City Of Fire Trilogy 1 - Dreamland (62 page)

“
Neine, neine
, nothing yet. It’s a treacherous region.”

“It is indeed,” Freud remarked.

He peered down the height upon which the university was planted, past another splendid English park to a wide, slow-moving river.

“I remember reading about old ships that got caught in the ice floes up there,” he remarked idly.

“Really?”

On the other side of the river was a magnificent range of bluffs, plunging dramatically down to the water—covered with ferns, and other trees, all very picturesque. Freud stared out at the cliffs, while he talked on absently about the Arctic wastes:

“It seems the seasons change very rapidly, and they miscalculated, and were caught by the ice. Whole ships hemmed in for the winter. Sometimes, the pressure of the ice would start to crush the hull, and the sailors would have to make out across the ice for civilization.”

Freud stopped, lost in his own reverie—listening to the ice slowly bending and cracking the great ship beams in the endless Arctic nights. Like something from the savage dawn of the world: striking out by sled or foot in the twilight—so remote from the beautiful, tranquil bluffs across the river. Like the bluffs of the Wachau, along the Danube, or the Rhine. Or the little outlook in the park the day before, above the black water and its dead pigeons—

There was a gesture: the man in the park raising his hand, chasing the children away—

In the dream he was standing in the Aula again, the great ceremonial hall of the university. Surrounded by all the great minds of science he would speak before, up at Clark.

On a table before him crouched the woman patient who had put the orchids in his ship cabin—younger and more shapely than ever. He looked over at Jung—who was now the General from his military maneuvers, wearing a cape and his ubiquitous pince-nez. The General made a small curt gesture with his hand—and the woman wiggled seductively under her bright-red dressing gown, lifted up the back of it to reveal her bottom, as red as the gown itself—

He felt himself becoming aroused, and held his penis in his hand, moving toward her. She looked back over her shoulder at him—and he saw she was wearing a disguise. Her face was now the face of the tanned man, the man in the Bleikeller, screaming silently across the ages—

His penis hung limp in his hand, and the General peered in at him through his pince-nez. He made another small, curt gesture for him to go on, to perform, but Freud could not. He had to urinate, and he dashed off the stage, back through the beautiful apartments—until he was standing outside on the train platform again. He was standing next to the sick old man, he was standing next to his father, blind in one eye, holding up his glass urinal, and a conductor was working his way down the platform, but they didn’t have a ticket.

He held up the mask in front of his father—the mask of the tanned man, from the lead cellar. He held up another mask in front of his own face. Thinking that would fool the conductor, thinking now he would have to let them on.

But looking down, he saw that his father had his penis out—had it out, and was already beginning to use the glass urinal.

Freud staggered, and looked around. He felt an urgent need to urinate himself—and looking down he saw to his shame and his horror that he already
had.
That in fact he still was micturating, the fine brown fabric of his trousers darkening even as he watched. Jung’s mouth was open in shock, his pince-nez dropping from his nose.

“Let me help you,” he said, and Freud shook his head, backing up around the
Thinker.

“Let me help you,” Jung said again, touching his elbow, and Freud let him guide him in out of the sun, into the shade of a bench next to the red-brick clinic, his newspaper with its headlines about Peary and Cook held up chastely over the shameful pants.

“
Zeeser Gottenyu
, how humiliating,” Freud muttered, leaning his head back against the wall of the clinic, as Jung fanned his face with his hand.

“What am I going to do, what am I going to do?” he murmured, helpless as a fainting opera diva. “What happens if I do this up at Clark? What will they think of me? Oh, I could just die!”

“Let me help you,” Jung repeated, his glasses firmly back in place now, staring down firmly into Freud’s eyes.

“Can you? Can you help me?”

“I can—if you let me.”

He knew what he wanted. Freud looked up at him for a long moment—then quickly nodded his head.

“
Ja,
all right, anything—if that’s what it takes.”

He lay on a couch in the little clinic, wearing a pair of old trousers provided by Brill. Jung sat in a chair, just behind his head. He had taken care of everything—sending Ferenczi back downtown for another pair of pants. Making sure they would not be interrupted—

“The urinating is simple enough,” Freud began, running through it a little desperately. “That’s ambition—the godlike ability to put out fire by
pishing
on it.”

“The lectures, the honorary degree—they will be the climax of your ambitions,” Jung agreed. “But by trying to disgrace yourself, you are also trying to undermine everything you have accomplished. Clearly, this is a conflict.”

“But why? I have some misgivings, of course—whether I can answer my audience’s expectations,” Freud pondered. “Yet they are at
our
mercy. They must applaud, no matter what we bring them.”

“Doesn’t it strike you that you have reversed the paternal position?” Jung pointed out. “Your father discovers you wetting yourself, at seven or eight, and despairs: ‘The boy will amount to
nothing
!’ ”

“Yes, yes—the traces of my old neurosis,” Freud said impatiently. “And then I dreamed that
my father
had become incontinent, and that I was his nurse, carrying around a glass urine vial. So now you are saying I am in my father’s place.”

He twisted around on the couch, craning his neck to look at Jung.

“So then
you
are in my place, taking care of
me
.”

“Is that what you think?” Jung asked.

“I don’t know,” Freud hesitated, genuinely unsure.

“There was something else,” he went on slowly. “Some dreams.”

“Tell me,” Jung commanded.

The overlook in Central Park, the dead birds floating in the black water. There was something else—the gesture that man had made toward the children—

In the dream, the General made a curt, dismissive gesture with his hand. So like the gesture he had made in the cafe in Olmutz years before, dismissing Freud. But why did it remind him?

“Tell me your dream.”

“First—there was something you said. In the park.”

“Something
1
said?”

Freud put his feet down on the floor again, and swung around to face him.

“Just after we had been to the museum—with all those bones, and the Neanderthals.”

“Yes—you mean about
my
dream?” Jung asked suspiciously. “The two ancient skulls, in the cave?”

“There was that, but something else. Something about the children we saw.”

The man had made that gesture toward the children—and Jung had said something. Something about the children—

“The children? I don’t think I remember. Tell me about your dream.”

“You said there were
all kinds
,” Freud reminded him, speaking quickly now, the memory pouring back. “You remember: the children were playing on the lawn, and I said I thought two of them looked like my nieces. And you said, ‘Yes, there are all kinds.’ What did you mean by that?”

“I don’t know,” Jung half shrugged.

“You meant
Jews
, didn’t you? You meant some of the children were Jewish.”

“I suppose,” Jung shrugged again, looking away. “That, and all other kinds of nationalities.”

It was beginning to fall into place, the way it always did when he was finally picking the lock on a difficult case—

“The skulls—they represent two different
kinds
of people.”

“Well, I suppose that’s possible—”

“Gentiles, perhaps—and Jews?” Freud pressed.

“You’re taking over the analysis,” Jung accused him. “Tell me about your dream.”

“I don’t think so.”

It all made sense now. The pince-nez that the Cruel Captain had worn. His own military tormentor, the anti-Semitic General. The same gesture that the General and Jung had made. Then there was the little Germanic castle in the park—and below it, the dark water, the black muck of occultism.

It all came down to Jung, who was one and the same with the Cruel Captain, and the General. He wished to overthrow Freud, of course, that was perfectly natural, but there was something more. Jung knew he was relying on him to rebut all the usual notions about race and culture—to keep his psychology from being pigeonholed as “the Jewish science.”

Yet now Jung was insinuating that racial differences were real and predominant—that he and Freud were somehow different
kinds.

“Tell me something first,” Freud maneuvered. “The house—that was
your
house?”

“Yes.”

“Meaning, yours, personally?
Or your race’s?
”

“Well, both, I suppose,” Jung blinked.

“Ah, yes. The House of ‘Europe,’ with its Roman walls and medieval furnishings. The House of ‘Germany,’ perhaps? Or maybe the ‘Aryan’ house?”

“Well, what of it?” Jung said impatiently, suddenly defiant, like a schoolboy caught in some petty lie. “Why not? Why not accept that different peoples have different psychologies?”

“No.”

“Can’t you see the difference?” Jung asked, almost pleading. “The Jews or, say, the Chinese, with their ancient cultures, their old books—they must have a different psychology from newer, younger races, such as us of German blood. Surely you can’t deny that, if you have any belief in culture—”

“That same mystical nonsense,” Freud said flatly. “We are scientists. We are dealing with what we can test, and perceive, and measure.”

“But surely you can perceive culture!”

“Oh? What is the difference, then? Explain it to me. Let us forget about the Chinese for right now. Explain to me—how are Jews different from gentiles? Is it just the old books?”

“No,” Jung said slowly. “There’s, well, there’s just what you are arguing now, with your refusal to acknowledge the mystical.”

“And that is?”

“There’s a certain
materialism
, say, in Jewish culture. As opposed to the higher,
spiritual
belief of the gentile, the German.”

Freud felt his mind filming over with anger, but he forced himself to think rationally, logically. He leaned over the edge of the couch, his cold, clear eyes boring down into Jung.

“So. The two of us, born a few years, a few hundred miles away from each other, wearing the same clothes, speaking the same language—raised in the same
bourgeois
culture—we are fundamentally different beings? Different species? I am the materialist—and you are not?”

Jung stared at him, his eyes wide and angry, but saying nothing. His silence told Freud all that he needed to know.

So that was it: Jung was to be the analyst to the gentiles. Freud would be relegated to a corner for the “Jewish” science, after all. Like an old grandfather confined to the attic—like a half-blind, incontinent old gentleman, carrying his own urinal around.

In Jung’s dream—if it really
was
a dream, and not some dissembling invention—Jung had used Freud’s own symbols, his own dream against him. Of course he had read in the
Interpretation
of Freud’s dream in the Aula—escaping through one, beautifully finished room after another. Now Jung was claiming them for himself—particularly the ornate, rococo, upper story of the “Aryan” house.

The reception hall, crowded with scientists, was the upcoming lecture at Clark. Jung—as the General, as the Cruel Captain—was gesturing for him to accept the “differences” between the children, between all Jews and gentiles. The woman on the table, in her ancient mask, represented all that occult, racial dreck—
Nirdvanda,
and
numinosum
, and the higher, spiritual genius of the German race. All the sloppy, excited mysticism he wanted Freud to join him in. Not to mention the rich female patients he had always planned to pick up in America—

“The dreams. Your dreams,” Jung was pressing him. “You won’t tell me?”

“I cannot risk my authority,” Freud replied, getting up and pulling his jacket as close as he could around the baggy, borrowed pants.

“Oh? You may have just lost it!” Jung said peevishly. “You are putting that authority above the truth!”

“We shall see, Doctor.”

He felt sick at heart, yet relieved, in command of himself again—the way he always did when he had solved a problem. There was a commotion in the hallway—Ferenczi returning with more pants from their hotel—and Freud walked over and opened the door.

“The session is over,” he told his former protégé, with a faint smile. “I must change my trousers.”

Big Tim Sullivan stood by the waters of the Hudson, waiting for the boat home. From the dock he could see the lights in the great pile of the capitol, up on the top of State Street. Soon he would see them begin to flicker out, one by one. It was the last night of the session, and once the last light was out he would not see them again until it was time to take the train back up to Albany in the fall.

It had been a good session, run like clockwork. Bob and Al had everything wrapped up so well that he had decided to leave early, instead of waiting for the last, midnight boat. That ship was like the hell-bound train, with every state senator and assemblyman from Kinderhook to Coney Island on board. There would be a band going, and plenty of liquor, and the last, cutthroat card games of the session. The solons singing endless choruses of “Goodnight Ladies,” as they dropped each upstate legislator off at some rotting, deserted little pier along the river, sneaking in endless hotfoots and other great practical jokes. Until at last the City delegation churned, bleary with drink, into the grim, gray piers of the West Side, amidst the mighty ocean liners and the other sagging river ferries.