Freud's Mistress (4 page)

“Martha, please. Let me settle in a bit before you start all this.”

“Start what?” Martha asked innocently.

“It's just that . . .”

“It's
always
just this or that
.
You must admit, there were others . . . after Ignaz died. Respectable others. You were too busy . . . or too . . . I don't know. . . .”

Martha had always believed that Minna could get married anytime she wanted. She just needed to be more pliable, or at least pretend to be. Men weren't amused by women who were unconventional—straying from the norm and bringing chaos into their lives.

Minna, on the other hand, had always believed that marrying merely for security sentenced one to a lifetime of boredom. But she looked into her sister's worried face and decided to appease her.

“All right, my dear,” Minna said indulgently, “the next time you see Prince Charming, send him my way.”

M
inna dear, sit next to Sigmund,” Martha said, motioning to two empty chairs at the far end of the table. “Where are those children? I ask you, how difficult is it for everyone to be on time?”

Minna looked around the somber dining room. She had never liked the crimson-flocked wallpaper and oppressive velvet curtains, which gave the room a stuffy, funereal atmosphere. If she could pull down the drapes, she would, and, she thought, she'd also refinish the beef-colored mahogany table. But all of this, including the elaborate rosewood sideboard, was de rigueur in every proper dining room. The only unique touch was the couch, placed for no apparent reason at the far end of the room and smothered in Persian carpets. What they used it for was a mystery.

“Light the candles, will you, dear?” Martha asked, fussing over the flowers. She disappeared into the kitchen as the children sauntered in unhurried, and headed toward their assigned seats—Oliver next to Sophie, with Martin and ten-year-old Mathilde across from them. Mathilde was the oldest child and the acknowledged beauty of the family. It didn't take her more than two minutes to start bossing the others around.

“Wipe your nose, Oliver. Have you no manners? It's disgusting. Sophie, hurry up!”

The baby, Anna, was with Frau Josefine in the upstairs nursery, and six-year-old Ernst, as Martin told Minna, was still at speech therapy. Ernst had a lisp even more pronounced than that of his sister Sophie, and after years of erupting with incomprehensible phrases, he was now seeing a specialist.

The children all had that scrubbed-behind-the-ears look: neat pigtails and lace pinafores for the girls, and crisp linen sailor shirts and knickerbockers for the boys. Minna attempted to talk with each one, but they were all so animated and impossibly fidgety that she found it difficult to follow the different strands of conversation, particularly when they were all speaking at the same time. As the noise level rose, Martha flitted back and forth into the kitchen, checking on the biscuits, the beef, getting this child a glass of water, that child a napkin, removing an elbow or a leg from the arm of a chair, and, at one point, bending over and picking up a wad of lint from the floor.

“What on earth . . .” she murmured to no one in particular, then sighed and sat stiffly in her chair.

Minna smoothed her high-necked, white silk blouse, thinking that the room smelled like Sunday. She had taken off the jacket of her traveling suit and loosened the hair from her bun when she was upstairs in her bedroom, but now she felt suddenly underdressed compared to the formality of the dining table. Lace tablecloths, silver candlesticks, good china, vases of flowers. Martha straightened her place setting and fixed her eyes on the door.

“Sigmund's lecture must have run over again. . . . I simply don't understand it . . . talking endlessly to his students when he knows we're waiting . . . or maybe he took the long way around the Ring . . . he's sure to catch his death.”

A uniformed maid, carrying a steaming soup tureen, marched in from the kitchen as Sigmund simultaneously appeared through double doors. It certainly wasn't the first time Minna saw him, but it felt that way. He walked into the room and gave her a curious smile. He was handsomer than she remembered, with a heftier build and finer clothes. In fact, he was impeccably groomed, wearing a pinstriped, three-piece wool suit and a black silk cravat. There was a simple gold chain, a chain that had belonged to her father, that was attached to his watch, secured through a buttonhole, with the excess length draped across his vest. In one hand, he was holding a small antiquity, a solid bronze figurine, and in the other, a cigar. His hair was thick and dark, slightly graying at the temples. And then there were the eyes. Intense. Dark. Appraising.

Minna thought back to when she first met him, a new suitor for Martha. He was standing in the parlor of their home in Vienna, a poor Jew from the wrong side of town, whose family had neither social standing nor wealth. He was looking at Martha, and Minna was looking at him. It was twilight, the time when day and night slur together at a certain moment and then all the colors of the day fade to black. Her sister had been introduced to him a month before, but by the end of this particular visit the stage was set for both of them. Martha was almost giddy when she talked about him. But not their mother, a woman from a distinguished German Jewish family who deemed the young doctor hardly worthy of her daughter. Nevertheless, two months later the couple was secretly engaged. Minna remembered thinking that Sigmund's wild infatuation and pursuit of Martha didn't seem quite real. As if they were playing at being in love, the courtship taking place in both of their minds. The progression of it all was baffling, at least to Minna.

During these first visits, her sister hardly talked. Martha was a soft, delicate little creature filled with hope. And Minna was a different version of herself as well. Back then, she was tall and thin, all angles and tangled hair. Too much enthusiasm, too much talking, and far too clever. In those days, Sigmund got exactly what he wanted: an old-fashioned sweetheart, not a woman with opinions who engaged in serious conversations. Minna's role was clear from the beginning, and she was ever mindful of that fact. Minna was the intellectual and Martha was the intended. And now here they were, Martha and Sigmund, married, six children, married, married, married.

He stood there for a moment, watching Minna. She met his gaze and he gave her the same look he used to give her years ago, making her feel that it was more than simple recognition. Then he crossed the room and took his seat next to her empty chair, placing the antiquity on the table in front of him and stubbing out his cigar in a small brass ashtray.

“My dear Minna,” he said, “to what do we owe this great pleasure?”

“To my getting dismissed,” she said, smiling demurely. “Again.”

He laughed, but her joke came at the cost of revealing her situation, which, under the circumstances, she meant to avoid. She colored slightly as she leaned over the table and lit the candles.

“Tante Minna got sacked?” Martin asked, his mouth twisted in disbelief.

“Martin, your language. Who uses such a term?” Martha said.

“Again? Has she been dismissed before?” chimed in seven-year-old Oliver, whom Sigmund had named after one of his heroes, the great puritan Oliver Cromwell.

“What would you like to drink, Minna?” said Martha. “Quinine? Beer? Wine? Sigmund, what shall we serve Minna to drink?”

“But who would dismiss Tante Minna?” Oliver persisted.

“What did you do?” Martin asked.

“No more questions,” Martha said, cutting them off. “Eat your soup. Did you say wine, dear? It's wonderful to have Tante Minna here with us, isn't it?”

“Yes,” Sigmund added, standing in a polite gesture as Minna finally sat down in the chair next to him.

“How fortuitous that
she
landed here. Tell me,” Sigmund asked, looking straight at her, “how did we get so lucky?”

“Well,
she
happened to be working for a beastly woman who hadn't the common decency of a, I don't want to say a blood-sucking rodent, but I suppose that would be a fair comparison. Wine sounds lovely.”

His eyes met Minna's for a moment with an appreciative glint. Then he looked away and leaned back with his arms crossed, just the way she remembered when she and Martha used to meet him at the café with a group of friends many years ago. He had finished his neurological training by then, and was living in a cramped, one-room flat at Vienna's General Hospital. Minna's fiancé, Ignaz Schönberg, one of Sigmund's closest friends, was also part of this little band. He was a Sanskrit scholar and a philosophy student at the university and his outbursts of Sanskrit trivia struck Sigmund as so much poppycock.

“You see, the title of this piece is
Turanga Litia
. Two thoughts, really.
Turanga
and
litia. Turanga
, that means ‘time.' And
litia
, ‘play.'
Time Play.
It's a good deal more involved than that, of course. . . . One could say that . . .” Ignaz said with intensity.

“One could certainly say that,” Sigmund interrupted, in a mocking tone. “Could you hand me that newspaper?”

It was the two men's habit to meet most afternoons, with Martha and Minna frequently joining them. They all had just enough money to buy one coffee each, and they nursed it for hours. Martha would mostly listen, but Minna felt no such reticence as they talked of poetry, the meaning of life, recitations of Goethe and Shakespeare, politics, and the ever-growing wave of anti-Semitism in Vienna.

On one occasion, they were arguing about Darwin's theories, the way students often did when trying to impress one another. Freud had loaned Minna his prized copy of
On the Origin of Species
, which Ignaz had already read and which Martha had no interest in whatsoever.

“Men from monkeys. Ridiculous!” Ignaz said. Poor Ignaz.

“How completely shortsighted! Do you also believe the world is flat?” Minna challenged.

“You didn't realize you were about to marry Kate,” Freud said, sitting back in that exact same way he was now and folding his arms with an ironic smile.

“Kate?” Martha asked Minna.

“Yes. Your beloved Sigmund has just called me a shrew.”

“No offense intended, my dear,” Sigmund responded. “You know how fond I am of that particular shrew, her disagreeable demeanor notwithstanding.”

“No offense taken,” Minna said, secretly enjoying being compared to the heroine
.

“I find that character so foul-tempered and sharp-tongued,” Ignaz had said.

“Ah, but that's her great charm,” Freud replied, and then recited long passages from
The Taming of the Shrew
. She could still see him as he was in the café, challenging everyone, his head raised, chin thrust forward as though his genius had dared be questioned. Even then he was impatient, filled with random, eccentric thoughts, and had an air of being the smartest person in the room. Initially, Minna would sit back and let him dominate the conversation. But then he would look for her reaction, and the two of them would end up in a dialogue of their own.

They had, in fact, for years shared a lively correspondence. It began, oddly enough, shortly after he and Martha got married. Initially, it was all about books. As a child, growing up with six sisters and an overbearing mother, Sigmund read to escape his poverty and his chaotic home life. And Minna delighted in having someone who considered her an intellectual as opposed to a strange duck.

She remembered their early letters, discussing the Romantic Lake District poets, Wordsworth and Coleridge. The classic thinkers were next. He would write about Homer and Dante, flaunting his mastery of Greek and Latin. She would have her own opinions, reading the German translations and questioning his interpretations. They both loved Dickens and the Russian writers Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Also Shakespeare, whom, he boasted, he began reading at the age of eight.

He was passionate about the poets Schiller and Goethe, quoting long passages from both. And fascinated with the ancient worlds, extinct civilizations, gods, religion, and myths, including the story he kept going back to,
Oedipus the King
, the Sophocles play that he had translated from the Greek for his final examination at the gymnasium. Sprinkled in between, he'd complain about his practice, his colleagues, the children's constant ailments, and his inability to stop smoking. Although his letters in that regard were overwrought and filled with drama and self-pity.

“I gave up smoking again . . . horrible misery of abstinence . . . completely incapable of working . . . life is unbearable. . . .”

“Your Achilles' heel,” she'd respond, then ask him about his latest research. He would send her pages detailing his “breakthrough” psychoanalytic techniques, including his theories about hysteria and a treatment called “the talking cure.” He complimented her, telling her that she was a detailed and perceptive reader of his work. She had learned early on to be careful in her responses because he could be pugnacious and took offense easily.

In the past few years, she had attempted to include Martha in their literary discussions, but to no avail. Sometimes, Minna thought, rather uncharitably, but there you are, Martha had nothing in the way of an observed or even active inner life. She rarely read novels anymore or even the newspaper, and she still felt Shakespeare, in translation, was impossible to decipher. Except for the sonnets, which she liked. Perhaps a reminder of her early courtship, during their four-year engagement, when Freud would send them to her on a regular basis. In those days, there were at least a few authors she favored, especially Dickens, but all that seemed to fade after the children.

Martha entered from the parlor, carrying a carafe of red wine, and stopped when she noticed the boys had left the table and were wedged behind the sofa, fighting over what looked like a little toy soldier.

“Oliver, Martin, back to the table! Sigmund, where is the claret that was on the top shelf, you remember, the one the patient gave you who couldn't pay? All I could find was this
vin ordinaire
.”

He shrugged, seemingly focused on his small statuette. The figurine's left arm was raised to hold a spear (now missing) and she was wearing a breastplate embossed with the Medusa's head. It was Sigmund's peculiar habit to bring one of his favorite antiquities to the dinner table, leaving the silent statue standing in front of him, like an imaginary friend. Thank goodness he didn't converse with it, Minna thought.

“First century?” Minna asked.

“Second century, Rome. Athena, goddess of wisdom and war,” he replied.

“Roman, not Greek?”

“Very good. After a Greek original, fifth century,
B.C
.,” he said, leaning to the side as Martha stood between the two of them and poured Minna a glass of wine.