Freud's Mistress Read online

  It was perfectly acceptable and even considered polite for women to drink five to six glasses of wine at a formal Sabbath dinner. And Minna felt she needed every glass. In fact, the alcohol filled her with a renewed but unfounded state of calm, effectively easing her anxiety for a time.

  Later that night, as she and her mother washed the dishes, Minna carefully avoided questions regarding her hasty departure from Martha’s house and what exactly was this new position. When her answers were too obtuse, her mother changed the subject.

  “Such good news about Elsa,” Emmeline said as she wiped the last platter. “She was such a lovely-looking child. The prettiest of all the cousins.”

  Emmeline placed the plate on the upper shelf of the cupboard, closed the glass doors to the cabinet, and turned to her daughter.

  “Are you eating enough, dear?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “You’re looking far too thin. Only young girls can stay this thin. It affects your face, you know.”

  “Do you think I look old?”

  “What I think is that you might perhaps attract a man if you seemed a bit softer. It makes one more approachable.”

  “I don’t want to attract a man.” Even as she said it, the hypocrisy of that remark was not lost on Minna.

  “Well, if you want to have children of your own . . . you can’t just blithely go along year after year without a man. Women who do that . . . well, there’s a kind of sadness about them. You remember our neighbor, poor Fräulein Hessler? That’s how everyone referred to her. I can’t remember anyone saying her name without the word ‘poor’ in front of it. And now you’re nearly twenty-seven . . .”

  “Twenty-nine . . .”

  “Twenty-nine, my goodness. Time marches on,” Emmeline said, wiping the last of the dishes and handing it to Minna. “You know, tomorrow we could visit Rabbi Selig. He always has such good advice. And he’s known the family for so long. Then we could crochet, and I could show you my new yarn. You might take up needlework again.”

  “Good night, Mother,” Minna said, her stomach churning. “It’s been a long day. I think I’ll go to bed.”

  “Good night, dear.”

  Minna walked up the stairs, thinking that she hadn’t been home for even twenty-four hours and she had to get out. Things always slid back to the way they were. Homesickness, she thought . . . one affliction she had never suffered from. Living here would be like being buried alive. She would waste no time and look for a position immediately. She unpacked her bag, filled the iron tub with warm water, and sank into it. Orthodox Jewish law forbade bathing on the Sabbath, but her mother rarely enforced that edict with her daughters. Thank goodness, because Minna needed its therapeutic solace that night. Later on, as she lay in bed reading, there was a light knock on the door.

  “I brought you some water,” Emmeline said, placing a pitcher with a chipped spout next to her bed.

  “Thank you,” Minna said, feeling helpless at her resentment. After all, her mother was trying.

  Minna listened to her trudge back down the stairs, lock the front door, then walk back up the stairs into her bedroom across the hall. I’m twenty-nine years old. My mother didn’t need to remind me, Minna thought, gazing around the bedroom. Everything looked the same, but shabbier. The floral wallpaper was yellowed and peeling off in the corners, and the dresser drawers were scratched, with half of the knobs missing. This wasn’t what she had dreamed of when she was a child. But then again, she never had those domestic dreams that captured other young girls. She had somehow always known that motherhood was not her fate.

  She rolled over and tried to sleep, but she couldn’t stop the sudden rush of remorse. It was a stranger who lay in that man’s arms. It wasn’t her. She couldn’t erase those memories but she would try. She would not let them affect her future. Up until then, she had led a respectable life. She would find a new position in another town and would build a life where nothing remarkable ever happened again. She turned on her side, pulled the blankets up around her chin. Then she heard a rustling noise outside and remembered that the back door was unlocked. Was it a possum? A rat? Or maybe something bigger . . . ?

  “Oh, hell!” she said as she threw off the covers and ran downstairs and slid the bolt.

  As she crawled back into bed, she wondered, just for a moment, if he was thinking of her.

  21

  The next morning, Minna slipped out of the house early and headed for the café at the edge of town. Gusts of icy wind from the night before had quieted down, but the breeze was still strong enough to ruffle the curbside litter and blow her hat off her head. She intended to consult the local newspaper for employment positions, but as she looked around at the barren landscape and sullen little houses, she suspected she’d have to widen her search. Everything here had that bitter aftertaste of being left behind.

  When she reached the café, she grabbed the newspaper on her way in and sat at a table in the back. Then she fished in her pocket for some kronen and pulled out a small piece of paper. What was this? The script was unmistakable. It was from him.

  Thursday, February 2. 4 o’clock. Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten, Hamburg

  That was the day after tomorrow. Impossible, she thought. She considered throwing the note in the rubbish and pretending she never saw it. It would be so easy. It’s what she should do. But instead, she folded it up, put it back into her pocket, and tried to proceed with her day. I’ll deal with it later, she told herself, treating it like an enormous bill that one couldn’t possibly afford to pay. But, in truth, Sigmund’s message weighed on her body like a brick. When had he put it in her coat? Why hadn’t he just told her he’d be in Hamburg? Perhaps he had a conference, although the timing was suspicious.

  She ordered a coffee, propped her head on her hands, and tried to concentrate on the ads, circling a few promising ones. Guilt—an exercise in self-indulgence. That’s what Sigmund would say. “You don’t need to suffer it unless you choose to.” Nonsense. Guilt was not a choice. No one would choose to feel as if her life had deteriorated into a morass of longing and pain. There was no part of her that was unaware of the danger in seeing him again . . . but, in the end, she knew that she would meet him.

  • • •

  On Thursday, Minna took a train back to Hamburg and walked a few blocks to a pub located slightly below street level. It was cold, dark, and cavernous, like purgatory, a perfect place to wait. She took off her hat, ordered a coffee, and warmed her hands on the cup.

  She pulled a pocket mirror from her handbag and appraised her face. Her eyes were slightly rimmed in red and her lips were dry. She smeared a bit of tinted salve on her lips and then noticed one cheek was more pinked than the other. Thankfully, her mother hadn’t noticed the rouge. In her opinion, makeup was only for prostitutes and actresses.

  She thought about her mother chattering away this morning, happy because she assumed Minna had all but obtained a prestigious position with the Kassel family, a fact that Minna had grossly exaggerated. What was simply Minna’s response to an advertisement in the local newspaper, had now, thanks to her duplicity, become a certainty. Well, she was positive the Kassels would at least ask for her credentials when they received her letter of inquiry.

  “You know the Kassel family is one of the oldest in Frankfurt . . . and well known here as well. How did you say they’d heard about you? The baroness? She must have offered quite a ringing endorsement for them to arrange to see you so soon.”

  Minna was deep in thought when the waiter asked her if she would like another coffee.

  “No, thank you . . . but I will have a whiskey,” she said, with a strained smile.

  The waiter hesitated a moment—this was an attractive, seemingly refined woman, drinking alone in the middle of the day. Not his usual customer. He set down a shot glass beside her coffee cup and filled it to the top, then leaned against the back of the bar and
watched her drain the glass. She felt the long, slow slide of the liquor flow through her system.

  “Another?” he asked, in a tone that Minna didn’t quite like.

  “No, thank you,” she said, motioning for the check. Then she paid the bill and left.

  The wind from the sea had started up again; it smelled of salt and brine and whipped her coat open as she walked down the street. She considered her route and then cut through the St. Pauli neighborhood, the global capital of louche, its Reeperbahn one of Europe’s most notorious red-light districts. She and Martha would always walk well away from it when they were girls, warned by Emmeline that it was a sordid place where seamen came to spend their kronen. But it was the most direct route to the hotel, so what the hell? And, besides, in the daylight, Grosse Freiheit’s bars and cabarets were boarded up, the Teutonic whores and their clientele hungover or dead asleep. No danger for her here.

  She passed several bars, then avoided a pile of debris, and crossed over to a more refined area where the town burghers had recently undertaken a beautification project. By the time she reached the hotel, it was past three. She had managed to stall for nearly three hours.

  She hesitated for a moment in front of the heavy iron door to the fashionable hotel, then pulled it open and walked in. For a few moments, the glare from the sun was intense and blinding, the way it is just before it gives up and sinks into the dusk. And then she saw him. He was standing in the lobby with his back toward her, silhouetted in the fading light.

  It was extraordinary, she thought, how familiar he was to her now. His hair, his stance, the way he held his head . . . there was something distinctive about him, even from behind. He turned to her.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

  “You knew I would,” she said, putting her gloved hand in his.

  • • •

  It was not yet dark, an ungodly time for a man and woman to be in bed. She had entered a new world, a secret world, she thought, where you don’t go to the place you’re going, and you disappear once you get there. And, when you return, you pretend that nothing happened. Anonymity is everything. You can’t risk direct looks, simple exchanges are often transparent, and the mundane is transformed into the hypnotic. There is mutual agreement about what is safe and what is not, a certain modicum of polite behavior upon meeting, and then that wash of relief as you finally fall together behind closed doors and ignite into flames.

  They stood next to each other in the back of the wood-paneled elevator, nerves tingling, staring straight ahead at the wrought-iron door, pretending that they weren’t together. The old elevator operator glanced back.

  “Floor, sir?”

  “Seven, please.”

  “And you, Fräulein?”

  “Seven,” she said, not looking at Freud.

  The man didn’t blink as he closed the door and pushed the lever sideways. She heard the cranking of the gears as she saw the elegant lobby fall away beneath her. Sigmund had checked in earlier. It was all so carefully planned and beautifully executed. Pitch perfect. And here they were. Two strangers in an elevator.

  As soon as they were alone in the room, he pressed himself against her, and a wave of desire hit her as he pulled off her coat and then her blouse. She could see by his expression he felt the same way.

  “Have you missed me?” he asked.

  “What’s wrong with you? How can you ask me that?”

  One would have to be made of stone, she thought, to turn away from these feelings. She felt almost inhuman, wicked and exhilarated. It was a delicious depravity.

  Afterward, he leaned across her body, opened the bedside table drawer, and took out a pack of cigarettes. For the first time, she noticed a champagne bottle in a silver ice bucket and two glasses on the dresser.

  “Here, my love,” he said tenderly. “I brought these for you.”

  She took a cigarette from the box, sat up in bed, and leaned her head against the headboard. He lit it for her. She inhaled once or twice, then rolled out of bed, snubbed it out on the windowsill, and reached for her clothes.

  “Where are you going?” he asked. “I have the whole evening.”

  “I have to get back. Mother will worry.”

  “Pity. Let her wait.”

  “She’ll wonder where I am.”

  “Only if it inconveniences her supper. Let’s talk.”

  “Are you going to tell me how modern we are, how deliciously unrespectable? Or are you going to try to cure me of ‘us’?”

  “Impossible. There is no cure,” he said, kissing her, tasting the smoke on her mouth. “Come back to bed.”

  Later, before she left him, she glanced around the room—the white towels like puddles on the bathroom floor, the sheets askew, empty crystal flutes by the bed. She thought of tangled arms and legs, wet and slick. The light slipped through the draped window, like a secret message under the door. He called her to him. She bent over and kissed him lightly on the mouth. He pulled a strand of her hair back from her face and stared at her, silent, thoughtful.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked.

  “I’m wondering when I can see you again.”

  “Don’t spoil it.”

  “Aren’t you thinking the same thing?”

  “No.”

  “Liar.”

  “I’m counting the hours. Is that what you want to hear?” she said.

  “I want to hear the truth.”

  “The truth is that it’s hopeless.”

  “Nothing is hopeless.”

  22

  Before she boarded the train home, Minna stopped at the Apotheke near the hotel. The ritual of prophylactic douches after sexual intercourse had not been foremost on her mind, chiefly because after their first encounter, she had resolutely decided never to see him again. Not that she couldn’t have conceived the first time. What was she thinking? She wasn’t. But now she must be smart and take precautions like any married woman or prostitute on the block. The safest thing, of course, would have been to jump out of bed and perform the ritual right there in the hotel bathroom. But for whatever reason, she didn’t have the potion or the apparatus. She entered the small establishment, passing walls of apothecary cabinets with neatly labeled drawers. She was matter-of-fact in her tone with the chemist, and so was he as he handed her a uterine syringe and a premixed solution of water and carbolic acid.

  Before she even greeted her mother, she rushed upstairs to the bathroom and performed the necessary procedure. Then she hid the syringe in her valise and later stuffed it in the dustbin. She would not need it again.

  “So? Did you get the position?” Emmeline asked.

  “I think so,” Minna answered.

  “Well, they certainly took their time with the interview. You’ve been gone for hours.”

  Minna spent the better part of the evening plagued by a foreboding she feared might be the end of her. And she spent the better part of the night wide awake, staring into the darkness. At one point she got up and walked into the bathroom. I am a monster, Minna thought as she gazed at her cold, hard reflection in the mirror. She couldn’t stop thinking about the sex. Being with this man yet again was like plunging into a pool of quicksilver. Deadly poison and yet a godsend.

  She should have been embarrassed by her ardor. She should have been more demure. She had clung to his body for hours, their faces glistening like glass. Right before she left, she confessed that her encounter with him had been shockingly thrilling. He told her that these drives were instinctive and basic, for women as well as for men, and sexual satisfaction was the key to emotional happiness.

  So why wasn’t she happy? Somehow she felt they had touched each other everywhere and nowhere.

  Shortly after she finally fell asleep, she was up again, agitated, edgy, listening to the clock ticking on her mantel, a restless neighbor’s dog howling pitifu
lly down the street, and, every hour on the hour, the faint, mournful echoes of the church bells of St. Michaelis. If Minna were Catholic, she would go to confession, gain absolution, and go on with her life. Why did that sound more appealing than doing penance in front of her old rabbi in one of the three daily prayer services at her mother’s synagogue? Perhaps the Catholics knew what they were doing when they invented the confessional booth that shielded one’s secrets from judgmental eyes. At one point, she got up and drank a glass of water, but her mouth was still dry. She was chilled and then inexplicably hot and fretful. How could something so basic and peaceful as sleep be such torture?

  She had read of women who openly turned away from the confines of Victorian conduct, women who talked of the pleasures of eros, women now hidden behind burning cheeks and migraine headaches. But who would be willing to stand in the fire to feed this hungry beast?

  Still, if she were to throw herself on the mercy of the court, forced to take an oath of honesty, she would have to admit that it was not without regret that she left him there without any hint of future assignations. But there was no other choice.

  Luckily, the next day, a message arrived from the Kassel sisters, offering her a provisional position as a lady’s companion at their home, depending upon their mutual satisfaction and compatibility.

  When Minna finally bid her mother good-bye, she felt an unexpected tug of sadness. There was little show of emotion on both sides, and she knew, as she always did, that her mother was relieved to get back to her solitary life. This was a staunch and upright woman who had been hit by a series of bitter losses and who could never forget decades of major and minor slights from neighbors, relatives, close friends, and even her own daughters. Somehow she always forgave Martha, but not Minna.

  Being home reminded Minna that as a young woman she had chosen a different life for herself, but it never seemed to work out the way she had envisioned. Shadowing her wherever she went was the issue of what to do next, never being settled, never getting anything quite right. Leaving her mother’s house should mean that she would be happier someplace else. But the reality was, she was leaving for a life of servitude and self-denial. A life that was considered refined, yet for her, a misfortune. Misery in opulent surroundings.