The Death Instinct (12 page)

    '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 fiancé 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 fiancé 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 fiancé.'

    '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.'