The Death Instinct (10 page)

    'But that's incredible,' cried Colette. '
Vraiment incroyable.'

    'Well done, my boy,' Freud said to Younger, as if he deserved the credit, and rose to indicate that the interview was over. 'You must join us for dinner this evening, both of you. Martha, my wife, especially invites you. Bring your brother, Fraulein. It will give me a better sense of how to proceed.'

    Colette said she would be honored.

    'Dr Freud,' said Younger, 'might I have a word with you?'

    'I was about to ask the same of you. Will you excuse us for five minutes, Miss Rousseau? Younger, come to my study.'

    'And how exactly,' asked Freud, seated behind the desk in his private study, which was populated by even more antiquities, 'do you expect me to analyze a boy who can't talk?'

    'But you-'

    'It's like the beginning of a joke: Did you hear about the mute who went to see Sigmund Freud? Your behavior, my boy, wants analyzing.'

    'My behavior?'

    Freud raised the lid of a wooden box. 'Cigar?'

    'Thank you.'

    Freud cut the cigar with fine, delicate scissors. 'Well, you have something to say to me, and I to you. Let's start with what you want to tell me.'

    Younger considered how to put it.

    'Will you permit me?' asked Freud. 'You want to say, first of all, that bringing the boy to me wasn't your idea.'

    Younger didn't reply.

    'If it had been your idea,' said Freud, 'you would have explained psychoanalysis to Miss Rousseau, told her you'd practiced it, described its benefits, and so on. You did none of these things. The idea was therefore hers. Moreover, the reason you were reluctant to have the boy analyzed is what you expect me to say about his condition. Miss Rousseau has obviously been the boy's substitute-mother for some time. You expect me to conclude that he therefore wants to sleep with her, and you want me to keep that information from her.'

    Younger was astounded. 'There's only one other man alive,' he said, 'whom I constantly ask how he knows what he knows, and he happens to be listening to this story right now.'

    'You didn't say that,' said Littlemore, his badly scuffed black shoes once again crossed on top of the kitchen table. 'Don't interrupt like that. It spoils the - uh-'

    'Dramatic effect?'

    'Yeah. You know, this Freud guy, he should have been a detective. But you mixed things up pretty good there, Doc. You made it sound like, according to your man Freud, Luc wants to sleep with Colette. And he wants to sleep with her because she's been his mom all these years!'

    Littlemore broke into a loud laugh. He stopped when he saw Younger's unchanged expression. 'He doesn't think that,' said Littlemore. Younger nodded. 'No, he doesn't,' said Littlemore.

    'That's why I stopped practicing psychoanalysis,' answered Younger. 'I told Freud ten years ago I didn't believe in it. That's how he knew what I was thinking.' 'So what did you say?'

    'Yes, I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell her that, Dr Freud,' answered Younger. 'She'll believe it's true.'

    'Whereas you don't.'

    'No, sir.'

    Freud smoked his cigar, nodding.

    'I'm sorry,' Younger added, 'but I can't persuade myself that Luc's difficulties have anything to do with a desire to sleep with his sister, his mother, or any member of his family. If he has a neurosis at all, it's a sort of war neurosis. Not sexual at all.'

    'Not sexual - a diagnosis you base on what evidence? You remind me of the government physicians who attended our conference in Budapest. "Yes, we have to hand it to Freud. Yes, the old man was right about the unconscious after all. Yes, the war neuroses are caused by unconscious memories, just as Freud always said. But that disgusting sexual business? Thank God it has nothing to do with shell shock." In fact not one case of war neurosis has yet been analyzed all the way down to its roots. We don't know what connection it has to childhood wishes. That's why I'm so interested in Miss Rousseau's brother.'

    'To see if you can find Oedipus beneath his symptoms?'

    'If he's there, why not find him? But don't be so sure what I expect to find. Something else may be hiding in the boy. I've seen something new, Younger - dimly, but I've seen it. Perhaps another ghost in the cellar.'

    'What is it?'

    'I can't tell you, because I don't know.' Freud tamped ash from his cigar. 'But we haven't gotten to what I wanted to say to you.'

    'You want me to reconsider my rejection of the Oedipus complex.'

    'I want you to practice psychoanalysis again. Why are you here?'

    'Miss Rousseau-'

    'Wanted her brother analyzed,' interrupted Freud, 'and you're in love with her, so you said yes to please her. Obviously. Apart from that.'

    'Apart from that?'

    'Assuming the boy can be analyzed at all, you could have done it yourself. There was no need to travel to Austria. Indeed coming here was illogical given that Miss Rousseau plans to return to Paris shortly;

    an analysis cannot be conducted in a week or two, as you well know. It follows that you had another reason for coming.'

    'Which was?' asked Younger.

    'You wanted to see me,' said Freud.

    Younger reflected. There was a long pause before he finally answered: 'That's true.'

    'Why?'

    'I think to ask you something.'

    Freud waited. There was a longer silence.

    'I have no -' said Younger, looking for the right word, - 'no more faith.'

    'The loss of religious faith,' replied Freud, 'is the beginning of maturity.'

    'Not religious faith,' said Younger.

    Freud waited.

    'The war,' said Younger. 'Millions of men, millions upon millions of young men, killed for nothing. Meaningless slaughter. Countless more crippled and maimed.'

    'Ah,' said Freud. 'Yes. Such destruction as we have lived through is very hard to fathom. Everything I believed I knew about the mind falls short in the face of it. But that's still not why you're here.'

    Younger didn't reply.

    'The war isn't what you want to ask me about,' added Freud.

    'I don't see a point anymore,' said Younger. 'I don't see - the possibility of a point. I have thoughts, I have desires, but I no longer see any purpose.' His right fist clenched; he made it relax. 'Can one live without purpose?'

    'The demand that your life have a purpose, my boy, is something you acquired from your parents, probably your father - something to be analyzed.'

    'To say that,' replied Younger, 'is to concede that there is no purpose.'

    'Then I can't help you.'

    Another pause.

    'You're not smoking,' said Freud, noticing that Younger's cigar was out and offering him a light. 'I've followed your career from afar. Brill has kept me informed. You've done well.'

    'Thank you.'

    'You fought?' asked Freud.

    'Yes.'

    'My sons too. Martin is still a prisoner, in Italy.' Freud drew on his cigar. 'I was very sorry to hear about your wife's death. A terrible thing. Do you treat women badly?'

    'I beg your pardon?'

    'You never remarried. You have an exaggerated idea of female innocence, to judge by your reluctance to speak about sexuality in front of Miss Rousseau. I'm wondering if you habitually mistreat women.'

    'Why would I mistreat women?'

    'It's a perfectly common reaction. A man who idealizes women not infrequently maintains a low opinion of them at the same time.'

    'I don't have a low opinion of women. I have a high opinion of them.'

    'I'm only observing. It was after your wife died that you turned away from psychology. You turned away from the mind.'

    'I studied the mind,' replied Younger. 'Biologically.'

    'That was how you turned away from it - probably a way of striking hack.'

    'At whom?'

    'At your wife. At me, I suppose. At yourself.'

    Younger said nothing.

    'You abandoned psychoanalysis,' Freud continued, 'and you mistreat women for the same reason: because of a sense of responsibility for your wife's death.'

    'That's absurd. I wasn't responsible for her death.'

    'Absurdity is an offense to logic,' said Freud, 'but in the mind logic is not master.'

    Colette was no longer in the consulting room when the two men emerged from Freud's study. Younger went outside, but didn't find her on the street either. He walked down Berggasse toward the canal. He thought she might have taken a walk to see the Danube. She wasn't there. Younger stared at the water a long time.

    Back at the Hotel Bristol, Younger asked Luc if his sister had returned. The boy shook his head and showed Younger a picture he had drawn.

    'Very accomplished,' said Younger. The boy had drawn a tree with many limbs. On several of those branches animals perched, each of them staring at the viewer with large, hungry eyes. 'Are they dogs?'

    Luc shook his head.

    'Wolves?'

    The boy nodded.

    'You realize, little man,' said Younger, 'we don't even know if you can speak. Physically, that is.'

    Luc looked interested, but disinterested, simultaneously.

    'But
you
know if you can,' said Younger. 'I know you know. And if you can't speak, Luc, there's no reason for you to go to Dr Freud. He's not that kind of doctor.'

    The boy remained still.

    'But if you
can
,' Younger continued, 'you could get out of all this very easily. By talking. Get out of seeing the doctor. Get out of that school you're in. Make your sister very happy.'

    Luc stared at Younger a long while before turning his drawing over and writing a message on the back. It was only the second time he'd done so with Younger. The page bore two words: You're wrong.

    Watching the boy sit down in a corner with one of his books, Younger wondered on which point he'd been wrong. That Luc knew if he could speak? Or that his talking would make his sister happy?

    Colette returned to the hotel an hour later.

    'You disappeared,' said Younger.

    'I went-' she began.

    'To the Grubers'.'

    'Yes. I walked. But the address wasn't their house,' she replied. 'It wasn't a residence at all. I couldn't find out anything. I'm not even sure what kind of place it was. A concert hall, maybe. Could you help me?'

    Younger accompanied her back to the address to translate. It proved to be a music school. A secretary, kind enough to look in the school records, found that a student by the name of Hans Gruber had attended the school - or at least applied to it - in 1914. She gave them a new address, which, they learned from their cab driver, was in the Hutteldorf district, almost two hours away by horse-drawn, although the trip would be faster and cheaper by train. Colette declared that she would go by herself tomorrow.

    'Don't be silly. I'll come with you,' said Younger.

    That evening, Martha Freud, her sister Minna, and the Freuds' maid Paula all fawned over Luc, pronouncing him the most adorable
schmächtige Kerlchen
in the world. Martha apologized repeatedly for the meagerness of the dinner fare, which in fact was the opposite of meager, but was extremely simple, as if the Freuds were country farmers.

    'The awful war,' said Martha.

    'At least the right side won,' declared Freud.

    Martha asked how her husband could say such a thing when they had lost everything.

    'We didn't lose everything, my dear,' said Freud chidingly.

    'Only our life's savings,' replied Martha. 'We had it all in state bonds. The safest possible investment - everyone said so. There were pictures of Emperor Franz Josef on every one.'

    'And now they are worth face value,' said Freud.

    'They're worth nothing!' said Martha.

    'Just what I said, my dear,' answered Freud. 'But our sons are unhurt, and our daughters are happy. True, we don't have Martin home yet, but he's better off where he is. As a prisoner, he's fed every day, while Vienna is starving. My patients pay me in goat's milk and hen's eggs - which has at least kept food on our table. But our movement, Younger, is rich. We received a bequest - a million crowns - from a Hungarian patient. When the money is released, we're going to build free clinics in Berlin and Hungary. Budapest will be our new center. Your old friend Ferenczi has just been appointed professor of psychology there.'