The White Hotel (17 page)

Her symptoms continued to be severe; she was sleeping badly, and had lost all the weight she had regained, being once more on a self-imposed diet of oranges and water. She said on one occasion: “You tell me that my illness is probably connected with early events in my life that I have forgotten. But even if that is so, you can’t alter those events in any way. How do you propose to help me, then?” And I replied: “No doubt fate would find it easier than I do to relieve you of your illness. But much will be gained if we succeed in turning your hysterical misery into common unhappiness.”

It was at this moment in the painfully slow unravelling of my young patient’s mysterious illness that I began to link her troubles with my theory of the death instinct. The shadowy ideas of my half-completed essay,
Beyond the Pleasure Principle
,
¹
began, almost imperceptibly, to take concrete shape, as i pondered the tragic paradox controlling Frau Anna’s destiny. She possessed a craving to satisfy the demand of her libido; yet at the same time an imperious demand, on the part of some force I did not comprehend, to poison the well of her pleasure at its source. She had, by her own admission, an unusually strong maternal instinct; yet an absolute edict, imposed by some autocrat whom I could not name, against having children. She loved food; yet she would not eat.

Strange also (though too many years of psychoanalysis had partly blinded me to its strangeness) was her psyche’s compulsion to relive the night of the storm when she learned of her mother’s death in a hotel fire. I have said that at certain moments Frau Anna’s expression reminded me of the faces of the victims of war neuroses. It is still not clear to us why those poor victims of the battlefield force themselves again and again to relive in dreams the original traumatic events. Yet it is also the case that everyone, not only neurotics, shows signs of an irrational compulsion to repeat. I observed, for example, a game played by my eldest grandson, who kept carrying out over and over again actions which could only have had an unpleasant meaning for him—actions relating to his mother’s absence. There is also the pattern of self-injuring behaviour that can be traced through the lives of certain people. I began to see Frau Anna, not as a woman separated from the rest of us by her illness, but as someone
in whom an hysteria exaggerated and highlighted a
universal
struggle between the life instinct and the death instinct.

Was there not a “demon” of repetition in our lives, and must it not stem from our human instincts being profoundly conservative? Might it not therefore be that all living things are in mourning for the inorganic state, the original condition from which they have by accident emerged? Why else, I thought, should there be death? For death cannot be regarded as an absolute necessity with its basis in the very nature of life. Death is rather a matter of expediency. So ran the argument in my mind.

Frau Anna was simply in the front line, as it were; and her journal was the latest dispatch. But the civilian populace, if I may so term the healthy, were also only too familiar with the constant struggle between the life instinct (or libido) and the death instinct. Children, and armies, build towers of bricks only to knock them down. Perfectly normal lovers know that the hour of victory is also the hour of defeat; and therefore mingle funeral wreaths with the garlands of conquest, naming the land they have won
la petite mort
. Not least are the poets familiar with the wearisome strife:

Ach, ich bin des Treibens müde!
Was soll all der Schmerz und Lust?
¹

While I was thus dwelling on the universal aspect of Frau Anna’s condition, Eros in combat with Thanatos, I stumbled over the root of her personal anguish. I had, up to this point, never been able to establish any particular event which might have been instrumental in unleashing her hysteria. The pains in her breast and ovary had attacked her at a time when she was busy and happy, successful in her resumed career, and eagerly anticipating her husband’s first leave, confident that all would now be well. She could not think of any unpleasant episode which might have had a bearing on her illness. She had gone to bed quite happily one night, after writing her husband a very affectionate letter hinting that she would like to become pregnant during his forthcoming leave. The pains had woken her that same night.

One day she arrived for her appointment with me in an unusually cheerful frame of mind. She explained that she had received a letter from her old friend in Petersburg, with the splendid news that she and her husband had survived unharmed, though in much reduced circumstances, and had been blessed with a son. Though he was already three years old, she reminded Frau Anna of her promise to be a godmother, should the happy occasion ever arise. This was Anna’s first news of her friend for nearly four years, and the first news
from
her since before the war. Her happiness was therefore easy to understand.

However, while she was expressing her pleasure at the thought of having a little godson, her pains, which had previously been only moderate, greatly increased. They were so severe that she begged to be allowed to go home. I was not prepared to let her go without attempting to find the cause of this sudden deterioration, and I inquired whether she was not perhaps jealous of Madame R.’s happy event. The poor young woman was crying with the pain, while vigorously denying any such unworthy thought. “It would not be at all surprising or discreditable, Frau Anna,” I said. “After all, if you had not left your husband you yourself would doubtless be equally blessed.” She continued, weeping, to deny any jealousy, yet confessed the truth through her gesture of fumbling with the crucifix. I felt it was the right time to tell her, at last, what a “godsend” I had found her crucifix, on occasions; but even before I could explain why, she was saying, with some excitement, that she now recalled the onset of her pains in more detail.

Before going home to write her nightly letter to her husband, she had dined quietly with her aunt, following an afternoon concert. She now remembered it was on that very day that she had last had news of Madame R. The news had reached her by a lucky chance. Her husband wrote that he had been questioning an officer from the Russian capital; and in a lighter moment they had found a slender thread of coincidence linking their lives. The officer was acquainted with Anna’s friend, and reported her as being in good health and (he believed) expecting a child. Frau Anna had discussed the exciting news with her aunt. Could it be true? Was it not dangerous, to be with child in middle life? What christening present should she send, when circumstances permitted? Her aunt had suggested a crucifix, and Anna had concurred. That was all she could remember of the conversation.
She had gone home, written a happy, amorous letter, and awoke feeling ill in the night.

The young woman, whose pains had eased somewhat in the excitement of recollection, was stroking her own crucifix during her recital; and I now proceeded to relate the importance to me of these involuntary gestures. My explanation had the effect of bringing back her fierce pains, but also of recalling to her mind a host of forgotten memories of that evening, and thence to unting the knot of her hysteria. Needless to say, it did not happen without much distress on her part and much probing of her defences on mine. The gist of her story was as follows:

She had felt disturbed by the news from Petersburg as well as glad. She confessed it had to do with her knowledge that if she had allowed her husband full intercourse she herself might well have been pregnant by now. But she had shaken off this slight disturbance by discussing the question of a christening gift. Her aunt happened to mention that her own crucifix had come to her at birth, and she had worn it day and night ever since her first communion. On saying this she touched the silver cross proudly. How well worn it was, she remarked—unlike Anna’s; for the simple reason, she added, that Anna’s mother had ripped hers off on her wedding day and never worn it again. It was an angry gesture against her parents’ hostility. Indeed, from that day she had ceased her religious observances. Her crucifix had lain untouched in her jewellery box, until eventually it had come to Anna.

Her aunt had then made a somewhat tactless remark about her sister’s character being selfish and worldly; then, quickly repenting, began to praise her and to speak cheerfully about those distant times. It was rare for her to talk about the past, for she found it painful; Frau Anna enjoyed the treat of conversing about the mother she had scarcely known. Her aunt recalled her sister’s
good looks; and her own too, in those days before she had become old and crippled, for of course they were so alike. She brought out the photograph album to confirm it: and smilingly she recalled that people used to say you could only tell them apart by glancing at their bosoms to see which one wore the cross! Anna, looking at the two lovely young ladies, smiled too, and thought she dimly remembered people saying such a thing. Then an entirely forgotten memory flashed into her mind: the incident of the summer-house. As she recalled it then—and related it now—it differed in one respect from the version I had previously heard.

The child was bored and hot, impatient with her mother for being so engrossed in her painting. Everyone else had vanished after the noon meal. Anna decided to return to the coolness of the house, and torment her nurse for a while. She had forgotten it was the nurse’s half-day off, so instead, she drank some lemonade and played alone with her dolls in the nursery. It was less hot when she went outdoors again. She went exploring through the trees, and came upon the scene in the summer-house. She was startled to see her aunt’s shockingly naked chest and shoulders, and backed away into the shrubbery. She went down to the beach, to ask her mother to explain why her aunt and uncle were behaving so strangely; but by now her mother was dozing on a rock. She knew it was a strict rule not to disturb adults when they were resting, so Anna returned to the house and played with her dolls again. In her heart of hearts she was glad her mother was asleep on the rock—because, of course, she really knew it was not her mother lying there. Besides the hundred secret signs by which a child knows its own mother, there was no mistaking her aunt’s high-necked dress, the glint of silver on her chest, in contrast to the shocking nakedness of the woman in the summer-house.

But what, then, were her mother and her jolly uncle doing together in the summer-house? It was too disturbing and puzzling, and the child forgot it in play. The adult Anna, when it flashed back to her with all the accretions of mature knowledge, immediately assumed the worst; and likewise found it impossible to bear. Her fragile sense of her own worth had been sustained by the ikon of her mother’s goodness. One flaw and it would shatter, shattering the young woman too. Now, the embrace of a single afternoon became the incest of many summer-houses and many summers. She did not wear a crucifix because she did not deserve to wear one: so her thoughts ran, even as she continued to attend to her aunt’s reminiscences. Then instantly another thought—she, Anna, did not deserve to wear it either; she too should rip it from her neck.
¹

But for what reason? She knew of none. She performed her religious duties and led a blameless life. Almost too blameless! In a sense, was she not jealous of her mother? Wicked she may have been; but how much pleasure she must have had, to want to fly into his arms, at the slightest opportunity, whatever the risk. Of course she must have gone to him, all those times she had left Anna with the nurse and returned many days later. There must be something very sadly lacking in me, she thought; for
I
could not imagine travelling hundreds of miles—to endure the rack! What is wrong with me? Clearly her poison still runs in me but in a quite, quite different direction. And I cannot even share my burden with one other person, as my mother could. I am completely alone. Suddenly the truth about herself which the young woman had not acknowledged burned itself upon her like a lightning
flash in the dark: I would travel hundreds of miles—at this very moment, if it were possible—to see my friend! But now she is bearing his child, I am more alone than ever!

Everything was now clear. I had listened to her agitated account with a growing assurance of its conclusion; it was by no means entirely at odds with certain suspicions I already had. Yet the clarification had a shattering effect on the poor girl. She threshed about, she cried aloud when I put the situation drily before her with the words: “So you didn’t want
a
child, you wanted Madame R.’s child—if only Nature had made such a thing possible.” She complained of the most frightful pains, and made a desperate effort to reject the explanation: it was not true, I had talked her into it, she was incapable of such feelings, she could never forgive herself, she had meant only that her friend would now be even less likely to sympathize with her unnatural horror of becoming pregnant. I confronted her with inescapable facts. Was it not significant that she suffered her destructive hallucinations during the only sexual activity permitted by her conscience? That her only long-lasting and fruitful relationships had been with women? That she was strongly maternal in her instincts; yet, when it came to the point, was filled with revulsion by the permanent domestic tie which motherhood would entail? That her journal gave a far livelier sense of Madame R.’s personality (in the guise of “Madame Cottin”) than of the young man’s? In comparison with Madame Cottin, was he not a cipher?