Vienna Secrets

58

FRAU ARABELLE POPPMEIER ENTERED the consulting room and hesitated by the door. She had mousy blond hair, bright eyes, and although not beautiful, she might have merited that accolade with the very slightest alteration of her features. Liebermann stood, walked around his desk, and rested his hands on a high-backed chair. It was obvious, from the looseness of her sunny yellow dress and her bulging abdomen, that Frau Poppmeier was pregnant. She saw how Liebermann’s gaze had momentarily lowered, and smiled coyly.

“Please, do come in.”

Exhibiting the ponderous gait typical of gravid women, she walked to the chair and took Liebermann’s offered hand. With this small assistance, she was able to achieve a graceful descent in spite of her condition.

“One moment,” said Liebermann. Snatching a pillow from the rest bed, he lodged it between the base of her spine and the back of the chair. “There, that should be more comfortable.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” she said.

Liebermann sat behind his desk and opened a file of blank pages.

“So, Frau Poppmeier, how can I help?”

“Well, it isn’t my problem, exactly. But then again, I suppose it is my problem-insofar as any problem that affects one’s nearest and dearest also affects oneself. It’s my husband, Ivo. He hasn’t been very well lately. He’s still working, but-”

“What is your husband’s occupation?” Liebermann interjected.

“He’s a salesman for a firm of jewelry designers and manufacturers. They have offices on the Graben.”

Liebermann began to take notes. “And where do you live?”

“On Krongasse.”

“In the fifth district?”

“Yes. Not far from the Naschmarkt. We’ve been very happy there. It’s a little cramped, I suppose… We already have a daughter, Leonie. She’s four now. But when the little one arrives”-Frau Poppmeier laid a hand on her belly and smiled-“we will probably have to move. I’d like to get an apartment somewhere around here, but Ivo says we can’t afford it. So perhaps it will have to be Landstrasse. It’s not that he isn’t doing well. In fact, he’s been promised a promotion next year. But one can’t help worrying, what with this problem of his.” Her lips became a horizontal, bloodless line. “He isn’t himself.”

“How do you mean-not himself?”

“He’s been sickly… less vigorous.”

Liebermann asked a few more questions but found that Frau Poppmeier’s answers were imprecise. She seemed embarrassed. A touch of color occasionally rose to her cheeks. Liebermann assumed that her husband’s problem was most probably sexual. The physical changes that altered a woman’s body during pregnancy increased libido in some men while reducing it in others. She had mentioned her husband being less vigorous, which sounded like a euphemism; however, it was most unusual for a woman to present on her husband’s behalf. This tended to happen only when the husband had become overly fond of drink. Liebermann decided that it would be in everyone’s interest to expedite matters by being direct.

“Frau Poppmeier, if your husband is suffering from a problem that is affecting your marital relations-”

“Oh, good heavens, no,” she quickly interrupted. Glancing down at her bulge, she added, “Ivo has always been able to function as a man. Our relations have become less intimate of late, but that is only because he is concerned for my and the little one’s safety.”

Raising the topic of sex had not caused Frau Poppmeier any awkwardness. What, then, was she so embarrassed about?

“Frau Poppmeier, you have suggested that your husband is out of sorts, unwell, not himself, but could you please try to be a little more specific?”

The young woman sighed, and began to enumerate her husband’s symptoms: indigestion, nausea, constipation, changes of appetite…

Liebermann looked up from his notes.

“Frau Poppmeier, I think there must be some mistake. This is the department of psychological medicine. It sounds like your husband requires the services of a specialist in gastric disorders, not a psychiatrist.”

“We’ve already seen one. Herr Dr. Felbiger.”

“Felbiger?”

“Yes. It was he who suggested we come to see you.”

Liebermann scratched his head. “Are these symptoms making your husband depressed?”

“Not really…” Frau Poppmeier shifted on her chair and grimaced. “This is rather difficult, Herr Doctor. My husband’s nausea tends to happen only in the morning… He retches but only occasionally vomits. I said that his appetite has changed, but really it would be more accurate to say that he has developed odd food cravings. Fads. And he complains of pressure in his pelvis, tightness of the abdomen, and…” She paused and adjusted the drop of her skirt.

“Yes?” Liebermann prompted.

“Quickening sensations.”

Liebermann put his pen down. Frau Poppmeier looked perfectly sane, but what if she wasn’t? What if everything she had said was an elaborate delusional fantasy? It certainly sounded that way. The young woman detected the change in his expression: the narrowing of his eyes, the setting of his jaw, both suggesting suspicion and doubt.

“Herr Doctor,” Frau Poppmeier continued, “I think you must be well aware of what these symptoms mean.”

Liebermann involuntarily glanced at the woman’s belly.

“What did Dr. Felbiger say?”

“What you are probably thinking but cannot say for fear of sounding foolish. My predicament exactly!” She threw her hands up in a desperate appeal to the heavens. “But yes, you are quite right. My husband appears to have gotten himself pregnant.”