Freud's Mistress Read online

  And then there was Aristotle, whom she threw aside after discovering that he considered women one of nature’s deformities—an unfinished man. She sold that volume with no regrets. Plato wasn’t much better on the subject, insisting that women were less competent than men. Then again, she couldn’t dismiss every philosopher simply because of his narrow-minded convictions. After all, Nietzsche, whom she adored, viewed women as merely possessions . . . a property predestined for service. And Rousseau believed a woman’s role was primarily to pleasure men. It was dispiriting, actually.

  But there was nothing to aggravate her in literature. In fact, it was the perfect antidote for those feelings of boredom, dread, and loneliness. She chose Goethe’s epistolary The Sorrows of Young Werther and Shakespeare’s Henry VI (Part Two, not Part One, which was more of a historical treatise and one of Shakespeare’s weakest dramas, in her opinion). For sheer entertainment it was Mary Shelley’s Gothic thriller Frankenstein, which she’d consumed in one sitting. And then there was that avant-garde Viennese author named Schnitzler, who had given up his medical practice to write plays about aristocratic heroes and their adulterous affairs. No irony, no moralizing, just a frank, unemotional study of the phenomenon of passion. She’d never read anything quite like it. An acquired taste, this Schnitzler—like olives or caviar or Klimt. But this was not a night to lose oneself in gin, tobacco, and bibliomania.

  She pulled on her boots under her nightclothes, not bothering to fasten the tedious number of buttons, and made her way back down to Flora’s claustrophobic little nook. The child was curled up on the cot, clutching her rag doll.

  Normally Minna would sit with Flora and tell her stories, but at the moment, Flora was in no mood. She wanted what any child her age would want. She wanted her mother and she wanted to go home. Minna sat down next to her and held her in her arms as Flora snuggled in, laying her cheek against her chest. She gently stroked her hair and hummed softly until she saw Flora’s eyelids flutter and then close. Minna breathed a sigh of relief when the child finally fell asleep.

  The next morning, the baroness received a note from her doctor inquiring as to the child’s health and explaining that “after-hours” calls were charged at a premium.

  “You’re dismissed,” the baroness had said with a petulant frown, looking away as she informed Minna that all wages would be garnished. The usual nastiness associated with an infuriated employer and an unrepentant employee wasn’t there. Minna stood justly accused. No vehement protestations. There would be no point. Especially in light of what Minna intended to do next.

  An hour or so later, after the baroness left for the day, Minna packed up her bags and left them by the servants’ entrance. Then she informed the staff that she and Flora had been “let go,” and took the bewildered child to the Wien Westbahnhof. She was sending Flora home.

  Flora was from a small village outside Linz, where the winters were long and the people worked at hardscrabble jobs in iron foundries, mines, or factories. There was, in Flora’s life, privation and tragedy—a sister had died of diphtheria, a brother was imprisoned, and no one knew anything about the father, a general laborer who had disappeared long ago. But Flora clearly adored her mother. “She has golden hair,” she told Minna one night, “like a fairy.”

  Minna wrapped her arms around the girl’s small body and they huddled on the platform, half frozen, watching travelers gather at the gate—women with embroidered fur-collared jackets and fancy traveling valises, children with curled hair and warm overcoats. The girl seemed calm now, relieved.

  When the train pulled up, Minna and Flora walked past the uniformed porters who were standing by private first-class cars with elaborate sitting rooms and electric lights. She helped the child into the third-class cabin, settling her on a hard wooden bench between two matrons, one of whom had a sleeping baby on her lap.

  “Don’t come back,” she had wanted to say, as she brushed Flora’s warm cheek with a kiss, and pressed a few kronen into the matron’s hand, getting her assurance that she would see the child home. But she knew Flora would be sent off somewhere else in a few months. That was her fate. Minna felt a visceral charge of longing and regret. She would have liked, at the very least, to have felt she was setting Flora free.

  Minna watched the train lumber away and stood alone on the empty platform as the severity of her situation finally hit her. There would be no recommendation from the baroness, that was for certain. Her money was woefully depleted, and she had no hope for future employment. She hailed an omnibus and rode along the jumbled, cobblestoned streets, trying to ignore the panic building up inside her. She was beginning to think that finding the perfect position was never going to happen. It was exhausting trying to sustain the feeling that she was just one step away from happiness.

  She checked into a modest pension near the Danube, but sleep did not come easily. The hours drifted by, she dozed, she read, she paced. The clock ticked loudly on the dresser as she sat down finally to write to her sister. There was no one else. Not even her mother, who barely got by on her widow’s pension. She was facing another failure.

  She had been fired several times before and she had quit more times than that. With every setback, Minna would insist that she was fine, she liked her independence, her freedom, her time in the café reading and talking. And with every setback, her sister would turn to her in pity and pat her consolingly on the arm.

  “Poor Minna. You know you never get a moment’s peace when you work for those people. . . .”

  She wanted a bath and a change of clothes, but her bags were still at the baroness’s house—probably dumped in the alley by now. As soon as the day porter came on duty, she would send for them. She finished the letter to her sister and sealed it. For years, Martha had indicated that her husband, Sigmund, couldn’t afford another person in the house. Now, according to her sister, things had turned around. His medical practice had improved. He had more patients. There was a sixth child. Mathilde, Martin, Oliver, Ernst, Sophie, and now Anna. Maybe they needed her.

  Minna hoped Sigmund would be in favor of the situation. Their relationship had always been cordial. No, more than cordial. During the past several years, they had shared a lively correspondence concerning subjects of interest to them both: politics, literature, and his scientific work.

  Minna closed her eyes and imagined Martha opening the letter and sending for her immediately. She held that image in her mind. And she, who had never been dependent on relatives, felt the immense relief of the ignorant.

  2

  Minna stood on the frozen, grimy curb, shivering in her coat. Her fingertips burned with the cold as she hailed a hansom cab, her spirits buoyed by the thought of settling somewhere. “Come home at once, my dear Minna,” her sister had said in an entirely persuasive manner. “The children miss you terribly. We’ll expect you before dinner.”

  The sky was overcast, the wind blowing off the river, another brutally cold November morning as Minna set out to join her sister. The spindly coachman was initially courteous when he first pulled over, but then glowered as she stepped aside to reveal her belongings lined up on the sidewalk, as if she’d been evicted. He grumbled as he hefted her bags into the luggage compartment of the carriage, and now, as she rode through the empty streets, the man’s clucking sounds were nearly as loud as the clopping of the stepper’s hooves.

  Wie lange dauert’s? she had asked. How much longer? He seemed to be taking the “scenic route” around the Ring, passing every neoclassical, Renaissance, and baroque building and pointing out each one’s distinguishing features. “The Hofburgtheater was founded by the Emperor in 1874. . . . The Hofoper was inaugurated by His Highness not that long afterward, and the Hofmuseum. . . .” Perhaps he’s angling for a bigger tip, she thought, as she looked out at Vienna’s wedding-cake skyline, with its snow-capped, pointed turrets and Gothic flourishes.

  Martha’s words had been reassuring, it was true
, but Minna was coming around to the unfortunate fact that this was a rescue, not an invitation. It had not been her choice to impose on her sister, who could hardly say no. How demoralizing at this stage in her life to be in this position. On the other hand, for the moment, this home was a sanctum for her depleted spirits.

  Minna nervously looked at the little gold watch dangling from her mother’s bow pin. She knew how her sister felt about tardiness. Dinner, the Mittagessen meal (soup, meat, vegetables, and a sweet), was always served precisely at one, and not a minute later. People did not drift in and out of Martha’s dining room. And all chores were performed with military precision. Martha’s rules. She would be living under Martha’s rules. As was fitting. This was Martha’s house, Martha’s husband, Martha’s children.

  The Freuds lived in the Ninth District on a steep, unprepossessing street. One end bordered a respectable residential neighborhood, while the lower end swept down to the disheveled Tandelmarkt, huddled near a canal of the Danube.

  The coachman reined in the horses, and his mouth. One more description of a Hof palace, a Hof theater, or a Hof anything, and Minna would have wrung his Hof neck. When the carriage finally pulled up to Berggasse 19, she paid him (including a decent tip—it was freezing up there) with the last of her savings. She arrived at her sister’s house without money and without a plan.

  She always thought her sister’s apartment building had an ennobling facade—high ornamental windows, baroque and classical features, an air of grandeur to it if one didn’t look at the stores on the ground floor. On the left of the entrance leading into the apartment was Kornmehl’s kosher butcher shop and on the right, Wiener’s co-operative grocery. The Freud children were bundled in coats and crowded on the front stairs, waiting to greet her.

  “How long are you going to sthay, Aunt Minna?” asked four-year-old Sophie, a pink-cheeked, curly-haired cherub with an impressive lisp, who couldn’t quite manage a smile. The rest of the children surrounded Minna as she climbed out of the carriage, a few of them sniffling and rubbing their eyes.

  Before Minna could answer, she heard seven-year-old Oliver call back to his mother, “Mama, where is she going to sleep? I thought Papa said there was no room.”

  Martha appeared in the doorway, shooing the children aside like pigeons.

  “Darling Minna. Here you are,” Martha said, rising on tiptoes and kissing her sister on both cheeks.

  “Martha, I can’t tell you how much . . .”

  “Stop. Don’t say another word, my dear. We’re the lucky ones.”

  Minna put her arms around her sister and then stepped back and looked at her. She hadn’t seen Martha since the birth of Anna and was somewhat unnerved by her appearance. Her lusterless hair was parted down the middle and pulled back in an uncompromising bun, her expression tense and edgy. She looked like someone who had just come out of hiding—her puffy, red-ringed eyes pouched with purple bags, her usual meticulous attire rumpled and slightly askew. Martha had always been “the pretty sister,” blessed with a gentle, oval face, pale complexion, and a Cupid’s bow upper lip that gave her demeanor just the right amount of allure. But now, after six pregnancies, she seemed blurred around the edges, and the only overall impression one got of her was fatigue.

  “I’ve been so worried about you,” Martha said, as she clasped Minna’s hand and led her into the apartment. Sophie, Oliver, and yet more children herded behind them, loitering in the hallway and shoving one another aside, trying to lead the way.

  They walked slowly through the stolid bourgeois apartment, past rosewood consoles, Biedermeier tables, fatigued Persian carpets, and draperies that trailed on the floor. There was a light smell of furniture oil and floor polish. The children followed behind, their sense of decorum gradually disintegrating. Oliver and Martin tore through the drawing room like little hellions, toppling a chair, while the girls yanked Minna’s sleeve, vying for her attention.

  Minna’s bedroom was small and oddly shaped, the former dressing area of the master suite with a long, narrow window over the bed. A jug of water was placed beside the washbasin, a gas lamp was on the dresser, and fresh, laundered sheets were laid out on the bed. There was a small fireplace, bordered with decorative tiles, and an ornate wooden wardrobe was squeezed into the corner.

  Martha led her into the room and pulled back the white muslin curtains, letting the soft afternoon light flood across the shiny wood floor. She poured a glass of water and handed it to Minna.

  “You look thin, my dear. Are you eating well?” Martha asked, watching her sister thoughtfully as she sat on the edge of the bed.

  The two sisters still resembled each other—their eyes the same dark color, their noses straight, and their hair thick and wavy, although Minna inherited her father’s lean frame, while Martha was becoming the image of their plump, matronly mother. In their youth, the difference in their stature was not as apparent, but over the years, it had become more pronounced.

  There was a banging at the open door as eight-year-old Martin, the eldest Freud son, struggled in melodramatically with her suitcases. He might be handsome in a few years, Minna thought, but at the moment, he was gawky and slightly chubby, with a pronounced bruise under his right eye. Martha had often complained that the child was always getting into trouble, constantly coming home with skinned knees, black eyes, and ominous notes from other children’s mothers.

  “What happened to your eye?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “How long are you staying?”

  “Just through dinner,” Minna answered.

  “Really?” he replied hopefully, giving Minna the distinct impression that the matter of the “maiden aunt” hadn’t yet been settled between his parents.

  3

  It’s lovely,” Martha said, admiring the fine fabric of a silk dinner gown that Minna was unpacking.

  “A gift from a former employer. Well, not exactly a gift. The baroness thought it was outdated and told me to get rid of it,” Minna said, smiling. Then a childhood memory washed over her. She and Martha were planning for the first social event of the season. It was a different time and place, and it all seemed so frivolous now.

  Martha was eighteen, and, in the eyes of her many suitors, female perfection—five feet two; a small, pretty face; dainty hands and feet. On this particularly splendid fall day, she had the rosy glow of a morning walk still on her cheeks and she looked pristine in her soft gray suit and matching boots. She and Minna made their way across the broad Ringstrasse, past St. Stephen’s and the opera house, and into the heart of the old city, where the family dressmaker had a small shop. The first “smart” party of the season was still months away, but Martha had already decided on the material for her gown: seven yards of extra-wide yellow brocade (no crinoline—too vulgar and old-fashioned) that would be measured, cut, and sewn into a tightly corseted, tyrannizing shape, emphasizing Martha’s tiny waist and modest derriere.

  The shop was located on a crooked, dark street with medieval cobblestones and was sandwiched between a perfumery and a fine cabinetmaker’s studio that reeked of lacquer. As the two girls entered, they were instantly marooned in silk. Scores of fat, luscious fabric bolts leaned up against the walls, blocking the aisles and windows, along with boxes spilling over with trimmings, bows, feathers, and fringe. Minna fingered the rich French weaves, the intricate Italian prints, the satin velours in jade and garnet and shimmering gold. But where were the prices? she wondered. Not a tag in sight.

  “Martha, how much do you suppose . . .”

  “Oh, Minna, look. It’s Prussian blue velvet,” Martha replied, transfixed.

  “Your friends will be Prussian green with envy,” Minna said with a grin.

  At fourteen, Minna was taller than her older sister, almost unfashionably so, with abnormally long legs and neck, and collarbones that stuck out from her blouse. She did not yet go to socials, like her sister, nor did she even own one g
rown-up party dress. She glanced at herself, then at her sister in the dressing-room mirror. She did this on a regular basis, hoping her image would magically shrink down to that of her sister’s, but, alas, it was not to be, something that made her glad in the years to come.

  Minna, however, was comforted by some things. Both she and Martha had the same fine-boned Bernays profile and their skin was white and spotless. But her feet were gargantuan compared to Martha’s, and by the time Minna was eight, the two couldn’t even share boots or slippers. Then there was her hair, always falling out of its braid and ending up in unruly wisps around her face. And the matter of her handwriting. It was smudgier than Martha’s, the tutor never failed to point that out, while grudgingly conceding that Minna was the “student” in the family.

  After the fitting, the two sisters walked arm in arm past the architectural infinity of the Ring and the ornate facades of apartment houses, and then along the Kärntner Strasse, past the cathedral. Those days, one could hardly go anywhere without seeing military officers in full regalia, and a group of them smiled at the sisters and touched their helmets. Then it was just a few more streets down to the canal and the wholesale merchant mart, where they bought hot, sticky cream cakes in paper cones and waved at the people in passing boats. At that moment their world was secure and uncomplicated, and they were thankful in a way most young girls were not. The past had been a nightmare.

  Ten years earlier, when the family lived in Hamburg, their father, Berman Bernays, was sent to jail for bankruptcy fraud. He had been wrongfully accused, of that Minna was certain. Nevertheless, for years there was a lingering tinge of embarrassment that blighted family gatherings and other social events. While he was in prison, Minna’s mother assumed a haughty air of contempt to counteract the disgrace; and her older brother, Eli, dropped out of school, abandoned his friends, and went to work for an uncle from Kiev who peddled dry goods up and down the countryside. Eli would disappear for weeks on end to God knows where, then reappear dispirited and drained of energy, wearing rumpled clothes and smelling of sausage and cabbage. He would rail about the filth and disease of the villages, the crowded rooming houses with no lavatories, but most of all, he hated the life of an itinerant peddler. (Ah, well, thought Minna, he showed them all, moved to America with his own family, richer now than any of them.)