Freud's Mistress (21 page)

T
he next few days they spent touring the area, walking around the lake, and lingering over quiet meals in charming inns, where the soft light reflected the midsummer snow. She imagined what it must be like to live in a place like this, with its barrage of fragrant flowers in the summer and pines fringed with ice in the winter. A place where she could shut out the world. A place where they could be together.

They would fall into a routine every night. She would take off her clothes and slip into bed next to him, enveloped in the cocoon-like comforter. At first, he would talk at an intoxicating pitch, with all his energy and concentration directed toward her. Everything he said had sparkle and brilliance, as if he were presenting her with an extravagant gift of jewels. His intellect was like a drug, intense and erotic, and she couldn't keep her hands off him. And afterward, when they were spent, she rested her head on his shoulder, entwined her legs around him, and thought, with peculiar gloom, that he was the only person she had ever loved.

He told her stories of his childhood. Hours and hours of talking. She had heard bits and pieces from Martha over the years, but he retold it now, as the fire burned low and he gently stroked her cheek. He told her how he was the chosen one, the favorite—his five sisters and their parents shared three bedrooms while Sigmund had his own spacious, light-filled room and gas lamps instead of candles. About his baby brother, Julian, who died of an intestinal infection when he was eight months old. Although Sigmund was only two at the time, he remembered wishing his brother would die so he could regain his mother's attention. He felt “dethroned and despoiled” and even fantasized about killing him. Then blamed himself when his wishes magically came true.

About his father. How as a young boy, Sigmund was enthralled by the heroic lives of famous warriors. How his relationship with his father, Jakob, a traveling dry-goods salesman, was tenuous, based on years of disappointment due to the man's lack of backbone, success, or ambition. He told her that one of his father's more colorful blunders was investing in South African ostrich feathers just as women's fashions changed and the demand collapsed. He then compared Jakob to Dickens's character from
David Copperfield
, Micawber, the hopeless optimist who famously repeated, “Something will turn up.” He said it was because of his father's shortcomings that he began his obsession with Alexander the Great, Hannibal, and Garibaldi.

And then there was the story. Everyone in the family knew the story, but he told it to her again with as much emotion as if it had happened yesterday. When Sigmund was a child in Moravia, he looked forward to his Sunday strolls with his father. They would get dressed in their finest apparel, Jakob wearing his best woolen coat and fur hat, and walk together down the main street of town. His father would amuse him with tales of life on the road. One Sunday, in the middle of their walk, a young thug came up behind them, knocked Jakob's cap into the mud, and taunted, “Jew, get off the pavement.” Sigmund was humiliated when his father calmly bent over, picked up the muddy cap, and continued on, like a beaten dog, without a word in response. This seemed less than heroic to a boy who was as engrossed as he was in the stories of Hannibal and, in particular, the tale of Hannibal's father, who made his son swear at an altar he would take vengeance on the Romans.

“I couldn't forgive him,” Sigmund said, his voice wavering. “I tried. But I couldn't.”

During these intimate confessions, she tried to memorize everything about him, to pretend she belonged to him. She told herself that they weren't like other people. An ironic statement she knew wasn't true.

•   •   •

S
he wanted the days to stretch out before them, but she couldn't help feeling that time was accelerating. Time. It was not on her side. Wasn't that what her sister had said to her? Or maybe it was her mother.

One evening, she lit a cigarette, stood out on their balcony, and watched as clouds gathered over the mountains. The air was getting cooler, and she could just make out the fog-enshrouded lake across the grassy pasture. The patches of snow on the rocky slope glistened, and there were outlines of black pines everywhere she looked. Just a few more days and then . . . what? Where was she to go after this? Certainly not Vienna. And not Hamburg. Not anywhere. If she had the power, she would begin anew, like a Mary Shelley character, except she would not be a hideous, disfigured monster but a beautiful young girl, pleasant and uncomplicated, and she would live a pleasant, uncomplicated life. She took another drag of her cigarette and tried to remember the last time she hadn't felt anxious about her life. Maybe last night in his arms.

That night at dinner, they sat at a table next to large picture windows overlooking the beautiful Engadine Valley, a stone's throw from the Italian border. Freud was in an excellent humor as they dined on sole in wine sauce and
galantine de veau
, drinking a different wine with each course.

Near the end of the meal, Minna happened to look up and was taken aback as a couple she thought she recognized entered the dining room. She felt a sudden lurch in her stomach and let out a short gasp.

“What's the matter?” he asked.

“I think I know that woman.”

“Which woman?”

“The one over there. I can't point. The one with blond hair, wearing a blue evening gown. Change seats with me,” she said, feeling suddenly trapped.

“This is ridiculous. Calm down. Even if it
is
her, there's no problem. It's not unusual for relatives to travel together.”

“Just move,” she hissed.

Minna stood up to switch seats with Freud and stole another glance at the woman. Maybe it
wasn't
her, she thought. The hair was curlier and combed up high over the forehead, the nose broader, the eyes too close together. And the woman she knew wouldn't wear hoop earrings like a pirate. She squashed the urge to rush out of the room.

“Would you like to go back upstairs, my dear?” Freud asked, unruffled.

She nodded.

Minna felt a wash of relief as they slipped away unnoticed through the lobby, with its brocade settees and watery paintings of alpine sunsets, and climbed the stairs to their room. Safe, Minna thought.

She disappeared into the bathroom to get ready for bed. She splashed her face, combed her hair, and smeared some glycerin on her lips. When she came out, Sigmund was sitting at the writing desk, smoking his cigar. The postcard that he had purchased at the train station was in front of him. She walked to the desk and looked over his shoulder. She had only to read the first two lines:

Dear Martha,

I hope you and the little ones are doing well. I've taken lodgings at a modest pension.

 

“I'm almost finished,” he said, smiling up at her—“just a few more lines. . . .”

So here it was. Right in front of her in black and white. Freud cheerfully writing postcards to her sister while she looked on. Not that she ever fooled herself that moments like this wouldn't occur.

“This doesn't bother you?” she asked.

“What?”

“Writing to Martha while I'm standing here . . .”

“Not in the least . . .”

She looked at him skeptically.

“Minna dear,” he said patiently, “I've explained this to you before. Martha and I are living in abstinence, she has no interest in my career or my personal pleasures, and while I sometimes feel sorry for all her troubles, I don't feel guilty in the least, and neither should you.”

The devil's rationale, Minna thought. She listened without further comment, but her calm expression felt pasted on and stiff. His position on guilt left her cold. “Self-imposed” or not . . . it was there. Maybe he could get rid of it, like a reptile shedding its skin, but warm-blooded human beings have a much harder time. The only thing she
could
agree with was his theory that guilt created a morass of hysterical symptoms and made people very unhappy.

She listened to the sounds in the hall outside the door. The chambermaids were ending their evening room service, couples were coming up from dinner. She heard the bell-like laugh of a woman with a friend whose rush of conversation had something to do with her house in Prague and an upcoming party. Everyone here was eventually going home. What a simple concept, which somehow always eluded her.

O
n their last morning, Minna agreed to a ride on a funicular near an ice glacier called Eiskapelle. Freud had insisted on booking it despite Minna's tepid response, the problem being that, for Minna, all ice glaciers looked alike. This particular tramlike vehicle was pulled by cable from the base of the mountain, 3,200 meters up the steep granite wall, landing at a rickety viewing terrace on top.

The cabin was hot and crowded with loud, fidgety tourists who had flocked to Switzerland from all over the German lowlands. Many of them wore traditional Bavarian costumes and posed in little groups for photographs before embarking. Minna had on a jacket, a flowing, ankle-length skirt, a long-sleeved blouse with a stiff collar gripping her neck, and far too many layers underneath. Freud wore a shirt with the sleeves rolled up, knickerbockers, and a green wool hat, which Minna thought didn't suit him at all. He carried a knapsack filled to the point of bursting with bread, sausage, and cheese, whose ripe smell mingled with the odors already emanating at close quarters.

She stood against the wall of the cabin, cradling a thick black beer in her hand, which was warm and unsatisfying. The windows were opened halfway, but no breeze flowed through, only the heat of the valley floor. She tried to ignore the little beads of sweat dripping down her back. A young boy in boots, high, thick stockings, and lederhosen leaned against her as the funicular began its steep ascent, smearing his sticky pastry on the side of her skirt.

The tram rocked and swayed precariously, passing copses of spear-shaped trees, which gradually thinned out toward the top. A local guide, whom Minna had seen working as a porter, began to give a short history of the area, but no one was listening. When they finally reached the platform, the temperature had dropped significantly, and the tourists, wrapping their coats around themselves, flowed out onto a serpentine pathway that led to the glacier ice cap.

Freud marched around the rocky terrain in an excellent humor, seemingly oblivious to the fact that this was their last day. It was perplexing, this nonchalance about their departure. Minna, however, could think of nothing else, and she had a hard time focusing on his enumerations of the prehistoric granite shelves: “the Piz Palu, the Piz Bernina, the Piz Trovat . . .”

She closed her eyes in irritation. Who could concentrate on geology at such a time? After a few more steps, she pretended to be affected by the altitude and told Freud she was taking the next tram down. She'd had her fill of the cold, barren landscape, which seemed only to increase her fears about the future. They agreed to meet in two hours at the tourist café at the bottom of the mountain.

All the way down, Minna struggled not to weep. Normally she restrained the impulse and, in fact, disliked it when other women cried in public. It made her uncomfortable to watch their bottom lips tremble, their jaws clench, and tears well up in their eyes. Weeping women always seemed so . . . well, unstable. One minute they were fine, and the next, waterworks. She had always prided herself on her ability to be stoic in the face of problems. But now her resistance was crumbling.

No, she thought, staring out into the void. She would not leap into that precipice. She would divert herself, think of something else, like Baudelaire's poems, or the succession of the Hapsburg monarchs. Or she could try to switch around the numbers from the Jewish to the Christian calendar so that she'd be slightly younger. Yes, that would work. Her eyes were dry as a bone.

When Freud finally appeared at the café, Minna was ready to deal with the inevitable. They could no longer defer the discussion. He sat next to her in the booth, ordered a beer, loosened his boots, and smiled with anticipation. She knew what would come next. He was about to run down, God help her, more specifics about the ice caps. Oliver would be riveted, but she wasn't. How could he be so oblivious?

“After you left, we—”

“Sigmund,” she said cutting him off, “I need to make arrangements to return to Hamburg.”

No sense “beating around the bush.” A governess once told her that this expression originated with laborers hired to hunt wild boar. They would beat the bushes to avoid direct contact with the savage beast. She had done that long enough.

“What do you mean, Hamburg? You're coming home with me.” He seemed genuinely puzzled.

“I couldn't possibly. How could I live under the same roof as my sister?”

“It worked perfectly well before. You were an enormous help to her. She desperately wants you home.”

“She wouldn't if she knew about us. . . . For God's sake, we're talking about basic morality here, not housekeeping.”

“I can tell you're getting upset. Try to be rational. . . .”

“You can't just pretend we're a normal family. Or young lovers somewhere meeting under a bridge.”

“Minna, my dearest. The prospect of your leaving me again is unthinkable. I can't live without you. If I could afford it, I'd get you an apartment—maybe something with a view of the Prater.”

She looked at him, incredulous.

“We can't do this.”

“Of course, we can,” he said.

“Don't act as if I'm simply being puritanical. This is far beyond the bounds of decent human behavior.”

“Oh, morality again, is it?” he said irritably, waving away the waiter who had arrived with his beer. “We're not sinning against ‘God's law,' if that's what you think.”

“Of course not, because for you there
is
no God. But for those of us who still believe, the morality of our actions matters.”

“Just another form of self-flagellation. Self-created hysteria and punishment. Not for me.”

“No. Not for you. The rules never apply to you.”

“I know you're upset. Struggling, trying to do the right thing. Many people have these feelings. We're all erupting with primitive sexual desires that we can hardly control. . . .”

Minna rolled her eyes and shook her head. Here it comes again, she thought. His theories turned on her when all else failed.

“But these feelings we have toward each other are inevitable and powerful,” he said, “and by denying them, you're traumatizing both of us. You have to acknowledge that these forces exist and respect their power and authority . . . or else they can turn into something nasty. . . .”

“If you start talking to me about urges and drives and repression, I swear, I'll scream. You can't simply conjure up scientific arguments to justify us,” she said, her voice rising with anger, although she knew it was impossible to separate the man from his theories.

“I wish I could give you some assurance that this would all turn out well.”

“You can't,” she said, “because it's not possible. You have
no
idea how this will all end.”

“Yes, I do. You'll be living in my house and you'll be—”

“Not your wife.”

He was quiet for a moment.

“No. Not my wife,” he said gently, almost apologetically.

They sat there a few minutes, neither one of them wanting to move. She sighed and looked at him.

“Did you ever worry that I would find a husband?”

“You had many prospects, Minna,” he said, his eyes softening. “You never wanted a husband.” He paused. “Did you?”

“If I had wanted one, I'd be married by now,” she said in a hushed tone.

She thought to herself. No. She had never wanted a husband. She had often wondered why, and it suddenly occurred to her. She had always wanted him.