Vienna Secrets

79

Herr Poppmeier was supine, looking up at the ceiling with a vacant expression on his face.

“You will recall that we were discussing your wife’s second pregnancy.” Liebermann spoke softly. “You said that you had traveled to Steyr on a work assignment, and it was while you were there that you received the telegram containing news of the stillbirth. But I could not help noticing, Herr Poppmeier, a small speech error that you made. When I asked you where you were when the telegram arrived, you started to say Linz, but you corrected yourself and said Steyr instead. This is very strange, because people tend to remember exactly where they were at the time when they first received momentous news. I am sure, for example, that you could tell me where you were when the empress Elisabeth was assassinated. Think, Herr Poppmeier. Think very carefully. Were you really in Steyr?”

“You know,” Herr Poppmeier replied, “now that you mention it, my memories of that trip are a little vague. I’ve always put it down to shock. The news was so unexpected. Even so, I’m reasonably confident that I was in Steyr.”

“No, Herr Poppmeier. You were not in Steyr. Your wife informs me that you were staying in Linz.”

“Well, there you are,” said Poppmeier. “My mind is playing tricks on me.”

“And the question is, why should it be playing tricks on you? I would suggest that your memory has been distorted by a powerful wish. At the time when you received the telegram, you wished that you were not in Linz. You wished that you were in Steyr, and that is still the case.”

“Why should I have wanted to be in Steyr? I had no friends there to comfort me, no special affection for the place.”

“Then let me express the wish differently. It wasn’t that you wanted to be in Steyr. Rather, you wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere else other than Linz. You chose Steyr simply because it was one of your usual destinations.”

“Herr Doctor, this isn’t helping me very much.” Poppmeier scratched his head, and some flakes of dandruff fell onto the pillow. “This is all very confusing.”

“Then let us consider again your recurring dream, which will-I believe-clarify matters. The action of the dream takes place in a hotel that you likened to the Kaiser in Steyr. Once again, note the desire to be away from Linz. You appear in the dream as a priest, which reveals the presence of another wish, a wish that you had been celibate.”

“Ah yes,” said Poppmeier. “I see what you mean. The dream is an expression of regret. If I had been celibate, if I hadn’t made my wife pregnant in the first place, then the terrible confinement-and the baby’s death-might have been avoided.”

Liebermann tapped his pen on the chair arm.

“I favor another interpretation. After receiving news of your wife’s fateful confinement, you wished you had been celibate…”-Liebermann hesitated before adding-“not back in Vienna, but in Linz.”

Poppmeier rocked his head from side to side. “I’m not really following this. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“In your dream,” Liebermann persisted, “you were asked by a pretty nurse to give a dying child the last rites, and you refused. The dying child is, of course, your own stillborn child, and your refusal to administer the last rites represents the understandable difficulty you experienced in accepting what had transpired. Denial. A very common response when-”

“Yes, yes,” Poppmeier interrupted. “But what you said before. What did you mean, exactly? That I’d wished I’d been celibate in Linz?”

“You wished that you had not been conducting an assignation, Herr Poppmeier.” The jewelry salesman gasped. “I suspect,” Liebermann continued, “that the pretty nurse in the dream was your lover. When you read the telegram, you were horrified-not only by the news it contained but by your own iniquity, the extent of your betrayal. While you and your lover had been enjoying illicit pleasures, your wife had been suffering the agonies of a protracted labor, and had almost died attempting to bring your heir into the world. Subsequently, the memory of your dalliance in Linz was repressed. However, nothing in the unconscious is forgotten. The truth always asserts itself, if only when the censorship of the conscious mind is relaxed during sleep.”

Liebermann leaned back in his chair and observed the effect of his pronouncements on his patient. Poppmeier’s eyes were now glassy and unfocused.

“One must suppose,” Liebermann added, “that your guilt was amplified by some residue of childhood. Your promised siblings did not arrive, and you may have concluded at that tender age that their advent was being prevented magically by your own desire to retain the exclusive attention of your mother. It is possible that a trace of this magical thinking still survives. Thus, somewhere in the depths of your mind you harbor a belief that your assignation exercised a malign influence on your wife’s confinement.”

Liebermann wondered what Herr Poppmeier was thinking, whether repressed memories of Linz were now rising up and breaking into awareness.

“You wanted to make amends. You wanted to atone. And for you, that atonement has taken the form of symptoms. They are a compensation for your prior neglect. They are a means of sharing the burden of your wife’s current pregnancy. In effect, they are an apology and a reaffirmation of your love.”

“Dear God,” said Poppmeier hoarsely. “The train journey, the hotel bedroom… the woman. I had given her a ring from the Prestige range as an enticement. A heart-shaped ring-dear God-with an opal set in a decoration of perpendicular bars.” Poppmeier’s eyes closed tightly. His expression became anguished, and his lower lip trembled like a child’s. Tears trickled down his cheeks. “What am I to do, Herr Doctor?” he groaned. “Must I tell Arabelle? Confess?”

Liebermann sighed. “That is for you to decide. Our work is done now. I would be very surprised if your symptoms persist.”

The young doctor stood up, squeezed the jewelry salesman’s shoulder, and quietly left the room.