Love and Treasure (40 page)

“My uncle! Good Lord. What a horrible thought. No, Dr. Zobel. No one has seduced me. I am still pure.”

I had no choice but to smile at the archness of her tone. But still I pressed her. “You are very sure that you have had no childhood sexual experience? None at all?”

She cast her eyes down at her hands.

“Nina? Did you have a sexual experience as a child? With a caretaker, perhaps? Or a sibling?”

“No. Or, rather, there was one thing that happened, but I didn’t know the man.”

Victory! At last! It took all my will to compel my voice to maintain its dispassionate tone. “Indeed? Tell me more about this.”

“There’s nothing to tell. It was at a picnic. I was perhaps six or seven years old. I was paddling in a stream with some other little girls. I remember
our mothers had warned us not to get our dresses wet, so we had stripped down to our petticoats and drawers. I believe one of my older cousins was meant to be watching us, but she’d gone off somewhere. I looked up and I saw the father of one of the other girls standing on the bank, just a few yards from us. He had unbuttoned his trousers and was holding his … his thing in his hand.” For all her forthrightness, for all her frank interest in the scientific and the medical, Nina S. was still a young, innocent, and cosseted girl unable to bring herself to speak the terrifying word.

“You saw his penis?”

“I don’t think I knew what it was. Only that it was strange. He was strange. Now of course I know. But I’m not sure what I knew then.”

“What happened?”

“I shouted for Mama. By the time she got there he was gone. I told her what happened, and she got very angry.”

“Did she confront him?”

“I don’t think she believed me. At any rate she berated me for having gotten undressed, packed me up right away, and took me home. I remember being particularly outraged because we missed the fireworks. I think it was the king’s birthday, perhaps? Anyway, there were to be fireworks that night, as soon as the sun set, and because Mama was so angry, she didn’t let us stay for them.”

As traumas go, this one was hardly as dramatic as I’d hoped. I would have thought that a girl like Nina would have required more in the way of incident to inspire a lifetime of such terrible pains and cramping. However, I knew at that moment that we had discovered the source of her hysterical ovarian neuralgia.

I explained to Nina that as we had now identified the traumatic source of her pain, it would dissipate if not disappear. Some of my learned colleagues will perhaps dispute this notion as overoptimistic, but all will grant me that the power of suggestion is a necessary tool of the analyst. It was important to me that Nina understand that we were well on our way to a cure.

•
36
•

I CONFRONTED MY NEXT SESSION
with Nina in a state of discomposure not easily overcome. My normally pleasant midday meal had been disturbed by an unusual family altercation. The afternoon previous, my wife had taken both Erzsébet and Lili to call on the mother of the young man whom the matchmaker had presented to us for consideration. The appointment was intended as an opportunity for the lady to meet Erzsébet, to take the girl’s temperature, so to speak, as a potential daughter-in-law. And to take, I imagine, the temperature of my wife, though the two ladies had long known each other, fellow members of the Israelite Women’s Organization of Pest. The young man himself was not supposed to be there, busy as he was with his medical studies. However, the day’s lectures had been canceled as a result of a demonstration by a nationalist students’ organization—a foreshadowing, we now know, of the ugly protests that would eventually culminate in the imposition of limitations on the numbers of Jewish students allowed to matriculate at Hungarian universities—and the young man was not only home when my wife and daughters called but spent the hour in the parlor with them. Under different circumstances, this might have been an ideal opportunity for the two young people to converse under their mothers’ watchful eyes. However, the unanticipated encounter proved to be a disaster, and my normally sweet-tempered daughter spent the next day’s luncheon haranguing her mother and me with her objections to András Nordau’s suit. After much wailing and knotting of damp handkerchiefs (on Erzsébet’s part, not mine), I was made to understand that her objections amounted to a globule of white saliva that attached to the young man’s upper lip, connecting periodically in a string to his lower.

“So he’ll wipe his mouth,” I told my hysterical child.

My sense fell on deaf ears, and nothing was accomplished beyond Erzsébet rushing away from the table, leaving behind an untouched plate, which, as one who abhors waste of any kind, I had no choice but to finish myself.

I was thus not merely distressed but also mildly dyspeptic when Nina
arrived in my consulting room, and though I had intended to spend our session going over her memories of the traumatic incident at the picnic, I was unprepared to withstand the assault of yet another young girl with an agenda of her own. When she entered the consulting room I could not help, despite my unusual state of mental and physical discombobulation, but to smile at her attire. She wore a coarse khaki coverall with pantaloons rather than a skirt, tight at the ankles, revealing a full two inches of pale stocking above the top of her low-heeled boot. The coverall was paired with a middy blouse with a wide navy-blue silk tie. On her head was perched a small straw boater, also trimmed in navy blue.

Indicating her dress, she said, “I’m afraid I didn’t have time to change.”

“Did you spend the early part of the day working the barges on the Danube?”

“Very funny. The Feminist Association held a boating excursion this morning.”

“Hence the nautical attire.”

“Do you like it?”

“I’ve never seen anything quite like it before.”

“They’re called overalls. They’re quite popular in America, especially among women laborers. They’re very comfortable.”

“They look very comfortable. How, might I ask, did you come to adopt the fashions of the American proletariat?”

“I bought the pattern at the bazaar at the Suffrage Congress exhibition hall and had our seamstress make a pair for me and a pair for Gizella. Mama nearly had an apoplectic stroke when she saw me wearing them. But I think they’re marvelous.”

“And Gizella? Does she look as marvelous in hers?”

“Gizella won’t wear them. She’s very particular about her clothing, and she said they’d make her look like a little boy. But all the younger women at this morning’s outing wanted a pair.”

“Did you enjoy your excursion?”

“Very much. We boated along the river for a while, and then we had lunch and heard a lecture beneath the oaks on Margaret Island.”

“A lecture?”

“It was quite fascinating. All about reforming the social and legal status of domestic servants. Did you know, Dr. Zobel, that our maids are utterly defenseless against the advances of their male employers? You would not believe the stories Mrs. Grossman told.”

“Indeed? Who is this Mrs. Grossman?”

“Janka Grossman. She has written on the subject of the rights of domestic servants for
Women and Society
. I’m sure you know that the young boys of Pest are encouraged to use their maidservants for … for sex.” The disgust with which she said the word did not, I fear, bode well for Nina’s future husband.

“Shocking!” I said, recalling with fondness my own dear Marta, the young kitchen servant whose attentions both culinary and sexual formed such an important part of my early life.

Nina said, “And when the maids fall pregnant, they’re simply sent back to their villages to fend for themselves.”

A wise and experienced girl, Marta used to rise from our nest beneath the warm eiderdown of her narrow cot in a corner of the pantry and clean herself inside and out with a solution of sodium bicarbonate and warm water. She remains to this day in the employ of my mother. The wasp-waisted, capacious-bosomed Marta of my youthful nights has long since turned into a squat and big-bellied old woman, her mouth devoid of all but a single tooth, her vast quantities of luxurious blond hair reduced to a gray braid no thicker around than my pinkie. But still the merry eyes remain, and she is as fond as ever of this overgrown boy to whom the years have hardly been more gentle.

“You found this lecture very interesting,” I said. “Exciting, even?”

“Inspiring. Infuriating.”

“ ‘Infuriating.’ ” I considered this. “In one of our last appointments you told me about your father’s sexual indiscretions. Did the lecture remind you of this? Did he or does he have liaisons with the family servants in addition to the governess? Have you witnessed such an encounter?”

“You seem so sure that my fury must be a result of my ‘witnessing’ something. Can’t I just be disgusted at this kind of outrage without having to witness it personally?”

“Perhaps. Though it is often the case that reactions this visceral are indications of latent trauma.”

“You and your traumas, Doctor!”

“Haven’t we discovered together the sexual trauma at the root of your menstrual pain?”

“I don’t know. It depends what you mean by ‘discover.’ There was no lost or submerged memory that you helped me to recall. I’ve never forgotten that man at the stream. It was ugly and unpleasant, but no matter
how I try I can’t think of it as so dramatic that it is sufficient to explain a lifetime of painful cramping.”

“Our unconscious minds are difficult to understand. They function very differently from our waking selves. I once had a patient who was unable to tolerate the taste of dairy products, merely because years before she witnessed a cat lapping milk from a bowl, an incident that caused her no more than minor disgust at the time. Once she recalled the incident, the symptom disappeared, and she was again able to enjoy her coffee with cream.”

“Well, it remains to be seen whether or not my symptoms disappear.”

“When do you expect your menstrual period?”

“In a couple of weeks.”

“I have high hopes.”

“You’re a very optimistic man, Doctor.”

“Perhaps I am. Can I encourage you to indulge my optimism for a while?”

“Why not?”

“Consider again the question of your father’s relationship with the servants. Are you sure there wasn’t an incident, perhaps one long forgotten, that caused this morning’s lecture to be particularly interesting to you?”

Nina frowned. “Well,” she said after a few moments’ consideration. “I suppose it reminded me of a story I heard a few years ago. One of the reasons I became determined to study medicine.”

I leaned forward in my chair, hoping that we might again be reaching a point of breakthrough. “Indeed?”

“Yes. It’s nothing I witnessed myself, or, rather, the incident itself is one I only heard about secondhand. What I witnessed was the distress it caused.”

“Go on!” It is at times so difficult to maintain a proper physician’s pose of disinterested equilibrium.

“It was not long after I began my studies at the gymnasium. I woke up one morning late for my morning classes, because our maid, Etel, didn’t wake me. I scrambled into my clothes and rushed into the kitchen. I was very worried about being late, and I shouted at Etel for having forgotten me. I found her sitting with Riza, the cook, and they were both crying. They didn’t want to tell me what happened, but I forced them to. I was a very willful child, and they were used to doing as I said.”

“I can imagine.”

She arched one of her well-formed eyebrows but continued, “A girl they knew, the maid of one of our neighbors, had died. Riza said the girl had been forced to go to an ‘Angel Maker,’ but then in the end it was she who became the angel. She was a nice girl, from the same village as Etel. Etel and Riza were both beside themselves. The police arrested the midwife who performed the procedure, and later on I found out that she was given a year in prison for the crime. A year for killing a young girl. But you know what was worse?”

“What could be worse than that sad tale?”

“The seducer was the eldest son of the poor girl’s employer, a young man I’ve known for years and years, ever since his family moved into one of the upper-level apartments of our building. He was forced to pay a one-hundred-kronen fine to the court. Nothing more. He served not a single day in jail.”

“Terrible,” I said. I was surprised that the young man had faced any punishment at all. His seduction of the young maid must have been unusually blatant for his identity even to have been discovered. “Though I’m not sure I understand how this inspired you to consider a career in medicine.”

“It was an outrage, Dr. Zobel!” Nina said, her voice rising. “I defy you to find a woman on earth who would not be outraged by such a thing.”

“I will grant you that. But why medicine, Nina? Why not law, in order to prosecute such miscreants?”

“Surely you know the answer to that question.”

“I assure you I don’t.”

“Because women are not permitted to study law in Budapest. The faculty will not admit women, and my father would sooner bury me alive than send me to Zurich or Vienna to read law. Anyway, my mind is inclined more to the scientific and to the practical. I want to roll up my sleeves and help women like that poor little maid.”

“You would become an abortionist?” I asked, aghast.

“Why not?”

I sat in stunned silence.

“Calm yourself, Doctor. That’s not my ambition. What I want is to be a physician to whom women will come with all their various problems and pains, because I believe—no, I know—that women feel more comfortable sharing such intimacies with other women. I will be a good doctor not in spite of my sex, Dr. Zobel, but because of it.”

Though it was hardly in my interest, I couldn’t help but wonder if this might not be true. All medical men are aware of the struggles inherent in treating women, particularly older women whose modesty often precludes even the most general of examinations. How many times have I heard my gynecologist colleagues complain of the frustrations of trying to treat a woman who refuses to shuck her skirts, even in the presence of the most dispassionate of physicians? Some have even sought my assistance in figuring out ways to convince their patients that their doctor finds no sexual satisfaction in scrabbling about in ancient and malodorous vaginas.