Susan's dreams become a book

She dreamt of a place, she knew it was in Narnia. A waterfall. A pool where the water falling down bubbled as a boiling cauldron. Two friends, or rather a master and a slave, a monkey and a donkey. A lion skin floating down ... "NO!"

How horrible! She knew the ape was going to force the poor donkey to take the lion skin on and pretend to be Aslan. How horrible! She made a prayer for the poor donkey, then slept again.

And she dreamt of a King of Narnia imprisoned by the monkey, and all animals telling him they could not release him because "Aslan" - they meant the poor donkey in the stable dressed up as such in the lion skin - had ordered him to be shut up. He wanted Susan's horn - as Rilian had when she dreamt of him - and called out to Aslan.

I suppose you have already read The Last Battle - if not, you should do it. It was she who wrote down dream after dream, month after month. Not everything in neat order, the next dream was a actually "a good night's work" in the book, but she sorted the dreams into a readable order afterwards. She sent it to C. S. Lewis - or Jack as he was now known as to her. And she got a letter:

Dear Susan!

This means Narnia is ended. But what about you? You know, where the Seven Friends tell Tirian you are no longer a friend of Narnia? We see none meeting you in Aslan's country. Besides, that is not how I know you at all.

And a letter arrived in the Kilns:

Dear Jack!

I heard that reproach by Polly in a dream long ago, just after we met. And it pretty well describes my habits back then.

But if I am lost, I am lost, God's will be done. I am glad for those who were not. I would not want to put in an extra scene with me saved, that would be a bit like Shift's ruse.

4^th of September 1956, she was not at Blackwell's waiting to see the sales. She was not buying the book, either, Jack had sent her a copy. As usual.

In the evening made a prayer about everyone being happy "but have you forgot me?"

A lion roared - it was Metro Goldwyn Meyer on the television set, which she had forgotten to turn off. She went to do it, and saw a Bible open.

"Can a woman forget her infant, so as not to have pity on the son of her womb? and if she should forget, yet will not I forget thee."

She sobbed "thank you" and dried a tear as she turned the television set off. She never turned it on again, and next Christmas it found another owner. For her own part, she thought no news on it could ever equal that moment.

And she dreamt that night, but the dream is not in The Last Battle, because the book was already printed.

"What a shame! Queen Susan the Gentle no longer a friend of Narnia! Could one not ask Aslan for her?"

And the Seven friends started laughing! "We forgot we are well seated to be heard, now, how silly of us!"

"It would be evil not to ask that, since, if my family tradition speaks true, she was praying for my ancestor Rilian's escape. Where is Aslan, by the way?"

They started running again, and they found him resting with a bishop in his lap.

He nudged him and the bishop stood up.

"Bishop Stephen of Paris!"

"Yes, good Lord!"

"Tell them when you allowed me to create Narnia!"

"You needed no allowing, my Lord!"

"Have you forgotten the Deep Magic from the dawn of glory: whatever you bind on earth is bound for me, whatever you loosen on earth is loosened for me?"

"Excepting errors on particular persons on our part, no, I have not quite forgotten, my Lord."

"Thirty fourth proposition, please!"

"God could not create other worlds than this one."

Tirian and the Seven Friends marvelled at such stupidity!

"What did you do with it?"

"I condemned it!"

"Did you condemn anything more?"

"There were 219 propositions of such nonsense, my Lord, and I condemned every bit of it."

"Well done, son of Adam, well done successor of the Twelve! Once a bishop, always a bishop of my Church!"

"Barring treason, of course."

"Speaking of treason, Edmund ..."

"Yes my Lord!"

"Did anyone bettray you in England?"

"Yes, Susan said things to a psychiatrist, so we needed to die in the train to be saved from evil and hurtful slavery."

"Did she do more?"

"She denied what she had seen with her eyes and made us look like fools if ever we would have tried to talk to other people of Narnia."

"Have you forgiven her?"

"How could I not? It was she who asked you to make the sacrifice for me!"

"Do you wish me to forgive her?"

Nine mouths said "yes" in unison.

"I will send her a dream ..."

And they watched as she had been dreaming about Prince Rilian and King Rilian came along. And they watched as Lucy's boat "Mary" became a new Splendour Hyaline for Susan. "Oh I remember the Hail Mary's I prayed for Su after painting that boat's name."

"Mary, what a delightful name! Who is that?" asked Tirian.

"Son of Adam, can you believe I was a lion cub?"

"Not in Narnia. But maybe somewhere before?"

And they were suddenly watching a stable from the sky, a stable which was also a cave.

And then Aslan appeared as Child Jesus in the arms of His Blessed Mother. And then as the Lion again.

"The Telmarines who left Narnia in King Caspian's Coronation feast chose a very good thing to get back - if that is how you are known there."

"They did indeed."

Chronicle of Susan Pevensie

Based on Susan Pevensie and other characters from the Seven Chronicles of Narnia, and on characters from Enid Blyton, G. K Chesterton, Sir A. Conan Doyle and some of my own, not to mention hitherto unknown episodes in the lives of some historic people, including C. S. Lewis who is generally held to have written the Seven Chronicles of Narnia.

I wish it to be clearly understood that I am not any more than C. S. Lewis claiming the Narnia stories really happened, I am rather treating them, like he, like Dante treated a fictitious journey during his lifetime through the abodes of souls - Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. As an occasion while story telling, to teach truth about some things, both higher and lower ones. Both such every Christian is bound to believe and beliefs the author cherishes (like psychiatry being bosh, like Experiment House being bosh, like that Emperor being in Heaven and that Pope not).

Oh, one more thing. A certain Audoin Errol is getting into more and more of my chapters, so it is high time I admit my debt to an unfinished novel by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, called The Lost Road, and the extant chapters of that one are to be found in a volume of the same name published by his son Christopher.

Least I forget later, overmore, I often rely on wikipedia. It allowed me to verify the gardener and factotum at the Kilns - the one that is the original for Puddleglum - was named Paxford and neither Baxter nor Paxton. It allowed me to verify which year Joy Davidman entered CSL's life. And earlier it helped me to discover what date was what weekday in which of the years.



In order to read the chapters in the right order, click first one, then read it from top to bottom. Then, once you are down, click the link to the next chapter in the comments, as far as you like and as far as the continuity reaches. Then, click "back to list of extant chapters" - i e back here. Whenever you feel like it resume reading from first unread chapter there. Chapters are being inserted between those not yet linked.

Letter to Douglas Gresham
Can Any Sane Man Attack C. S. Lewis?
To Reader of my Susan Pevensie Chronicle (or my Essays) on How to Read my Linked Messages/Chapters
See also Copyright issues on blogposts with shared copyright

Prologue to Chronicle on Susan Pevensie : Chiefly on Fan Fiction

Extant chapters:

Susan has a bad fright.
Who told Susan: introducing Revd. Jinx
Splendour Hyaline - again
Off to Sevenoaks.
The Car Ride to Sevenoaks was a Flashback
What about the train to Bristol?
Another Kind of Necklace of Beads
Four Bad Men Discussing Susan
And There Were Other Mourners
Recognising Spivvins
Small Talk in an Evil Lodge
Spivvins' the Cab Driver's Resurrection (nearly)
Nathan Coon and Spivvins
How Susan met Rose E. Pole
Getting On with the Burial
Reverend Pewsey's Last Sermon
Explanations of a Practical Nature
A Letter from Remorseful Father of a Son Gone Bad
Forgiveness Is Serious Stuff
Two Words with the Gardener
The Planting of a Tree
St John's Feast in Narnia
Helpers of the Holy Souls
Taking up residence.
Nobby
Good Old George (and don't you ever call her Georgina!)
Susan reads her story again
Not Nice, Once you Get to Know him - the Principal, that is

[An Author's Aside]

Susan reads Lucy's essay on Astronomy

Ramandu and Galileo, part 1
Ramandu and Galileo, part 2

And Su Called George About It ...
... Who Would Not Eliminate the Possibility Prematurely
Susan's Teacher Talk
"What are you going to do about it?"
Some Arrows and Some Bullets Whistle Keenly
An Interview with the Shrink
Decisio Medici
A View on Apple Trees
And How was Mental Hospital?
Macready
Macready and Tea
Susan Gets an Inkling About the Inklings
And Friedman looked for Su in the wrong office ...
Jack and Tollers discuss pipeweed
Escape from Merton College
A Car Ride With Roy Campbell
Susan Goes Short Haired for a While
Spivvins Needs a Lesson - they said
Meanwhile, What about Rose?
Rose meets Bobby
George, Meet George!
Forgiveness Has Its Sides
A Centaur and Some Egyptologists
The Unhappy Jew
Where Aslan was a Lion Cub.
A Glass of Cremisan with the Priest
Sorcery Worketh Not
Speaking to Dr Watson
Father Brown's Last Bow, part 1
Father Brown's Last Bow, Part 2
Spivvins' Other Secret
Spivvins is unhappy
Preparing the Defense
In Defense of the Spivvinses
The Archers Do Their Work.
Who is Getting In?
Nobby's Daring
Ann's Wake
The Idol and the Spell
The Exorcism.
Simon and George Catechumens
Tea yes, Tilak no
Susan is Free, So are the Policemen
Mr Errol Proposes
In a Fairy Mound?
So What are Fairies?
More Theories of Fairies
Talking of Elveness were Audoin and Su
A Talk about Tolkien
Barrister Popplewell's pleading for Susan Pevensie
Wedding in Cornwall
A Visit from The Kilns
Susan's dreams become a book
Some Final Words to the Readers Here

Splendour Hyaline - again

Ad ostendendam quandam veritatem ...

She remembered that event, a bright Indian Summers day a few weeks before the train accident. She was living in Oxford for a while back then. Another of these young men - not the one who envied the Dresden bomber, but another one - not quite the soldier he claimed to have been, or maybe that was precisely what he was, was saying he wanted to celebrate a battle memory.

Sure, she agreed.

They talked about this, they talked about that. They talked about an outing, and as he had wine and food and as she had a boat - a whitehall rowboat, actually, a gift by Lucy, who had called it Mary in the last minute - painted all white except the seats, oars and railing that were dark oak, three seats, a back seat, two oars, a painted name "Mary", which Lucy put there the day she gave it as a gift to her sister - they stepped in, took an oar each, rowed along the Cherwell upriver (it is better to row upriver while one is still fresh and downriver when one is tired), found an island.

So they landed on a lonely island. They started doing a fire on the ground. Potato salad was ripe for eating already, but they preferred waiting till they had sausages ready too. They put them on branches as boy scouts and girl guides do, and held the branches over the fire.

Some apples were ripe too. "Shall we take some roasted apple?"

"No thanks. I have tried them without sugar, that is not very good" - but she had never done that in England. The only memory that was there of it was Narnia, at that return to Cair Paravel, when they found the courtyard in ruins.

She had no time to think of it, because he was telling her a wonderful story from the war - made up or not, but it was great.

She got surprised when he claimed to have, on another occasion received the capitulation of some German soldiers walking up the fog.

Hey, wait a minute! That is what C S Lewis did back in WW-I!

- "I have been told that story by someone else, whom I know better and trust more."

- "Oh? Things like that do occur. Even if it is not often."

- "Shall we open the second bottle of wine?"

- "Do you really want to? I mean, the mood is so rich, we are so nice together, we can do without wine, for now!"

- "No, lemonade is finished."

- "So we can watch the sunset. We can watch the new moon rising."

- "Let's."

She had a funny feeling about standing close to him, and was beginning to suspect his motives. But she did not want to hurt him. He put his arm around her waist, she pushed it off.

- "Hey, everybody loves me baby! What is the matter with you?"

He said it as a joke, but it reminded her of a man in a turban who had tried to stop her return from Tashbaan.

- "I do not."

He looked at her.

- "Well, I am feeling lonely - darling!"

She heard a snarl in the R of darling.

- "And I am feeling in too much company."

Somehow this made him mad. She might have had a reputation of being loser than she was. Back then. Or he might have been periodically loosing his mind. Or he might have been without a girl for a time and getting impatient.

He lunged at her to pull her down. She drew out her whistle of the pocket and blew it loud. He was surprised, let her go to look around, and ... this was the chance she needed. She pushed her long nails onto his eyes, to make him recoil further, then slid out from under him, then kicked him where it hurts as well as cools down, and on top of that took an oar and hit him on the head.

She jumped, frightened at last as a stag, into the boat with the oar, it glode out of land, he was cursing as he rose, she took both oars, never mind the boat was rocking, and rowed away, while he staggered and fell.

She was so relieved she felt like crying.

- "Dear old splendour hyaline," she said as she felt like caressing the boat. It was to her that wonderful ship which had taken her out of Rabadash's clutches - found again. When she took land, far enough off the island, she did caress it.. She lay down in it and cried. And when she had cried enough, she rose out of the boat and looked again and really saw the name Mary. She felt like a bit of a joke and said in thankfulness but not without humour a verse she made up on the spot:

Hail thee Mary, full of grace:
was Aslan ever with thee?

And, as she was no Catholic, she did not quite know what a tremendous prayer she had touched on, but as she looked and remembered calling her (sailors always call boats "she") Splendour Hyaline, and as she remembered that Hyaline means "of glass", she recalled a comment between a Jew and a Christian in which the former said he did not believe the Virgin Birth, at least childbirth would have made Her no longer a virgin while the latter replied: Light doeth not break the Glass. Splendour Hyaline indeed!

Lucy had bought home a Madonna which she had on the wall. Wonder if she would have time to tell her this before the voyage? The trouble of being adults and having work is you have less time seing friends and family.

Yes, the Lion was once "with thee" - but what about calling Child Jesus a lion cub?

Someone had heard the whistle, he came blustering about: "can I help you Miss?"

- "Indeed, do keep me some company while that man over on that island is not too far away!"

- "Will do. Was he being rude?"

- "The least you could say was rude, yes."

- "Come in for a tea, will you?" His cheeks were ruddy, his face was roundish, he was not very tall, in his early fifties. As she looked around she saw they were standing next to a College. It was in fact Magdalen College.

And that is how she met Clive Staples Lewis. If she had had any kind of misgiving about his intentions, they vanished as she saw they were not alone. Tea was plentyful, so were scones and butter. Later the evening she found out that this was the man that had taken German's captive while they were just capitulating coming out of a fog. He had told Edmund and Lucy the story while they were talking to him (about their Voyage to the Sunrise of Narnia, though he did not dare tell Susan that).

Where Aslan was a Lion Cub.

Ad ostendendam quandam veritatem

Now, she was thinking of the "lion cub". Was Aslan ever a lion cub?

But the car passed along the road sign Bethlehem, and she said: "yes he was, by the Lion's mane!"

She started driving like mad to that village where Salvation was born. Her heart was back in where she had met him again after watching the sacrifice at the stone table. Met him alive, whom she thought dead.

Oh come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant, oh come ye oh come ye to Bethlehem ... she was just a little late for mass in a Church and she was crying and sobbing and laughing and smiling. She stopped the car, jumped off, never worry, people were still entering. Palestinians as well as pilgrims.

Susan reads her story again

About a year after the rail way accident, rather less than more, Susan had a shock.

In the letterbox, there was a letter from the Kilns. I will quote only extracts from his letter and her letter back.

I have a problem. I have just been reading through some papers that Professor Kirke left behind. Among them, he seems to have noted down what you told him back in 1940. That is Peter, you, Edmund and Lucy. To me it seems very strange, as if you had been taken to another world or time, to a place called Narnia - unless you were making it up together. And he seems to have believed you did not. Now there is only one survivor among you, and that is you. Do you mind if I publish the story?

She took a breath. Professor Kirke's attitude was always one of the things she tried to forget, one of the things that made it harder than usual to say "it was just a game" - so, although he had been very gentle, reminding her of him was not so gentle.

We played a game. He might have been going dotty by then, or ... I don't know: anyway, if you want to publish it, I see no real problem. None of them can be taken to madhouses anymore, since, you know, since Professor Kirke was one of them, they died last year. In fact I see some real beauties in what we made up, so, if you like, it may be a reminder of my brother and sisters.

You may think I am going dotty because I speak of being taken to madhouses, but the fact is my brothers and sister came to believe it was real - as Professor Kirke did that once. But that must have been to humour them. Anyway, I am not afraid for myself, and the others have no longer any fears to face. If you are not afraid, it is not for me to stop your taking risks.

As a favour, would you mind giving the art work to Pauline Baynes? Edmund and Lucy so loved Farmer Giles of Ham, by your friend Tolkien, and her illustrations.

16 October she was at the line for books, and there it was, everyone reading. She had got an example herself in advance, but not opened it yet, just enjoyed the grey dustcover with a faun and an umbrella - Tumnus - on the spine, herself and Lucy riding on Aslan's back on the front, illustrations slightly coloured from black and whites, cream coloured backgrounds standing out as white from the grey, and two fauns clinging on to trees waving in the wind as Aslan flew by. Pauline Baynes hadn't disappointed her, but she hadn't dared actually open the book yet. She was watching the buyers. She was watching those who read with no little dread. Would they laugh out loud? That about not being afraid for herself was a lie. Would she go off a hook again and holler about "I won two battles at Beruna" and get into real trouble?

No. No-one she saw laughed as if reading a farce. Noone set out to call the author mad. And noone - thank God or Aslan or whatever there was to thank - had been speaking a word about searching for her or anyone else in the books. They seemed to think it was all a children's book, made up stuff. Now she would go home and see if she liked it as much as she had when she had been into it.

She went home to her apartment, having asked her boss for a day off. Kettle of tea? Done. Bread? Up from the bag, just cut it into perfect slices, rather thick than thin. Honey? She had been sent some from the country. Cake with icing? She made it yesterday. She had always been good at baking, but the time of grief had perfected her in it. Something different? Tumnus had not made pancakes, so she made those too yesterday. Now there would be pancakes and jam. How many times had Lucy been asking for the tea party of Tumnus, and how many times had they done it with one thing more or less or otherwise different. Back in those days.

Well, she had recommended it to the writer for beauty. Now she would see if it was beautiful. A sip of steaming hot, strong tea. Grammophone on for music. Open the book. She started, and she could not stop reading. Tea was cold in the cup - though she had taken a few sips while reading - before she could stop enough from reading to finish it in a very long draught. By then she was where she had accepted Narnia. She had passed through the wardrobe. She was reading how she upbraided Edmund. And it struck her, that after leaving Narnia, she had been doing a bit of the same thing that back then she accused Edmund of doing.

"Even a traitor may mend, I know one who did."

No, that is not in the book she was reading, that is in another book, which had not yet been written and published. But she could not help but recall the occasion. Archenland. Edmund talking about Rabadash. She made a decision: if among the papers of the late Professor Kirke that Clive Staples Lewis found a coherent account of the Calormene adventure, she would believe. Oh, no. That is not a test. Because it was I who told him. Well, if I told him, was it because I had seen it? Well, just push it off. Make it a better test: if there is any hint about her own Narnian dreams, she will believe again. But actually she was no longer in doubt.

I guess you know what happened in less than three years. We will have a peep forward to that date:

September 7th, 1953, she was a lot calmer before the bookshop. But she was not calm at all about opening the book. From the moment she set eyes on the jade coloured dust jacket with Puddleglum on the spine and the chair empty on the front, as Rilian would have seen it while being led there, and the black and white made some etching-like scratches on the chair making it look like the metal it was. It was the first story she knew nothing about. And yet she knew it. Yes, Rilian was exactly that prince she had seen in the dream. The one she had prayed for, if there was a God, anywhere able to hear it.

She cried loads of handkerchiefs wet. She did not touch the chocolate, nor eat, until the book was finished.

"So you heard my prayers, after all? You do exist?"

But whether she had concluded so before or not after trying to forget about the grace of Narni, is a more immediate matter. So let us get back to 1950.

Susan has a bad fright.

Ad ostendendam quandam veritatem ...

In one of the golden happy years after beating Hitler when party was the rule of the day, when soldiers not yet married were party lions, and boys too young to have fought might say how much they admired their older brother (but unfortunately for the ladies that elder brother was already married) or even lie and pretend to have been fighting in the war, Susan Pevensie was at a party.

Some may remember these years as anything but "party was the rule of the day", but note I was speaking of bachelors and unwed maidens. Note also, rationing can be used so that you save up rations for a party. In that case, in theory party was the rule of the day 30 to 31 days a month except February, and the 25 to 28 days in practise without party were preparations for parties, for these folks. Susan was both unwed and very expert at rehashing canned meat and other rationing goods to make a real feast of them. While the qualification to get to a party was often to agree with some friends to save rations, she was while note quite catering, still part of preparing the party in more than one such circle. This evening she had been to a party with people she had not known for very long, some of them.

Once outside home - she took a cab, the Pevensies were a bit better off, but she had to share it and half regretted it, since the taxi had a bad jerk, but even more because of the company that was starting to be not so entertaining any longer - she pushed the young goggled man off as he tried to embrace her.

- "No, don't, rather!"

- "Why?"

- "You said you envied the pilot who bombed Dresden!"

- "Yea - so?"

- "Then you would have been bombing all the old men and children and babies and mothers who were in the city?"

- "Sure, I see what you mean, but - they were Germans!"

- "Take this from me:" Susan added with some heat and bitterness. "German soldiers may have been fighting for Hitler, but their women and children were not. And in a war, you fight the ones who fight. Not women or children!"

- "So, what do you know?"

- "Well, anyone knows the German soldiers were not in town 1945. They were freezing or heating themselves at camp fires. They were huddling together and hoping the war would be over soon. And they would come back to their wives and ... oh, you are a beast, a beast, a beast!"

- "So, should we have let Hitler roll over all our troops and do nothing?"

- "There are other ways to fight wars than bombing!"

- "What do you know about that? You have never been in a battle?"

- "I won two battles at Beruna!" (What did she say that for now?)

- "At Beruna? Are you mad?"

- "Sorry, forget it and leave me alone!"

- "You must be mad, women weren't captains in the war. And if there had been a battlefield with two victories on the allied side, you think I wouldn't have known its name? Does Beruna even exist?"

- "Oh, back off! Here's my house."

The cab driver stepped out and said to him: "Get back into the car, will you! I fought in the trenches, and when we came home we were not all that eager to dominate."

He stepped back into the cab and gave her a really queer look. A bit of pity, a bit of anger, a bit of restraint, a bit of "oh, I am insulted, but I am charitable, so I treat you as mad" - but he said nothing.

So she got in.

Back in bed, she tried to think of something pleasant. The Narnia Gang, as she called them - Professor Kirke (his name was Digory she had found out), Polly Plumber, same age as the professor, but looked younger, a bit younger than her grandparents, Eustace, Jill, younger than herself and of course her two brothers Peter and Edmund and sister Lucy (she was second to Peter) were heading off to Narnia. No, not to Cair Paravel, but to a town in Italy. It is really called Narni, but back in Roman times it was Narnia. "At least that is a real place."

Since she had drunk some quantity she did in fact not take long after calming herself to fall into heavy sleep. Parties mean you drink more than usual. Drinking more than usual means heavy sleep. And all she was thinking of when getting calmer was how nice a trip they would have to Italy. And all that stopped her was thinking about the rude man. Or being ashamed for again, even for just a moment, falling into the Narnian story. I mean, all the memories are just there because she imagined so well, when they were playing. A bit like memories from under hypnosis, maybe? Well, however these memories came there, she was living with them. Usually in silence. Except she had blurted out Beruna. Just because of the rude man. Would she go to mental hospital? Madhouses were not nice places. They made her afraid. They made about everyone afraid, but most people did not care to talk about it. How nice for Edmund and for Lucy and for Peter to be going to Narnia and not to a madhouse. Even if it was not the same Narnia.

She woke up with a dry mouth, with sweat, and screamed: "Oh God!"

She had been dreaming about a man, as she recalled it when staggering to the kitchen, a man not like the one who tried to embrace her, but somewhat similar to Caspian - one of her recurring memories from Narnia, as if it had been real, except of course it wasn't. Only he was captive with the White Witch (another memory). But it was not the White Witch, it was a Green Witch. Once every night he was himself. But before that moment came, always, always, always he asked people around to tie him to a chair. And seated on that chair, for that hour, he remembered every horrible thing the witch had done to him, every piece of hypnosis she had used. Since Susan knew party hypnosis, she had seen it at a few parties, but not volunteered, she could identify it, even if he did not call it hypnosis. And in that chair - the next hour enchanted him. He could do no more. "How if I had Susans horn!" he moaned.

And then she woke up. This means she did not know how it continued. She poured up water in a beaker, so as to avoid getting a headache in the morning.

She did not believe in God. She did not deny God on philosophical principle either. But she thought things were so unfair, ever since she decided that talking about Narnia was a game they did together and remembering Narnia was an illusion, coming from that game. If Narnia, why not the resurrection? If they, the four siblings, and she one of them, could get balmy discussing their wishes, why not those twelve? And it was so unfair - she did not have Lucy's courage and devotion - that she should neither have a blissful ignorance about all Narnian things, well, maybe not blissful, but then again ... nor the blissful illusion of the other seven. But now she made an exception: "God, if you exist, if you are Aslan, help that man!"

Then she took a beaker of water. And another. And went back to bed.

She had no headache when she woke up again. Nor had she been tormented by the vision of the unfortunate captive. She had instead been dreaming about Polly Plummer saying something like "She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and she'll waste all the rest of her life trying to stay that age. Her whole idea is to race on to the silliest time of one's life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can." It was less terrible than the man in the metallic chair. But it was a bit rude.

In that morning, she heard the news - I'll come back to by whom, it was not on the radio. The train had crashed. She was told that Mr. Peter Pevensie, Mr. Edmund Pevensie, Miss Lucy Pevensie were among the corpses identified. All of those in the waggon were quite dead. Speed kills as much as war machines.

Hullo, that means, she thought to herself, once she recovered from the first shock of grief, she was now the only person alive to know anything about Narnia. Unless Mr. Kirke had told someone else.

The Anglican parson who told her knew nothing - at least nothing about it being true.

Juan Antonio Vallejo Nájera y Anders Behring Breivik

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Vallejo-Najera

http://www.filosofia.org/hem/193/acc/e02142.htm*

Juan Antonio Vallejo Nájera hizo una buena cosa - disuader del eugenismo extremo como en Alemania. Eso no signífica que fuese él un buen typo. Peró lo mal no es en la partida que tuvo en la Guerra, es en su profesión de psiquiatro. A la época, fue la buscada del gen rojo. No hay gen rojo, ni hay gen terrorista, no hay infermedad roja, tampoco enfermedad terrorista. Probabilmente acceptó - como Franco y Yagüe - una idea demasiado negra de la natura humana en su guerra sin justa finalidad o sin buena esperanza de gañarla, la en El Rif. Entre los tres, Franco fue el menos cínico después.

Peró más importante que unos posibles traumatismos personales de guerra fueron sin duda el hecho de escuchar herejotes como Kraepelin, Gruhle, Schwalbe. Eso, como la guerra en El Rif, fue posibilidado por la dinastía acatólica o menos católica politicalmente. No habría sido posible en una España bastantamente Católica, como a una época quisieron los Carlistas.

Hoy sus colegas noruegos tentan la misma cosa. El hecho que Breivik es asesino es común a él y a ciertos rojos de la guerra. El hecho que Breivik se rellama derechista y los víctimas de Antonio Vallejo Nájera se rellamaron de la izquierda es sin relevanza. Justicia a asesinos y terroristas no es y no será el asunto de médicos. A menos que harán un día una justicia interna enfrente a la psiquiatría.

 

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Paris-Les Halles

29-XI-2011

*Precisemos: en los estados protestantes que praticaban a esta época le esterilización forzada, esta barbaría ha sido abandonada. En Suecia en los años setenta, en Alemania en 1945. En Michigan, no sé cuando. Precisemos también otra cosa: el doctor ha conocido casos de "demencia precoz" - es a decir símptomas dechas negativas de la esquizofrenía - después de castraciones forzadas. Eso confirma mi suspición que los símptomas de "esquizofrenía" son símptomas de traumatismos de humiliaciones. Por ejemplo lo de no tener ganas de nada - caso de abandonar todo proyecto después de tantos guastados. O hablar cuando uno es solo - no es halucinación auditiva, pero un caso de hablar a gente ausente cuyo influenza moral y social queda sinembargo relevante. Como la barbaridad de los piratas a Ben Gunn en La Isla del Tésoro, él hablaba a gente ausente, a los piratas que le habían dejado solo, casi todo el tiempo.