The Warsaw Anagrams

Of course, my theory could have been wrong, and I was about to probe further into her stepfather’s daily routine when I realized why I’d experienced deja vu: Irene had repeated what a young patient of Freud’s named Katharina had told him about the face of a man she envisaged whenever she suffered an anxiety attack: He has an awful face, and he looks at me in a dreadful way.

If those weren’t the exact words quoted by Freud, they were very close. They were contained in Freud and Brauer’s Studies on Hysteria, a work I’d read several times.

Katharina had told Freud she’d overseen her uncle making love to the family cook. Could that be why I’d concluded so quickly that Irene might have seen her stepfather with a woman?

The important question now seemed: was Irene aware that she had quoted a patient of Freud’s?

‘Tell me, Irene,’ I asked, ‘have you ever read any works on psychiatry or psychoanalysis?’

‘Yes, at my grandfather’s house in Zurich. I think he owns nearly everything Freud ever wrote.’

Since she showed no sign of having been caught out, I concluded that she’d repeated Katharina’s words unconsciously – had appropriated them because her predicament was so similar. Unsure as to how to proceed, I returned to what might have happened a couple of weeks earlier to start Irene believing that she was under threat.

‘Maybe it was a dream I started having,’ she told me. She shifted forward in her seat, as though to commit herself to making deeper revelations, though she put her cushion over her lap again.

‘Tell me the dream,’ I requested.

Gazing into herself, she said, ‘I’m with some children on a meadow. In the green grass are lots of yellow flowers. Each of us is holding a bunch of flowers we’ve already picked, and we start to pick more.’

‘How many children are with you?’ I asked.

‘At least two, though I think there may be more. It’s hard to tell.’ She looked at me for approval to continue, and I nodded.

‘A short man wearing a hat comes up from the town below, and he takes the flowers from us – from me and the children. And then he walks up the hill to a cottage where a friend of his is waiting – a much bigger man who seems almost like a giant.’

‘Go on.’

‘The man in the hat hands the flowers to his friend, and he receives a loaf of bread in return. And then the man in the hat walks to me and tears off a piece of his bread for me, and I… I look around for the children who’ve been on the meadow with me, so that I can share my bread with them, but they’re gone. And then the dream shifts.’

‘Shifts how?’

‘I’m standing with the man in the hat on the sidewalk of Krakowskie Przedmiescie.’ Irene closed her eyes and reached her hand out as if seeking to touch what she was seeing. ‘In front of me is a curving staircase, and it leads up to the Holy Cross Church. The street is empty. I don’t know where the other kids are, and I’m terrified. And… and that’s when I wake up.’

Her eyes opened and she looked at me purposefully; she’d undoubtedly read that it was my job to offer an interpretation.

I looked away, however; I was sure now that Irene had read Freud very closely. The children picking yellow flowers in a meadow had appeared in a dream of his that he’d discussed in a well-known, semi-autobiographical article called ‘Screen Memories’. She was placing her own experiences into the framework of her readings on psychiatry. Whether on purpose or unconsciously, I had no way of knowing, but in either case I suspected that she intended for me to return to Freud’s discussion of Katharina and extrapolate that they faced the same problem. In a sense, she was telling me in coded language, where to look for the origins of her troubles, without directly revealing any of her family’s secrets – and in a way she could be sure I would come to understand.

‘Can you see the face of the man in the hat?’ I asked her.

‘No.’

‘Would you close your eyes and try to picture him?’

‘Of course.’ She did as I asked, but after a few seconds she shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Dr Cohen, but I can’t tell you who he might be. I want to, but I can’t.’

She used the words tell you instead of see or recognize. A slip? Very possibly Irene knew who he was but would risk too much by revealing his identity.

I was convinced by now that she’d used Freud’s dream because she’d read his interpretation that a girl handing flowers to a man was symbolic of her losing her virginity. I suspected she’d had sex for the first time recently, and possibly with her stepfather. In that case, her guilt – at betraying her mother and threatening to destroy her family’s happiness – had brought on her self-destructive behaviour. She wanted to murder herself, but she’d transposed those violent feelings to an unidentified killer.

‘Do you know the children with you in the meadow?’ I asked, thinking they might have been other girls her stepfather had seduced.

‘No,’ she replied.

‘How old are they?’

‘They’re young – maybe ten or twelve. Like me.’

‘So you’re only ten or twelve in the dream?’

She looked inside herself again. ‘I think so,’ she said hesitantly, ‘but I’m not sure.’

Was it possible that her stepfather had violated her years earlier and had started again more recently?

‘Are the children boys or girls?’ I asked.

‘Both, I think. I’m not sure. They’re wearing yellow, so I don’t know.’

‘They’re wearing yellow?’ I asked, puzzled.

‘No, I meant that the flowers are yellow. Now I’m confused. You’re confusing me!’

‘I’m sorry. Can you identify the bigger man at the cottage who receives the flowers?’

‘No.’

‘Are he and the man in the hat Poles or Germans? Or maybe from Switzerland?’

She frowned nastily at me. Was I coming too close to unmasking her tormentor?

‘I think they’re Germans,’ she told me, ‘but I don’t know for sure. In any case, I don’t see why it matters.’

‘Maybe it doesn’t. How many times have you had the dream?’

‘A few times – I’m not sure.’

‘And how do you feel now – remembering it, I mean?’

She shrugged.

‘Well, are you glad you told it to me?’

‘Am I supposed to be?’ she snapped.

Her touchy replies made me realize that it would be best to stop now – I’d scared her with my probing and she’d tell me little more today. I downed my coffee and looked at my watch. It was eleven minutes past three.

‘Irene, for now, I only have one last question.’

‘But you’ll come back and see me?’ she asked in a tiptoeing voice. ‘You’re not angry with me?’

‘No, I’m not at all angry. And I’ll try to come back. I’ll speak to your mother about that as soon as I leave your room. But listen, Irene, I need you to promise me something or we won’t be able to talk again.’

‘What?’ she asked anxiously.

‘You must not try to take your own life while we’re working together. We must trust each other, and I won’t be able to work with you if I’m worried you might kill yourself if I say the wrong thing.’

‘Do you sometimes say the wrong thing?’

‘Of course,’ I told her, smiling at her naivety. ‘Everyone does. Though I shall try my best not to.’

I’d never admitted my failings to a patient so readily before. It seemed a change for the better, and I realized – astonished – that if I survived the ghetto, I’d be a gentler and more effective psychiatrist. Was that reason enough to go on living?

‘So do we have an agreement?’ I asked her.

‘Yes, I promise,’ she replied, and she showed me a relieved smile that convinced me she’d been waiting for me to take away her worst option from the beginning.

I stood up. ‘I’ll need your pills – the ones you took to try to end your life.’