The Interpretation Of Murder (2 page)

    At the beginning of the twentieth
century, an architectural paroxysm shook New York City. Gigantic towers called
skyscrapers soared up one after the other, higher than anything built by the
hand of man before. At a ribbon- cutting on Liberty Street in 1908, the top
hats applauded as Mayor McClellan declared the forty-seven-story redbrick and
bluestone Singer Building the world's tallest structure. Eighteen months later,
the mayor had to repeat the same ceremony at the fifty-story Metropolitan Life
tower on Twenty-fourth Street. But even then, they were already breaking ground
for Mr Woolworth's staggering fifty-eight-story ziggurat back downtown.

    On every block, enormous steel-beam
skeletons appeared where empty lots had been the day before. The smash and
scream of steam shovels never ceased. The only comparison was with Haussmann s
transformation of Paris a half century earlier, but in New York there was no
single vision behind the scenes, no unifying plan, no disciplining authority.
Capital and speculation drove everything, releasing fantastic energies,
distinctly American and individualistic.

    The masculinity of it all was
undeniable. On the ground, the implacable Manhattan grid, with its two hundred
numbered east-west streets and twelve north-south avenues, gave the city a
stamp of abstract rectilinear order. Above this, in the immensity of the
towering structures, with their peacock-like embellishments, it was all
ambition, speculation, competition, domination, even lust - for height, size,
and always money

    The Balmoral, on the Boulevard - New
Yorkers at the time referred to Broadway from Fifty-ninth to 155th Street as
the Boulevard - was one of the grand new edifices. Its very existence was a
gamble. In 1909, the very rich still lived in houses, not apartments. They
'kept' apartments for short or seasonal stays in the city, but they failed to
comprehend how anybody could actually live in one. The Balmoral was a bet: that
the rich could be induced to change their minds if the accommodations were
sufficiently opulent.

    The Balmoral rose seventeen stories,
higher and grander than any apartment building - any residential building - had
ever climbed before. Its four wings occupied an entire city block. Its lobby,
where seals cavorted in a Roman fountain, shone with white Carrera marble.
Chandeliers in every apartment sparkled with Murano glass. The smallest
dwelling had eight rooms; the largest boasted fourteen bedrooms, seven baths, a
grand ballroom with a twenty-foot ceiling, and full maid's service. This rented
for the appalling sum of $495 a month.

    The owner of the Balmoral, Mr George
Banwell, enjoyed the enviable position of being unable to lose money on it. His
investors had advanced $6,000,000 toward its construction, of which he had kept
not a penny, scrupulously remitting the entire amount to the builder, the
American Steel and Fabrication Company. The owner of this firm, however, was
also Mr George Banwell, and the actual construction cost was $4,200,000. On
January 1, 1909, six months before the Balmoral was to open, Mr Banwell
announced that all but two of the apartments were already let. The announcement
was pure invention, but it was believed, and therefore within three weeks it
was so. Mr Banwell had mastered the great truth that truth itself, like
buildings, can be manufactured.

    The Balmoral's exterior belonged to
the Beaux-Arts school at its most flamboyant. Crowning the roofline were a
quartet of thirteen-foot floor-to-ceiling glass-paned concrete arches, one at
each corner of the property. Because these great arched windows gave off the
top floor's four master bedrooms, someone standing outside them could have had
a very compromising view inside. On Sunday night, August 29, the view from
outside the Alabaster Wing would have been shocking indeed. A slender young
woman was standing within, lit by a dozen flickering candles, barely clothed,
exquisitely proportioned, her wrists tied together over her head, and her
throat embraced by another binding, a man's white silk tie, which a strong hand
was making tight, exceedingly tight, causing her to choke.

    Her entire body glistened in the
unbearable August heat. Her long legs were bare, as were her arms. Her elegant
shoulders were nearly bare as well. The girl's consciousness was fading. She
tried to speak. There was a question she had to ask. It was there; it was gone.
Then she had it again. 'My name,' she whispered. 'What is my name?'

    Dr Freud, I was relieved to see, did
not look like a madman at all. His countenance was authoritative, his head well
formed, his beard pointed, neat, professional. He was about five foot eight,
roundish, but quite fit and solid for a man of fifty-three. His suit was of
excellent cloth, with a watch chain and cravat in the continental style.
Altogether, he looked remarkably sound for a man just off a week's voyage at
sea.

    His eyes were another matter. Brill
had warned me about them. As Freud descended the ship's ramp, his eyes were
fearsome, as if he were in a towering temper. Perhaps the calumny he had long
endured in Europe had worked a permanent scowl into his brow. Or perhaps he was
unhappy to be in America. Six months ago, when President Hall of Clark
University - my employer - first invited Freud to the United States, he turned
us down. We were not sure why. Hall persisted, explaining that Clark wished to
confer on Freud the university's highest academic honor, to make him the
centerpiece of our twentieth-anniversary celebrations, and to have him deliver
a series of lectures on psychoanalysis, the first ever to be given in America.
In the end Freud accepted. Was he now regretting his decision?

    All these speculations, I soon saw,
were unfounded. As he stepped off the gangway, Freud lit a cigar - his first
act on American soil - and the moment he did so the scowl vanished, a smile
came to his face, and all the seeming choler drained away He inhaled deeply and
looked about him, taking in the harbor's size and chaos with what looked like
amusement.

    Brill greeted Freud warmly. They knew
each other from

    Europe; Brill had even been to
Freud's home in Vienna. He had described that evening to me - the charming
Viennese house filled with antiquities, the doting and doted- on children, the
hours of electrifying conversation - so often I knew his stories by heart.

    From nowhere a knot of reporters
appeared; they gathered around Freud and yelled out questions, mostly in German.
He answered with good humor but seemed baffled that an interview should be
conducted in so haphazard a fashion. At last Brill shooed them away and pulled
me forward.

    'Allow me,' Brill said to Freud, 'to
present Dr Stratham Younger, a recent graduate of Harvard University, now
teaching at Clark, and sent down by Hall specially to take care of you during
your week in New York. Younger is without question the most talented American
psychoanalyst. Of course, he is also the
only
American psychoanalyst.'

    'What,' said Freud to Brill, 'you
don't call yourself an analyst, Abraham?'

    'I don't call myself American,' Brill
replied. 'I am one of Mr Roosevelt's "hyphenated Americans," for
which, as he says, there is no room in this country.'

    Freud addressed me. 'I am always
delighted,' he said in excellent English, 'to meet a new member of our little
movement, but especially here in America, for which I have such hopes.' He
begged me to thank President Hall for the honor Clark had bestowed on him.

    'The honor is ours, sir,' I replied,
'but I'm afraid I hardly qualify as a psychoanalyst.'

    'Don't be a fool,' said Brill, 'of
course you do.' He then introduced me to Freud's two traveling companions.
'Younger, meet the eminent Sandor Ferenczi of Budapest, whose name is
synonymous throughout Europe with mental disorder. And here is the still more
eminent Carl Jung of Zurich, whose
Dementia
will one day be known all
over the civilized world.'

    'Most happy,' said Ferenczi in a
strong Hungarian accent, 'most happy. But please to ignore Brill; everyone
does, I assure you.' Ferenczi was an affable sandy-haired fellow in his late
thirties, brightly attired in a white suit. You could see that he and Brill
were genuine friends. Physically, they made a nice contrast. Brill was among
the shortest men I knew, with close-set eyes and a wide flat-topped head.
Ferenczi, although not tall, had long arms, long fingers, and a receding
hairline that elongated his face as well.

    I liked Ferenczi at once, but I had
never before shaken a hand that offered no resistance whatsoever, less than a
joint of meat at the butcher's. It was embarrassing: he let out a yelp and
yanked his fingers away as if they had been crushed. I apologized profusely,
but he insisted he was glad to 'start learning right away American walls,' a
remark at which I could only nod in polite agreement.

    Jung, who was about thirty-five, made
a markedly different impression. He was better than six feet tall, unsmiling,
blue- eyed, dark-haired, with an aquiline nose, a pencil-thin mustache, and a
great expanse of forehead - quite attractive to women, I should have thought,
although he lacked Freud's ease. His hand was firm and cold as steel. Standing
ramrod straight, he might have been a lieutenant in the Swiss Guard, except for
his little round scholarly spectacles. The affection Brill clearly felt for
Freud and Ferenczi was nowhere in evidence when he shook Jung's hand.

    'How was your passage, gentlemen?'
asked Brill. We could not go anywhere; our guests' trunks had to be collected.
'Not too wearisome?'

    'Capital,' said Freud. 'You won't
believe it: I found a steward reading my
Psychopathology of Everyday Life!

    'No!' Brill replied. 'Ferenczi must
have put him up to it.'

    'Put him up?' Ferenczi cried out. 'I
did no such

    Freud took no notice of Brill's
comment. 'It may have been the most gratifying moment of my professional life,
which does not perhaps reflect too well on my professional life. Recognition is
coming to us, my friends: recognition, slowly but surely.'

    'Did the crossing take long, sir?' I
inquired idiotically.

    'A week,' Freud answered, 'and we
spent it in the most productive way possible: we analyzed each other's dreams.'

    'Good God,' said Brill. 'I wish I had
been there. What were the results, in the name of heaven?'

    'Well, you know,' Ferenczi returned,
'analysis is rather like being undressed in public. After you overcome initial
humiliation, it's quite refreshing.'

    'That's what I tell all my patients,'
said Brill, 'especially the women. And what about you, Jung? Did you also find
the humiliation refreshing?'

    Jung, almost a foot taller than
Brill, looked down on him as if at a laboratory specimen. 'It is not quite
accurate,' he replied, 'to say the three of us analyzed each other.'

    . 'True,' Ferenczi confirmed. 'Freud
rather analyzed us, while Jung and I crossed interpretative swords with each
other.'

    'What?' Brill exclaimed. 'You mean no
one dared to analyze the Master?'

    'No one was permitted to,' said Jung,
betraying no affect.

    'Yes, yes,' said Freud, with a
knowing smile, 'but you all analyze me to death as soon as my back is turned,
don't you, Abraham?'

    'We do indeed,' Brill replied,
'because we are all good sons, and we know our Oedipal duty.'

    In the apartment high above the city,
a set of instruments lay on the bed behind the bound girl. From left to right,
there were: a man's right-angled razor, with a bone handle; a black leather
riding crop about two feet in length; three surgical knives, in ascending order
of size; and a small vial half full of a clear fluid. The assailant considered
and picked up one of these instruments.

    Seeing the shadow of the man's razor flickering
on the far wall, the girl shook her head. Again she tried to cry out, but the.
constriction of her throat reduced her plea to a whisper.

    From behind her came a low voice:
'You want me to wait?'

    She nodded.

    'I can't.' The victim's wrists,
crossed and suspended together over her head, were so slight, her fingers so
graceful, her long legs so demure. 'I can't wait.' The girl winced as the
gentlest possible stroke was administered to one of her bare thighs. A stroke,
that is, of the razor, which left a vivid scarlet wake as it traced her skin.
She cried out, her back curved in exactly the same arch as the great windows,
her raven hair flowing down her back. A second stroke, to the other thigh, and
the girl cried out again, more sharply.

    'No,' the voice admonished calmly.
'No screaming.'

    The girl could only shake her head,
uncomprehending.

    'You must make a different sound.'

    The girl shook her head again. She
wanted to speak but couldn't.

    'Yes. You must. I know you can. I told
you how. Don't you remember?' The razor was now replaced on the bed. On the far
wall, in the wavering candlelight, the girl saw the shadow of the leather crop
rising up instead. 'You want it. Sound as if you want it. You must make that
kind of sound.' Gently but implacably, the silk tie around the girl's throat
drew tighter. 'Make it.'

    She tried to do as she was bid,
moaning softly - a woman's moan, a supplicating moan, which she had never made
before.

    'Good. Like that.'

    Holding the end of the white tie in
one hand and the leather crop in the other, the assailant brought the latter
down upon the girl's back. She made the sound again. Another lash, harder. The
sting caused the girl to cry out, but she caught herself and made the other
sound instead.

    'Better.' The next blow landed not on
her back but just below it. She opened her mouth, but at the same moment the
tie was drawn still tighter, choking her. Her choking, in turn, made her moan
seem more genuine, more broken, an effect her tormentor evidently liked.
Another blow, and another and another, louder and faster, fell on all the
softest parts of her body, rending her garments, leaving glowing marks on her
white skin. With every lash, despite the searing pain, the girl moaned as she
had been told to do, her cries coming louder and faster too.

    The rain of blows stopped. She would
have collapsed long before, but the rope from the ceiling, tied to her wrists,
kept her upright. Her body was now scored with lacerations. Blood ran down in one
or two places. For a moment all went dark for her; then the flickering light
returned. A shiver passed through her.

    Her eyes opened. Her lips moved.
'Tell me my name,' she tried to whisper, but no one heard.

    The assailant, studying the girl's lovely
neck, loosened the silk binding around it. For one instant she breathed freely,
her head still flung back, the waves of black hair flowing to her waist. Then
the tie around her throat went taut again.

    The girl could no longer see
distinctly. She felt a hand on her mouth, its fingers running lightly over her
lips. Then those fingers drew the silk tie yet tighter, so that even her
choking stopped. The candlelight went out for her again. This time it did not
return.