The White Hotel (25 page)

I realize I seem to be going back on what I’ve said before. He did try his best to make contact with me, was generous with money, and scrupulously avoided favouring my brother. Yet I always felt it was a struggle for him, a matter of
duty.
Possibly he feared women, and was happier with casual contacts. He must have been capable of passion, otherwise he would never have married my mother, against all the odds. But I presume he came to regret giving way to his emotions. When I knew him he seemed cool and calculating, throwing all his energies into his business and—in a hush-hush way—political intrigue on behalf of the Bund. After the shipboard episode I think he realized he’d “lost” me, and made a special effort to be nice. He even took me on a skiing holiday in the Caucasus. It was disastrous, because I felt he was begrudging every moment away from his work. By now, anyway, I had started to blame him for my terrible crime of being Jewish. We were both infinitely relieved to get home
.

I come now to my husband. He and all his family were horribly anti-Semitic. Much more than I allowed you to think. True, I don’t imagine he was anything out of the ordinary in that respect—but literally everything was the fault of the Jews. In all other ways he was very pleasant and kind-hearted, and I was extremely fond of him. I didn’t lie about that. But you see, I was
living
a lie. He said he loved me, but if he had known I had Jewish blood he would have hated me. Whenever he said “I love you” I understood it as “I hate you.” It couldn’t have continued. It upset me dreadfully, though, for in many ways we were well matched, and I wanted to settle down and start a family
.

That brings me to the night when I remembered the summer-house incident, and perhaps other incidents. For a few moments I was filled with happiness! Do you understand? I was convinced that my father wasn’t my father, I wasn’t Jewish, and I could live with my husband, and get pregnant, with a clear conscience! But of course, I couldn’t cope with feeling glad that my mother was an adulteress and that she might have passed me off to her husband as his child—so unutterably sordid and wicked. To be glad of such things! And so, as you know, I “buried” it
.

We did get an annulment, by the way. I heard he remarried and moved to Munich after the war
.

So you see, our separation had very little to do with sexual problems. I have always found it difficult to enjoy myself properly, knowing there were people suffering “just the other side of the hill.” And there always are. I can’t explain my hallucinations, but I do know they were distinct, in some peculiar way, from the pleasure
(
which I continued to feel
).
It was the same with Alexei, and I have to confess that I “experimented” with one of the orchestra players from the Opera, not long after my husband left to go into the army, and I felt the same with him too
(
though the pleasure was of course superficial in the extreme, and tainted by guilt
).
I was not lying when I said the hallucinations were bound up with my fears of having a child. If I am right, I should now be in the clear, so to speak, because I have begun to miss my periods—rather early…. But there is in any case no prospect of my putting it to the test
.

I cannot explain my pains either
. (
They have recurred from time to time
.)
I still think they’re organic, in some peculiar way, and I keep expecting, every time I visit a doctor, for him to say I’ve been suffering from some outlandish disease in my breast and ovary for the past fifteen years! The “asthma” at fifteen may have been hysterical, I grant you that, but I don’t think the rest is. Let’s try to look at it afresh. I lost my mother when I was five. That was terrible, but as you say, there are orphans everywhere. She died in dreadfully immoral circumstances—and very painfully. Yes, but I could come to terms with it. Is there any family without a skeleton in the cupboard? Frankly I didn’t always wish to talk about the past, I was more interested in what was happening to me then, and what might happen in the future. In a way you made me become fascinated by my mother’s sin, and I am forever grateful to you for giving me the opportunity to delve into it. But I don’t believe for one moment that had anything to do with my being crippled with pain. It made me unhappy, but not ill. And lastly, yes it is possible there may be a slight bisexual component in my make-up, but nothing specifically sexual, or at least nothing I haven’t been able to cope with very easily. On the whole I feel my life has been more bearable by reason of my closeness to women
.

What torments me is whether life is good or evil. I think often of that scene I stumbled into on my father’s yacht. The woman I thought was praying had a fierce, frightening expression, but her “reflection” was peaceful and smiling. The smiling woman
(
I think it must have been my aunt
)
was resting her hand on my mother’s breast
(
as if to reassure her it was all right, she didn’t mind
).
But the faces—at least to me now—were so contradictory. And must have been contradictory in themselves too: the grimacing woman, joyful, and the smiling woman, sad. Medusa and Ceres, as you so brilliantly say! It may sound crazy, but I think the idea of the incest troubles me far more profoundly as a symbol than as a real event. Good and evil coupling, to make the world. No, forgive me, I am writing wildly. The ravings of a lonely spinster!

Hence the mirror phobia I had for a short while. That was when I was reading the case of the “Wolf-Man,” with his compulsive obsession for intercourse more ferarum. (Aren’t we indeed close to the animals?) I knew him, by the way. Or rather, I knew his family, by repute, in Odessa. It was quite clear from the details. That’s why—if I may make a suggestion?—it seems unnecessary to refer to Odessa as “the town of M_____.” It won’t fool anyone close, of whom few remain. Anyone not close will be sufficiently deceived by my being a cellist (l), for which disguise—thank you
.

The Wolf-Man’s story haunted me for years, a kind of Christ figure of our age
.

At least now I have been frank with you, and I can only express my heartfelt regret that I was not frank with you
then,
when you were spending so much of your time and energy on an unworthy patient. I am touched, beyond words, by knowing that so much wisdom, patience and kindness were devoted to a poor, weak-spirited, deceitful young woman. I assure you it was not without fruit. Whatever understanding of myself I now possess, is due to you alone
.

I wish you every success with the publication of your case study, should you still decide to go ahead with it. I should prefer my real name to be kept out of any negotiations. If any money should be owing to me, please donate it to charity
.

Yours very sincerely
,

Lisa Erdman

She felt a great relief at having declared everything—everything that was relevant. She had intended to tell him also about having slept with the “unimportant” man in the train from Odessa to Petersburg, her first experience of sexual intercourse and also her first experience of hallucination; but her letter had grown so long, and so full of the correction of lies, that she took fright. One more might “break the camel’s back”; and really, it was
not
important, she could not say it had ever preyed on her mind.

Yes, it was marvellous to have poured it all out. She waited anxiously for a reply. As the days, and then the weeks, passed
without a response from the Professor, anxiety became a kind of terror. She had mortally offended him. He was in a state of rage. Indeed, how could it be otherwise? She merited his wrath. Her breathlessness came back (and certainly not because of committing fellatio); she was forced to cancel three engagements because of ill health. She dropped a tray of breakfast dishes one morning, between the kitchen and her aunt’s bedroom, because she thought she heard Freud’s thunderous voice, cursing her.

She suffered from nightmares, one of which led to her moaning so loudly that it brought her aunt, hobbling on her stick, into her bedroom, her face as white as her nightdress. She had met a man climbing the stairs to the apartment. He doffed his trilby hat and said he was the Wolf-Man, and had come to take her to Freud. She was frightened, but he was very pleasantly-spoken, and explained that Freud only wanted to go over the place names in his manuscript, replacing initials with the real names. So she went with him, but instead of heading for Freud’s house he took her into some woods. He wanted her help, he said—showing her some pornographic photographs of a girl scrubbing a floor, kneeling down, with her dress hoisted to her hips. This was the only way he could obtain relief—by gazing at these photos. She talked to him seriously about it, and he appeared grateful for her help. They were by a lake, and she was admiring the swans. When she turned towards the man, he had turned into a real wolf; a wolf’s head between his hat and his long, shabby black coat. He snarled, and she ran away, and he bounded after her, intent on biting through her head. Even as she ran for her life, she knew she deserved it, for her letter to Freud. That was when she was shaken awake by Aunt Magda, in her white nightdress, her face as scared as the old granny in Little Red Riding Hood.

When at long last a letter arrived, it was several hours before
Lisa could muster the courage to open it. Her hands shook as she unfolded the writing paper. And she winced with pain as she read it (but that was mainly because of the paragraph about his grandson). And she flushed scarlet over his reference to her slip of the pen, and agonized over the context, which she simply could not remember. Yet, generally speaking, it was more merciful than she deserved.

19 Berggasse

18 May 1931

Dear Frau Erdman
,

Thank you for your letter of 29 March. I found it of course most interesting, not least your slip of the pen in writing “perhaps I was” for “perhaps he [my father] was.” Yet, after all, that is not so diverting as an error made by one of my English correspondents, who has written to commiserate with me on my “troublesome jew,” in place of “jaw.” Indirectly, that is the cause of my delay in replying. My jaw, I mean. I had to have another operation on it, and I fear I have fallen behind with my correspondence
.

I am glad to know you and your aunt are well. In answer to your query, my little grandson Heinz died when he was four years old. With him, my affectional life came to an end
.

Io the main business. I prefer to go ahead with the case study as it stands, despite all imperfections. I am willing, if you will permit, to add a postscript in which your later reservations are presented and discussed. I shall feel compelled to make the point that the physician has to trust his patient, quite as much as the patient must trust the physician
.

I call to mind a saying of Heraclitus: “The soul of man is a far country, which cannot be approached or explored.” It is not altogether true, I think, but success must depend on a fair harbour opening in the cliffs
.

Yours very sincerely
,

Sigmund Freud

Lisa replied with a short letter, thanking him for his forbearance, and expressing her anguish at the accuracy of her premonition. She confessed to a feeling of remorse, as though her premonition had somehow been responsible for the child’s death. She did not expect a reply to her note; indeed she expressly asked him not to burden himself by replying. Nevertheless, within a few days a letter came, from the apartment in the Berggasse:

Dear Frau Erdman
,

You are not to trouble yourself about my grandson’s death, which is far in the past. Doubtless, already when his mother died, he carried the seeds of his own fatal illness. My experience of psychoanalysis has convinced me that telepathy exists. If I had my life to go over again, I should devote it to the study of this factor. It is clear that you are especially sensitive. You must not let it distress you unduly
.

As a matter of fact, one of your dreams during your analysis made me certain you possessed this power. You have probably forgotten it. According to the note I made of it, you dreamt that a man and woman in middle life were being married at a church in Budapest, and in the middle of the ceremony a man stood up in the congregation, drew a pistol from his pocket, and shot himself. The bride screamed—it was her former husband—and fell in a faint. When you recounted the dream, it was perfectly clear to me that it referred to a tragic event, earlier in that year
(
1919
),
which occurred in Budapest. One of my most distinguished colleagues, practising in that city, got married to a woman whom he had courted for eighteen years. She had not wished to divorce her husband while her daughters were unmarried. On the very day of my colleague’s wedding to her, her former husband committed suicide. I am sure you sensed that knowledge in my mind, and it merged into your mother’s situation: which of course I am still convinced was at the root of your troubles
.