Chapter Fourteen
Among the grander edifices on Vienna's Ringstrasse was a five-story, pink-and-white confection of an apartment building, the first floor of which housed the elegant Cafй Landtmann. In the main salon of that coffeehouse, below a receding boulevard of crystal chandeliers, Younger met Freud at eleven the next morning. The head waiter had greeted Freud as if he knew him personally and guided them to a table at a window with elaborate drapery, through which they could see the magnificent state theater across the street.
'So,' said Freud, taking a seat, 'do you know what I want to discuss with you?'
'The Oedipus complex?' asked Younger.
'Miss Rousseau.'
'Why?'
'Tell me first,' said Freud, 'what you thought of my old friend Jauregg, the neurologist.'
Younger, Colette, and Luc had visited Dr Julius Wagner-Jauregg in his university office earlier that morning. 'His treatment for war neurosis is electrocution,' said Younger.
'Yes. His team reports considerable success. Was he surprised I had sent you?'
'Very. He said you testified against him at a trial of some kind last week.'
'On the contrary, I testified for him. There was an allegation that he had essentially tortured our soldiers into returning to the front. The government commissioned me to investigate. I reported that his use of electrotherapy had been perfectly ethical. I explained, of course, that only psychoanalysis could uncover the roots of shell shock and cure it, but that this was not yet known in 1914. My friend — and his many supporters — spent the rest of the hearing attempting to destroy the reputation of every psychoanalyst in Vienna.' A waiter brought them two small gold- rimmed demitasses of coffee and a basket of pastries. 'Foolish of me. I'd somehow forgotten how intense a hostility we still provoke. But never mind. Did he persuade you to attempt electrocution on the boy?'
'He made a case for a single treatment at low voltage. He believes shell shock is a kind of short circuit inside the brain — and that a brief convulsive charge can clear the circuitry.'
'I know. And since you disbelieve in psychology, you should be favorably inclined.'
Younger pictured the confused and harrowed expressions he had seen in the faces of shell-shocked soldiers. The scientist in him knew that the cause of their suffering could indeed have been a cross-firing in their neural circuitry. But something in him rebelled at this diagnosis or at least at the treatment. At last he said, 'I don't believe there's anything wrong with the boy's brain.'
'Ah — you think the problem is in his larynx?'
'I doubt it,' said Younger.
'Well, at least you have one thing right. What was Miss Rousseau's opinion? No, let me guess. She was distracted and had no firm opinion. She wanted you to decide.'
'How did you know that?'
'Would you say she is self-destructive?' asked Freud.
'Not at all.'
'Really? My impression was that you had a taste for such women.'
'I make exceptions,' said Younger.
'She's not attracted to abusive men?'
'If you mean me, her attraction to abusive men is regrettably weak.'
'I don't mean you,' said Freud.
'Her fiancй — Gruber?'
'The man is a convicted criminal.'
Younger looked out the window. 'She only remembers a sweet, injured, devout soldier she knew in a hospital.'
'A maternal affection? Not likely.' Freud stirred his coffee. A scowl came to his already deeply furrowed brow. 'Was I too severe with her last night?'
'She can take it. Why were you severe?'
Freud removed his glasses and wiped them clean with a handkerchief, lingering on each lens. 'She reminds me of my Sophie, my second-to-youngest,' he said. 'Beautiful, headstrong. Sophie became engaged at the age of nineteen. To a thirty-year-old photographer. It was as if she couldn't get out of the house fast enough. I believe I was taking out on Miss Rousseau an anger I harbor against Sophie for leaving us so soon.'
'Sophie — she's the one who lives in Germany?'
'She's the one who is dead.'
Freud's spoon tapped the rim of his glass, repeatedly, unevenly.
'I didn't know,' said Younger.
'It happened last January. The flu. She was living in Berlin, she and her two little boys and her husband, whom I never treated as well as I should have. When we received word she was ill, there were no trains running — not even for an emergency. The next we heard, she was gone.' He took a deep breath. 'After that, fundamentally everything lost its meaning for me. To an unbeliever like myself, there can be no rationalizations in such circumstances. No justifications. Only mute submission. Blunt necessity. For several months, my own children — my other children — and their children — ' Freud stopped, gathering himself — 'I could no longer bear the sight of them.'
Outside, the Ring was in its full daytime bloom. Cars and streetcars rolled by. A charming carriage trotted past. A governess strolled with a perambulator.
'Well, the intention that man be happy was never part of his creation,' said Freud. 'You will say it's superstition, but I have a foreboding about Miss Rousseau. What is her goal in coming to Vienna?'
'You guessed it last night. This Gruber fellow was just released from prison.'
'Come — you can't have forgotten all your psychology. What is her object?'
'To see if he still loves her, I suppose. Or perhaps if she still loves him. She made a promise. She feels she has to keep it.'
'Nonsense. I don't trust her motivation. Neither should you. Do you know what specifically her soldier was imprisoned for?'
'No.'
'I do. She told me herself — in tears, the day after you left Vienna last year. He beat up an old man. So at least the police say. I advised her that a ruffian who marches with the Anti-Semitic League was not a fit husband for her. I counseled her not to see him again. I thought she took my advice.'
'Evidently she reconsidered,' said Younger.
'There is a condition into which many young women fall. They attach themselves to violent men. They forgive any mistreatment. They think it love; it isn't. What they really want is to be punished for their sins, real and imagined — or for someone else's. There's something wrong with Miss Rousseau's attachment to this Gruber. I sense it. My advice to you is not to let her out of your sight. She's throwing herself into the arms of a criminal.'
'Maybe he'll beat her, and she'll come to her senses.'
Freud raised an eyebrow. Younger wondered if his own habit of doing so — raising a single brow — was copied from Freud. 'You feel,' said Freud, 'she's made her bed with this man, and you're inclined to let her sleep in it?'
'I don't control where Miss Rousseau sleeps.'
'You wish to see her punished — for choosing another man. You retaliate by letting her go.'
'Letting her go? I crossed an ocean trying to change her mind.'
'You can't change her mind. But you might be able to protect her.' 'From what?' asked Younger.
'From this Gruber. From a decision she'll regret the rest of her life.'
Younger, back at the Hotel Bristol, found a note waiting for him:
Dear Stratham:
I'm running to catch a train. I didn't go to the Radium Institute. I went to the prison, and they told me that Hans had left Vienna and gone to Braunau am Inn. I think it's his hometown. There's only one train a day for Braunau, and it leaves in half an hour. I expect to be back tomorrow. Luc is upstairs in my room. Please look after him. Some day I hope you'll understand.
Yours,
