Sample

Perhaps the time has come, though I prefer to ignore this fact, to stop trying to forget the unforgettable and confront reality once and for all, accept the existence of this worm devouring me from the inside, constantly growing as the days go by. If it’s true that writing is a liberating therapy, as I’ve often told my patients, then describing events here, which however hard I try I cannot push to one side, will help me overcome this horror, these obsessions growing in my brain like lianas.

I may perhaps finally obtain the peace I’ve been searching for in vain over the past three years. Writing these lines will be painful, will somehow mean reliving what happened during those ill-fated months. But I must do so, remember everything, beginning with the happy days when it seemed impossible to end up like this. Who could have guessed Laura’s eyes, those eyes at the start of my misfortunes, were the door to an abyss I would sink into until reaching these depths?

I met Laura Novo on 12 September 1999. How to forget the date since that is when I started working at the Beira Verde clinic, a prestigious psychiatric centre on the banks of the Lower Miño, next to the border with Portugal? I had recently turned 32 and had the feeling that with this new job, which exceeded all my professional expectations, I was finally leaving behind the stage of my education and opening a new, exciting chapter in my life.

Ever since I was a teenager and read Sigmund Freud’s books in my father’s library with a mixture of passion and curiosity, I’d been particularly drawn to psychiatry, which seemed to harmoniously combine the scientific and humanistic aspects of human knowledge. Entering the secrets of the mind, those nooks and crannies in which the great human passions reside – love, hatred, jealousy, obsession, resentment – and doing so with a solid scientific background inspired in me emotions I imagined similar to those experienced on the great scientific expeditions of the nineteenth century by explorers who gladly risked everything in order to reach the farthest flung corners of the earth.

I took my degree in medicine with excellent marks and enjoyed the same success during my long years as a houseman and on subsequent specialist courses at the most renowned European universities. I received numerous offers to continue at university, but rejected them since what I longed for most of all was direct contact with patients. I believed theories only made sense if they contributed to a better understanding of the complexities of the mind. My work experience in various hospitals was highly positive and served to confirm that this is where I wanted to be, even though it bothered me knowing there was always someone watching over me, controlling my work and making sure I didn’t stray from well trodden paths. I realized this was the price I would have to pay if I wanted to experiment and learn things no book could teach me.

With such a background it is hardly surprising how nervous and excited I was that September afternoon. Anyone familiar with the world of psychiatry will know the Beira Verde clinic is considered a special case in the treatment of mental illnesses, an island of liberty where procedures are investigated and carried out leading to success stories where other people fail. Put briefly, it is a top-class clinic with all the latest equipment and a highly enlightened concept of psychiatric work. Not in vain are the directors, Hugo Montenegro and Elsa von Frantz, possibly the two most relevant figures in the field of European psychiatry today. That is why, when I found out about the vacancy, I rushed to present myself for selection, blindly confident that this was the place where I would work. The news that the post was mine was one of the happiest moments of my life, marking as it did the fulfilment of my most cherished dreams.

I remember that day Dr Montenegro received me in person, a courtesy I wasn’t expecting that served to underline his immense humanity. Having introduced me to some of my future work colleagues, he offered to show me around the different parts of the centre. Anything I say about them here will not be enough. I can hardly imagine anything better. The location itself is exceptional: a wonderful manor house situated a few miles from Goián on top of a hill that slopes down to the Miño river, just opposite the small islands of Boega and Vacariza, with Vila Nova de Cerveira watching us from the Portuguese side. The building has a long history and is an excellent example of the finest Galician baroque civil architecture. As I later found out, it was erected on top of the scant remains of an old fourteenth-century fortress. The manor house dated to the middle of the eighteenth century and had always belonged to the lords of Goián and Cerveira, a noble family which over the years had ended up squandering its estate and selling off the remaining properties.

The climate and beauty of the surroundings were two of the reasons the doctors had chosen this place to put their theories into practice. They’d completely restored the house and added new facilities. If the outside was a sight to see, with its two side towers and impressive staircase, the inside was also exemplary, having been refurbished in order to cater to the building’s new purpose. The patients’ rooms, which were light and airy, had been designed in a minimalist style and equipped with comfortable, functional furniture. There were then numerous communal areas with pleasant corners conducive to dialogue.

From the surroundings I was particularly impressed by the spacious French-style gardens with their enormous, centenarian palm trees and large woodland occupying the other side of the hill and continuing down to the cultivated fields of the valley. Walking along paths flanked by chestnuts and oaks, I had the feeling, despite the centre’s proximity to Vigo, that I’d just entered one of the few isolated forests still to be found in the interior of our country.

Dr Montenegro showed me around with a sense of undisguised pride. I suppose, even subconsciously, he wanted to give me the idea that working there was a privilege, a unique opportunity I would do well not to spurn.

‘I’m more than familiar with your record, Dr Moldes, I chaired the selection committee,’ he remarked while we were visiting the air-conditioned pool. ‘I confess the reason I opted for you was not your qualifications, but your desire to learn, that vital impulse that could be glimpsed behind the cold data of your CV.’

‘What do you mean exactly?’ I asked, feeling both pleased and intrigued.

‘The point is there were other, more impressive records than yours. This vacancy was much sought after, highly trained people applied. But how can I put it? Their files were predictable and followed preset lines. You could almost guess what these people were going to do during the rest of their professional lives.’

The doctor may have been expecting me to ask more questions, given the ambiguity of his words. But I remained silent, waiting for him to finish what he wanted to tell me.

‘Do not misunderstand me, my dear friend,’ he continued after a period of silence. ‘Your career to date is extremely impressive, could hardly be better. But, as I’m sure you know by now, academic qualifications by themselves are not a guarantee of anything. What I liked about you were other things: your enthusiasm for diverse fields of knowledge, the breadth of your reading, the fact you were so open… Such apparently insignificant details point to a deep-lying passion to learn about all aspects of human life.’

The doctor’s words pleased me. I recognized myself in this hasty portrait he had just sketched and told him so. And yet I couldn’t quite understand why this had conditioned my selection.

‘Psychiatric science needs a push in a new direction, something to break with the false notion we know everything there is to know about the human mind and have reached the end of the road begun by the great masters,’ remarked Dr Montenegro. ‘We’ve become too sure of ourselves, as if there were an answer to each and every problem. This is not the case. How could it be when the human mind is as enigmatic and unfathomable as interstellar space? Remember Jung’s suggestive words, “The part of the mind which produces symbols of true and unknown complexity is still virtually unexplored.” We act as if the brain were familiar territory when in fact it’s as impenetrable as the Amazon rainforest was to early explorers. This is why we need people willing and unafraid to break new ground.’

While talking, he had guided me to an outbuilding we had yet to visit. In contrast to the luminosity of the others, this vaguely resembled a wartime bunker with compact walls and tiny windows. When we went inside, the doctor said:

‘This is the best example of what I’ve just been saying. This building houses six security cells reserved for those cases science cannot provide an answer for. Here is the proof of our failure, the inadequacy of our knowledge of the human psyche. As you can see, high walls, inaccessible windows, reinforced doors, as if it were a prison. And yet it’s not. I am being unfair to myself since the purpose of these security measures is to safeguard patients’ lives.’

I was dumbfounded, unsure how to react to what my eyes were seeing. This was the other face of reality, the dark side, in sharp contrast to the modern installations we’d just been in.

‘All six cells are equipped as you would expect in such a building,’ the doctor explained. ‘Padded walls, special furniture, constant surveillance by means of closed-circuit television. They’re designed to house violent or suicidal patients who must be kept under watch day and night.’

‘Who’s in them?’

‘Well, I’m happy to say they’re all empty… except for this one.’ The doctor approached the first of the doors situated on either side of the central corridor and gestured to me to follow him. ‘We have a patient here who’s been with us for some time, a woman who came to the clinic about three months ago. Three months during which, despite our best efforts, we’ve made no progress worth mentioning. This is our unsolvable case, a constant reminder we’re not as well acquainted with the mind as we sometimes claim to be.’

Dr Montenegro drew back the bolt on the window in the door and opened the window. He quickly glanced inside and invited me to do the same.

I was familiar with such installations. I’d seen similar ones in the hospitals where I’d worked, though they weren’t as big as this. But I remember I hardly paid any attention to the cell’s features since my eyes were immediately drawn to the person inside it. She was a young woman, about my age, slim, dressed in a blue T-shirt and baggy, grey trousers. At first glance the most noticeable thing about her was her intensely red hair tied back in a ponytail that could hardly suppress her long curls. I was surprised to find her attractive, a reaction I judged inappropriate in the circumstances. She was sitting on a chair, leaning over a table piled high with papers, writing compulsively, with feverish impatience, as if her whole life depended on it.

At one particular moment I must have made a noise at the door because the woman turned in my direction and gave me a look I shall never forget. It was then I was able to see her eyes, eyes that, if I close my own, continue to stare at me from the backdrop of my mind with the same intensity they had that afternoon.

Any other consideration about her body was immediately superseded by those eyes. What drew my attention was not their beauty, though they were extraordinarily attractive, but the unease, the anguish they transmitted. It wasn’t fear or sadness, but something much deeper, inexplicable, as if they contained all the horror of which a person can conceive.

She looked up, as I said, and stared in the direction of the window, stared at me, talking to my eyes, as if she wanted to communicate her horror to me through that silent, meaningful gaze. I cannot express what I felt or find the right words to describe my emotions. It was as if an electric current had passed right through me, from top to bottom, an invisible bolt had reached my soul and ripped it to shreds.

I moved away from the door, still disturbed by the intensity of her gaze. I must have seemed disorientated, unable to express myself. But the doctor said nothing, perhaps sensing my confusion, and started walking along the corridor towards the exit.

‘Wait, doctor, not so fast…’ I blurted out. ‘That woman… that woman was writing with an unusual passion, as if her life depended on a few words.’

‘Yes, we too were surprised by the passion of her writing, this drive that makes her spend hours on end, day after day, over a piece of paper,’ he replied. For a moment I thought I detected a glint in his eye. ‘It may be something like a screw with a stripped thread – however many times you turn the screw, it won’t tighten. Would you like to see what she’s writing?’

‘I would, yes, though I hardly think…’ The last thing I wanted at that moment was to enter her cell. To interrupt that woman’s labour would have seemed like a violation of her intimacy. The doctor, however, guessed my thoughts and quickly interrupted me:

‘Don’t worry. It wasn’t my intention to enter her cell. We have other, more effective means than that. Please follow me.’

We made our way towards a room next to the exit. Inside, a man and a woman, both dressed in the clinic’s uniform, oversaw a complex control panel. I soon realized this was where they controlled the closed-circuit television. Several illuminated screens showed the cell I’d just seen from different angles. In all of them, like a figure multiplied in various frames and sizes, was the red-haired woman.

Having introduced me to the two employees, Dr Montenegro addressed the man:

‘Henrique, would you mind focusing on what the patient is writing? Dr Moldes would like to see what is absorbing her attention.’

The employee manoeuvred the controls and an overhead camera zoomed in until the sheet the woman was currently writing on appeared on one of the screens. She had large handwriting, it wasn’t difficult to read the words on the piece of paper.

I was astonished, this was the last thing I’d been expecting. The whole sheet, which the woman was on the verge of completing, was covered in just two words, which continued line after line to the point of exhaustion: ‘Laura Novo, Laura Novo, Laura Novo, Laura Novo…’

Without allowing me time to recover from my surprise, the doctor opened a drawer stuffed with sheets of paper and produced a handful.

‘Here is a selection of her literary output during the time she’s been with us. You may examine them if you like.’

I took the sheets. They were all covered in the same nervous handwriting, handwriting so precise you could follow it on the other side of the paper with your fingertips. And they all contained the same name, ‘Laura Novo,’ written hundreds of times on that sheaf of papers.

‘She’s been like this for weeks. All we do is supply her with the paper and pencils she needs. And at the end of the day we collect her day’s output. So far, these are the only results.’

It struck me as a pathetic sight, suffused with violence and bitterness. I was before a private tragedy, forced to act the role of unwilling spectator. It reminded me of the image of a castaway at sea, holding onto a plank of wood, at the mercy of the waves, increasingly anxious, enduring the passage of time with only the wood for company. This is how that woman must have felt, clinging desperately to her name, possibly the only thing left to her after some unknown shipwreck.

‘Laura Novo. That’s her name, right?’ The answer was obvious, but I needed to say something to hide my confusion. ‘I’d like to learn more about her case.’

Had I remained silent, had I concealed my interest at that point, I might now be in a completely different situation, far away from the horror that has been ceaselessly gnawing away at me for the past three years. And yet my words simply paved the way for what Dr Montenegro had to say:

‘You will learn more about Laura Novo, Dr Moldes. She is going to be your first patient. Under my supervision, of course. You have new ideas, you may be the only person capable of shedding light on a case that has kept the rest of us in the dark. I know it’s not an easy challenge, but perhaps, with your passion for knowledge, you’re the only one who can find a solution that goes beyond the boundaries of accepted practice. I’ll have her case history sent to you at once. Good luck, Víctor, my friend, and welcome to Beira Verde Clinic!’

With that, he shook my hand and accompanied me to the exit. I headed for the main building, where the manager was waiting to show me to my rooms. Though everything seemed to be progressing rapidly, I was pleased by the turn of events and felt that feverish impatience that is the precursor to periods of great activity. How little did I realize then that the first rays of tragedy were slowly beginning to pierce the ground beneath my feet!

The apartment I would live in over the following months was situated in the tower on the left of the main building. There was a small bedroom with adjacent bathroom and a light, spacious living room which could double up as a workplace on those days I didn’t feel like going down to my office on the ground floor. Through the large window I could see the vineyards that covered the lands around the manor house, as well as some small fields and a few patches of forest. If I looked south, past the gardens, what I saw was the river Miño and, on the other side, the green line that indicated the start of Portuguese territory. The location was perfect and it was easy to imagine my experience there would be memorable.

I was just arranging my things when I received the visit of a nurse who handed me a blue folder. ‘The director asked me to give you this. It’s Laura Novo’s case history,’ she said before leaving. Surprised by such punctuality, I decided to postpone my unpacking and set about examining those papers. I sat down in a chair, taking everything out of the folder and spreading it across the table.

There was a long report with the patient’s biography and several additional documents. Then in a separate folder were the data on the progress she’d made since being admitted to the clinic. I was surprised to find a copy of a book written by this woman who’d so impressed me a couple of hours previously since the doctor had said nothing to me about her literary pursuits.

Determined to give everything its due attention, I first took the biographical report. Though the people in documentation had done their best, the information contained in the report was incomplete. It was as if, among all the details, a few key elements were missing to fully explain the state Laura Novo was in. A state, I was only too aware, the seed of which is almost always to be found in a careful survey of the patient’s biography.

Laura Novo had been born in Pontedeume in 1968. This meant she was 31, only a year younger than me. Her family – parents and one brother who was two years older – had moved to Coruña when she was still a child, which is where she’d grown up. The family had then transferred to Madrid, where Laura had lived until a year earlier. She studied there at university, graduating in journalism and social sciences with excellent marks, as copies of her academic record showed. Later she’d had various jobs, not all of them in the field of her studies, but mostly related to journalism, a profession in which, despite her youth, she’d managed to occupy posts of certain importance. There were also references to her work as a writer, an aspect of her life I’d been surprised to discover. She’d published several short stories in magazines and collective anthologies and, in 1995, the volume I held in my hands, Like Floating Clouds, a collection of stories that had enjoyed some favourable reviews (the newspaper cuttings were included), but little commercial success.

Laura had been living alone for some years. Her brother, who worked as an engineer in Valencia, had married an Italian architect and distanced himself from the family. Her parents had separated at the end of the eighties; a few months later her father had married a much younger woman and settled in Barcelona. Laura had continued living in the family home with her mother, who’d died in 1996. In 1998, for no discernible reason, she’d left her job and returned to Galicia, staying in a house in a village located in Lugo’s Terra Chá. Among the documents I found a leaflet which explained about the possibilities of rural tourism, with a photo of the house where my patient had stayed marked with a felt tip pen.

Data for the preceding twelve months were much harder to come by. She’d remained in the house from September 1998 to May 1999, but there was nothing to indicate what she’d done during all this time. It was in the month of May when she suffered the accident which, according to the documents, had provoked her current state.

The previous spring, during a walk in the countryside, Laura had been struck by a bolt of lightning or, to be more precise, a bolt had fallen very near her as she was out walking in the open, giving her a tremendous shock. She’d been admitted to Santiago General Hospital for almost six weeks, where she’d been cured of her physical ailments. It was during this period of recovery that the mental anomalies she displayed had first been diagnosed. At the end of June she’d been transferred to our psychiatric clinic, where she’d remained ever since. And here the report ended, which I found to be full of gaps and overly schematic.

I then took her case history from the clinic, which contained all the information Dr Montenegro had promised me. There was a detailed description of her behaviour, which included depressive and psychotic features together with others associated with autism, followed by a conclusive diagnosis: the patient was suffering from anxiety disorder caused by the lightning bolt that had landed beside her five months previously.

The reading of this diagnosis made me laugh, as if a part of the Beira Verde clinic’s prestige had been eroded away before my eyes. How could a bolt be the cause of Laura’s current state? A bolt, like any other unforeseen accident, can provoke an emotional shock, there are numerous case histories to prove it. But in all such cases the shock disappears after a few days and, with it, the accompanying symptoms. How could this event explain the autistic features and inner disquiet evidenced by Laura’s behaviour? Where were the bodily dysfunctions normally associated with such neuroses? In her case the report showed none apart from broken sleep patterns. And what relation could such a disorder have with the patient’s obsessive writing? I had immediately interpreted this activity as a desperate attempt to cling to the vital thread that sustains us as people, symbolized by the fact of our name. Besides, I’d seen her eyes, I’d witnessed the terror inside them, and the memory of her gaze discredited all the literature contained in this folder. No, her state was not the result of shock caused by a lightning bolt. We were clearly before a neurosis that went much deeper, with obsessive, phobic features, though the symptoms I’d seen reflected nothing I was familiar with.

Over dinner, which was shared by the whole medical team, I listened to my new colleagues’ conversation and replied as best as I could to the personal questions they asked me. As soon as we’d finished, I sought out Dr Montenegro and presented my doubts to him with sufficient tact not to hurt his feelings. He listened with considerable interest and then, as we walked around the gardens, remarked he hadn’t been convinced by the diagnosis either, perhaps it was just a way of concealing beneath words the confusion the medical team, he included, felt over the case.

‘You must consider it provisional in the absence of something better,’ he concluded. ‘The truth is none of the case histories we possess show similar behaviour. We know next to nothing about what’s going on inside Laura Novo’s mind, there are lots of gaps which need filling in before we can go any further.’

‘What gaps do you mean, doctor?’ I asked.

‘The absence of any significant detail about what happened to Laura after her return to Galicia, for example,’ he answered. ‘We had difficulty finding out that information, though everything indicates she led a normal life with nothing out of the ordinary.’

I carried on walking in silence, not knowing what to say. When we reached the front door, it was the doctor who spoke again:

‘It would be wonderful if she could explain this herself, but she’s obviously in no condition to tell us anything. Don’t pay me much attention, Víctor, my friend, this is only a personal opinion based on a lack of understanding. It may be much simpler than that and all Laura’s problems derive from her inner self, that fortress autistic people construct to protect themselves and survive in a world they perceive as hostile. It’s up to you to investigate!’

That evening, having gone through all the documents again, I read Laura’s collection of stories. As a reader I found it of little interest. It was too pretentious, the typical first book by a writer who wants to show how much he knows and how many authors he has read. It was obvious she was more concerned about writing glittery sentences than about the structure of the stories and their content. It was all far too artificial, with less life than can be found on the surface of the moon.

Even so, I forced myself to read the book again, this time from a clinical perspective. It was the right decision since, while the book held no interest for me as a reader, as a doctor I soon realized it would help me find a way to lay siege to the fortress constructed around Laura’s mind. It was obvious the first thing I had to do was get closer to my patient. I somehow had to gain her confidence, make her see me as someone she could trust. Only if I was close to her could I embark on a therapy that would cure her. And fortunately it was her own words which showed me the way.

In most of the stories, by means of the main characters, Laura made a passionate defence of literature and the power of books to change our lives and help us in difficult situations. This idea was repeated again and again, as if it formed the central theme: literature as a source of life. This repetition gave me the idea of assaulting Laura’s self-built fortress using words. It was an illumination, a shaft of light showing me how to proceed. As Joshua had destroyed the walls of Jericho with the sound of his army’s trumpets, so I would demolish the walls around Laura with a far mightier force, that contained inside words.

I needed to know if such a therapy had ever been performed, so I spent two whole days in the clinic’s library, going through all the medical biography there was on the subject, but finding nothing of great use. It was clear I would have to trust my instincts and experiment with a novel therapy. After all, this was what was expected of me.

After three days shut up in my apartment, designing my plan down to the smallest detail, I presented it to Dr Montenegro for his approval. He was fairly sceptical and raised numerous objections, but ended up granting his permission. His opinion was that we had nothing to lose by trying it out, so we agreed to put it into action at the earliest opportunity.

The following morning I headed for the building which housed the security cells with a book in one hand and a folding chair in the other. I asked the guards to open the door to Laura’s cell and went inside. The woman was sitting at the table, just as I’d seen her the first time, and was already engrossed in her writing. She had on the same grey clothes and her red hair, which that day was down, was the only note of colour in the room. When I went in, she turned around and fixed me with the look that had so impressed me on the day of my arrival. Once inside, behaving as if there was no one else in the cell, I placed the chair in the corner furthest from where she was, sat down, opened the book and began to read in silence, as if in the solitude of my own room.

Laura had stopped writing while I set myself up, perhaps confused by the interruption. But when she saw I’d started reading, apparently without paying her attention, she went back to her writing. At first she would break off and glance in my direction, but she soon became absorbed in her work with the same frenetic activity as before. She took sheets from one pile lying on top of the table, wrote on them without stopping, then placed them on another pile to her right, having covered them with the same obsessive repetition of her name and surname.

And so the morning passed, with her writing and me reading, two strangers occupying parallel worlds. The only thing that broke the apparent calm was the spasms Laura suffered at odd intervals. They almost always happened in the same way: she would break off her writing, drop the pencil and sit rigidly, staring at a fixed point on the wall with an expression of terror that grew until ending in a muffled groan, a silent outburst it was difficult to forget. All of this lasted barely two minutes. Then, as if she’d woken from a dream, Laura would pick up the pencil and return to her work with renewed intensity.

At around midday I left the cell. Two hours later, having eaten and stretched my legs in the park, I went back in and repeated the same programme as in the morning. I stayed like this until it was eight o’clock and the first day of my experimental therapy came to an end.

After three days of the same activity, I began to doubt the effectiveness of my plan since I’d observed no discernible change in Laura’s behaviour. But on the morning of the fourth day I saw she occasionally stopped writing, looked up and stared at me for a few minutes, as if the sight of an individual sitting with a book in his hands, turning the pages from time to time, was of considerable interest to her. She then went back to her writing, but with less drive, as if the centre of her attention had shifted ever so slightly.

That evening I decided the time had come to proceed to the second stage of my plan. I was very unsure which book to take since a wrong decision on my part could ruin everything. I finally opted for one that seemed suitable for the task in hand: a thick volume containing the complete stories of the Brothers Grimm. I’d already selected a dozen stories which followed the classic structure of a fairytale: a hero faced by a conflict that endangers his life enters the forest, that metaphor for the world, and finally returns victorious, having overcome all the difficulties he meets along the way.

The following morning, back in the cell, I followed my usual routine, but after Laura’s first interruption, when I saw she was about to return to her writing, I started reading out loud. I did so as if to no one in particular, acting as if this was the first time anyone had ever told these stories since the creation of the world. As I read, I watched for the slightest reaction on Laura’s part. This way I could see how she left her writing on hearing my voice, a voice that disturbed the silence that had surrounded her for so many days.

After a few moments’ hesitation, she settled in her chair and began to listen openly. Every time one of the stories finished, I stopped reading and allowed the silence to refill the room. This wasn’t just so that I could rest. Most of all it was to observe her reaction, how she fidgeted in her chair, waiting for me to continue. We carried on like this for two hours, the time I remained in her cell.

I repeated the procedure that same afternoon. This time I chose a book by Jack London with a selection of his amazing vitalistic stories, which transport us to the chilly landscapes of Alaska or luminous seas of Polynesia. And again, as had happened in the morning, the force of the narrative captured Laura’s attention.

Over the following days I experimented with Kipling’s magical stories, Cunqueiro’s unruly fantasy, Roald Dahl’s ironic gaze, Cortázar’s lucid genius… All the narratives I chose were full of contagious passion and vitality, of the kind that makes you want to live when you read them. This was the sole condition for selecting them. In this way I spent the whole morning and afternoon, day after day, following the same routine. Hour upon hour of reading out loud, as if addressing the walls, though I was increasingly aware my words were not being lost in the air, but were reaching Laura’s ears. These stories were altering the expression on her face and above all removing the look of terror in her eyes.

On the morning of the fourth day there was a significant change. When I entered the cell and was about to start reading, having chosen some of Stevenson’s more optimistic stories collected in his South Sea Tales, Laura stood up, took her chair, came over to where I was and sat down beside me. My heart started beating fast, this was a clear sign my strategy was working, but I limited myself to opening the book and reading with apparent indifference, as if nothing untoward had happened and Laura wasn’t there.

We spent that afternoon and the whole of the following day like this. But having achieved one small success, I wanted further results and was prepared to provoke them. I decided the time had come to abandon stories and start a novel. Like Scheherazade in One Thousand and One Nights I wanted to read in such a way that the narrative was unfinished, making Laura wish to know what would happen the day after. I was very careful about which novel to choose, it wasn’t easy. In the end I opted for One Hundred Years of Solitude, one of the few books that still aroused my enthusiasm every time I reread it.

The next day I entered the cell, but instead of sitting I remained standing next to the door, which I’d asked the guards to leave open. Laura took her chair to the usual place and sat down to wait. I could see she felt confused by this change in what was now a shared routine. I proceeded to open the book and read the first lines of the novel.

Having read four or five pages, having allowed the narrative to envelop us in the Buendía family’s outrageous adventures, I turned, walked through the door and went outside, reading all the time. Laura hesitated for a few moments, unsure what to do, but in the end she too abandoned the cell and followed me along the corridor.

She stopped at the exit to the building, taken aback by the sunlight. The sudden brightness must have been too much for her, used as she was to spending her days between four walls. I waited for a little and then carried on walking. Having planned everything previously, I headed slowly, reading all the while, for a bower of bougainvilleas, a place where the wall surrounding a raised part of the garden opened into a semicircle flanked by a balustrade, forming a kind of summer-house. Some stone benches completed the circle while two bougainvilleas, which had twirled around a metallic structure behind the benches, stretching over them like a roof, offered a sort of vegetal curtain which made this one of the most attractive spots on the estate.

The bougainvilleas acted as a shield against the sun, but also served to isolate the summer-house from the rest of the garden. It was an ideal place to read or think or let the hours go by as the clouds sailed gently overhead. It was also exactly the kind of place I needed for Laura, being outside, to feel as protected as inside her cell.

I sat on one of the benches and, having watched Laura sit at a certain distance from me, continued reading. She appeared tense, rigid, as if expecting some aggression and at one point I was even afraid she might jump up and run off in a panic. But whether it was the beauty of the spot or the hypnotic effect of García Márquez’s writing, the truth is she stayed put and carried on listening until midday.

Then, as had previously been arranged, two nurses came to fetch her and take her back to her cell. In the afternoon, after lunch, I repeated the morning’s movements, making sure I interrupted the reading at a point in the text when the emotion was at its highest. I did the same thing over the following days.

Soon it wasn’t even necessary for me to visit the cell or for the nurses to come since it was Laura herself who would walk each morning to the summer-house in search of her dose of reading. Though it may not have been obvious to an external observer, the progress was clear to me: her body began to relax, she acquired greater confidence and above all her look began to change. She was still disorientated on occasion, still overcome by gusts of panic, but most of the time she remained lost in thought, staring into the distance, while listening through my voice to the words of novels I selected very carefully: Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Dostoyevsky’s White Nights, Saramago’s Baltasar and Blimunda…

It wasn’t all good news, however. From time to time Laura would suffer an attack, a crisis brought about by her inner ghosts. I noticed it immediately because her body would go rigid and the features of her face would become contorted, her mouth open in a silent cry, her eyes full of anguish and fear. She was the living expression of horror, something that was in sharp contrast to the outer calm that surrounded us. These attacks came and went, there was no set rhythm, nor were they always as intense, but they kept reminding me they were there, making my task all the more difficult.

One day I started reading The Locked Room, one of the novels in Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy. The love story between a writer and the widow of a friend, so enthralling and laden with emotions, came to life in my voice. I was about to finish one of the chapters when I heard a short sob. I paused and glanced at my taciturn companion. Tears were rolling down her cheeks and her eyes were bathed in sadness. She stared at me for a few intense moments and then said the first words I’d heard her speak:

‘I too was a writer!’

She immediately jumped up and ran towards the buildings of the clinic. I remained seated, making no effort to follow her. After days and days of laying siege I now knew some cracks had opened in the walls of my patient’s inner fortress which would enable me to enter her world. My work as a doctor was about to begin, my task to discover the causes of the phantoms that inhabited poor Laura’s mind.

In the days that followed I did what I could to make sure Laura’s life changed radically. I was always keeping an eye on her, seeing to the tiniest details, as a lover does for his beloved. She needed my help now that she was returning to the real world, a world, for reasons we didn’t know, she had abandoned to fall into a chasm of darkness in which she’d spent the preceding months. I had her moved to a room in an area where there weren’t any other patients. She remained under constant surveillance, under my direct supervision, but her new situation was completely different from the overwhelming control of the security cells. I was sure she was no longer in danger, her attempts to end her life were a thing of the past.

Every evening, after dinner, I would inform Dr Montenegro of the progress we’d made, consulting him about the following steps. When it was all over, we intended to publish a paper in The Psychoanalytic Review and so I kept a detailed record of each day’s events.

During this new phase I continued to read to Laura as before. I endeavoured to include the odd personal comment, but she always replied with monosyllables. These soon gave way, however, to short, hesitant sentences, as if she were stepping on unknown territory. Now that Laura had decided to return to life, her progress was clear for all to see.

Gradually the time we spent reading every day began to diminish since Laura would frequently interrupt me, sparking some conversation with her comments, sometimes on the most mundane themes. Other times I would suggest a topic of conversation almost always based on the book in hand. In this way I managed to create a bond of sympathy between us. Laura obviously felt well with me, though she continued to refuse to talk to anyone else.

Of course it wasn’t all a bed of roses. There were days Laura reverted to her previous condition, observing a strict silence I was careful not to break since I knew certain setbacks were inevitable in any psychoanalytic therapy. Her sudden terror attacks also continued, though they were increasingly less prolonged and intense.

As is only natural, I lost no opportunity to delve into her past. Everything Laura told me confirmed what I’d learned from her biography. But there was something strange. All my attempts to uncover what happened after her return to Galicia floundered against a wall of silence. ‘I don’t know,’ ‘I can’t remember,’ ‘You’ll have to ask someone else.’ It should have been the easiest period for her to remember since it was the most recent, but any effort on her part came up against a black pit she seemed unable to cross.

I knew that gaps in memory were typical in cases like hers, but they didn’t usually last so long and were generally accompanied by other symptoms of dissociation. In all other aspects of her life, however, Laura behaved like a normal person. Even so, we continued administering anxiolytics and at night a nurse stayed by her side, watching for unexpected reactions.

I tried at the same time to explore the territory of her dreams, knowing they can often provide significant clues, but she always claimed not to remember them. And yet, according to the nurse’s reports, Laura suffered from constant nightmares which, despite the medication, unsettled her greatly, resulting in terrifying screams. I was determined to discover what these nightmares were about. Knowing they always occurred during the deepest part of her sleep, I agreed with the nurse to be present around that time.

The first night, having waited patiently for several hours, the nurse and I witnessed Laura tossing and turning in her bed, as if involved in a struggle that made her body tense while she adopted an expression of anguish. The horror on her face grew until eventually she let out a cry of terror, a long drawn-out howl that echoed along the corridors, sending a shiver down my spine. I rushed into her room and woke her up. Laura opened her eyes and stopped crying as soon as she recognized me. Then, without allowing her time for the images to fade, I asked her to tell me what she’d been dreaming about a few moments earlier.

Her explanation was disconnected and fragmentary, but I hastened to note it all down as soon as she went back to sleep. Since I intervened on several nights and her dreams were always more or less the same, I can describe them here with a coherence my patient was unable to give me.

The departure point was different, but Laura always ended up in a kind of gloomy passage that seemed to continue forever. She would walk forwards confidently with the sense there was someone or something waiting for her at the end. The passage sloped downwards and at a certain point a kind of phosphorescence would appear, a brightness that indicated she was coming to the conclusion of her journey. Since the passage turned a corner and didn’t allow her to see what was there, Laura would become paralysed, unable to take a step. This contradiction between the need to go on and the fear of doing so caused her intense panic, a feeling that increased when she realized she was rooted to the spot and couldn’t move. The phosphorescent light would grow in intensity and Laura would catch sight of a huge black shadow reflected on the cavern walls, which filled her with terror. She would then start to cry out until waking up and returning to reality.

As anyone familiar with the oneiric world will know, this is a classic dream of which there are numerous documented examples, which helped me very little except to confirm what I’d already guessed: there was some unresolved conflict inside Laura’s brain, a past experience which had left an unbearable mark in her memory. There it remained, lurking inside her, in such a way that her subconscious viewed it as a threat to Laura’s stability. I soon realized we would have to relive this traumatic experience since only a conscious awareness of what had happened would succeed in unblocking her mind.

How wrong I was! Had I not been so blind, had my brain not staggered under the weight of so much clinical reading, had I heeded my instincts more than the teachings of Freud or Jung, had I not been determined to find symbolic meaning in Laura’s dreams, had I been prepared to accept how far she was giving me the necessary clues to save her, had I paid attention to everything she was telling me through her dreams, perhaps she would now be safe, living out a placid, monotonous existence just like anyone else. But I failed to notice these things, I was too blind to see past what I’d read in books of psychiatry. Nor did I fully comprehend the significance of two events that happened around then, which in the light of all I now know were particularly important.

The first of the two events I must relate happened after I decided to drastically reduce both the reading sessions in the summer-house and our walks in the garden. I began to take Laura out on trips in the local surroundings. I wanted her to gradually adjust to the habits and routines of daily life and get used to being near strangers again. I did this very carefully, as is only natural, selecting places further and further away from the clinic. In my car we visited Goián, Tomiño, O Rosal and several other small towns by the Lower Miño. After that, I dared to cross the Miño and take her to Portuguese towns on the other side: Valença do Minho, Vila Nova de Cerveira and above all Caminha, a place I was especially fond of, where we went on several occasions.

It was in Caminha that the first incident occurred. We were having lunch in Barão, a cosy restaurant located in an old street near the church. We had just been for a wander around the main square, which seemed to possess a magical aura, and I was feeling particularly optimistic. Following the waiter’s suggestions, I ordered grilled lobster, hoping this would please Laura. When the lobsters arrived, Laura was terribly impressed by the size of the specimens. Taking hold of one of them, she laughed and said she didn’t remember the last time she’d tried seafood. But then, with the lobster in her hand, she fell quiet, staring at the creature’s pincers for a short space of time. The expression of terror I knew so well began to reappear on her face and a few moments later she closed her eyes, lost consciousness and fell to the ground.

Fortunately the restaurant was almost empty and the incident went unnoticed. The staff helped me carry Laura to a private room, where I did my best to revive her. When she finally came around, she remembered nothing of what had happened, only that we’d been walking in the square and had then headed to a restaurant for lunch. Looking back on it now, I’m amazed I could be so blind and not see the ominous reality it concealed. But I wasn’t even able to make the connection between what had happened and Laura’s nightmares, which recurred with greater intensity and continued for several nights.

The second incident took place a few days later. We were in A Guarda, visiting St Thecla’s Mount, on the side of which is a Celtic fort. Having scoured the fort, we climbed to the top of the hill, which has one of those views that linger in the memory. In one direction the final stretch of the Miño opening out into an estuary between Portuguese and Galician lands; in the other, the vast expanse of the Atlantic, its waves beating furiously against the cliffs below, extending as far as the eye can see. Having spent some time identifying places on both sides of the river, we decided to visit the small museum situated close to the summit. It is housed in an unpretentious building and contains exhibits found during the excavation of the hillside, almost entirely of Celtic or Roman origin, though some are earlier.

I was surprised by the museum since it wasn’t the typical pile of stones arranged haphazardly, in fact quite the opposite. Each exhibit was accompanied by a detailed description so that the whole offered an exhaustive overview of the civilizations that had left their mark in that place. Given the large numbers of tourists, there was also a stall selling pieces of pottery and jewellery decorated with motifs from the museum. Laura insisted on buying me a silver triskele necklace, which I not only had to accept and wear around my neck but also promise to keep always with me. It was her way, she explained, of showing me how grateful she was for my help.

At one point we were gazing at a plinth engraved with rudimentary figures eroded by the passage of time, which vaguely recalled the marks left by an unknown animal, when Laura let out a muffled sob and ran from the building. I followed her, chasing her through the trees, until I managed to catch up with her. She was beside herself, with an expression I’d never seen on her before. There were still signs of horror on her face, but her look had changed, as if something inside her had finally broken. She gradually returned to normal and let me accompany her to the car. The whole way back to the clinic she didn’t say a word, preserving a stubborn silence I was unable to fathom.

She kept up this attitude over the next two days. She asked to be left alone in her room in voluntary confinement. I waited patiently for her to ask to see me, to want to go out for a walk. But it was all in vain. It seemed as if the slow work of the preceding weeks had suddenly crumbled and we had to start again.

I was utterly wrong, however. As I later discovered, what this episode had done was speed up a complex inner process, bringing about a change inside Laura. On the morning of the third day, when I called around to her room with a sense of hopelessness, she was waiting for me, ready to go out.

‘Good morning, doctor,’ she said with a naturalness I found disconcerting. ‘Don’t you think it’s a good day for the summer-house?’

‘I suppose so, yes,’ I replied, unable to hide my excitement. ‘A day like this is a blessing in autumn!’

We walked to the pavilion, chatting about trivial topics. Once we were seated, Laura remained silent for a few minutes and then, as if giving a pre-prepared speech, she said:

‘Do you remember some of the mornings we’ve spent here, when the sun would gradually dissipate the mist that had formed beside the river and ever so slowly we’d be able to make out what was on the other side?’

I didn’t speak, having quickly realized this was a rhetorical question and formed only the beginning of what she had to say. In the end Laura spoke for more than ten minutes, explaining how the mist of her memory was also lifting. Her recollection of the past few months was improving all the time, but the new images piling up inside her made her feel uncertain. I’d often told her she needed to remember what had happened in the preceding months in order to be healed. I now saw we could give it a try, though she obviously found it difficult to put into words the images crowding her mind. She was also afraid to relive a period of her life which, as her memory cleared, might throw up unpleasant events she was unprepared to confront.

‘Then write it down, write everything from the beginning,’ I said almost without thinking. ‘Write what you do not feel able to express out loud to me or even to yourself. That way all the images jumbled up in your mind will gradually begin to make sense.’

‘But I’m afraid, doctor. If, as you’ve said, the cause of my illness is in events that happened to me in the past, then obviously I would prefer not to remember them. What if their recollection makes me suffer a relapse?’

‘You have to trust me, Laura. Bringing them to mind is not the same as reliving them. You can always count on my help, as Theseus had Ariadne’s help when he entered the Minotaur’s labyrinth. I can be the thread that guides you, keeping you company on this journey through your memory.’

‘But how to set about it? When I think of the work involved, I feel discouraged. Besides, I might get lost or forget something important.’

I understood the difficulties Laura saw in my suggestion. We had to follow a method that would allow her to recall, step by step, everything that had happened. It was then I divined a course of action that might be appropriate.

‘Write down everything you remember. Write something every day, even if it’s only four lines. At the end of the day bring me your text. I will read it, type it out on my computer and the next day give you back the original and one clean copy. Remember Marlow, the main character in Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, always sailing upriver, without faltering, in search of the objective that justified his stubborn journey. Well, I’m asking you to make a similar journey along the rivers of your mind.’

‘I accept, but on one condition,’ she replied, having thought it over for a while. ‘You will read my texts, but I don’t want you to comment on any of them, at least not until I’ve finished.’

‘That’s how we’ll do it then.’ I tried to sound as encouraging as possible. ‘Courage, mon amie! “Literature or life,” wrote a novelist some years ago, but in your case I’d say literature and life. Your words may be exactly the help we need for you to get better.’

From everything the doctor and I spoke about when we agreed that I would start writing these lines, it is perhaps the image of a castaway on a desert island that best reflects my current feelings. I undertake the task ahead of me with a strange sensation in which fear of the futility of my efforts is mixed with an awareness I don’t know who I’m writing to. ‘To yourself, write for yourself. Tell yourself again what happened, live it over in your own words,’ Víctor said that afternoon. It should be relatively easy to follow his advice, but something tells me there are difficulties ahead I cannot even imagine. The truth is I’m afraid to begin this journey, possibly because there may be moments I do not wish to remember. And yet I’ve no reason to think like this since if there’s one thing the recollection of these past few months brings me, over and above my fears, it is a sensation of calm and happiness.

The doctor suggested I should start telling my story from when I arrived back in Galicia. But now that I’m sitting in front of a blank sheet of paper, I feel it would be wrong to follow his recommendation. I must also explain what compelled me to leave Madrid and return to this land I left at the end of my teens.

It’s difficult to know exactly when a new stage in our life begins. Everything is interconnected and if we allowed ourselves to be drawn by the threads uniting all that happens to us, we’d end up going back to the very moment of our birth. Or further still, like Sartre in his book Words, where he closely examines the lives of his parents and grandparents in an attempt to give sense to his own. I don’t plan to go back as far as that, but I will begin this journey through my memory in the summer of 1998, during those months of crisis which brought about a break with my life until that moment.

It’s funny how subjective the passage of time can be. Barely more than a year has passed, but it seems to me those events belong to a much more distant past. Even so, I can still remember the reasons for the great dissatisfaction I felt inside me, which is perhaps the only thing worth relating here.

At the start of the summer, after almost two years of going out, my relationship with Miguel was in a very bad way. The breaking point, for me at least, came during the unbearable month of August we spent with his family at their villa in Marbella, which in theory was so that we could all get to know each other better. The result was the opposite of what Miguel intended. The mere thought of having to deal with those people, put up with their impertinences, endure their meaningless conversations and reactionary, not to say authoritarian, positions made me want to start running and not stop until I was thousands of miles away. Now that I think about it, that August was a blessing since it enabled me to know the real Miguel revealing himself as he was in front of his family and allowing me to see that what we had in common was just a few superficial things the passage of time would soon put paid to.

What’s more, my professional situation had worsened over the preceding months. Ever since I wrote a column criticizing the Minister of Culture, the pressure for me to be fired had grown, so the editor in chief informed me. Though I could count on his support, he eventually had to let go of my services or else face losing the generous advertising subsidies provided by government-controlled companies. I’d been blacklisted, he told me, and my future as a journalist, in Madrid at least, was bleak. The only option left to me was to transfer over to documentation services until there was a change of politics in the country.

This seemed to me a humiliating offer I was unwilling to accept. I found myself without work, not knowing quite what to do with my life. The only other option was university, to accept the post of associate professor I’d repeatedly been offered and then endeavour to obtain the post of full professor. Of course this meant finishing my thesis, which I’d constantly postponed. But how was I going to finish a thesis in such circumstances? Miguel and his family were already planning the wedding. They wanted it to be in the cathedral with all the pomp and ceremony of grand occasions. I felt like a fly caught in a web, watching the approach of the spider that would suck all my blood and finally destroy me.

The need to escape from this situation and my desire to finish my thesis made me start thinking about leaving Madrid. To begin with, this was an idea I fantasized about from time to time, but it ended up becoming an obsession. I needed some peace and quiet, to get away from this overwhelming situation, I just didn’t know how to do it.

People refer to chance in order to explain the inexplicable. I suppose there are always hidden reasons, unconscious impulses that cause us to follow one or another path when it comes to making a choice. In my case I think rather than chance it was my inner disquiet that made me notice that advertising feature by the Galician Department of Tourism I found while flicking through a magazine. It gave ample information about the many houses that had opened in Galicia in recent years offering rural tourism, as well as the high quality of their services. It also emphasized the beauty of the countryside and provided a guarantee of peace and tranquillity.

It must have been the word ‘tranquillity’ that kick-started my actions. A box contained the address of a website with information about rural tourism in Galicia. Since it was evening and I had nothing better to do, I switched on the computer and went online. I soon found the site I was looking for. It was very well done and complete. And the information it gave about each of the houses was excellent.

I started flicking through page after page, pausing just to look at them. It was strange: as I went through these houses scattered all over Galicia, remembering names I thought I’d forgotten, I felt the disquiet that had been with me for days begin to subside, as if this virtual journey was acting like a balsam to my spirit.

And so, as I moved the mouse here and there, I came across another establishment on the screen, with all the information I needed in a side box. I was about to go on to the next one when something made me stop and pay attention to the text describing the Big House of Lanzós, ‘a fully restored building from the turn of the century, situated a few miles from Vilalba, in Lugo’s Terra Chá.’ It offered all kinds of services, including a library, and highlighted the beauty of the surroundings. But what drew my attention was not the text written in a style typical of a tourist leaflet and very similar to that of other houses on offer, but the name of the owner in charge, Carlos Valcárcel.

As soon as I read it, my heart began to beat fast. I was overcome by a torrent of memories I thought lay buried and suddenly felt like the little girl I’d once been, the teenager writing poems for an impossible love. Must I explain it here? I don’t suppose it will serve the doctor’s purposes, but it will help me, help me understand why, among all the houses offering rural tourism in Galicia, I ended up paying attention to the Big House of Lanzós. Chance rolling dice in a cup or a dark design controlling our lives without our knowing it. Let us leave aside the memories, there’ll be time for them later. I was talking about my surprise when I saw the name of Carlos Valcárcel associated with that house.

Once the memories had subsided, I realized what I’d been thinking was impossible. The Carlos Valcárcel I’d known so many years earlier would still be teaching in Coruña, he couldn’t be in a house in Terra Chá, it must have been a simple coincidence of names.

But there was chance, pushing me ever forwards. Because it so happened this was one of the few houses that allowed you to make a reservation by email. I didn’t think twice about it. In an irrational outburst I sent a message asking for more information and including a question at the end – ‘Do you have a copy of Méndez Ferrín’s Arnoia, Arnoia in the library?’ – which attempted indirectly to confirm whether or not this was the Carlos Valcárcel who had burned my adolescent heart.

The following evening I switched on the computer and looked to see if there were any messages. There was one, answering the email I’d sent the previous day. On the screen I read the information it contained. The text was neutral, aseptic, talking most of the time about the surroundings and even providing links to other websites on Terra Chá. At the end, in a kind of postscript, was what I wanted to know, the key that made me abandon everything, for once in my life giving free rein to my heart:

The book Arnoia, Arnoia is not in the manor house’s library, but it is in my own personal library.

I once knew a Laura Novo who also liked this book. The Laura I knew would now be 30. Do you have anything to do with her?

There was no doubt! This Carlos Valcárcel was my impossible love, my teenage passion. Obeying an irrational impulse, I immediately filled out a reservation beginning on 15 September. My rational side soon started working on the excuse I needed. This was the ideal place for what I wanted: to get away from Madrid and concentrate on my thesis. I would have all the tranquillity in the world and, however hard they tried, no one would be able to find me.

It wasn’t easy talking to Miguel, telling him I was going to be absent for a while since, in addition to my workload on the thesis, I needed time to be alone and think. Marriage was an important step and I wanted to be absolutely sure of what I was doing. I said I was moving to Galicia without giving further details. I knew perfectly well he was capable of turning up a couple of days later wherever I was.

I spent the next three days resolving various issues and gathering all the material and minimal bibliography I needed for my work. Early in the morning of the 15th I closed the door of my apartment with the feeling I was crossing over to the other side of an imaginary line which marked the start of a new chapter in my life. And so, with the car piled high with bags, books and folders, I set out for Galicia.

This and other titles by Agustín Fernández Paz are available to read in English – see the pages “YA Novels” and “Stories”.