The Death Instinct

Chapter Seven

No city in the world was more altered by the Great War than Vienna.

Not physically. Vienna was never invaded during the war, nor shelled, as Paris had been. Not one stone was nicked. What the war had shattered was merely Vienna's soul and its place in the world.

In the spring of 1914, Vienna had been the sun around which revolved a galaxy of fifty million subjects speaking dozens of languages, all bound in fealty to Emperor Franz Josef and the House of Hapsburg. Vienna was rich, and its affairs mattered to the world. Five years later, it was a city of no consequence in a country of no consequence — starving, freezing, its factories shuttered, its emperor a fugitive, its empire abolished, its children deformed by years of malnutrition.

The result was a host of contradictory impressions for travelers arriving there in March of 1919. Riding their cab from the railway station — an elegant, two-horse, tandem carriage — Younger, Colette, and Luc saw under a rising sun a Vienna superficially every bit as grand as it had formerly been. The majestic Ringstrasse, that wide avenue parade of monumentality encircling the old inner city, presented the same invincible visage that it had before the war. The Ring borrowed liberally, and without nice regard for consistency, from the entire Western architectural canon. After trotting by an oversized blazing white Greek Parthenon, their carriage passed a darkly Gothic cathedral, and after that a many-winged neo-Renaissance palazzo. The first was the parliament, the second city hall, the third the world-famous university. Even the inferior buildings of the Ring would have been palaces elsewhere.

But the figures out for a morning stroll on the Ring, though fashionably dressed, did not display the same imperial bearing. Many of the men were maimed; crutches, dangling sleeves, and eye patches were ubiquitous. Even the able-bodied had a vacantness about them. Off the Ring, in smaller streets, children lined up by the hundreds for food packages. At one point Colette and Younger saw a clutch of these children break into a mad rush; the stampede was followed by angry shouting from adults, then by blows, then by trampling.

Colette wanted the cab to drop her off at Hans Gruber's address.

Younger pointed out that, because of the lateness of their train, which was supposed to have arrived the night before, they were in danger of missing their appointment with Freud.

'Can you ask the driver how far away the address is?' she replied. 'Perhaps it's close.'

It wasn't. Colette relented. After she had settled back, disappointed, their driver spoke to her in excellent French: 'Excuse me, Mademoiselle, but if I may: Does France's hatred of the Germans extend to the Viennese?'

'No,' she answered. 'We know you've suffered as much as the rest of us.'

'We do have our troubles,' agreed the driver. 'Have you noticed, sir, what is so disturbing about the dogs in Vienna?'

'I haven't seen any dogs,' replied Younger.

'That's what's so disturbing. The people are eating their dogs. And you must have heard of the sobbing sickness? People begin to sob for no explicable reason — men as well as women — and can't stop. They sob in their sleep; it goes on so long it ends in epileptic fits. When they wake, they have no memory of it. It's our nerves. We've always been nervous, we Viennese — gay but nervous.'

Colette complimented his French.

'Mademoiselle is as generous as she is charming,' replied the coachman. 'I had a Parisian governess as a boy. Here is my card. If you require a cab again, perhaps you will send for me.'

The name engraved on the card was Oktavian Ferdinand Graf Kinsky von Wchinitz und Tettau.

'You're a nobleman,' said Younger. The word Graf is a title of nobility in German; the von in his last name carried a similar meaning.

'A count, yes, and a most fortunate count at that. I held on to my very last carriage, and it has given me a living. A baron friend of mine sweeps floors in a restaurant. And consider my livery.'

Younger for the first time noticed the driver's once-dignified but now-threadbare uniform.

'It belonged to one of my servants. I was lucky there too: I had a man as short and round as his master. Here we are — the Hotel Bristol.'

'But this — this is much too grand,' said Colette when she saw her room. Luc's eyes fixed on a table dressed in white linen, where a silver tray was piled high with pastries along with two steaming pots — one of coffee, the other of hot chocolate. He wasn't starving like some of Vienna's children, but he wasn't too far from that condition either. His sister added, 'I've never been in a room like this in all my life.'

'And they dare to charge three English pennies for it,' replied Younger. 'Robbery.'

Less than an hour later, in a small but comfortably middle-class apartment house on Berggasse — a narrow, cobbled lane gently sloping down to the Danube canal — a maid let Younger and Colette into Sigmund Freud's empty consultation room. 'I'm so nervous,' Colette whispered.

Younger nodded. Well she might be, he thought: Colette would be both worried and excited about the prospect that Dr Freud might actually be able to help her brother; and she would be eager to make a good impression on the world-famous Viennese physician. But she, Younger reflected, was not the one who had disappointed him.

Freud's consulting room was like a bath into which civilization itself had been poured. Leather-bound volumes lined the walls, and every inch not occupied by books was filled with antiquities and miniature statuary: Greek vases intermixed with Chinese terracottas, Roman intagli with South American figurines and Egyptian bronzes. The room pulsed with a rich fume of cigar and the deep crimson of Oriental carpets, which not only lay thick on the parquet floor, but also draped the end tables and even covered a long couch.

A door opened. A dog, a miniature chow, trotted through it, yapping. The animal was followed by Freud himself, who paused in the doorway ordering the dog away from Younger's and Colette's shoes. The chow obeyed.

'So my boy,' said Sigmund Freud to Younger without introduction, 'you are no longer a psychoanalyst?'

Freud wore a suit and necktie and vest. In his left hand, half-raised, was a cigar between two fingers. He had grown older since Younger last saw him. His gray hair had thinned and receded; his short, pointed beard was now starkly white. Nevertheless, for a man of sixty-three, he remained handsome, fit and robust, with eyes exactly as Younger remembered them — both piercing and sympathetic, scowling and amused.

'Miss Rousseau,' said Younger, 'may I present to you Dr Sigmund Freud? Dr Freud, I thought you might wish to speak with Miss Rousseau before meeting her brother.'

'Delighted, Fraulein,' said Freud. He turned back to Younger: 'But you didn't answer my question.'

'I no longer practice psychology at all, sir.'

'You were a psychoanalyst?' Colette asked Younger.

'Didn't I mention it?' he replied.

'He never told you he was once my most promising follower in America?' asked Freud.

'No,' said Colette.

'Certainly,' said Freud. 'The first time we met, Younger conducted an analysis under my supervision — of the girl who became his wife.'

'Oh yes,' said Colette. 'Of course.'

Younger said nothing.

'He didn't tell you he was married?' asked Freud.

Colette colored. 'He doesn't tell me anything about himself.'

'I see. Well, he isn't married anymore, in case the subject is of interest. But he's told you what analysis consists of, surely?'

'No, not that either.'

'I'd better explain then — take a seat, please,' said Freud, glancing at Younger. Then he called out to his maid, instructed her to bring tea, and eased himself into a comfortable chair. 'You're a scientist, Miss Rousseau?'

'I'm studying to be one. A radiochemist. I'll be working in Madame Curie's institute. My post begins next week.'

'I see. Good. As a scientist, you will easily follow what I'm about to say. When a child is to be analyzed, we've found it necessary for the parent — or guardian, in your case — to be informed in advance of what we analysts do. That's why Younger has given me an opportunity to speak with you first.'

Younger and Colette had left Luc at the hotel. Paula, the Freuds' maid, came in with a tea service.

'All neuroses,' Freud went on as the maid poured tea, 'are caused by memories, typically a memory from long ago, involving a forbidden wish. The wishes from which neurotics suffer are not unique to them. We all had them in our childhood, but with neurotics, something prevents these recollections from being forgotten and disposed of in the ordinary way. They linger in the recesses of the individual's mind — so well hidden that my patients initially are not even conscious of them. The aim of analysis is to make the patient conscious of these repressed memories.'

'In order to forget them?' asked Colette.

'In order to be free of them,' replied Freud. 'But the process is seldom an easy one, because the truth can be difficult to accept. Invariably the patient — and the patient's family — will resist our interpretations, resist them quite forcefully. There can be good reason. Once the truth is out, the family may be changed unalterably.'

Colette frowned. 'The family?'

'Yes. In fact that's often how we know we've arrived at the truth: the patient's family suddenly demands that the analysis come to an end. Although occasionally there are other, stronger proofs. I'll give you an example. I have a patient — like you, French by birth — from a family of considerable rank and wealth. Her complaint is frigidity.'

Younger shifted. The carnal explicitness of psychoanalysis was chief among the reasons Younger didn't like discussing it with Colette.

'In one of her first sessions,' Freud continued, 'this patient, an attractive woman of about forty, described a dream she'd had the night before. She was in the Bois de Boulogne. A couple she knew lay down on a double bed right there in the park, on the green grass by a lake. That was all — nothing more. What would you say that dream meant, Miss Rousseau?'

'I don't know,' answered Colette. 'Do dreams have meaning?'

'Most assuredly. I informed her that she had witnessed a scene of sexual intercourse that she was not supposed to have seen — perhaps more than one — when she was a small child, probably between the ages of three and five. She replied that such a thing was impossible, because she grew up with no mother. But of course she'd had nurses. Suddenly she remembered that her first nurse had left the family abruptly when she was five. She had never known why. I said it was likely this nurse was involved in her dream. So she made inquiries back home.

'She asked everyone, including the longtime servants. They all denied anything untoward in the nurse's departure, and she reported back to me that I must be mistaken. Then she had another dream, in which this very nurse appeared, but with a horse-like face. I told her that this represented — but, Younger, perhaps you know what the second dream represented?'

'No,' answered Younger.

'No? In that case,' replied Freud, 'why don't you tell Miss Rousseau what I said it meant?'

'I'm not sure the subject matter is appropriate.'

'For me?' asked Colette sharply.

'If Miss Rousseau is going to consent to her brother's treatment,' said Freud, 'don't you think she should know what she's consenting to?'

'Very well,' said Younger. 'To begin with, Dr Freud would probably have said that the nurse's horse-like face was an example of condensation: it represented both the nurse herself and the man she slept with.'

'Good,' said Freud, looking genuinely pleased. 'And who was that man?'

'The patient's father was a horseman, I suppose?'

'No,' Freud replied, giving nothing else away

'Did she associate him with horses?'

'Not to my knowledge.'

Younger paused. 'But horses were kept on the property?'

'They had a stable,' said Freud. 'For their carriages.'

'In that case,' Younger reflected, 'I suspect you would have said that the man the nurse slept with was someone involved with those horses — but associated as well in some way with the patient's father.'

'Excellent!' cried Freud. 'I told her that her nurse was in all probability involved with their groomsman, who was in fact related to her father. She answered that she had already questioned the groomsman he was one of the servants who had told her the nurse had done nothing illicit. I said she might wish to question him again.'

'Did she?' asked Colette.

'She did indeed,' replied Freud. 'She went to the man and told him she knew all about his affair with her nurse. Whereupon he confessed everything. Their tryst was the stable. The nurse would feed my patient a syrup that made her very drowsy. They would lay her down on a bed of hay and proceed to their business. The groomsman added, by the way, that the maid was quite hot-blooded — he was afraid sometimes she might die of pleasure. The affair began when my patient was three and continued until she was five, when the lovers were discovered and the maid was dismissed.'

'But that's incredible,' cried Colette. 'Vraiment incroyable.'

'Well done, my boy,' Freud said to Younger, as if he deserved the credit, and rose to indicate that the interview was over. 'You must join us for dinner this evening, both of you. Martha, my wife, especially invites you. Bring your brother, Fraulein. It will give me a better sense of how to proceed.'

Colette said she would be honored.

'Dr Freud,' said Younger, 'might I have a word with you?'

'I was about to ask the same of you. Will you excuse us for five minutes, Miss Rousseau? Younger, come to my study.'

'And how exactly,' asked Freud, seated behind the desk in his private study, which was populated by even more antiquities, 'do you expect me to analyze a boy who can't talk?'

'But you-'

'It's like the beginning of a joke: Did you hear about the mute who went to see Sigmund Freud? Your behavior, my boy, wants analyzing.'

'My behavior?'

Freud raised the lid of a wooden box. 'Cigar?'

'Thank you.'

Freud cut the cigar with fine, delicate scissors. 'Well, you have something to say to me, and I to you. Let's start with what you want to tell me.'

Younger considered how to put it.

'Will you permit me?' asked Freud. 'You want to say, first of all, that bringing the boy to me wasn't your idea.'

Younger didn't reply.

'If it had been your idea,' said Freud, 'you would have explained psychoanalysis to Miss Rousseau, told her you'd practiced it, described its benefits, and so on. You did none of these things. The idea was therefore hers. Moreover, the reason you were reluctant to have the boy analyzed is what you expect me to say about his condition. Miss Rousseau has obviously been the boy's substitute-mother for some time. You expect me to conclude that he therefore wants to sleep with her, and you want me to keep that information from her.'

Younger was astounded. 'There's only one other man alive,' he said, 'whom I constantly ask how he knows what he knows, and he happens to be listening to this story right now.'

'You didn't say that,' said Littlemore, his badly scuffed black shoes once again crossed on top of the kitchen table. 'Don't interrupt like that. It spoils the — uh-'

'Dramatic effect?'

'Yeah. You know, this Freud guy, he should have been a detective. But you mixed things up pretty good there, Doc. You made it sound like, according to your man Freud, Luc wants to sleep with Colette. And he wants to sleep with her because she's been his mom all these years!'

Littlemore broke into a loud laugh. He stopped when he saw Younger's unchanged expression. 'He doesn't think that,' said Littlemore. Younger nodded. 'No, he doesn't,' said Littlemore.

'That's why I stopped practicing psychoanalysis,' answered Younger. 'I told Freud ten years ago I didn't believe in it. That's how he knew what I was thinking.' 'So what did you say?'

'Yes, I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell her that, Dr Freud,' answered Younger. 'She'll believe it's true.'

'Whereas you don't.'

'No, sir.'

Freud smoked his cigar, nodding.

'I'm sorry,' Younger added, 'but I can't persuade myself that Luc's difficulties have anything to do with a desire to sleep with his sister, his mother, or any member of his family. If he has a neurosis at all, it's a sort of war neurosis. Not sexual at all.'

'Not sexual — a diagnosis you base on what evidence? You remind me of the government physicians who attended our conference in Budapest. "Yes, we have to hand it to Freud. Yes, the old man was right about the unconscious after all. Yes, the war neuroses are caused by unconscious memories, just as Freud always said. But that disgusting sexual business? Thank God it has nothing to do with shell shock." In fact not one case of war neurosis has yet been analyzed all the way down to its roots. We don't know what connection it has to childhood wishes. That's why I'm so interested in Miss Rousseau's brother.'

'To see if you can find Oedipus beneath his symptoms?'

'If he's there, why not find him? But don't be so sure what I expect to find. Something else may be hiding in the boy. I've seen something new, Younger — dimly, but I've seen it. Perhaps another ghost in the cellar.'

'What is it?'

'I can't tell you, because I don't know.' Freud tamped ash from his cigar. 'But we haven't gotten to what I wanted to say to you.'

'You want me to reconsider my rejection of the Oedipus complex.'

'I want you to practice psychoanalysis again. Why are you here?'

'Miss Rousseau-'

'Wanted her brother analyzed,' interrupted Freud, 'and you're in love with her, so you said yes to please her. Obviously. Apart from that.'

'Apart from that?'

'Assuming the boy can be analyzed at all, you could have done it yourself. There was no need to travel to Austria. Indeed coming here was illogical given that Miss Rousseau plans to return to Paris shortly; an analysis cannot be conducted in a week or two, as you well know. It follows that you had another reason for coming.'

'Which was?' asked Younger.

'You wanted to see me,' said Freud.

Younger reflected. There was a long pause before he finally answered: 'That's true.'

'Why?'

'I think to ask you something.'

Freud waited. There was a longer silence.

'I have no — ' said Younger, looking for the right word, — 'no more faith.'

'The loss of religious faith,' replied Freud, 'is the beginning of maturity.'

'Not religious faith,' said Younger.

Freud waited.

'The war,' said Younger. 'Millions of men, millions upon millions of young men, killed for nothing. Meaningless slaughter. Countless more crippled and maimed.'

'Ah,' said Freud. 'Yes. Such destruction as we have lived through is very hard to fathom. Everything I believed I knew about the mind falls short in the face of it. But that's still not why you're here.'

Younger didn't reply.

'The war isn't what you want to ask me about,' added Freud.

'I don't see a point anymore,' said Younger. 'I don't see — the possibility of a point. I have thoughts, I have desires, but I no longer see any purpose.' His right fist clenched; he made it relax. 'Can one live without purpose?'

'The demand that your life have a purpose, my boy, is something you acquired from your parents, probably your father — something to be analyzed.'

'To say that,' replied Younger, 'is to concede that there is no purpose.'

'Then I can't help you.'

Another pause.

'You're not smoking,' said Freud, noticing that Younger's cigar was out and offering him a light. 'I've followed your career from afar. Brill has kept me informed. You've done well.'

'Thank you.'

'You fought?' asked Freud.

'Yes.'

'My sons too. Martin is still a prisoner, in Italy.' Freud drew on his cigar. 'I was very sorry to hear about your wife's death. A terrible thing. Do you treat women badly?'

'I beg your pardon?'

'You never remarried. You have an exaggerated idea of female innocence, to judge by your reluctance to speak about sexuality in front of Miss Rousseau. I'm wondering if you habitually mistreat women.'

'Why would I mistreat women?'

'It's a perfectly common reaction. A man who idealizes women not infrequently maintains a low opinion of them at the same time.'

'I don't have a low opinion of women. I have a high opinion of them.'

'I'm only observing. It was after your wife died that you turned away from psychology. You turned away from the mind.'

'I studied the mind,' replied Younger. 'Biologically.'

'That was how you turned away from it — probably a way of striking hack.'

'At whom?'

'At your wife. At me, I suppose. At yourself.'

Younger said nothing.

'You abandoned psychoanalysis,' Freud continued, 'and you mistreat women for the same reason: because of a sense of responsibility for your wife's death.'

'That's absurd. I wasn't responsible for her death.'

'Absurdity is an offense to logic,' said Freud, 'but in the mind logic is not master.'

Colette was no longer in the consulting room when the two men emerged from Freud's study. Younger went outside, but didn't find her on the street either. He walked down Berggasse toward the canal. He thought she might have taken a walk to see the Danube. She wasn't there. Younger stared at the water a long time.

Back at the Hotel Bristol, Younger asked Luc if his sister had returned. The boy shook his head and showed Younger a picture he had drawn.

'Very accomplished,' said Younger. The boy had drawn a tree with many limbs. On several of those branches animals perched, each of them staring at the viewer with large, hungry eyes. 'Are they dogs?'

Luc shook his head.

'Wolves?'

The boy nodded.

'You realize, little man,' said Younger, 'we don't even know if you can speak. Physically, that is.'

Luc looked interested, but disinterested, simultaneously.

'But you know if you can,' said Younger. 'I know you know. And if you can't speak, Luc, there's no reason for you to go to Dr Freud. He's not that kind of doctor.'

The boy remained still.

'But if you can,' Younger continued, 'you could get out of all this very easily. By talking. Get out of seeing the doctor. Get out of that school you're in. Make your sister very happy.'

Luc stared at Younger a long while before turning his drawing over and writing a message on the back. It was only the second time he'd done so with Younger. The page bore two words: You're wrong.

Watching the boy sit down in a corner with one of his books, Younger wondered on which point he'd been wrong. That Luc knew if he could speak? Or that his talking would make his sister happy?

Colette returned to the hotel an hour later.

'You disappeared,' said Younger.

'I went-' she began.

'To the Grubers'.'

'Yes. I walked. But the address wasn't their house,' she replied. 'It wasn't a residence at all. I couldn't find out anything. I'm not even sure what kind of place it was. A concert hall, maybe. Could you help me?'

Younger accompanied her back to the address to translate. It proved to be a music school. A secretary, kind enough to look in the school records, found that a student by the name of Hans Gruber had attended the school — or at least applied to it — in 1914. She gave them a new address, which, they learned from their cab driver, was in the Hutteldorf district, almost two hours away by horse-drawn, although the trip would be faster and cheaper by train. Colette declared that she would go by herself tomorrow.

'Don't be silly. I'll come with you,' said Younger.

That evening, Martha Freud, her sister Minna, and the Freuds' maid Paula all fawned over Luc, pronouncing him the most adorable schmдchtige Kerlchen in the world. Martha apologized repeatedly for the meagerness of the dinner fare, which in fact was the opposite of meager, but was extremely simple, as if the Freuds were country farmers.

'The awful war,' said Martha.

'At least the right side won,' declared Freud.

Martha asked how her husband could say such a thing when they had lost everything.

'We didn't lose everything, my dear,' said Freud chidingly.

'Only our life's savings,' replied Martha. 'We had it all in state bonds. The safest possible investment — everyone said so. There were pictures of Emperor Franz Josef on every one.'

'And now they are worth face value,' said Freud.

'They're worth nothing!' said Martha.

'Just what I said, my dear,' answered Freud. 'But our sons are unhurt, and our daughters are happy. True, we don't have Martin home yet, but he's better off where he is. As a prisoner, he's fed every day, while Vienna is starving. My patients pay me in goat's milk and hen's eggs — which has at least kept food on our table. But our movement, Younger, is rich. We received a bequest — a million crowns — from a Hungarian patient. When the money is released, we're going to build free clinics in Berlin and Hungary. Budapest will be our new center. Your old friend Ferenczi has just been appointed professor of psychology there.'

After finishing his meal, Luc was permitted to leave the table. He sat in a corner, absorbed in one of Freud's books.

'Why don't you let the boy stay here a night or two?' Freud asked Colette. 'I can't have proper sessions with him, but if he were under my roof, I could at least observe him.'

Younger found himself inwardly favoring Freud's plan, but not for psychiatric reasons. If the boy stayed with the Freuds, that would leave the two of them — Colette and Younger — alone in the hotel.

'You could stay too, Miss Rousseau,' Freud continued. 'Our nest is empty. Anna is away visiting her sister in Berlin. You could stay in her room.'

Younger spent the night by himself.

Colette was supposed to call at the hotel after breakfast the next morning. She did call after breakfast — but by then it was also after lunch.

'Martha and Minna took Luc to an amusement park,' she said, as if that fact explained the several hours she had been unaccounted for. 'He's so powerful — Dr Freud. Those eyes. He sees everything.'

'I know where you've been,' replied Younger. 'The Hutteldorf.'

'Yes. There was a train station near the Freuds'. I didn't want to trouble you. But-' she raised her eyebrows importuningly.

'You need to go back,' said Younger.

'Could you help me just one more time?' she asked, smiling her prettiest smile. 'I found the building where I think he used to live, but I couldn't understand anyone. I don't think the Grubers live there anymore, but maybe someone can tell us where they've gone. The train is quite fast.'

'Where are his things?' Younger asked her as they rode the metropolitan rail to the Hutteldorf. Vienna's winter had evidently been long and cold: although it was nearly spring, not a tree was yet in bud.

'Things?' answered Colette.

'Your soldier's belongings. Which you were going to return to his family. Did you forget them?'

'Of course not,' she said. 'I told you — I don't think the Grubers live where we're going. Why did you hide it from me — that you were married?'

'I didn't.'

'You never told me.'

'You never asked.'

'Yes I did,' replied Colette. 'You said you didn't believe in marriage.'

'Which was true.'

She looked out the window. 'You tell me nothing. It's just like lying. It is lying.'

'Not speaking isn't lying,' he said.

'It is when it tricks someone. I'd rather you lied. At least if you lied, I'd know you cared what I thought.'

They sat in silence as the train rumbled along the banks of the brown, unstirred Danube. Younger watched her profile. He wondered why or how he saw vulnerability in her, when none showed anywhere on her face or figure. 'I do care,' he said.

'You don't.'

It was a principle with Younger not to say a word more about himself, his past, his thoughts, than he had to — at least not to women. They always asked him to; he never did. Evidently he was losing his principles. 'It was November of 1909,' he said. 'Her name was Nora. Would you like to hear about it?'

'If you don't mind telling me.'

'She was the most beautiful girl I'd ever met,' he continued, 'to that point. Totally different from you. Blonde. So fragile you thought she might break in your hands. Self-destructive too. I guess I liked that. We had a good six months. In my experience, that's not too bad — a good six months. But there were danger signs even then. I remember taking her shopping for wedding gowns. She got it into her head that the mannequin modeling dresses for us — a girl of about sixteen — was mocking her. I made the mistake of asking Nora what the girl had done. She accused me of defending her. I made the further mistake of laughing. That fight lasted two days. But things really began in earnest after the wedding, when she found some notebooks of mine. Psychoanalytic notebooks; case summaries. My women patients tended to — well — they usually began acting as if they were in love with me, which is exactly what's supposed to happen in psychoanalysis. You can ask Freud if you don't believe me.'

'Of course I believe you,' said Colette.

'The notebooks recorded what happened during each hour of analysis: what my patients said to me, my own inner reactions to them, and so forth.'

'And so forth?'

'Yes.'

'You — you liked your patients? And you said so in your notebooks?'

'One of them. Her name was Rachel.'

'Rachel. Was she pretty?'

'Her figure was like yours,' Younger replied. 'So yes, she was pretty.'

'Did she want to sleep with you?'

'She certainly did,' he said.

'You mean you did to her what you tried to do to me — and she let you.'

Younger only looked at Colette.

'I don't blame you,' she said. 'A pretty girl coming to your office every day and lying down on a couch and telling you her secrets? If I were a man, I would have found that — appealing.'

'Many analysts sleep with their patients. Freud doesn't do it. I didn't either.'

'You did with Nora,' said Colette.

'Not before I'd married her. And she wasn't my patient — not really.'

'I see. You didn't do anything with Rachel; you only said in your notebook that you were attracted to her. So you didn't understand why your wife was upset with you.'

'That's right,' said Younger.

'Well, that was very foolish of you.'

'Really? If women want their men never to have been attracted to another girl in all their lives, it's not the men who are being foolish.'

'What did you say to Nora?' asked Colette.

'I chided her for having read my notes, which were confidential. That was an error. She charged me with trying to hide my "romances" from her. She developed an elaborate theory according to which the entire notion of confidentiality in psychoanalysis was designed to allow doctors to have affairs with their female patients. A point came when not an evening would go by without some reference to my "romances." She said that I disgusted her. That I was unfeeling. That I was weak. She began to throw things. First at the walls, then at me.'

'And you were like a stone — impassive.'

'More or less.'

'That must have made her even angrier,' said Colette.

'Yes. She started to hit me. And kick me. At least she tried to.'

'What did you do?'

'Well, she was very young, and she'd been through some nightmarish events. On top of which she was very slight. I found it almost endearing when she tried to hit me. So I took it, suppressing my temper. Actually, I don't think I knew the extent to which my temper required suppression.

'One evening,' Younger went on, 'I came home to find a cheval glass of ours, an antique, a wedding present from my aunt, lying in pieces on the parlor floor. It turned out that Nora had deliberately broken it. That night she fought more furiously than ever. One of her blows landed, and I finally struck her — with the back of my hand, against her cheek. The force of it was stronger than I intended. She fell to the floor. To my astonishment, she apologized. It was the first time she'd ever apologized. She railed at her own folly, praised me for my kindness, and protested her undying love for me. She threw her arms around me and begged my forgiveness. She began to cry. I thought we had finally come to the end of it.

'Instead a pattern had begun. Our quarreling would start again, swell to its old proportions, and then we'd come to blows. Or rather, she would try to land blows until at last I struck her, at which point she would soften and beg to be forgiven. But the strangest thing of all was that I discovered that I could forestall the worst of our quarreling by — a — by cutting straight to the end of the pattern, in our intimate life.'

'I don't understand,' said Colette.

'No, and I'm not going to explain it,' said Younger. 'But it worked. For a while at least; not for long. When we were out in public — on a street, in a theater, anywhere — Nora began flying into rages, accusing me of being attracted to other women. Which I was, naturally, if they were attractive. At first I didn't deny her accusations, but in the end just to quiet her down, I told her she was imagining it — that it was all in her head. She knew I was lying, but she seemed to prefer the lie to the truth.

'Then the young wife of a rich old patient asked me to make a house call. Her husband was dying. I was there a long while. Very sad. When I got home that night, I found myself concealing it from Nora. There was nothing to conceal, but the wife was famously charming — she'd been an actress — and I knew if I told Nora, there would have been an endless night of pointless recriminations. It had all become so boring, so monotonous. So I told her a different story; she believed me. At that moment, I realized I no longer loved my wife.

'About two months later, the same woman called me again. Her husband was dead, and she was resuming her career on Broadway. She said she had a painfulness in her lower back from rehearsals. She asked me to come to her house and have a look at it. I did. After that she asked me to make house calls several times a week. I lied about it recklessly to Nora.

'One day a note from the actress came to our apartment, requesting my presence as soon as possible. Of course Nora saw the note, and of course she understood at once all the lies I'd been telling her. She accused me of the affair; I confessed it. We divorced, scandalously, having been married little more than a year — and the most comic fact was that I hadn't had an affair at all. At least it would have been comic if Nora hadn't died shortly afterward. They wired me the news in Boston. She had fallen from a subway platform into a train. They called it an accident, but I doubt it. The one thing they did discover was that she was with child when she died. Freud says I feel responsible for her death.'

'Do you?' asked Colette.

'It's worse than that. I was happy she was dead. I'm still happy about it, to this day.'

Hutteldorf Station was the end of the line. In the town center of an otherwise bucolic and thickly wooded district stood a few low apartment houses. One of these was Gruber s address, but no one by that name lived there now. Younger discovered nothing useful until he approached a matronly woman sweeping the courtyard.

'Hans Gruber?' she said. 'Who all the girls were mad about? The tall young man with the blond hair and beautiful blue eyes?'

Younger translated this description without comment. Precisely by not reacting to it, Colette acknowledged its accuracy. He thought he saw color rising to her face.

'Of course I remember,' said the woman. 'What a lazy, haughty one he was. He had a stipend — his father had died, maybe? — so he didn't have to work. Wouldn't lift a finger. Just took long walks in the woods, playing his violin any old place. And what a temper. Ordered us around when he was sober, and insulted us when he was drunk.'

'It seems you're devoting a lot of effort,' said Younger to Colette after translating these comments, 'to someone who doesn't much deserve it.'

Colette frowned and shook her head, but didn't answer.

Younger explained their errand to the charwoman and asked if any of the Grubers still lived nearby

'So he's dead,' replied the woman. 'Well, that's another one. No, the family I never knew. He came from one of those river towns in the west, near Bavaria. I don't know where. Ask at the Three Hussars near St. Stephen's. That's where he ate all his dinners. Maybe someone there will know.'

The sun had set when they arrived back in central Vienna. In the taxi Younger asked the driver if he knew a restaurant called the Three Hussars. The driver said the restaurant was closed, but would be open again Thursday.

'It's just as well,' said Colette to Younger. 'I don't want you to come with me. I've taken up too much of your time already.'

'There's a game your brother plays, Fraulein,' Freud said to Colette that evening, 'with a fishing reel and string. He makes sounds when he plays. A sort of ohh and ahh. Do you know what he's saying?'

'Just nonsense,' answered Colette. 'Does the game mean something?'

'It means, for one thing, that there's nothing wrong with his vocal cords,' said Freud.

'To play the same game over and over,' asked Colette, 'is it very bad?'

'It's interesting,' said Freud.

Treating his dog to its walk the next morning, as the early sunshine shimmered off damp cobblestones, Sigmund Freud held the hand of a little French boy. Their conversation was distinctly one-sided. Freud chatted amiably, in French, recounting to Luc tales from Greek and Egyptian mythology. The boy was absorbed, but did not respond.

In a small triangular park, they came on a crowd encircling a man convulsing on the grass. His workingman's clothes were clean, if patched and fraying. His cap, evidently thrown to the ground when the fit began, lay next to his writhing body.

'If you were out with my wife and her sister,' Freud said quietly to the boy, 'they would undoubtedly cover your eyes at this point. Shall I cover your eyes?'

Luc shook his head. He exhibited none of the horror that children typically display in the presence of illness. Some in the crowd, taking pity on an epileptic, dropped coins into the man's cap. Eventually Freud led the boy away.

Luc wore a thoughtful expression. Then he tugged at Freud's hand and looked up at him, a question having formed in his eyes.

'What is it?' asked Freud.

The boy tugged again.

'That won't do, little fellow,' said Freud. 'I can't explain anything if I don't know what's troubling you.'

Luc stared, looked away, stared up at Freud again. Then he began pulling his pockets inside out.

Freud watched him, petting his dog's ears. At last he understood: 'You want to know why I didn't give the man any money?'

Luc nodded.

'Because he didn't do it well enough,' answered Freud.

Younger, alone in Vienna's old quarter, happened the next day on an open-air market, large and well stocked. It was clear that Freud wouldn't take money for treating Luc, so Younger decided to have a delivery made to number 19 Berggasse: fresh fruits and flowers; milk, eggs, chickens, ropes of sausage; wine, chocolates, and a few boxes of tinned goods as well.

But he stayed away from the Freuds' the entire day. There were several old, obscure churches he wanted to see. And there was the fact that Colette was hiding something from him.

'By any chance, Miss Rousseau,' asked Freud that night, 'was German spoken in your family?'

Freud had seen his patients that day, finished his correspondence, added notes to the drafts of two different papers he was working on, and apparently found time in addition to interact with Luc. He was standing in the doorway of the kitchen, where Colette was helping the maid clean up.

'We spoke French of course,' she answered.

'No German at all?' asked Freud. 'When you were a child, perhaps?'

'Grandmother was Austrian — she knew German,' said Colette smiling. 'She used to play a game with us in German when we were very little. She would hide her face behind her hands and say fort, then show us her face again and say da!

'Fort and da — "gone" and "there."'

Colette washed the dishes.

'You're pensive, Fraulein,' he said.

'I'm not,' she replied, looking steadily at her work. 'I was just wishing I could speak German.'

'If what you're concealing,' answered Freud, 'is connected to your brother, Miss Rousseau, I should like to know it. Otherwise, I have no wish to intrude.'

The Three Hussars, located on a quaint, uneven lane in the oldest quarter of Vienna, came alive at eleven-thirty Thursday morning Shutters parted, windows opened, the front door was unlocked, and an aproned waiter, all black and white, came out to sweep the sidewalk. This man was approached by a very pretty French girl, who smiled shyly and was directed by him into the restaurant.

Younger, installed at a cafe down the street, watched and waited.

Ten minutes later, the girl emerged, anxiety furrowing her forehead. Younger followed her.

Every street in Vienna's old quarter leads to a single large square — the Stephansplatz — where stands the cathedral of St. Stephen, massive, dark, Gothic, and impregnable, its roof incongruously striped with red and green zigzags, its south tower as absurdly huge as the left claw of a fiddler crab, dwarfing the rest of the body.

Colette passed through the gigantic wooden doors of the cathedral. She lit a candle, dipped two fingers into a stone bowl of water, crossed herself, took a seat on a lonely pew in the cavernous hall near a column three times her width, and bowed her head. A long while later, she got up and hurried out, never seeing Younger in the shadowy recesses of one of the chapels.

She walked more than a mile, stopping several times to ask for directions, showing a piece of paper that evidently bore an address. Having crossed the Ring and then the canal, she entered a large, ungainly building. It was a police station. After perhaps half an hour, she came out again. Younger, smoking, was waiting for her next to the doorway.

'So your Hans is alive,' he said.

She froze as if a spotlight had picked her out of the darkness. 'You followed me?'

He hadn't answered when a kindly-looking, mutton-chopped police officer hurried out of the station. 'Ah, Mademoiselle, I forgot to tell you,' he said in broken French. 'Visiting hours end at two. They are very strict at the prison. If you're not there before two, you won't see your fiancй until tomorrow.'

'Thank you,' said Colette in the awkward silence that ensued.

'Not at all,' replied the officer, beaming genially. He must have taken Younger for a friend or member of the family, because he said to him, 'So touching, two young people falling in love during the war, one from either side. If a single good thing can come from all the death, maybe this will be it. 'The officer bid Colette goodbye and returned into the station.

'You should have told me,' said Younger. 'I-'

'I'd still have brought you to Vienna. I'd still have introduced you to Freud. I'd probably have paid for your honeymoon. Whatever you'd asked me, I would have given you.'

She surprised him with her answer: 'You want to kill me.'

'I want to marry you.'

She shook her head: 'I can't.'

They looked at each other. 'I'm too late,' said Younger, 'aren't I?'

Colette looked away — then nodded.

Younger dined, despite himself, at the Three Hussars that evening, a wood-beamed, low-ceilinged restaurant with uneven floors and tables barely large enough to fit the enormous schnitzels served to virtually every customer.

When the waiter was clearing his dishes, Younger placed a substantial number of bank notes on the table and told the man that he was looking for an old friend of his named Hans — Hans Gruber — who was in jail and who used to frequent the Three Hussars. The waiter cheerfully remarked that Hans's fiancй had stopped by the restaurant that very day, at lunchtime, adding for good measure that the girl was French, very good-looking and drooling with affection for him — but then Hans was always lucky with the fairer sex.

Younger drove his meat knife through the wad of bank notes, pinning them to the wood table. He stood, towering over the waiter, and his voice came out barely above a whisper: 'What's Hans in for?'

'He was in the rally,' stammered the waiter, although it wasn't clear whether he was more in fear of physical force or pecuniary loss.

'What rally?'

'The league rally. For the Anschluss — the union with Germany.'

'What league?'

'The league.'

Younger left, not because there was no more information to be had, but because he was concerned he might hurt someone if he didn't.

'So,' Freud said to Younger late that night in the splendid lobby of the Hotel Bristol. 'I have a conjecture.'

The statement took a moment to penetrate. Freud was on his feet, hands crossed behind him, coat hanging down from his shoulders, while Younger sat at a low table before an empty snifter of brandy. Freud had been there for more than a minute. Younger hadn't seen him.

'I beg your pardon,' said Younger, coming to his senses.

'My conjecture is that you've discovered what Miss Rousseau has been hiding,' said Freud.

'You knew?' asked Younger.

'Knew what?'

'That she's engaged?'

'Certainly I didn't know. Engaged? Why didn't she tell you?'

Younger shook his head.

'Of the three of you,' said Freud, 'I think I'm analyzing the one who needs it least.'

'Is there a league in Vienna,' asked Younger, 'that marches in favor of union with Germany?'

'The Anti-Semitic League.'

'They call themselves Anti-Semitic?'

'Proudly. In fact most of them are simply anti-Socialist — no more anti-Jewish than anyone else. There was a demonstration a couple of months ago. Several of them were jailed. Why?'

'One of those is Colette's fiancй.'

'I see,' said Freud. 'What are you going to do?'

'Leave Vienna. But I-'

'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.'

'I believe in God.'

'Well, I don't want to marry you either.'

'You're just sore because she lied to you about Hans.'

'I'm sore because I wanted her and never had her,' said Younger. 'Freud was right — I do mistreat women. Once I have them, I don't want them anymore. I use them up. I can't stand the sight of them after three months, and I toss them aside. She's better off with Hans. Much better.'

'She doesn't want Hans. She changed her mind.'

'And she'll change it again,' said Younger. He finished off his glass and spoke more quietly: 'You think she's forgotten him — the man she was engaged to? That's not how women work. I'll tell you what's going to happen. She'll go looking for him. Count on it. Sooner or later, she'll realize she needs to see her Hans again — just once — just to be sure.'

Stirrings came from down the hall, then footsteps. The men glanced at each other. Colette entered the room, squinting, wearing a nightgown too large for her, borrowed from Littlemore's wife. Only youth is beautiful at six in the morning; Colette, despite a confusion of hair, was beautiful. Both men rose.

'Morning, Miss,' said Littlemore. 'Coffee?'

'Yes, please — oh, I'll do it; sit down, you two invalids,' she answered. Bursts of hot water were sputtering in the glass button on the coffee pot's lid. Rubbing her eyes, Colette saw the empty whiskey bottle on the table. 'Isn't that illegal here?'

'You can drink it at home,' said Littlemore; 'you just can't buy it or sell it. Great policy. A lot of folks are making spirits in their bathtubs.

Say, I never complimented you, Miss, on that trick you pulled last night — getting them to steal your radium so we could trace you.'

'Thank you, Jimmy,' said Colette. 'I was lucky.'

'She did that on purpose?' asked Younger.

'Sure,' said Littlemore. 'Kind of obvious, Doc. How many times did the kidnappers go to the Miss's hotel room?'

'I don't know — twice?' asked Younger.

'Twice,' agreed Littlemore. 'The first time, they took Luc. They already had him when you called, remember? But when we got there, Drobac was in the hallway with his pockets stuffed, and the ash next to the Miss's case was still warm. In other words, he went back a second time, and that's when he took the elements. So why didn't he take them the first time if they were worth all that dough? Because he didn't know about them. How'd he find out about them? The Miss must have told him. The only question was whether she let it slip by accident or on purpose. Given how smart the Miss is, I had to figure on purpose.'

Younger nodded. 'I'm impressed — doubly impressed.'

'I have to go back, Stratham,' said Colette.

'To the hotel?' asked Younger.

'To Europe.' Colette unplugged the percolator. She poured coffee.

Littlemore looked at Younger.

'You can't — you're in charge of Boltwood's laboratory,' said Younger. 'Don't judge America because of what happened yesterday. It's safe here.'

'It's not that,' she answered. 'I received a letter. From Austria. It was in the mail that Jimmy's friend Spanky brought back from the hotel.'

'Stanky, Miss,' said Littlemore. 'Not Spanky.'

Younger said nothing.

'Who was the letter from?' asked Littlemore.

'From a policeman who helped me once when I was in Vienna,' she replied. 'Hans is getting out of jail, Stratham. In just a few weeks. I have to go back.'