blinked. Bruno reached behind himself for a towel and rolled it into a neck bolster and then he helped her lie back once again. He stood and looked down on her in the bath. Anna closed her eyes and fished the washcloth out of the water and put it over her face. The light was so bright that she imagined her every guilt was visible. “You’ll be okay,” Bruno said a final time as he left her alone in the bath, flipping the light switch as he pulled the door shut.
This was as close to an apology as Anna would get.
DOKTOR MESSERLI TRIED, ONCE, to explain Jung’s concept of the shadow to Anna. “In the physical world a shadow is the dark shape that forms behind anything that light shines upon. A place where light—at present—isn’t. In analysis we equate consciousness with light. Therefore, unconsciousness finds its parallel with darkness. Simply, the shadow is formed of what a person doesn’t consciously know about herself. The self’s unattended aspects. Places where consciousness—at present—isn’t.”
“The dark parts. The sinister parts.” Anna bowed her head.
Doktor Messerli hemmed. “The unknown parts. The shadow isn’t inherently negative. But yes, a negative shadow is very destructive. It will rarely be experienced as an intentional response or a rational force. It is an unconscious reflex. You don’t control it. What stays in shadow controls you.”
Doktor Messerli spoke with slow, dire counsel. “The result of not working toward consciousness is isolation. Instead of real relationships you’ll have imagined ones. The less embodied you are in your conscious life, the blacker and denser your shadow will be. You have no wish to succumb to a negative shadow. And yet”—Doktor Messerli weighed the outcome of every statement that might possibly follow—“the effect of a compulsion is rarely positive. What conscious person would jump into a shark-infested sea? Who would eat glass? Who would shiver when she could so easily be warm? No conscious person would.”
“So it’s bad.”
Doktor Messerli pulled back. “Not exactly. The shadow’s potential to destroy is undeniable. Lightning might strike a house and set it ablaze. But harness the electricity and the same house can be illuminated with the turn of a switch. Consider a vaccine. Included in the serum is a small amount of the disease. Light needs the dark. It is the order of the universe. What would thaw in the spring if we didn’t have a winter to endure? Consciousness is conditioned against its absence, Jung wrote. Amputate the serpent’s tail and the power to heal lies within.” Anna nodded. She tried to understand.
“All self-knowledge begins in the shadow’s black rooms. Enter those rooms, Anna. Address the shadow face-to-face. Ask your questions. Listen to the answers. Respect the answers. The shadow will tell you everything. Why it is you hate. Who it is you love. How to heal. How to sit with sadness. How to grieve. How to live. How to die.”
WHEN ANNA FIRST BEGAN to journal, her writing was intentionally rough. Doktor Messerli had challenged her to write like that, automatically and without judgment and self-editing. Anna was to let her thoughts flow unimpeded. In a rare instance of concession, Anna took the Doktor’s advice and did as she counseled her. The resulting entries were hurried and overblown and her handwriting was illegible. But this was how it was done, she was told, and this is how she would try to do it. And it was good to have a place to let it all loose. The page was her sole confidant. My soul confidant, she thought. After Charles’s death, Anna’s prose slowed and her already abstract logic grew more nebulous.
And what is a Swiss flag but a white cross swimming in a sea of red? I’ve no place to go but insane. Like trying to find your glasses without your glasses: impossible. Like a cell phone’s incorrect predictive text: wrong, wrong, wrong. Like massaging a broken bone: it’s done because it must be done. A blessing, a curse upon me. I merit every ache.
I want nothing more to do with my life.
AN HOUR AFTER LEAVING her alone in the bathroom, Bruno returned to help her out of the tub. The water had cooled. Anna had unrolled the towel underneath her head and used it to cover herself, out of shame and shivering alike. She had worked the whole dark hour on willing her mind to empty. She hadn’t succeeded, but the attempt filled the time and distracted her from the pain.