'No,' she whispered. 'You have to do what you did before.'
I made no reply. I didn't know if she meant what I had done in the police station or what I had done a moment ago.
'Choke me,' she said.
I did nothing.
'Please,' she said. 'Choke me.'
I put my finger and thumb to the place on her neck where the reddish marks were. She bit her lip; it must have hurt. With these bruises covered, there was no sign of her previous attack. There was only her exquisitely turned neck. I squeezed her throat. Instantly her eyes closed.
'Harder,' she said softly.
With my left hand, I held the small of her back. With my right, I choked her. Her back arched, her head fell back. She gripped my hand tightly but did not try to pull it away. 'Do you see anything?' I asked. She shook her head faintly, her eyes still closed. I drew her in more firmly, pressing harder at her neck. Her breath caught in her throat, then stopped altogether. Her lips, vermilion, parted.
It is not easy for me to confess to the wholly improper reactions that came upon me. I had never seen a mouth so perfect. Her lips, slightly swollen, were trembling. Her skin was the purest cream. Her long hair was sparkling, like falling water turned gold by sunlight. I drew her still closer to me. One of her hands was resting on my chest. I don't know when or how it got there.
Suddenly I became aware of her blue eyes looking up into mine. When had they opened? She was mouthing a word. I hadn't realized. The word was stop.
I let go her throat, expecting her to gasp desperately for breath. She did not. Rather, she said, so softly I could barely hear it, 'Kiss me.'
I am obliged to admit I don't know what I would have done with this invitation. But there came, at that moment, a sudden loud rapping at the door, followed by the rattling of a key being worked frantically in the lock. I released her immediately. In the space of a second, she retrieved the teapot from the floor and placed it on the table, from which she also seized the note I'd left there. We both faced the door.
'I remember,' she whispered urgently to me, as the knob turned. 'I know who did it.'
Chapter Twelve
At noon the same day, September 1, Carl Jung was taken to lunch by Smith Ely Jelliffe — publisher, doctor, and professor of mental diseases at Fordham University — at a club on Fifty-third Street overlooking the park. Freud was not invited; neither was Ferenczi, nor Brill, nor Younger. Their exclusion did not perturb Jung. It was another mark, he felt, of his rising international stature. A less magnanimous man would have been crowing about such a thing, rubbing the invitation in the others' noses. But he, Jung, took his duty of charity seriously, so he concealed.
It was painful, however, to have to hide so much. It had started the very first day out of Bremen. Jung had not actually lied, of course. That, he told himself, he would never do. But it was not his fault; they drove him to dissemble.
For example, Freud and Ferenczi had booked second- class berths on the George Washington. Was he to blame? Not wanting to shame them, he had been obliged to say that, by the time he bought his ticket, only first- class cabins were available. Then there had been his dream the first night on board. Its true message was obvious — that he was surpassing Freud in insight and reputation — so, out of solicitude for Freud's sensitive pride, he asserted that the bones he discovered in the dream belonged to his wife, rather than to Freud. In fact, he had cleverly added that the bones belonged not only to his wife but also his wife's sister: he wanted to see how Freud would react to that, given the skeletons in Freud's own closet. These were trivialities, but they had laid the groundwork for the far greater dissimulation that had become necessary since his arrival in America.
The lunch at Jelliffe's club was most gratifying. Nine or ten men sat at the oval table. Intermixed with knowledgeable scientific conversation and an excellent claret was a goodly dose of ribald humor, which Jung always enjoyed. The women's suffragette movement bore the brunt of the raillery. One of the men asked whether anyone had ever met a suffragette he could imagine bedding. The unanimous answer was no. Someone ought to notify these ladies, another gentleman said, that even if they got the vote it didn't mean anyone would sleep with them. All agreed that the best cure for a woman demanding the suffrage was a good healthy servicing; that treatment, however, was so unappetizing one might as well give them the vote instead.
Jung was in his element. For once, there was no need to pretend to be less wealthy than one was. There was no obligation to deny one's ancestry. After the meal, the members repaired to a smoking room, where the conversation continued over cognac. Their ranks gradually thinned until Jung was left with only Jelliffe and three older men. One of these gentlemen now made a subtle signal; Jelliffe instantly rose to leave. Jung stood as well, assuming that Jelliffe s departure indicated his own. But Jelliffe informed him that the three gentlemen wanted the briefest of words with him alone and that a carriage would be waiting when they had done.
In actual fact, Jelliffe was not a member of this club at all. He yearned to belong to it. The men with authority over the society and its membership were those now remaining with him. It was they who had told Jelliffe to bring Jung to them today.
'Do sit down, Dr Jung,' said the man who had dismissed Jelliffe, gesturing toward a comfortable armchair with one of his elegant hands.
Jung tried to remember the gentleman's name, but he had met so many, and was so unused to wine at lunch, he could not.
'It's Dana,' the man said helpfully, his dark eyebrows setting off his silver hair. 'Charles Dana. I was just speaking of you, Jung, with my good friend Ochs over at the Times. He wants to do a story about you.'
'A story?' asked Jung. 'I don't understand.'
'In connection with the lectures we've arranged for you at Fordham next week. He wants an interview with you. He proposes a short biography — two full broadsheet pages.
You'll be quite famous. I didn't know if you'd agree. I told him I'd ask.'
'Why,' answered Jung, 'I–I don't — '
'There is just one obstacle. Ochs' — Dana pronounced it Oaks — 'is afraid you are a Freudian. Doesn't want his paper associated with a — with a- Well, you know what they say about Freud.'
'A sex-crazed degenerate,' said the portly man to the right, smoothing his muttonchop whiskers.
'Does Freud actually believe what he writes?' asked the third gentleman, a balding fellow. 'That every girl he treats attempts to seduce him? Or what he says about feces — feces, for God's sake. Or about fastidious men wanting sex through the anus?'
'What about boys wanting to penetrate their own mothers?' rejoined the portly man, with an expression of utmost disgust.
'What about God?' asked Dana, tamping the tobacco from his pipe. 'Must be hard on you, Jung.'
Jung was uncertain exactly what was being referred to. He didn't answer.
'I know you, Jung,' said Dana. 'I know what you are. A Swiss. A Christian. A man of science, like us. And a man of passion. One who acts on his desires. A man who needs more than one woman to thrive. There is no need to hide such things here. These so-called men who don't act, who let their desires fester like sores, whose fathers were peddlers, who have always felt inferior to us — only they could dream up such vile, bestial fantasies, theorizing God and man into the sewer. It must be hard on you to be associated with that.'
Jung was finding it increasingly difficult to absorb the flow of words. The alcohol must have gone to his head. This gentleman did seem to know him, but how? 'Sometimes it is,' Jung answered slowly.
'I am not in the least anti-Semitic. You need only ask Sachs here.' He indicated the balding man on his left. 'On the contrary, I admire the Jews. Their secret is racial purity, a principle they have understood far better than we. It is what has made them the great race they are.' The man referred to as Sachs gave away nothing; the portly man merely pursed his fleshy lips. Dana continued: 'But last Sunday, when I looked up at our bleeding Savior and imagined this Viennese Jew saying our passion for Him is sexual, I found it difficult to pray. Very. I should think you might have encountered similar difficulties. Or are Freud's disciples required to give up the church?'
