Freud's Mistress (10 page)

“Yes. Using both birth and transitional charts,” Minna said.

“I'm vaguely familiar with Jean Louis,” he said, with a small smile. “Wasn't he the one who committed suicide in a charming little hotel in Marseille?”

“Why, yes, I think he did.”

“And remind me of his style?”

Minna paused for an instant, searching her memory. “Well, he's generally categorized as a disciple of Racine and Descartes,” she said, beaming.

“Descartes and Racine,” Martha echoed, more confident now that Minna had taken up her cause.

“Ah, yes,” he said, his eyes bearing down on Minna, as if she thought he were born yesterday.

He excused himself, stood up, and, as he passed Minna, casually leaned over so close that she could smell the musky aroma of wine and cigar on his breath.

“Perhaps next time,” he whispered, “you might give your imaginary poet a name more original than the French hairdresser down the street.”

Minna did not react until he was out of the room, at which point, she released a sheepish smile to no one in particular.

T
hat evening after supper, Minna was in her bathroom unpinning her hair when she heard Martha rapping lightly on her door.

“Can I come in?” Martha asked, opening the door, not waiting for a response. She was dressed in her nightgown and clasping an overfilled glass of bicarbonate of soda, which she could hardly hold steady. One slight nudge and it would spill all over.

“Is something wrong?” Minna asked, noticing a distinct frown line between her sister's eyes.

“I'm not feeling well and I'm dizzy. Would you mind taking Sigmund his evening tray? It's all prepared—sitting on the kitchen counter near the cupboard.”

“Oh, Martha. Can't the maid do it? I don't want to go down there now,” she said, tired and desperate for a break.

“She's left early—some family emergency. Or so she says. Frankly, I think the children just wore her out. And she always detested working on weekends. Anyway, you're still dressed and I'm not. Just walk in there and leave it by his desk. It'll take you five minutes.”

Minna sighed as Martha left. She walked into the bathroom and stared at her red-rimmed eyes and tried to calm her uncivilized tangle of curls. Martha
would
ask her to go down there on a night when she was exhausted and looked like hell.

The first thing that hit her as she entered the stairwell to his office was the smell. The hall reeked of sour, stale cigars, and as usual smoke hovered in the air like a noxious cloud. She tentatively knocked on his door, balancing the tray in one hand.

“Come in,” he called out in a low smoker's voice.

Minna opened the door and peered into the room. Freud was sitting at his desk, staring at an open notebook. A lit cigar burned in an ashtray and there was an open bottle of wine nearby. He was in rolled-up shirtsleeves, his jacket flung over the chair, and his hair rumpled as if he had just awakened from a restless night. She thought briefly that he looked so much more attractive this way than all buttoned up in his impeccable suits. She could see his bare arms up to the elbow and the creases at his neck where his shirt was unbuttoned. The sight of him like this slightly unnerved her as she wedged the tray between two piles of books on a table near his desk.

“Oh, it's you,” he said, looking up at her. “Where's the maid?”

“She went home. Martha asked me to bring down your supper. I hope I'm not disturbing you.”

He looked at her a moment and then leaned back in his chair.

“You have your hair down. . . .” he said, staring at her, almost studying her. She pushed her hair back and smiled modestly, a bit flustered that he even noticed.

“I was about to go to bed when Martha asked me to deliver this. Didn't have time to . . . freshen up. . . .”

She stood there, feeling slightly awkward. She knew that no one went to Freud's office uninvited. . . . She wished Martha had done this instead.

“Sit down,” he said, taking the tray from her. He set it on his desk, hastily pushing aside a pile of papers and inadvertently toppling a few of the many ancient figurines lined up like a little army.

Minna looked for an empty chair. She would sit for a few minutes and then leave.

There were figurines everywhere, on shelves, tables, the floor, in a set of glass cases, and jumbled together willy-nilly on every other available surface. Also, here and there, were several ashtrays overflowing with snubbed-out butts. Minna knew he was a collector, but she had no idea of the extent of his passion. And then there were the bookshelves. Walls of them filled with hundreds of books.

“‘Video meliora, proboque, deteriora sequor,'”
he said. “‘I see the better way and approve it; I follow the worse.' Publius Ovidius Naso.”

A smile of recognition appeared on her face as she settled herself down and smoothed her hair. “You mean Ovid.”

“He was referring to cigars, of course,” he joked, blowing out a stream of smoke, which brought tears to her eyes. “Poor bastard. Banished for poetry, a crime worse than murder. But then again, he married three times before the age of thirty. Have to admire that.”

Minna couldn't help herself, she laughed.

“Love, poetry, and adultery. You've got to give the man credit. Olympian urges.”

He relit his cigar, inhaling in short, rat-a-tat puffs, and then coughed loudly, rolling into a bronchial spasm.

“My God, Sigmund. Why don't you stop?”

“I've tried a dozen times . . . but it's impossible to concentrate without it. The longest I've ever lasted was seven months. I was unable to work. Completely incapacitated. Barraged by arrhythmia and depression.”

“A disaster . . .”

“Exactly,” he answered, coming up next to her. “But when I use coca, the urge for tobacco is diminished. Magical drug. Five hundredths of a centigram of cocainum muriaticum in a one percent solution. The perfect dose. A few minutes after taking it, I feel confident, almost euphoric.”

“I remember your paper on the subject.”

“You read it?”

“Of course I read it. You sent it to me.”

“Oh, yes, I remember.”

“No, you don't, but I remember you were quite convincing that it was useful for all sorts of things, digestive disorders, hunger, fatigue . . .”

“As well as alcohol and morphine addiction . . .”

“But wait a minute, aren't you just substituting one drug for another?”

“Not at all . . . There are no physical aftereffects from coca . . . and, used in moderation, it's quite effective.”

“Martha tells me it makes her nervous and uncomfortable.”

“What doesn't? And why would you listen to her anyway? She took it
once
. In fact,” he said, “it's just the opposite. One feels deliriously calm and content and, at the same time, charged with this marvelous kind of energy. I can work all night. Why do you always wear your hair up when it looks so lovely down? Would you like to try some?” he asked, his face turned toward her, his intelligent eyes softening slightly.

Minna's mind was racing. She was instinctively aware that he was looking at her differently, and her first thought was that she should leave. Absolutely. She was here merely to deliver the tray. But while a person's first thoughts are generally reasonable, they are not always the most persuasive. And to be honest, she was curious about this coca. She could stand to be a little more content. And who couldn't use a little more energy? So she nodded yes, as he reverently plucked a small blue bottle out of his drawer, opened it, dabbed some solution on his fingertips, and rubbed it inside his nostril.

“Just paint your nose like so,” he said, passing her the viscous, opalescent mixture, which had a strong medicinal smell.

She carried the bottle to the window and looked into an odd-shaped mirror hanging there. As she carefully applied the solution, she caught a fleeting glimpse of him standing near his desk, watching her.

“Oh, it burns.”

“Only for a moment.”

“And there's this bitter taste running down my throat,” she said. Her windpipe itched, as if she were about to cough.

“You need to paint a little more, perhaps on the other side,” he suggested helpfully. She gravely did as instructed, almost sitting on a winged Eos statue placed on a chair near the desk.

“I feel nothing,” she said, handing him back the bottle, “except my throat, which burns like fire. And my temples ache. I don't see why you think . . .”

“Yes?”

Minna ran the tip of her tongue over the smooth enamel of her two front teeth. She was overcome by an urge to get up and move about, so she rose from the chair and walked across the room. She stumbled and experienced that out-of-control sensation one gets from missing a bottom step. The normality of things started to shift. This was
not
nothing.

“My gums are numb and so is my tongue.”

He smiled and puffed on his cigar. And then she felt it. The rush, or more like a surge in her being, which grew stronger, gaining power, consuming her in one perfect, magnificent single moment. She felt invincible and complete. Blissfully calm. In fact, she felt inexplicably better than she ever had before, yet also deeply focused and energetic. There was a sudden, sharp sensation in her sinuses and she put her fingers to her temples. He explained that it was the cocaine lighting up the limbic system and flowing through the ventral striatum, midbrain, amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex, and prefrontal cortex. All she could comprehend from his dense, medical words was that the coca was cascading through her brain, leaving pure pleasure in its wake.

And then the magic was gone.

“It's over,” she said. “. . . I think.”

“Sometimes,” he replied, “I repeatedly paint the nose, which might be excessive, but I have a lot of work tonight and it won't harm you.” He stubbed out his cigar, applied another dose, then walked over to Minna and handed her back the bottle. This time it burned white hot, as if someone had poured alcohol directly on an open wound. She momentarily panicked and pinched the bridge of her nose.

“I'm afraid . . .”

“Don't be . . .” he said, putting his arm around her.

As the pain from the drug subsided, the numbness in her mouth returned, invading her teeth, gums, and upper lip, traveling down her throat and making it difficult to swallow. The surge came even faster this time. The warmth flowing down her thighs, charging streams of heat in her cheeks, her lips, her shoulders, her brow. One moment she was solid, flat, and planted to the earth. The next, everything was lifted. She threw her head back against his shoulder almost in prayer.

“God, how long does this last?”

“It's a moderate dose . . . it'll fade away eventually,” he said, his voice all port and velvet, his eyes hooded. She moved away from him and watched as he painted his nose yet again and picked up a small Egyptian statuette from his desk and stroked it gently.

“Isis, sister-wife of Osiris. Funny,” he said, fingering it in his palm, then folding his hand around it. Then he rearranged the grouping of antiquities on the shelf behind him. He noticed her watching him with curiosity.

“It started as a hobby, you see. But the addiction soon seized me. Now, I suppose, one could say that collecting these antiquities is a form of love. It directs my surplus libido at something inanimate.”

Surplus libido? Minna thought as she stared at the ancient objects and envisioned one of them, a gorgon-like phallic female alive with writhing snakes, coming to life, pulling herself off the shelf, and walking around the room, unleashing seething passions of sex.

“In any event,” he went on, oblivious to her coca fantasies, “it relates to my work, you see. I like to think of myself as an archaeologist of the mind.”

He walked over to one of the bookshelves and pulled out a heavy leather volume.

“Have you read this?” he asked, handing her a book entitled
History of Greek Culture
by Jacob Burckhardt. “I'm consumed by it. Primitive myths and religions. Keeps me up until three in the morning.”

She watched in silence as he selected a fresh cigar from his cedar humidor, clipped off the tip, lit the end, and rotated it slowly. He began talking and talking, smoking and smoking, swooping in and out of topics, then he stopped abruptly.

“How are you feeling?”

“I'm feeling lovely. . . . Somehow light . . . warm . . .”

“Content?”

“Why, yes . . .”

“Phenomenal, isn't it? So many uses . . . I give it to my patients for depression, melancholy, and . . .” he added, almost as an afterthought, “it's also a powerful aphrodisiac. Sometimes, not always, it has a stimulating effect on the genitalia.”

Minna nervously fiddled with her hair. She felt heady, filled with self-absorption, and, come to think of it, desire.

“I'm curious,” he said, watching her graceful profile. “You never tried this with Ignaz?”

“Of course not. He never even suggested it.”

“He should have. Might have made him more interesting.”

“Ignaz
was
interesting.”

“Oh.
Very
interesting. When he wasn't discussing the nuances of Sanskrit, he just sat there half-dead.”

“That's unfair. Admit it. You never liked him.”

“Absolutely not true. What makes you say that?”

“Don't you remember your letter?”

“What letter?” he asked innocently.

“Your so-called condolence letter when Ignaz died, the one in which you told me that I was better off without him and that I should break off all relations with his family and burn all his correspondence?” she said, taking a swig of his drink.

He was silent for a moment.

“Oh. That letter.”

He thoughtfully took another cigar from his humidor and began, once again, the whole ritual of cutting, rolling, lighting. Minna watched, waiting for some further response. He finally drew on the cigar.

“In any event,” he said, exhaling luxuriously, “you and Ignaz were effectively estranged.”

“Ignaz said this to you?”

“He didn't have to. It was obvious to everyone that the relationship had cooled. That you had cooled.”

“I was
madly
in love with him.”

“Madly?”

“Madly, passionately, completely,”
she said, now weirdly craving to touch the man standing across from her. Horrified, she crossed the room and stood as far away from him as possible. She could feel her skin burning under her blouse.

He watched her and then thought for a minute. “Wine, my dear?” he asked, his eyes bright and trained right on her.

Minna nodded yes and then took a handkerchief from the pocket of her skirt and dabbed her running nose. A thin sheen of sweat appeared on her face, and she noticed her heart was beating faster than usual. She had no idea that coca could do this to her. She must get a hold of herself.