In the Last Analysis (8 page)

“I’ve thought much the same thing myself; you weren’t sure you wanted to be a college teacher, and I had all sorts of ambivalences about psychiatry. Yet here we are, you as a teacher having sent me, a psychiatrist, one of your students as a patient. It seems to have a pattern, yet of course it can’t. If we could just show that it hasn’t a pattern, or that we’re seeing the pattern the wrong way, we’d be clear of all this.”

“Emanuel! I think you’ve just said something very important and profound.”

“Have I? It doesn’t seem to make any sense at all.”

“Well, never mind; I’m sure the reason for its profundity will occur to me later. What I want now is to have you sit down at your desk and tell me everything you know about Janet Harrison. Perhaps what you say will remind me of something I know, and have forgotten. I’m convinced of one thing: if we find the murderer, always supposing he isn’t a homicidal maniac casually in off the streets, we will find him through some knowledge we get about that girl. Will you try to be helpful?”

Rather to Kate’s surprise he didn’t flatly refuse, he merely shrugged, and continued to gaze out of the window onto a courtyard in which there was almost certainly nothing to see. Kate, with a certain studied carelessness, sat down on the couch. One of the chairs would have been more comfortable, but not to sit on the couch was to avoid it.

“What can I tell you? The tape recording of an analysis, for example, would be meaningless, in any important sense, to someone not trained to interpret. It’s not full of clues like a Sherlock Holmes detective story, at least not the sort of clues that would be any use to a policeman. She
didn’t tell me one day that she would probably be murdered, and that if she were, such-and-such a person would probably have done it. Believe me, had she said something definite of that sort, I would not hesitate to reveal it, certainly not from any misguided sense of idealism. The other vital thing to remember is that, to the analyst, it is unimportant whether something actually happened, or whether the occurrence was merely a fantasy on the part of the patient. To the analyst, there is no essential difference; to the policeman there is, of course, all the difference in the world.”

“I should think it would matter very much to a patient whether something had really happened or not. I should think that would be the whole point.”

“Exactly. But you would be wrong. And I can’t explain all this simply, without grossly falsifying it, and by making it too simple, making it false. But if you want, I’ll give you, reluctantly, an example. When Freud began on his treatment of patients, he was astonished to discover how many women in Vienna had had, as children, sexual relations with their fathers. It appeared for a time that at least a handful of Viennese fathers had been sexual maniacs. Then Freud realized that none of these sexual experiences had ever taken place, that they had been fantasies. But his important realization came with the understanding that, for the purposes of the patients’ psychological development (though not of course for the purposes of sexual morality in Vienna) it did not matter at all whether the incidents had taken place actually or not. The fantasy had an immense importance of its own. Kate, have you ever tried to explain
Ulysses
to a self-satisfied person whose idea of a great novelist was Lloyd Douglas?”

“All right, all right, I see your point, really I do. But let
me go on being a nuisance, will you? I never knew, for example, why she thought she needed an analyst. What did she say the first time she came to see you?”

“The beginning is always rather routine. I ask, of course, what the trouble is. Her answer was not unusual. She slept badly, had a work problem, was unable to read for more than a short period, and had difficulty, as she put it in regrettable social-worker jargon, in relating to people. Her use of that term was the most significant thing she said that day; it indicated how the problem was intellectualized, to what degree emotion had unconsciously been withdrawn from it. Most of this policemen could discover; the rest they would find useless to their purpose. I asked her to tell me something about herself; that’s routine also. The facts are usually not important, but the omissions may be greatly so. She was the only child of strict, compulsive parents, both now dead. They were quite old when she was born—if you want the details I can look them up. She neglected to mention at that time any love affairs, even of the most casual nature, though it emerged later that she had had one love affair in which she was deeply involved. Occasionally associations would bring her to this, break through her resistance, but she always immediately moved away from the subject. We had just begun to touch on some real material when this happened.”

“Emanuel, don’t you see how important that is? By the way, had she—was she a virgin?” He turned to her with surprise, at the question, at Kate’s asking it. Kate shrugged. “Possibly my salacious mind, but I have an odd feeling it may be important.”

“I don’t know the answer, as a fact, for certain. If you want my professional guess, I would say that the love affair had been consummated. But it’s a guess.”

“Do patients in the beginning talk mostly about the past or present?”

“About the present; the past of course comes in, more and more as you continue. I had a hunch—though do try not to overestimate its importance—that there was something in the present she was
not
mentioning, something connected, though perhaps only in the sense of the same guilt, with the love affair. Ah, I particularly admire you when you get that gleam in your eye like a hawk about to dive. Do you think she was a key figure in a drug ring?”

“You can laugh later; one other question. You mentioned the other evening that she had become angry, that transference had begun. What is transference when it’s at home, as Molly Bloom would say?”

“I loathe simplified explanations of psychiatry. Let’s say merely that the anger inherent in some situation becomes directed at the analyst, who becomes the object of those emotions.”

“Don’t you see, Emanuel? That’s good enough. Put together two things you’ve casually told me. One, possibly connected with her past, which she was hiding. Two, emotion had begun to be generated in her relationship with you. Conclusion: she might have told you, or might have revealed to your sensitive professional ear something which someone didn’t want anyone to know. Perhaps there was someone to whom she talked
—she
thought casually—about her analysis—people do talk
somewhat
about their analyses; I know, I’ve heard them—and whoever that person was knew she had to die. It was easy enough to discover from her the routine around here, and he came in and killed her, leaving you with the body. Q.E.D.”

“Kate, Kate, I have never heard such drastic oversimplification.”

“Nonsense, Emanuel. What you lack, what all psychiatrists lack, if you’ll forgive my saying so, is a firm grip on the obvious. Well, I won’t keep you. But promise me, at any rate, that you’ll answer any idiotic questions that I want to ask.”

“I promise to cooperate in your gallant attempt to save me from disaster. But you know, my dear, speaking of the obvious, the police have quite a case.”

“They don’t know you; that’s the advantage I have over them. They don’t know the sort you are.”

“Or the sort Nicola is?”

“No,” Kate said. “Not that either. It’ll come out all right; you’ll see.”

She felt, nonetheless, as she stood indecisively in the hall, like a knight who has set off to slay the dragon but has neglected to ask in what part of the world the dragon may be found. It was all very well to decide upon action, but what action, after all, was she to take? As was her habit, she extracted notebook and pen and began to make a list: see Janet Harrison’s room, and talk to people who knew her in dormitory; find out about ten and twelve o’clock patients; find out who person in picture Janet Harrison had was (lists always had a devastating effect on Kate’s syntax).

“I’m sorry to intrude. Is Mrs. Bauer in?” Kate, who had been writing with the notebook balanced against her purse, dropped notebook, pen, and purse. The man stooped with her to help her retrieve the articles, and as they straightened up Kate became aware of that peculiar quality of masculine beauty to which no woman can help reacting, however superficially. It did not really attract Kate, yet she felt herself become somehow more girlish in its presence. She remembered once having met at a dinner party a
beautiful, modest young Swedish man. He had perfect manners, there was not anything even suggestive of flirtation in his manner, yet Kate had been horrified to notice that every woman in the room seemed aware of him; her horror had turned to amusement as later, when he had spoken to her, she had found herself simpering.

This man was not that young; his hair was flecked with gray at the temples. “You’re Dr. Barrister, aren’t you?” Kate said. With difficulty she kept herself from adding, “our favorite suspect.” “I’m Kate Fansler, a friend of Mrs. Bauer’s; I’ll call her.”

As Kate walked to the back of the apartment for Nicola, she realized how great, in fact, was the connection between appearance and reality. Considered in the abstract, good looks seemed sinister; yet, in the presence of good looks, Kate found them innocent. It was, of course, no accident that in Western literature, certainly in Western folklore, beauty and innocence were usually joined.

The three of them ended by standing, on this patientless day, in the living room. Not that Nicola had asked them to sit down; it was not so much that Nicola ignored the social amenities—she seemed never to have known that they existed.

“I stopped in to see how you were bearing up,” Dr. Barrister said to Nicola. “I know there’s nothing I can do, but I find it difficult to resist the impulse to be neighborly, even in New York where neighbors are not supposed to know one another.”

“Aren’t you from New York?” Kate asked, to say something.

“Are any New Yorkers?” he asked.

“I am,” said Nicola, “and my father before me.
His
father, however, came from Cincinnati. Where are you from?”

“One of those highbrow critics has discovered, I understand, a new sort of novel about the young man from the provinces. I was a young man from the provinces. But you haven’t told me how it’s all going.”

“Emanuel has had to call off the patients for today. We hope in a day or two he can get back to having patients.”

“I hope so too. Do let me know, won’t you, if there’s anything I can do? I’m full of good will, but rather lacking in ideas.”

“I know,” Nicola said. “For a death in the family or illness, one sends flowers or food. In this case I suppose all you can do is to keep telling everyone that Emanuel and I didn’t do it. Kate is full of ideas and is going to find the murderer.” Dr. Barrister looked at Kate with interest.

“Where I’m going,” said Kate, “is home.”

“I’m going east,” Dr. Barrister said. “Can I drop you anywhere?”

“That’s very kind of you,” Kate said, “but I’m going west.”

It was as Kate was sitting in the taxi going home that she thought of Jerry.

I
T
was true, of course, that Kate still had the weekend, before Monday should again bring the need to teach her classes. But some preparation for those classes was necessary, particularly since, in the last two days, she had got completely out of touch with the academic world, as though she had been absent for a year. One had, after all, a commitment to one’s profession, in spite of any murders, however demanding of investigation.

And what, when she came right down to it, was she to investigate? Something, certainly, could be gleaned by a little recondite questioning around the dormitory where Janet Harrison had lived; examination of the university records might reveal some clue of interest. All that Kate could, without undue interference with her professional duties, undertake. But the police had more or less covered the ground, and what seemed now most fruitful of examination was the other suspects whom the police seemed inclined
to treat with little more than superficial interest: the patients before and after Janet Harrison, both men; the elevator man; and any stray men who might, hopefully, turn up and turn out to have known Janet Harrison, however slightly.

It seemed to Kate that, the question of time apart, what was clearly needed was a male investigator, preferably unattached and footloose, able to appear either the worldly young college graduate, possessed of that patina which only the more elegant colleges provide, or the young workingman, who has labored by day and who, in the proper clothes, can hang around discussing ball clubs and whatever else workingmen discuss, without appearing to be slumming. The description fit Jerry to a fare-thee-well, and indicated, once again, the occasional benefits of a large family.

Not that Jerry was in any way related to Kate; not, that is, as yet. But he would one day soon be a nephew by marriage. Kate did not remember his exact age, but he was old enough to vote and young enough to believe that life still held infinite possibilities. “No young man ever thinks he shall die.” Hazlitt had certainly described Jerry.

Kate, coming from a large family, had also been an only child, a unique combination of benefits. Her parents, in the normal course of events—in the normal course, that is, of a sophisticated, well-to-do, New York City life (with summers in Nantucket)—had produced three sons in the first eight years of their marriage. They had departed from convention, or perhaps from what Kate had come to think of as a planned economy, only far enough to find themselves, when the youngest of their sons was fourteen, with an infant daughter. They had provided Kate with a nurse, and subsequently, a governess, loved her to distraction, indulged
her recklessly, and stood by hopelessly as she turned her back on society and became, not only an “intellectual,” but a Ph.D. This was blamed, somewhat unfairly, on the fact that she had been named Kate, because all her mother remembered of college English was that this had been Shakespeare’s favorite female name. The brothers had all pursued more respected and orderly careers. Sarah Fansler, the daughter of the oldest brother, was engaged to Jerry.