Freud's Mistress Read online

  There was a long silence as the question hung in the air, Martha holding her ground and Minna deciding how to respond.

  “I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Minna replied.

  “All right, dear,” Martha said, “but the cherry dumplings have gone cold. Would you like Cook to reheat them also? Although, on second thought, she might have left for the evening.”

  “It’s fine, Martha. Never mind. I’m tired, anyway.”

  “All right, then,” Martha replied, as she fiddled with the key on the gaslight, turning the wick down, lifting off the globe, and blowing on the flame.

  “They smell less if you blow them out,” she said. “By the way, in the future, suppertime is not a good hour to disappear. Unless of course, Sigmund needs you.”

  Her sister’s tone was strained, her inflection brittle. How unpleasant she was, Minna thought to herself. Getting so upset because she was a few hours late, when heaven knows she had been working nonstop since she’d arrived. The two sisters stood opposite each other, their countenances so similar. The evening light played on the surfaces of the freshly polished wood as Minna was suddenly seized by a wave of guilt. The problem was not merely that Minna had been at a café drinking with Martha’s husband while her sister stayed home to care for the children. The more explosive issue was that Minna’s feelings toward Sigmund were not altogether innocent. There was no excuse for it and she knew it. She went back to her room in uncomfortable silence. As though they’d had an argument and both decided not to mention the real reason.

  She opened the door to her room to find Sophie sitting cross-legged on her bed, with a book of folktales on her lap.

  “Mama thaid you’d read me this before I go to sthleep,” she said.

  “Oh, Sophie dear, it’s so late,” Minna said.

  What she’d really like to do is have a bit of gin, take a bath, and crawl into bed. However, one look at the child’s disappointed face and Minna pulled Sophie on her lap and began to read.

  It was the story of Franz, a little country mouse who lived in a little country house with red-checked curtains, two mouse-sized armchairs, and a cozy fireplace. He wore a red beret and glasses, and was filled with joy as he had just stolen a plate of strawberries and tartlets from a nearby farmhouse and delivered it to his three good-natured mouse siblings and adorable, round, furry parents, the sort of characters that populate children’s literature, but not, alas, their real lives. The stories were sweet and rambling, and as Sophie cuddled into her, both Minna and the child fell fast asleep.

  • • •

  The next morning, Minna awoke early and deposited Sophie back in her room, taking care not to wake Mathilde. She was desperate for coffee and bread, as she had had no supper the night before, but the thought of running into Sigmund kept her in her room until the appointed breakfast hour. This morning, as she had done since she arrived, she got the children up, fed them breakfast, and helped organize their schedules. Martha was perfectly pleasant and there seemed to be no residual annoyance from the night before.

  “How did you sleep, my dear?” Martha asked.

  “Just fine, thank you. And you?”

  “Like a baby. I was so exhausted I could barely move. Fell asleep the moment my head touched the pillow. Sigmund, on the other hand, was up most of the night working in his study. I just don’t know what to do with that man.”

  Martha put on her hat and coat and left for the butcher. She told Minna she was planning to complain about last night’s meat, and then afterward she would stop at the dressmaker’s. Minna wanted to tell her that she might consider another dress pattern rather than the dowdy, outmoded one she always used, but decided against it. She was straightening the parlor when she heard loud voices coming from the foyer.

  Minna peeked out the door and saw Dr. Josef Breuer, Freud’s closest colleague and mentor, standing in the vestibule below. Fourteen years older than him, he had the appearance and demeanor of a kindly uncle. The cadence of his speech was impressively slow, like that of a scholar, in contrast to Freud’s sharp retorts, infused with unapologetic disappointment and anger.

  “Try as I might, I can’t agree with your conclusions. My case studies just don’t support them,” Breuer said.

  “Then your case studies are wrong,” Freud replied, scowling at his former mentor.

  “You’re taking this too personally, Sigmund.”

  “How am I supposed to take it?”

  “I’m not saying I disagree with everything. But your findings are a grave overvaluation of sexuality. You’ve gone too far.”

  “You think I’ve gone too far! I haven’t gone far enough!” Freud said, his fury filling the air with tension.

  Minna assumed they were arguing over Freud’s Studies in Hysteria. The lecture that she had attended had been defensive at the end, and he had told her that his conclusions concerning hysteria were being challenged by other scientists.

  “You’re my most brilliant student. Your theories are inspired, but you must compromise . . . make some changes. . . .”

  “There is no compromise with the truth,” Freud fumed, his voice rising as he waved a bunch of papers in the air.

  “I’m simply suggesting that you need further findings before presenting this to the council. These men are strong willed, like you,” Breuer said, smiling, trying to appease him. “If you continue in this vein, they’ll cut you off.”

  “Let them.”

  “Sigmund. You know I support you. I send you patients. When you’ve been short of funds, I’ve tried to help. But I’m telling you, by doing this, you’re isolating yourself.”

  “Good day, Josef,” Freud said, his face red with indignation, as he walked the man to the door.

  “Can we discuss this another time?”

  “I don’t see the point,” Freud said.

  Minna watched as Breuer carefully placed his hat on his head, straightened his tie, and left as Freud stormed back into his office, slamming the door. She ventured down the stairs and knocked on the door to his study.

  “What!” he barked.

  “It’s me,” Minna said, hesitantly opening the door.

  “Come in! Did you hear that? Doling out praise as he tries to destroy me.”

  He was sitting in his desk chair, shoulders hunched, puffing on a cigar with that hot-under-the-collar look.

  “He thinks just because I owe him money, he can tell me what to do,” he said, flicking his ashes on the floor and kicking them aside.

  “I’m not sure that’s fair. It didn’t sound like—”

  “Fair! You tell me what’s fair. I work day and night, I’m on the verge of a major breakthrough, and he harasses me with his picky objections,” he said bitterly. “And what good has he done? I’m not even a professor. Year after year he stands by watching others get promoted over me. Still a Privatdozent after all this time.”

  “You can’t deny the man cares for you.”

  “Don’t defend him. You have no idea. I hope his practice is obliterated, in ruins. See how he likes it when someone wreaks havoc on his work.”

  Minna was suddenly reminded of Martin after Oliver teased him about his poetry.

  “I hate you,” Martin had said, his face turning red, his veins sticking out of his neck. “I will hate you until the day you die. I hope everything you do turns to filth.”

  “You look tired, my dear,” Minna said, observing Freud’s puffy eyes. “Martha tells me you didn’t sleep at all last night.”

  “I was revising part of my theory,” he said, putting his research together in a packet and handing it to her. “And for what, I might ask?”

  “What’s this?” she asked, taking the folder.

  “Worthless pieces of paper, if you listen to Breuer. Read it and decide for yourself. I’ll be gone next week, but we can discuss it when I return.”

  “W
hy, of course,” she said, thrilled, clutching the folder under her arm.

  • • •

  Minna stayed up half the night looking over the notes. She was well aware that Freud had flung this thing into her arms, almost on a whim, after banishing his mentor, Breuer, from his study. Nevertheless, she was flattered. At first she thought it might be just a summary of what she had heard in the lecture. But from what she could glean from a preliminary reading, he had added more case studies and more proof of his discovery.

  For the next week, Minna’s days were filled with family activities, errands, and outings. But after the children were asleep and the house was finally still, she sat on her bed and took out his report, sifting through it as if it were buried treasure.

  I decided to start from the assumption that my patients knew everything that was of any significance to their treatment and that it was only a question of getting them to communicate it . . . penetrating into deeper layers of memory, using all the weapons in the therapeutic armory, forcing our way in, overcoming resistances all the time, like a surgical intervention akin to the opening up of a cavity filled with pus. . . .

  She stayed up writing notes on the side, compulsively filling an empty journal with her thoughts. Her neck strain came on about the third night and she borrowed a writing desk from downstairs. She wished she had electric lights in her bedroom. It would be much easier than reading by candlelight. It was a difficult and slow process to digest it all, but this solitary activity gave her a window into how Freud’s mind worked. She could hear his disembodied voice in the report and she longed to discuss it with him, but he was still away at a congress in Berlin.

  Through it all, she began to form her own opinions of his work. She could see why Breuer had some objections . . . why he disagreed with the proposition that every neurotic symptom had a sexual origin. Weren’t fear, injury and disease, the loss of a family member, bankruptcy pivotal? Couldn’t these misfortunes also cause neurosis and hysteria? For instance, she had been devastated by Ignaz’s death. She still had nightmares about it. But the cause of her discomfort wasn’t sexual. Ignaz died of the white plague. She felt guilty she didn’t visit him, but what, one might ask, is sexual about that?

  Also, she noticed that almost all of Sigmund’s case studies were women—upper-middle-class women and very unhappy ones at that. She thought about her mother, who used to eat gobs of strudel at tea or retire to her room for days on end when she was “not herself.” Everyone always knew when Emmeline was upset, which was most of the time after their father had died. Now, according to this report, Sigmund would argue that her mother’s behavior was driven by guilt over some secret form of sexual deviance and that she needed to be prodded and pushed to talk about her feelings. This process would eventually make her feel better and, supposedly, she wouldn’t continue to torture the rest of the family with her bitterness and frustrations. This sounded highly doubtful to Minna. In Minna’s experience, the more her mother focused on her problems, the more she bedeviled those around her. In fact, in Minna’s opinion, the less she talked, the better. Perhaps she might be better off not thinking about her mother at all.

  When Minna finally reached the last line of the report, she smiled. It was so typical of Freud’s unbridled sense of entitlement.

  “We shall, in the end, conquer every resistance by emphasizing the unshakable nature of our convictions. . . .”

  Like one of his heroes, Julius Caesar, Minna thought. If he couldn’t tolerate criticism from his mentor, Breuer, he certainly wouldn’t welcome it from her. She could still safely give him her reaction and perhaps just touch on her reservations, but she would have to be extremely careful.

  She looked out the window and saw the light breaking through the thick rain clouds that had gathered during the night. It was still quiet in the house except for the wind rattling the windows and the metal radiator hissing away, sounding like an old man half asleep. The heating system was antiquated and erratic, as were most things in this apartment. Her eyes ached and she felt as if she’d been drugged.

  By eight a.m., the rain was coming down in hard, steady sheets. The governess had not appeared, and lessons would not resume until tomorrow. The children were naturally at loose ends, their routine upset, their outings canceled.

  Minna tried to organize a few activities, starting with reading time. All the children were told to choose a book from their bookshelves. And as they settled in their rooms, Minna tried her best to pull herself together but, she had to admit, she was beginning to look as disheveled as Martha. Her hair, limp and tangled, was knotted carelessly at the nape of her neck, and she had on one of her least attractive shirts and skirts.

  She was in the kitchen, filling Anna’s bottle, when she heard a high-pitched scream from the girls’ room. She ran upstairs to discover Martin, sitting in his pajamas, reading a copy of Der Struwwelpeter to Sophie. It was a wildly popular children’s book, written by a Frankfurt physician, that ostensibly read like a fairy tale. But it was actually a collection of nightmarish stories, cautionary tales of what happened to children who disobeyed their parents. Minna had read this book to a few of her older charges when it was first published. She didn’t think it was the most suitable book for children, but then neither was Kinder und Hausmärchen by the Brothers Grimm.

  There was the story of little Daumenlutscher, who was warned by his mother not to suck his thumb and ended up having his digits lopped off by giant scissors. Then there was Kaspar, who wouldn’t eat his soup. He wasted away and died. And don’t forget poor Pauline, a little girl who played with matches and then burned to death.

  Martin was reading these stories slowly with a quirk of a smile, relishing four-year-old Sophie’s reaction.

  “I don’t want thith book!” she cried, pulling the book out of Martin’s hands and throwing it on the floor.

  “Martin, what on earth are you doing?” Minna asked. “Why don’t you choose another book?”

  “She likes this one,” he said, with the expressionless stare of a child feigning innocence.

  “I highly doubt that.”

  “Tell her, Sophie,” Martin pushed. “You asked me to read it.”

  “Did not . . .” She sniffed.

  “Martin, why don’t you go get dressed?” Minna asked.

  “No.”

  “You’re not sitting in your pajamas all day.”

  “Why not? Mama does it.”

  “Only when she’s under the weather.”

  “Well, I’m under the weather,” he said, grinning at her with a row of pointy white teeth, his hair curled up into two little horns behind his ears. It was at this point that Martha poked her head in the room.

  “What’s going on?” Martha asked.

  “Tante Minna’s making me get dressed and I’m not not feeling well. At all.”

  “The boy does look flushed,” Martha said. “I think he’s getting sick. Are you getting sick, dear?”

  Martin faked a dry, rattling cough. “. . . And my throat hurts something terrible.”

  “I knew it! Go to bed,” said Martha.

  Martin banged out the door, flashing Minna a small, triumphant smile. My Lord, Minna thought, if he didn’t drive you crazy, you had to admire him. But why did her sister have to interfere in something so trivial?

  “You undercut my authority, Martha.”

  “But the child is sick.”

  Minna held her tongue, but this was one of those times when Martha’s peevish behavior made her want to poke her with a parasol.

  15

  The next morning was a clear, sparkling Saturday. Ernst was at speech therapy and the girls had gone with their mother to the Tandelmarkt, so Minna decided to take Martin and Oliver skating on the iced-over lake. It seemed that Martin had made a “most remarkable recovery” overnight and, once on the way, he and his brother ran ahead, leaping across puddles and swinging on
overhanging branches with unmitigated glee.

  When Minna thought back to what happened next, she had to admit that she had heard a faint chorus of hoarse, high-pitched voices coming from somewhere, before the boys even laced on their skates. Perhaps at that moment she should have sensed the impending danger, been forewarned, and steered the boys away from the scene. But no instinctual alarms rang out in her brain as she settled herself on the sandy shore, and then sat there, immobile, as a gang of four or five older boys burst out of the bushes and swarmed around Martin and Oliver, hurling insults and brandishing rocks and sticks. Even a deer knows when a hunter has his scent.

  “Dirty Jew,” one oversized, snub-nosed adolescent barked as he knocked Oliver down and pummeled him in the face and chest. Another boy pushed Martin to the ground and the two went at it with alarming ferocity, fists and boots flying, blood spraying in the air. Minna’s shouts echoed across the lake as she ran over and tried to yank the assailants off them. Then it was over as fast as it had begun. The bullies retreated into the woods as more and more people crowded the scene, and someone called for the police.

  • • •

  Minna knelt down and wrapped her arms around Oliver’s thin, shivering shoulders, then wiped his swollen eye and held her handkerchief to the cut on his forehead, his blood smearing the front of her blouse.

  “What hurts?” she asked.

  “Everything,” Oliver moaned.

  “And look what they did,” Martin said, hobbling over to her. “They broke my skate.”

  “But you chased them away, brave boy,” she said, with a pained smile.

  As they trudged back to the apartment, the boys were mostly silent. At one point, she tried to console them, but her words sounded empty. She knew very well that incidents like this were happening all over Vienna. What could she say?

  When they walked in the door, Freud was standing in the vestibule, still wearing his traveling clothes, having just returned from his congress with Dr. Wilhelm Fliess, a young doctor from Berlin who specialized in ear, nose, and throat ailments. The boys were near tears as they told their father what happened.