Freud's Mistress

AMY EINHORN BOOKS

Published by G. P. Putnam's Sons

Publishers Since 1838

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

New York, New York 10014, USA

USA
•
Canada
•
UK
•
Ireland
•
Australia

New Zealand
•
India
•
South Africa
•
China

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

For more information about the Penguin Group visit penguin.com

Copyright © 2013 by Karen Mack and Jennifer Kaufman

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors' rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

Published simultaneously in Canada

“Amy Einhorn Books” and the “ae” logo are registered trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mack, Karen.

Freud's mistress : a novel / Karen Mack and Jennifer Kaufman.

pages cm

“AMY EINHORN BOOKS.”

ISBN 978-1-101-60823-4

1. Freud, Sigmund, 1856–1939—Fiction. 2. Psychoanalysts—Fiction. 3. Austria—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3613.A272548F74 2013 2013004036

813'.6—dc23

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors' imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

TO MOLLY FRIEDRICH AND AMY EINHORN

VIENNA, 1895

T
he season for suicides had begun.

The young woman sat at the writing desk by the window and dipped her pen into black ink. It scratched across the paper like a raven's claw. Outside, the sky was ashen gray. Since early November, the air had been bitter cold, and patches of ice had spread over the breadth of the Danube. Soon the river would be frozen solid until spring. Just the other week, she had read in the
Salonblatt
about a wealthy young aristocrat, dressed in bridal gown and veil, who jumped her steed off Kronprinz-Rudolf Bridge. The beautiful filly sank like a stone, and the woman's body washed up on the shore, shrouded in white satin.

She never thought it would come to this, but now here she was, at her sister's mercy, asking for help. She finished the letter at dawn, just as the bells of St. Stephen's rang out across the city. She sealed the envelope and placed it in the letter box outside the front door. She would remember this day. It was the beginning.

TWO DAYS EARLIER

The sky was raining ice, but the woman hurrying down the boulevard wore no coat or hat. She was carrying a bundle wrapped in stiff, coarse blankets, and the heavy load hampered her gait, causing her to favor one leg, then the other. Strands of long, wet hair lashed across her mouth and eyelids, and every few minutes she would pause, shifting the weight of her bundle onto one arm and hip, and exposing her free hand to brush the sleet off her face.

She crossed the Ringstrasse—the broad, tree-lined avenue that circled Vienna—then passed a row of massive apartment buildings, their exteriors casting glazed shadows on the cobblestones. The storm was getting worse, a constant downpour. Blinded by the wet, she continued on, splashing through puddles in her good leather boots, crossing Schwarzenbergplatz, the invisible boundary between the aristocracy and everyone else. A few hundred yards away, a row of opulent homes blazed with lights.

Earlier, in her haste to leave, she couldn't be bothered to run upstairs to get her woolen overcoat and gloves, and now she sorely regretted this rash decision. She was chilled to the bone. Idiot, she thought. My boots are ruined.

She slowed her pace and swept through the ornamental iron gates of the baroness's residence, heading around back to the servants' entrance. She rang the night bell and then knocked loudly, cursing softly and swaying with impatience. Open the damn door. There was a dull, aching pain in her side as a gust of icy wind drove her slightly off balance. She shifted the load over her shoulder, her fingers throbbing as she pounded on the door.

When the night maid finally appeared, Minna brushed past her in a fury. Took bloody long enough, she thought, but murmured a perfunctory “Good evening” and descended a dimly lit stairway to the basement kitchen. She carefully placed her bundle on a cot near “the Beast,” the enormous black furnace by the scullery. A frail, drowsy child emerged from the blankets and sat there silently as Minna pushed the cot closer to the furnace, slid the thin mattress back on its frame, and settled the child beneath a feeble candle flickering on a wooden shelf.

“Fräulein Bernays, you're wanted upstairs. The mistress has been ringing for over an hour,” the night maid said, adjusting her starched white cap. “Everyone suffers when you run about . . .” she added, sighing heavily as she bent over and wiped a mud print from the stairs. “I told the mistress you went for a walk, but she wasn't having any of it, said you must have gone somewhere . . .”

“If you must know, we've been out gargling gin. Haven't we, Flora?”

“Yes, Fräulein,” Flora said, with a weak smile. “And
then
we went to the doctor.”

“The child's delirious,” Minna said. “Cover up, dear, it's freezing in here.”

There was a draft coming from somewhere that made her long for dry clothes, and her head was pounding. She put her hand in her skirt pocket and fingered the brown paper parcel of medicine. Thank God—still there.

Earlier that day Minna had discovered Flora in a terrible state, attempting to do her chores but coughing so hard it brought her to her knees. Several times, Minna had dunked the pathetic little thing, wailing and hiccupping, in a cold bath to break the fever, but nothing seemed to work. The child was doomed, her cheeks shining with fever, the sweating sickness getting worse and worse. Minna could stand it no longer. She bundled her up and, without a word to anyone, set out to take the child to the doctor.

“My throat hurts,” Flora whimpered, struggling for breath, as Minna rang the bell at the physician's office.

“He'll take care of you,” she answered with an air of conviction she did not feel. “You're the baroness's charge, and very important.”

An elderly gentleman appeared in the doorway, blotting his mustache with a linen napkin. Minna could see a woman sitting at the dining table across the room, and there was an aroma of boiled beef and wine.

“Herr Doctor, my employer, the Baroness Wolff, wishes immediate treatment for this child. She is most concerned.”

The doctor hesitated a moment as Minna pushed by him, launching into a litany of the child's ailments: fever, coughing, nausea, loss of appetite. There was little reason to doubt her authority. Even without her overcoat, and despite the muck on her clothes, she was an elegant woman—willowy with a straight back, smooth skin, and perfect diction. In addition, she was a most convincing liar.

“Could she possibly have scarlet fever?” Minna asked, as the doctor led her to his offices in the back.

“Unspecified infection . . .” he concluded after an examination. “Bed rest for at least a month . . . linens changed twice a week . . . lozenges for the sore throat and Bayer's Heroin for her cough . . .”

Minna listened, nodding her head in agreement, all the while knowing what the doctor advised would be impossible to carry out in this household. In any event, how in heaven's name did Minna ever think she could get away with this? Her days, her evenings, even her Sundays belonged to the baroness. She was expected to serve at the pleasure of her employer, and tardiness often meant instant dismissal.

Minna thought of Herr Doctor's orders as she laid her hand on Flora's clammy forehead.

“Don't leave me,” the child said, slightly bewildered, her voice hoarse and strained. She was ten, but looked six, and she clutched Minna's skirt, sensing a departure. Minna gave Flora two spoonfuls of the sticky, sweet-smelling syrup and whispered something in her ear. The child lay back down and turned her head to the wall.

The night maid eyed Minna as she pinned a few damp wisps of hair into her small bun, pointedly wiped the heels of her boots with a rag, and left the kitchen with no comment. She climbed back up the narrow stairwell, making her way through the marble-floored entrance hall, and then hurried down a vaulted corridor lit by a series of imported electric lights. She stopped briefly just outside the crimson drawing room and caught her breath, then knocked softly.

“You may enter,” a voice called.

The baroness's inner sanctum looked like the kind of room that no one ever visited. Rich, heavy damask chairs and sofas, stained-glass shades, Persian carpets, and a collection of porcelain that included pug dogs, poodles, and exotic birds. There was a bowl of lilies on an inlaid side table, and in the corner near the window, a writing desk with a silver tray filled with tea cakes and snow-white sandwiches. Outwardly, Minna was calm, but her face was flushed and her heart racing, as if she had just broken a valuable vase. Also, the smell of the baroness's tea cakes reminded her that she had not eaten a morsel the entire day.

“Good evening, Baroness.”

“The others are talking about you,” the young woman replied abruptly, her voice pinched and refined. She was sitting in her perversely torturous corseted dress and examining Minna with a gaze that could sear the skin off a rabbit. “Would you like to hear what they're saying? They talk about your peculiarities—your constant reading and your walking about and such. Things I put up with at great inconvenience to myself. Things I've managed to ignore. You're late. Where have you been?”

“I went to the chemist. Flora is sick,” Minna said.

“You think I haven't noticed,” the baroness responded, beckoning Minna to sit down across from her. Minna hesitated. Her skirt was still damp and would leave a mark on the sofa's delicate fabric. She sat gingerly on the edge, extricating a silk pillow and pushing it aside.

“I'm not a monster, after all. I myself told Cook last week to give the little creature daily doses of camphor.”

That would have been the first decent thing the baroness had ever done for her, Minna thought. The unfortunate Flora had been hired from the country to work as one of the general servants in the large baroque residence. Even upon her arrival, the little girl was thin and pale, too fragile for this kind of employment. She had straw-colored hair, eyes the color of sherry, and spent the better part of her day in the basement kitchen, choking on thick black clouds of fumes and smoke. Her duties ran from cleaning the boiler and emptying the fireplaces to scraping pots and cleaning privies. At night, Minna had frequently seen her crying herself to sleep.

“The camphor's been useless. She needed—”

The baroness held up her finger in warning, cutting Minna off. “I'll decide when my staff needs medication. And, by the way, when I had my sore throat last week, I didn't notice you running to the chemist for me.”

There was a tense pause as the baroness adjusted the fringed pillows on her Empire sofa. “I must say, I've never had much luck with you people. I rarely hire anyone from the Second District, but you came so highly recommended. . . .”

Minna did not contradict her. She had never lived in the Second District, Leopoldstadt, where most of Vienna's middle-class Jews resided, but she had often felt the sting of anti-Semitism. When she was a child, she sometimes took revenge upon schoolchildren who taunted her with a barrage of bigoted slurs, one time hitting a boy so hard she bloodied his nose. But as she grew older, she found it was something best to ignore, although she still felt a chill at the nape of her neck every time she encountered it.

“Rest assured, my only concern is for the child,” Minna said in a low, firm voice.

“Your concern should be for your employment. You're a lady's companion. And as far as I can tell, you haven't had any medical training.”

“But I have. I was employed by a doctor in Ingolstadt.”

“What's his name?” the baroness asked, skeptically.

“Herr Dr. Frankenstein,” Minna shot back in a blithe tone.

The baroness stared at Minna for a moment in surprise and then smiled slyly as she registered the joke. She stood up and walked to the fireplace, gathering her basket of needlework. “Now, Minna,” she continued, in a conciliatory tone of voice, “you must apologize so we can carry on.”

“I apologize,” she said promptly, although the sentiment wasn't there.

“I accept your apology,” she said. “In any event, the girl has never been quite right. Weak and consumptive.”

The baroness gazed into the mirror over the mantel and touched her elaborately upswept hair.

“What do you think of this hairstyle? It's the same as Clara's. She wore it to the Imperial Palace last week.”

“It suits you,” Minna replied, staring at the ridiculous bouffant pompadour and wondering if anyone on the face of the earth would be able to keep a straight face looking at it.

“Good, then, I'll keep it for now,” she said with a dismissive wave, settling herself back on the sofa with her needlework on her lap.

The light was fading and shadows darkened the room. Faint sounds of horses' hooves and carriage wheels on cobblestones drifted through the heavy, swagged draperies and an occasional servant's voice echoed through the halls. The baroness's smooth white hands moved quickly as she concentrated on the pastoral scene she was embroidering on linen. Pale verdant greens, lush lavender sky, and a shepherd tending his flock.

Afterward, Minna climbed the two sets of stairs to her room, immediately pulling off her wet muslin skirt, flannel petticoat, woolen stockings, and unbuttoning the twenty buttons of her white cotton shirt. Her bone-crushing corset was pressing on her rib cage, and she exhaled thankfully as she unlaced it, tossing it on the floor. She needed to dry off. She was beginning to smell like wet dog. The room was dark, matching her mood—the walls an unhealthy shade of arsenic green. She put on her nightdress and carried a candle to the dressing table, her shadow following her. Minna leaned her head back and began brushing her thick auburn hair, gathering it into combs. In her youth, she had been conscious of the wealth of her hair and her tall, slim figure. But over the years vanity had disappeared. The fine planes of her face and neck were still in evidence, but even in the candlelight she could see delicate lines around her eyes.

She never imagined that at this point in her life, at almost thirty years old, she would be standing by silently while a young woman, barely her age, scolded her and nearly let a poor child die like a dog. Minna would have been married by now, like her sister, Martha, if life had turned out differently, if her father hadn't lost his money and dropped dead on the street, if her fiancé hadn't died. If, if, if . . .

There was no sense going back over it. She had been on her own for years. No one else in the family could support her—Martha had a growing family; her brother, Eli, had married and moved away; so she fell back on the only options remaining to her—lady's companion or governess. She had to make her own way in this world, and it looked as if she would be moving on again soon.

She wrapped her shawl around her shoulders, hugging her body and pressing her fingers into her upper arms. She was tired. And her neck hurt. She drifted over to the balcony and looked out the window to the north.