'Yes?
'I'll still pay for her brother's treatment. If you think you can treat him.'
'I don't. I intend to tell Miss Rousseau the same thing tomorrow. The truth is I don't understand his condition; I don't understand the war neuroses at all. It would be wrong of me to pretend otherwise. I know just enough to know how much I don't know. I wish I could analyze the boy at length, but under the circumstances, that's impossible.'
Neither spoke.
'Well,' said Freud, 'I came to thank you heartily and to pass on Martha's and Minna's gratitude as well. You gave us enough to provision a small army. Will you join me walking? It's my only exercise. I have something important to tell you. You'll be pleased to hear it, I promise you.'
They strolled toward the city center, leaving the broad and modern Ringstrasse for streets that grew ever more medieval and tortuous, as if they led backward through the centuries. In a small and irregular square, old townhouses faced the back walls of heavier, administrative buildings. The square was empty, dark. 'This is the Judenplatz,' said Freud. 'It's quite historical. There's a plaque somewhere, over four hundred years old. There it is. Come, let's have a look. You see the relief? That's Christ receiving his baptism in the River Jordan. How's your Latin?'
Younger read from the plaque: ''As the waters of the Jordan cleansed the souls of the baptized, so did the flames of 1421 purge the city of the crimes of the — of the — Hebrew dogs'?'
'Yes. In 1421 Vienna tried to force its Jews to convert. A thousand or so took refuge in a synagogue, barricading the doors. For three days they went without food or water. Then the synagogue burned, Jewish accounts say that the chief rabbi himself ordered the fire, preferring death to conversion. About two or three hundred survived. These were rounded up and taken to the banks of the Danube, where they were burned alive. Ever thrifty, the Viennese used the stones from the synagogue's foundations for the university, where, for most of my adult life, I sought to attain a professorship.'
'Great God,' said Younger. 'Don't Jews object to this plaque?'
'Would one have to be a Jew?' replied Freud. They began walking again. 'But the answer is no. Not outwardly. The Jews of Vienna strive with their every fiber to feel, to think, to be Austrian. Or German. I include myself. It's a foolish and quite irrational lie we tell ourselves — that they will accept us if only we outdo them in being what they themselves want to be.'
Passing through an alley barely wide enough for two men to walk abreast, they presently entered the spacious Am Hof, where clothing, much of it secondhand, was in daylight sold from stalls beneath giant umbrellas. Now the stalls were empty, the umbrellas folded and bound.
'Repetition is the key,' added Freud.
'To self-deception?'
'To the war neuroses. Did you treat shell shock in the war?'
'No, but I saw it.'
'Did you encounter any cases in which the patient's symptoms corresponded to a traumatic experience he had undergone?'
'Twice. We had a man with a convulsive wink; it turned out he had bayoneted a German in the eye. There was another whose hand was paralyzed. He'd accidentally thrown a grenade into his own platoon.'
'Yes — such cases are exceptional, of course, but illustrative. They undercut all my previous theories.'
'Undercut?' said Younger. 'They're proof of your theories.'
'That's what everyone says. The whole world suddenly respects psychoanalysts because we alone can explain shell shock. Don't mistake me: I'll take the recognition. But it is certainly ironic — being finally accepted on account of the one thing that disproves you.'
'I don't see it, I'm sorry,' said Younger. 'If shell shock victims are acting out suppressed memories, surely that vindicates your theory of the unconscious.'
'Of course,' answered Freud, 'but I'm talking about what's in the unconscious. Shell shock defies my theories because there's no pleasure in it. That's what I wanted to tell you.'
Younger reflected: 'No sexuality?'
'I said you'd be glad to hear it. I don't enjoy acknowledging error, but when the facts don't fit one's theories, one has no choice. The war neurotics behave like masochists — constantly conjuring up their own worst nightmares — except without any corresponding gain in sexual satisfaction. Perhaps they're trying to relieve their fear. Or more likely to find a way to control it. If so, their strategy fails. I suspect there's something else. I sense it in Miss Rousseau's brother. I don't know what it is yet. Pity he doesn't speak. Something dark, almost uncanny. I can't see it, but I can hear it. I hear its voice.'
Jimmy Littlemore bottomed his whiskey glass, but there was nothing; in it. He tried to pour himself another; there was nothing left in the bottle either. Daylight had just begun to show in the windowpanes. 'Okay,' he said slowly 'What happened next?'
'That's all. I left the next day. Went to India.'
'India?'
'Stayed there almost a year.'
Littlemore looked at him: 'Stuck on her, huh?'
Younger didn't answer. India had repelled him — and fascinated him. He kept planning to leave, but stayed on for month after sweltering month, wondering at the snake-headed men of Benares, at the filth of the Ganges where natives washed themselves after bathing their family's corpses, at the harmony of the great palaces and tombs. He knew he remained only because nothing in India reminded him of Colette, whereas in Europe or America everything would have. Eventually, however, Indian girls began reminding him of Colette too.
'Guess it's time to switch to coffee,' said Littlemore. He went to the stove and, with his good arm, set up a percolator. 'What happened to the Miss?'
'She wrote to me. There was a letter waiting when I got back to London. She'd sent it last Christmas. Apparently she'd left Vienna without even going to the prison to see her soldier fiancй. She'd had a conversation with Freud and changed her mind. She returned to Paris, worked at the Radium Institute for six months, and then the Sorbonne finally took her. She was finishing her degree. She asked if I might come down to visit.'
'What did you write back?'
'I didn't write back.'
'Sharp move,' said Littlemore.
Neither spoke.
'Did you ever get to a point with a girl,' asked Younger, 'where you couldn't close your eyes without seeing her? Day and night — awake, asleep? Where you couldn't think of anything without also thinking of her?'
'Nope.'
'I don't advise it,' said Younger.
'Why didn't you write to her?'
'If I were an opium addict, what would you suggest I do — give in to the craving or resist it?'
'Opium's bad for you.'
'So is she.'
'Then what?'
'I came back to America. Last July.'
'But how'd she get here?'
'I recommended her for a position at Yale. A radiochemist named Boltwood was looking for an assistant. She was the best-qualified candidate.'
'You've got to be kidding.'
'She was. By far.'
'Come on — what are you waiting for?' asked Littlemore. 'When are you going to propose?
The kettle began to rattle.
'What is it with you husbands?' asked Younger. 'You think every man wants to be in your condition. I got stuck on the girl. Now I'm unstuck.'
'You said yourself you wanted to marry her. When you were in Vienna.'
'I was wrong. She's too young. She believes in God.'
