Freud's Mistress Read online

  She would never forget the day her father finally came home. He stood in the doorway, looking half-dead, his hair grown gray and wispy, his beard matted on his chin. His appearance hit her like a stone, and stunned the rest of the family into silence. Martha recoiled when he drew near her, so he turned to Minna.

  “My little shana madel,” he said, using the endearment he had called her since she was born, “my beautiful girl.” He threw out his arms and hugged her close, and she could feel his bones through his sweater.

  Later that evening, as they lit the Sabbath lights, the family was quiet, careful, but Minna’s mother’s voice assumed a tone of anger mixed with anxiety that, even years later, never went away. Her resentment increased when Minna’s father found a new position as a secretary to a well-known economist and moved the family to a modest house on the outskirts of the Jewish district of Vienna. There was a solid Jewish middle class there, he had argued, and many of his friends had grown wealthy and powerful under the Hapsburg monarchy. Hundreds of Jewish families like their own had streamed into the city in those days, escaping the growing movement of anti-Semitism in the countryside outside Hamburg, and seeking opportunity and culture unequaled in Europe. But his reasoning fell on deaf ears. Emmeline missed her native Germany and blamed Berman for their disgrace and economic hardship. After all, her family had been socially prominent, if not wealthy, and the calamity of his imprisonment had taken away their good name.

  “Vienna oppresses me,” she said peevishly. “The noise from the street is unbearable. And all those ugly steeples!”

  “I like it here,” Minna would respond, cool and defiant, indirectly defending her father. “It’s so boring in the country. There’s nothing to do in Hamburg.”

  While her mother went on and on, listing her grievances about the city, “the jaded avant-garde, the damp weather, the shabby synagogue . . .” her father would retreat to his chair, smiling wanly. Later on, Minna would sit by his side, and they would play cards or read. She would often think of these moments, when it was just the two of them.

  The night before he died, Minna and her father went out for their usual evening stroll. There was always a burst of vitality and life on the streets of Vienna, and Minna loved to look at the handsomely clad men in silk top hats and the women in elaborate feathered hats, fashionable gowns, and glossy fur capes as they gathered in the grand entrance of the Hotel Imperial and the popular Café Central. She would watch sleek black carriages arrive at restaurants filled with people smoking and laughing and drinking bitter-brewed Kaffee mit Schlag. The air was filled with mist and light and music. And, Minna thought, as much as my mother hates this city, this is how much I love it.

  She could remember the exact moment when she got the news. She was back at the dress shop, discussing which of Martha’s many suitors would fill up her dance card, when a white-faced Eli burst through the door. Berman had been crossing the Ringstrasse at a busy intersection when he collapsed in the middle of the street. According to passersby, he had stood still for a moment, clutching his arm, and then dropped in a heap on the cobblestones, a carriage swerving suddenly to miss him. He was just fifty-three years old. Dead from a massive heart attack.

  For the next few days, everything was focused on arranging the burial, which according to Jewish tradition, had to take place two days after the death. Emmeline was inconsolable and even more sharp-tongued than usual. She sat in the drawing room, alone at the end of the sofa, her needlework untouched on her lap. Curtains were drawn, mirrors covered with black crepe, and clocks stopped at the time of death.

  “We are left with nothing, girls. Nothing.”

  Emmeline’s anger was matched by Minna’s unimaginable disappointment. She was astounded at the loss, at the cold, dark silence filling the space that once was his. The universe seemed so unjust, so empty and thin.

  In accordance with Jewish law, the family sat shiva for seven days. No bathing or showering. They wore torn black ribbons on their lapels and listened as the rabbi, who stopped by several times a day, led them in the mourners’ Kaddish. Minna couldn’t stand all the consoling visitors with moist eyes. She couldn’t stand all the food and wine and socializing. In her fourteen-year-old brain, it felt as if everything had turned to dirt.

  Their mother, Emmeline, used this tragedy to further her campaign to leave Vienna for their former, more modest home in the countryside outside Hamburg. Neither sister wanted to move, but their mother persevered. During this period, they lived on the generosity of aunts, uncles, and Eli, their older brother, who was now making a good living as a businessman.

  In those days, the girls were confidantes, allying themselves against their mother. But eventually Minna became the stronger one, more outspoken, able to fight the necessary battles to ensure what little pleasures they had left. When they wanted to go out, it was always Minna who braved their mother’s temperamental moods and voiced the request. Consequently, Martha became the favorite, a fact their mother did little to hide, and Minna did little to pretend she didn’t know. Martha was dutiful, soft-spoken, and acquiescent, while Minna was independent and fearless. Those were their appointed roles, and it was really no different now, even though Martha was married and Minna had been on her own for years.

  • • •

  Is this alcohol, Tante Minna?” Martin asked.

  “No,” she lied as she stashed the bottle along with the cigarettes in the bottom drawer of the dresser.

  He continued to hover like a vulture as she opened the smaller of her cases and pulled out a small portfolio of her correspondence and a photograph of her mother in a widow’s cap.

  “I could stay and help if you want,” he said, watching with sharp, bright eyes as each item was pulled from the valise.

  She wished she had something to give him. In the past, she had always brought little things for the children, fancy bags of glass marbles or postcards with pictures of Emperor Franz Josef or Prussian soldiers with elaborate helmets and sabers. (There were also a few postcards she knew he’d like of the emperor’s mistress, a famous Viennese actress draped in a diaphanous gown—Hapsburg Cheesecake, everyone called it. These she wouldn’t give him, even if she had the money.) Nevertheless, the Flora incident had been expensive, and she was forced to send Martin on his way empty-handed.

  She watched him walk slowly down the hall, then sat on the bed, even more disappointed than the child. She could hear the distant sounds of bustling, midday crowds at the Tandelmarkt, cries from boatmen on the Danube canal, jingly bells of a parish church, and the clattering and rinsing of saucepans from the kitchen. From across the hall came the shrill noise of squabbling children and a howling baby.

  Martha smiled sympathetically at her sister.

  “You know, Minna. It’s very important—very, very, important—to be surrounded by one’s family.”

  “I agree,” Minna answered with a slight grin. “As long as it’s not Mother.”

  Martha laughed appreciatively.

  Both of them knew that their mother had been on an active campaign to marry Minna off. After all, she only wanted what all practical-minded mothers wanted—her aging, not-so-eligible daughter safely married. How many times since her fiancé’s death had Minna heard her mother tell her she needed to be less haughty with her words, less imaginative? Minna had paid a penalty for her nature, Emmeline argued, and as a result she would remain single. Also, she was too bookish, too biased, and intolerant of people who disagreed with her. The last time Minna visited Hamburg, her mother had advised, “You should talk less of Gounod operas and more of other subjects, or better yet, talk less in general. Most men don’t appreciate a bright wit, unless it’s their own.”

  To Emmeline, women like Minna were marginalized, surplus daughters with mediocre prospects, never fitting in, as if constantly suffering from a mild illness or having a physical disfigurement. This was an argument that Minna could never win. It w
as a good thing she wasn’t Catholic. Her mother might have stabled her in a distant convent.

  “Now don’t get angry . . .” Martha said, hesitating, “but you know she only has your best interests at heart.”

  “All she cares about is one thing. . . .” Minna said, pulling her few remaining books from the suitcase and setting them on the dresser, using the Dickens and the Kipling as bookends.

  “Well, one must be somewhat realistic. A woman alone . . .” she said, running her fingers through her hair, a habit Minna remembered since childhood, whenever Martha thought she might offend.

  “So what are you saying? That I should have married that friend of Eli’s, that salesman from Hamburg?” Minna asked, digging through her valises.

  “No, not him. Wasn’t he the one you kept calling the Merchant of Venice? What are you rummaging around for?”

  “A husband,” Minna teased.

  The two sisters laughed, their faces bending toward each other as if they were gossiping at a tea.

  “Well, if that’s the case, Sigmund has a colleague I’d like you to meet. Dr. Silverstein. Socially prominent. A lifelong bachelor. But at this age, there’s always something . . .”

  “Martha, please. Let me settle in a bit before you start all this.”

  “Start what?” Martha asked innocently.

  “It’s just that . . .”

  “It’s always just this or that. You must admit, there were others . . . after Ignaz died. Respectable others. You were too busy . . . or too . . . I don’t know. . . .”

  Martha had always believed that Minna could get married anytime she wanted. She just needed to be more pliable, or at least pretend to be. Men weren’t amused by women who were unconventional—straying from the norm and bringing chaos into their lives.

  Minna, on the other hand, had always believed that marrying merely for security sentenced one to a lifetime of boredom. But she looked into her sister’s worried face and decided to appease her.

  “All right, my dear,” Minna said indulgently, “the next time you see Prince Charming, send him my way.”

  4

  Minna dear, sit next to Sigmund,” Martha said, motioning to two empty chairs at the far end of the table. “Where are those children? I ask you, how difficult is it for everyone to be on time?”

  Minna looked around the somber dining room. She had never liked the crimson-flocked wallpaper and oppressive velvet curtains, which gave the room a stuffy, funereal atmosphere. If she could pull down the drapes, she would, and, she thought, she’d also refinish the beef-colored mahogany table. But all of this, including the elaborate rosewood sideboard, was de rigueur in every proper dining room. The only unique touch was the couch, placed for no apparent reason at the far end of the room and smothered in Persian carpets. What they used it for was a mystery.

  “Light the candles, will you, dear?” Martha asked, fussing over the flowers. She disappeared into the kitchen as the children sauntered in unhurried, and headed toward their assigned seats—Oliver next to Sophie, with Martin and ten-year-old Mathilde across from them. Mathilde was the oldest child and the acknowledged beauty of the family. It didn’t take her more than two minutes to start bossing the others around.

  “Wipe your nose, Oliver. Have you no manners? It’s disgusting. Sophie, hurry up!”

  The baby, Anna, was with Frau Josefine in the upstairs nursery, and six-year-old Ernst, as Martin told Minna, was still at speech therapy. Ernst had a lisp even more pronounced than that of his sister Sophie, and after years of erupting with incomprehensible phrases, he was now seeing a specialist.

  The children all had that scrubbed-behind-the-ears look: neat pigtails and lace pinafores for the girls, and crisp linen sailor shirts and knickerbockers for the boys. Minna attempted to talk with each one, but they were all so animated and impossibly fidgety that she found it difficult to follow the different strands of conversation, particularly when they were all speaking at the same time. As the noise level rose, Martha flitted back and forth into the kitchen, checking on the biscuits, the beef, getting this child a glass of water, that child a napkin, removing an elbow or a leg from the arm of a chair, and, at one point, bending over and picking up a wad of lint from the floor.

  “What on earth . . .” she murmured to no one in particular, then sighed and sat stiffly in her chair.

  Minna smoothed her high-necked, white silk blouse, thinking that the room smelled like Sunday. She had taken off the jacket of her traveling suit and loosened the hair from her bun when she was upstairs in her bedroom, but now she felt suddenly underdressed compared to the formality of the dining table. Lace tablecloths, silver candlesticks, good china, vases of flowers. Martha straightened her place setting and fixed her eyes on the door.

  “Sigmund’s lecture must have run over again. . . . I simply don’t understand it . . . talking endlessly to his students when he knows we’re waiting . . . or maybe he took the long way around the Ring . . . he’s sure to catch his death.”

  A uniformed maid, carrying a steaming soup tureen, marched in from the kitchen as Sigmund simultaneously appeared through double doors. It certainly wasn’t the first time Minna saw him, but it felt that way. He walked into the room and gave her a curious smile. He was handsomer than she remembered, with a heftier build and finer clothes. In fact, he was impeccably groomed, wearing a pinstriped, three-piece wool suit and a black silk cravat. There was a simple gold chain, a chain that had belonged to her father, that was attached to his watch, secured through a buttonhole, with the excess length draped across his vest. In one hand, he was holding a small antiquity, a solid bronze figurine, and in the other, a cigar. His hair was thick and dark, slightly graying at the temples. And then there were the eyes. Intense. Dark. Appraising.

  Minna thought back to when she first met him, a new suitor for Martha. He was standing in the parlor of their home in Vienna, a poor Jew from the wrong side of town, whose family had neither social standing nor wealth. He was looking at Martha, and Minna was looking at him. It was twilight, the time when day and night slur together at a certain moment and then all the colors of the day fade to black. Her sister had been introduced to him a month before, but by the end of this particular visit the stage was set for both of them. Martha was almost giddy when she talked about him. But not their mother, a woman from a distinguished German Jewish family who deemed the young doctor hardly worthy of her daughter. Nevertheless, two months later the couple was secretly engaged. Minna remembered thinking that Sigmund’s wild infatuation and pursuit of Martha didn’t seem quite real. As if they were playing at being in love, the courtship taking place in both of their minds. The progression of it all was baffling, at least to Minna.

  During these first visits, her sister hardly talked. Martha was a soft, delicate little creature filled with hope. And Minna was a different version of herself as well. Back then, she was tall and thin, all angles and tangled hair. Too much enthusiasm, too much talking, and far too clever. In those days, Sigmund got exactly what he wanted: an old-fashioned sweetheart, not a woman with opinions who engaged in serious conversations. Minna’s role was clear from the beginning, and she was ever mindful of that fact. Minna was the intellectual and Martha was the intended. And now here they were, Martha and Sigmund, married, six children, married, married, married.

  He stood there for a moment, watching Minna. She met his gaze and he gave her the same look he used to give her years ago, making her feel that it was more than simple recognition. Then he crossed the room and took his seat next to her empty chair, placing the antiquity on the table in front of him and stubbing out his cigar in a small brass ashtray.

  “My dear Minna,” he said, “to what do we owe this great pleasure?”

  “To my getting dismissed,” she said, smiling demurely. “Again.”

  He laughed, but her joke came at the cost of revealing her situation, which, under the circumstances, s
he meant to avoid. She colored slightly as she leaned over the table and lit the candles.

  “Tante Minna got sacked?” Martin asked, his mouth twisted in disbelief.

  “Martin, your language. Who uses such a term?” Martha said.

  “Again? Has she been dismissed before?” chimed in seven-year-old Oliver, whom Sigmund had named after one of his heroes, the great puritan Oliver Cromwell.

  “What would you like to drink, Minna?” said Martha. “Quinine? Beer? Wine? Sigmund, what shall we serve Minna to drink?”

  “But who would dismiss Tante Minna?” Oliver persisted.

  “What did you do?” Martin asked.

  “No more questions,” Martha said, cutting them off. “Eat your soup. Did you say wine, dear? It’s wonderful to have Tante Minna here with us, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Sigmund added, standing in a polite gesture as Minna finally sat down in the chair next to him.

  “How fortuitous that she landed here. Tell me,” Sigmund asked, looking straight at her, “how did we get so lucky?”

  “Well, she happened to be working for a beastly woman who hadn’t the common decency of a, I don’t want to say a blood-sucking rodent, but I suppose that would be a fair comparison. Wine sounds lovely.”

  His eyes met Minna’s for a moment with an appreciative glint. Then he looked away and leaned back with his arms crossed, just the way she remembered when she and Martha used to meet him at the café with a group of friends many years ago. He had finished his neurological training by then, and was living in a cramped, one-room flat at Vienna’s General Hospital. Minna’s fiancé, Ignaz Schönberg, one of Sigmund’s closest friends, was also part of this little band. He was a Sanskrit scholar and a philosophy student at the university and his outbursts of Sanskrit trivia struck Sigmund as so much poppycock.