Secret Dreams (14 page)

The door opened by itself…

Two bodies twined on the bed. She was urging him on as his mother had the beast, her hands reaching above the headboard for a plaque that hung on the wall. A hunter's trophy. Stag horns …

She grappled for the horns as the man struggled between her legs. Her fist clenched one antler. Nanny Sasha moaned, or was she sobbing? She broke the deer horn from the plaque. The man lunged into her, and she drew the sharp points across his back. Lines of sweat and red welts. The candle flame jumped as she cried out. The horn clattered to the floor.

Then suddenly her cry ceased and she was sighing. The bed rocked still. A silence … The man was his father.

He went back to his room and was sick in the chamber pot. Weak dawn crept in at the window. He walked grim-faced to his parents' bedroom just as daylight threw blue shadows across the study.

He tugged back the curtains. Light dashed across his father's face. The face looked slack and pale, his beard rough. His eyes opened,-he put a finger to his lips. “Shhhhhhh …” A glimmer of a smile on his face. “Go back to bed.”

And then his father rolled over, throwing an arm over his sleeping mother. The man's back shone white and unmarred. No scratches. No welts. He turned from the French doors with a black smoke in his gut. Back to Nanny Sasha's room. And once again the door was shut against him. She still slept in bed, wrapped in her sheets. Just one breast exposed, the dark, distended nipple beckoned him. He wanted to run to the bed and touch it. When he looked to the wall, his heart stopped.

The antlers on the hunter's trophy were intact, unbroken. Both horns fixed to the varnished wooden shield. They pointed at him like accusing fingers, saying, It never happened, it was in your mind, you made it up …

She stared at him. Pouting a little, eyes roving over him from head to toe. He fought to stare her down, but she unwound the sheets from her limbs, slowly asking in a husky voice:

“Did you have a bad dream?”

No! He shook his head, not trusting his mouth to speak. She lifted the corner of the sheet. Her tan legs stretched in long supple lines for him. It seemed cool under there, inviting, dark and safe. “Come,” she called. “Come to Nanny Sasha. Come …”

He wanted to cry. And maybe even wet himself. He came.

The old man in the tower slid from the chair and leaned against the stone wall, the two flies still cupped in the palm of his hand. They were doing a mating dance, showing each other their private parts. And even though their private parts were too minuscule to make much of an impression — still, they were showing off for him too. Should he be flattered? No … Animals copulated anyplace — in a cave, on a tree, in the palm of your hand. Lice bred in the seams of your clothes or in your hair. Mating like that meant nothing. Only the other kind of mating meant something. The human, warmblooded, brain-wrenching kind,

Nanny Sasha had shown off her private parts for him. And he had returned her giving, pressing his little body toward all her secret places, loving them, worshiping them. How many times had he exposed himself to her? In the bath, on the potty, getting undressed. And how often she to him? Letting him in the water closet as she sat on the seat. Letting him stay with her as she searched for her clothes. She was a country girl, used to seeing things thrive or die. And he — her rooster chick, her piglet, her little nothing … She showed herself to him shamelessly. Guiltlessly Endlessly.

The man in the tower stared into the upturned palm of his hand. He felt a tear roll down his cheek. He had gone shamelessly with Nanny Sasha, in his
heart
he had. And his father too. His own father. Had the two of them mended the broken antler in the small hours of the night? Mended it to make him doubt his eyes? His father lusted after her, he knew it in his bones. The desperate, insane wanting … His mother must have known. Any woman would.

In a horrible flash he saw his mother in a rage: he had overheard his parents having an argument early on a Sunday morning. His mother clad in her pink satin robe, his father frozen in a chair, sitting in the book-lined study. His face remote, incomprehensible as big words in a book. As though nothing Mother said made the slightest difference.

“Deny it!” Mother was shouting. “In my own house. Deny it to my face!”

But what
it
was was not clear. As though
it
were some kind of vermin Father had brought in on his shoes. He hoped not beetles or cockroaches or anything related to the Scuttlers. His father mumbled something in reply.

“Do you think I'm blind?” Mother snapped back. “Or stupid?”

His father shrugged as if admitting what she said, that she was blind. Stupid. He glanced away and mumbled again. His mother's voice rose in outrage.

“I should have expected it!” Shrieking. “Expected it!”

Father's voice came distinctly, stern as old wood. “In my opinion, you gave permission long ago.”

Mother stared the man to hell, her face red and swollen, her eyes yellow. “Permission …” The words choked out of her, a strangled sort of sputter. She went quite pale. An invisible line had been crossed between them. Something unforgivable had been said. Or suddenly admitted.

His mother went into the bedroom and closed the French doors. Then from inside the bedroom came the sound of glass breaking. Immediately the French doors swung open so hard they shattered, broken shards falling to the carpet. Mother was crawling out of the bedroom on her hands and knees, sobbing as she came. This is what I'd do to you! This is what I'd do to you!” She had the long white bolster that always lay on their bed. With a broken piece of mirror glass she ripped at it. Streaks of blood had smeared across the creamy bolster. This is you! This in you!”

Hanks of stuffing came out as she stabbed with the jagged glass. A rosy sweat floated over the pale skin of her arms. From where he crouched in the hall the woman seemed to be coming painfully toward him, straight at him, stabbing as she came. And every time she sobbed, This is you! This in you!” her eyes seemed to be staring into his own.

The man strode stiffly out of the study, staring straight ahead. His mother remained on the carpeted floor with her blood-streaked arms around the shredded bolster, and her face sank into the satin, sobbing, This in you … you … you …”

The man sitting in his tower mumbled, “You —- you — you.” He meant all of them: his mother, his father, Nanny Sasha. They had all transgressed. His head felt terribly swollen, like two great fists grinding his brains together. What profane arrogance to waste your life on the mere appearance of a thing. A career. Religion. An empty marriage. Only your own family mattered. Your tribe protecting you in the wilderness. How miserably his own tribe had failed him. They sent Nanny Sasha away, of course. One day there, the next day gone. And he never saw her again. Passing into the realm of warm and swollen dreams …

He leaned against the stone wall Where were those blasted flies? He felt one stuck in his ear. Now buzzing, keening furiously to be set free. He wanted to jam his finger in, gouge it out, but his hand wouldn't budge. For a brief moment he understood the language of flies. A tempting siren of unbearable sweetness. How dare anyone talk about him inside his own head! How dare a couple of mealy-mouthed insects hold a personal conversation inside his own cerebellum! He became dizzy,- he closed his eyes and shook his head, begging them to cease, but they didn't listen. He'd shut them up the minute he could stop drooling all over his chin. Amazing how much drool came out of a person's mouth when he let it hang indecently open. Puddles and puddles. Someone should really wipe this idiot's face.

He tried to groan out loud. But all that came was the thread of spittle that ran down his throat. Doktor Jung should really know by now how to handle a difficult patient like himself. After forty years of practice, high time to learn, ja? First, the patient should commit himself into the care of a reliable institution. That would be the Burghölzli of Zurich. Get a nice corner room overlooking the garden. And then Herr Doktor Jung might come and see him. Ah, but see here now, sir —- Herr Junior Physician Jung resigned his post at the Burghölzli thirty-odd years ago. And the methods they used in 1905, ach! Disgraceful! Of course, the patient would have to take into account Herr Junior Physician's relative inexperience. Perhaps they might consult Herr Professor Freud. Somewhat of an expert in cases of this kind. But would the great man consult on such short notice?

Of course he would! Freud loved him! They would consult as they always had. When had you last slaughtered your father? Herr Freud would ask. Hah! His father was years and years dead. Too late to track the old man down. But had he not killed another man, another father? That was what Herr Freud really meant to ask. Oh yes, he had. Another man. Another father. In a crazy girl's dream. Oh yes, he had.

He had come out of his seizure (a fit of neuro-spasmodic paralysis, should he call it?) and managed to wipe the spittle from his shirt. Somehow he had tumbled down the tower stairs without breaking his neck. Once in the round hearth room, he had collapsed on a bunk to sleep a deep, dreamless sleep. How long? The fire that burned in the central hearth had died to embers. Perhaps the same day, then. A sultry dusk lingered at the windows.

As he lay on the bunk the slats beneath the rag-stuffed mattress made his bones feel brittle and achy His paralyzed hands tingled, the circulation returning in hot needles of blood. Thank God the interminable itching in his head was gone. Those flies would certainly have driven him mad in the end…. He
had
killed his father once. Not the one in Nanny Sasha's bed, as would have been proper, as it should have been. But he'd found another, a lord and master. And cut his throat not once but a thousand times, to the roaring applause and wild cheers of the mob. They gave him garlands for the killing, garlands and devotion and love. They all wanted the old Faker dead.

As the seizure passed, he dimly remembered grabbing at an old framed photograph that sat on his desk. At the time, he had half a mind to burn the picture — that was why he came downstairs! — but he had collapsed on the bunk too soon for that, saying to himself, “I'll just rest here a minute first …” He still clutched it in his numb hand. He wondered how he had managed to break the frame and get the photograph out of the glass. He pried his fingers loose and let go.

The faded picture showed the imposing edifice of the Burghölzli Mental Hospital. On the back, a credit: Hans Hunisch, Photograph, 10 Hellestrasse, Zurich, February 15, 1906. He stared again at the cracked photo,- the name Hubert Frisson & Co. leaped to mind. The buildings architects and also builders of elaborate, elegant mansions along Fifth Avenue in New York City. What a ridiculous, absurd piece of useless information! How could he ever
—

Ah, he recalled now: veined marble pillars flanking the doors of the main lobby
—
he had passed them a dozen times a day, for years on end…. A bronze plaque embedded in one pillar proclaimed a paean to the architects;

Hubert Frisson & Co.

New York — London
—
Paris — Rome

“Addresses of Distinction”

Distinction was perhaps too light a word for what Messrs. Frisson & Co. built. They favored wrought-iron gates in the Gothic style, with spiked lamp cages on the gateposts. The Burghölzli had huge windows on the ground floor that opened like doors, the fittings of gold plate. The lintels over every window were red sandstone against blue granite. Then row upon row of half columns designating the various rooms and suites, five stories up like a layer cake. Round turrets at the building's corners, with circular rooms on each floor,- the turrets of a different color than the rest, a black stone like the bastion of the Bastille. Then along the top of the layer cake, gables with triangular Flemish windows, the design stolen from the château of Chenonceaux on the Loire, with the palest blue slate roofing, the copper trim gone green. And finally, above the four spired turrets, smart brass flagpoles.

By the time he arrived there the building had aged fifty years,- cold rains and sun and Zurich dirt had cracked the exterior stone. Inside, the marble wainscoting had yellowed with the grime of bodies and cigarette smoke. In some places, the orderlies' gurneys had scraped the walls, leaving marks.

A lush, well-planned garden flowered behind the building, but all this photo showed was window after window: staff offices, examination rooms, lecture rooms, communal wards … His own office had been in the back, in one of those cylindrical turrets overlooking the garden —

No! No! No! This photo had been taken
from
the garden. His office had been in
that
 corner turret, the fifth window up. There! Partly open, the way he always kept it, summer or winter, even on the worst days.

Was that him? A dark blur leaning back in his chair, elbow resting on the sill? À smudge in the photo?

How little photographs truly showed of a place. The fresh garden fragrance of the leaves and grass after the rain. The steamy food smell from the kitchen. The ozone cloud in the hallway outside the Galvanic Room. The fetid, musty odors in the lower reaches of the basement. No talking, no calls for help, no ringing bells. How could a mere picture show how they went about the business of treatment? Show triumph or failure. Or the common rhythm of life … ?

What damn few choices they had back then. They held unruly patients under warm water to soothe them. They wrapped lethargic ones in cold, wet sheets to stimulate their systems. Hydrotherapy they called it: your choice of hot or cold.

There was also the electroshock apparatus: a long wrought-iron table with overhanging cables attached to an electrical generator. A wide range of volts could be applied to different parts of the human body It worked in some cases of nervous paralysis or memory lapse. And it always worked in those cases suspected of shamming.