Street in his light carriage. “It’s all the trouble he’s had that’s to blame,” lamented the secretary despondently as the carriage bowled along. “They’ve plagued him to death, those damned singers and castrati, the scribblers and the carping critics, the whole wretched crew. Four operas he’s written this year to save the theatre, but his rivals hide behind the women and the court, and then they’re all mad for that Italian, that accursed castrato, that affected howling monkey. Oh, what have they done to our poor Handel! He’s put all his savings into the theatre, £10,000 it was, and now they come plaguinghim with their notes of what he owes, hounding him to death. Never has any man done such wonderful work, never has any man given so much of himself, but this would break a giant’s back. Oh, what a man! What a genius!” Dr Jenkins, detached and silent, listened.
Before they entered the house he drew on his pipe once more and knocked out the ashes. “How old is he?”
“Fifty-two,” replied Schmidt.
“Not a good age. He’s been working like an ox. But he’s as strong as an ox too, so let’s see what can be done.”
The servant held the basin, Christof Schmidt lifted Handel’s arm, and the doctor cut into the vein. A jet of blood spurted up, hot, bright-red blood, and next moment a sigh of relief issued from the grimly compressed lips. Handel took a deep breath and opened his eyes. They were still weary, faraway and unaware. The light in them was extinguished.
The doctor bound up his arm. There was not much more that he could do. He was about to stand up when he noticed that Handel’s lips were moving. He came closer. Very quietly, it was little more than a breath, Handel croaked: “Over… all over with me… no strength… don’t want to live without strength…” Dr Jenkins bent lower. He saw that one eye, the right eye, was staring while the other looked livelier. Experimentally, he raised Handel’s right arm. It fell back as if dead. Then he raised the left arm. The left remained in its new position. Now Dr Jenkins knew enough.
When he had left the room Schmidt followed him to the stairs, anxious and distressed. “What is it?”
“Apoplexy. His right side is paralysed.”
“And will—” Schmidt hesitated—“will he get better?”
Dr Jenkins ceremoniously took a pinch of snuff. He did not care for such questions.
“Perhaps. Anything is possible.”
“But will he remain paralysed?”
“Probably, in default of a miracle.”
But Schmidt, who was devoted to his master with every bone in his body, persisted.
“And will he—will he at least be able to work again? He can’t live without composing.”
Dr Jenkins was already on the stairs.
“No, he will never work again,” he said very quietly. “We may be able to save the man, but we have lost the musician. The stroke has affected his brain.”
Schmidt stared at him with such terrible despair in his eyes that the doctor himself felt stricken. “As I said,” he repeated, “in default of a miracle. Not that I’ve ever seen one yet.”
George Frideric Handel lived for four months, devoid of strength, and strength was life to him. The right half of his body remained dead. He could not walk, he could not write, he could not play a single note on the keyboard with his right hand. He could not speak; his lip hung crooked from the terrible stroke that had torn through his body, and the words that issued from his mouth were only a muted babble. When friends made music for him a little light came into his eyes, and then his heavy, unwieldy body moved like that of a sick man in a dream; he wanted to beat time to the rhythm, but his limbs were frozen in a dreadful rigidity, and his sinews and muscles no longer obeyed him. The once-gigantic manfelt helpless, walled up in an invisible tomb. As soon as the music was over his eyelids fell heavily, and he lay there like a corpse once more. Finally the doctor, in despair—for