A Curable Romantic (23 page)

With each and every word, however, I sensed I was only alienating Dr. Freud’s affections further. Had I made an open and frank confession, revealing everything to him, including the small licentious particulars I’d edited out, the consequences couldn’t have been worse nor the retribution harsher.

“You’re lying!” he nearly shouted at me.

“Certainly not!”

“Then you’re leaving something out.”

“Of course, but nothing of consequence.”

“What is it you’re not telling me?”

“What do you imagine” — I coughed out a hollow laugh — “that I raped the poor girl in her sleep?”

“So that’s it, then!”

“No!”

“Ach, this fucking boil!” he cried, adjusting his pants crotch and wincing again in pain. “Listen to me, Dr. Sammelsohn,” he said, “I cautioned you, did I not, to stay well away from the Fräulein, and so you pledged to me that you would, but in your lust — and I do not use the term lightly — you failed to live up to that pledge, and now you have not only betrayed me, as a physician, as a colleague, as a friend, but you have perhaps done irrevocable harm to a young woman whose health is at this very moment dangerously compromised. Why, the Ecksteins are longtime family friends of ours! Did you think nothing of that? What am I to tell her mother?”

“I have no idea.”

“You have no idea?”

I didn’t know how seriously to take his question. He seemed to be simply throwing my words back at me, though I wasn’t certain. Therefore, I shook my head and shrugged. “I really have no idea,” I said again.

“Very well, then,” he said, standing. “In that case, Dr. Sammelsohn, I regret to inform you that our acquaintanceship has reached its terminus. Make no effort to contact me either personally or professionally, as I assure you I will make no such effort, from my corner, to contact you. I expect you to have nothing further to do with the patient, even in the aftermath of her recovery, the prospects of which you have, I reiterate, severely compromised. Have I made myself clear?”

He didn’t leave me a moment to reply.

“Then I shall take my leave of you.”

“You’re going?” I said, only now beginning to comprehend all that he had told me.

“I am, sir,” he said. “Good morning and good-bye!”

MY DAYS AND
nights were suddenly quite empty, emptier in fact than they’d seemed before I met Dr. Freud, when solitude was merely an unalterable condition of my life and not the result of my own wicked
behavior. Before, I might have been content to eat a cold chicken wing at my desk while perusing a medical journal, followed by an early bed. Now, however, I couldn’t tolerate being alone in my apartment. I made plans for every evening — concerts, lectures, operas, plays — though I could hardly afford to do so, and this met with disaster as well.

Let me explain: I was mad for the late quartets, that last flowering of Beethoven’s difficult genius, and I had read in the papers that the Ehrstinsky Quartet were scheduled to perform the Grosse Fugue, op. 133. Rarely played, the piece is abstruse, perhaps even demented. I had read the score, but could make neither head nor tail of it, and was very much looking forward to the concert. I hesitated over purchasing my ticket out of fear of running into Drs. Rosenberg or Rie, certain each would have heard about my falling out with Dr. Freud or, if he hadn’t, would embarrass me by asking friendly questions about this or that event to which I knew I would never be invited. I was concerned, also, that if by chance I encountered Fräulein Eckstein in the presence of these men, they might, with unintended or even purposeful malice, let Dr. Freud know that I had seen her. Though I told myself I had nothing to be ashamed about, I felt ashamed about everything. It was better to suffer in private, I knew; still, I couldn’t abide the solitude of my apartments.

I arrived late to the Brahms-Saal of the Musikverein and surrendered my coat to the girl at the coat check. I stood in the back of the auditorium and calculated my odds: What were the chances, given her illness, that Fräulein Eckstein would even be here? And if she were, how likely was it that I might run into her? To further decrease the chances of our meeting, I forbade myself to look about the hall. I descended the aisle instead with my eyes cast down so that all I could see were the feet of the patrons seated on either side of the passage, having removed my eyeglasses as an additional precaution. Right or left? I asked myself, coming to a row that appeared in my blurred view to contain at least one vacant chair. My natural inclination was towards the left, and I disobeyed it, hoping, in breaking all habit, to further diminish the likelihood of encountering anyone I knew. I pushed my way to an empty chair and sat. I reached into my pocket for my pince-nez, which I fastened to the bridge of my
nose, only to discover that I had placed myself directly behind Fräulein Eckstein. (Had this coincidence not happened personally to me, I would never have believed it possible!) My stomach sank. I inspected the room, but even with my pince-nez on, I could find no available seat nearby. I consoled myself with a single idea: Surely Fräulein Eckstein will not turn around? She was too well bred a girl for that.

She was wearing a dress similar to the one she had on that night at the Carl, and in what I considered too flirtatious a manner, bubbling over with whispers and giggles, she periodically leaned her shoulder into the shoulder of her companion, a gentleman whose most remarkable characteristic, from my vantage point at least, was his abnormally rigid spine. I sat up straighter, I couldn’t help myself, and peered over their shoulders. They weren’t holding hands; however, when making a point, Fräulein Eckstein not infrequently permitted herself to touch this fellow’s hand, resting, as it was, on top of his knobby-headed cane.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” I muttered to myself. Where is Dr. Freud, and why isn’t he here to witness this? I wondered. What good does his forbidding me to see Fräulein Eckstein do if the taboo doesn’t extend to all of masculine Vienna?

I was a man of science, trained to observe the most horrific of scenes while remaining inwardly calm. Compared to the gruesome demonstrations I’d been forced to watch in the course of my medical training — vivisections and such — how difficult would it be, I put the question to myself, to observe Fräulein Eckstein in the company of this other man? Perhaps the experience might even prove instructive. I might come to understand what my attraction to the Fräulein had been about. Almost immediately, however, the task proved beyond my meager strength. Though the last thing I wanted was to be glimpsed by Fräulein Eckstein or caught, having seemingly followed her to the concert, at the same time I couldn’t abide being ignored by her!

The quartet mounted the stage, and the first violinist, his hair hanging down on either side of his forehead, began explaining the difficult piece, apologizing for it, really, while praising our willingness to hear all of the Master’s work, no matter the costs to our senses. The comment
elicited appreciative laughter. As it died away, I leaned forward and, hoping to invest the phrase with a credulous tone of surprise, muttered, “Oh — well — hello!” as casually as I could.

Neither Fräulein Eckstein nor her companion gave any indication that they had heard me. The people on either side of me took note, however, each presenting me with an arch glance before shifting away from me in their seats. Whether Fräulein Eckstein heard me or not wasn’t simply an academic question. If she hadn’t, I could repeat myself verbatim, with a little more volume this time; but if she had, no matter how genuinely I sounded my surprise, I would appear ridiculous. How many times may one be astonished by the same coincidence? (Not more than once, of course, is the answer.) Nevertheless, I decided to risk everything and repeated “Oh — well — hello!” at a louder pitch.

“Please!” the woman to my right exclaimed, and the fellow on my left shushed me as well. In reaction to the commotion brewing up behind him, Fräulein Eckstein’s brother angled away from the noise. (Yes, this splendid fellow turned out to be not Fräulein Eckstein’s lover, but her brother Friedrich, a noted Sanskritist and yogi: hence the impossibly rigid spine.) His movement left me an avenue, an opening, if I leaned forward enough, through which I could address Fräulein Eckstein privately, or at least away from the man and the woman on either side of me, which is what I did.

“Fräulein Eckstein!”

“Dr. Sammelsohn?” she said at last, turning towards me and peering behind her in the gloom.

“What a marvelous coincidence!” I boomed out in a whispered charade of confidence. “I sat here at random — completely at random! — with no forethought, with no design at all, absolutely randomly, and yet, well, here you are!”

“Yes, and it’s good to see you.” She smiled apologetically, a small, though not unkindly dismissal, before returning her attention to the stage.

“Yes,” I said, attempting to prolong our conversation but without success.

Her brother lowered his head towards hers, and the two murmured
conspiratorially. I couldn’t make out what they were saying but assumed he was asking her to identify me. What could she tell him? Who was I to her? No one, really, just a man who seemed continually on the point of raping her, that’s all. Friedrich Eckstein turned his head and, with one handsome eye, took me in. I nodded curtly, as though we’d been introduced as rivals.

Without answering my nod, he brought his attention back to the first violinist, who had taken his chair, garlanded by a wreath of applause. I could feel the man and the woman on either side of me regretting my presence between them. I crossed my arms and legs, hoping to disappear into myself. However, I could barely concentrate on the concert. The first violinist began with an aggressive attack, and the opening phrases, punctuated by silence, sliced the air like a series of sinister accusations. After an achingly beautiful motif, one hectoring note was shrilled out incessantly, until the piece sounded like a jig being danced by a man with a bullet in his brain. None of it made any sense to me.

“Bitte,” I said, standing in a crouch.

“What
now
?” the woman on my right whispered explosively.

“Pardon me, excuse me, pardon,” I said, moving down the row, knocking into knees at every chair, anger and pique washing over me from the four quarters of the concert hall. A scowl of annoyance burned into my back from the violist, peering over his music stand into the darkened hall, doing everything he could, short of leaving off from the music, to see what the commotion was.

I retrieved my coat and pushed through the front doorway and was once again on the street.

I WALKED UNTIL
I reached the Prater. Its woods were dark. Women’s voices called out to me from every direction beneath the trees. These were no sylvan nymphs, but prostitutes, and I wanted nothing to do with them. Or rather, wanting everything to do with them, I avoided them completely. Returning night after night to the grove where they lingered, lit by the garish lights of the amusement arcades, I could bring myself to approach not one of their number. And yet, for the better part of a fortnight, I ended my evenings here. Where else was I to go? Dr. Freud
had seen to it that I was accepted nowhere. When I dropped in on Dr. Rosenberg or on Dr. Rie or — why not mend fences? — on the Freuds themselves, the maid returned my card to me exactly as I’d placed it on the silver tray, as though it were too revolting to be touched.

I continued to see my patients during the day, but I no longer cared about catching them in their fakery. I prescribed government-issued spectacles for anyone with sufficient nerve to bluff through the exam. Let them have their imperial stipend! What did I care? After the night of the Grosse Fugue, as I came to think of it, I avoided all lectures, concerts, and plays. If, by chance, I had seated myself behind Fräulein Eckstein in a large concert hall, did I imagine I could drift through Vienna’s other public venues without encountering at least one person who, poisoned by Dr. Freud, would cut me dead? I had neither the heart nor the head for such encounters, and instead I found myself in the late afternoons wandering through the Prater, waiting for the sun to set and for the fallen women to appear like overripened fruit beneath the trees, where the courage to purchase one reliably failed me.

I began attending a children’s puppet theater in the park. Usually the only adult in attendance without a child in tow, I sat on the low bench, my hands laced around my knees, taking up as little space as I could. Without a child, I felt I had no right to more room. I felt like a clumsy giant sitting on the miniature bench, nodding and smiling with an exaggerated benevolence, in the hopes of reassuring the others — women, mostly: mothers and nannies — that I was as harmless as I seemed. (These many years later, I can only imagine that they saw me for what I was: a lonesome boy of a man lost in the capital city.)

Herr Franz’s Marvelous & Astonishing Puppet Theater was no more than a wooden room, really. Its walls, once painted gaudily, were faded and stained. It was heated by a brazier of coals burning in the rear. Yellow tufts of winter grass not beaten down entirely by the feet of stamping children grew between the benches. The stage was a crude rectangle cut into the back wall. The curtains looked like old chintz drapes onto which were sewn moons and stars. A bracing wind might collapse the entire ramshackle structure in an instant, it seemed, and yet, when the barn door closed behind us and the stage lights ignited and the hurdy-gurdy
began its warbling, I lost all sense of myself. Finally, in the darkened playhouse, I could breathe again. As the puppets strutted and fretted behind the proscenium, barking their dialogue out in comical dialects, I followed the story, whatever it was — tales from the Arabian Nights, from the Brothers Grimm, from the Ramayana — with incommensurable delight.

(Oh, the place was extraordinary. The puppet master Franz, a Jew from Galicia like myself, prided himself on a
Life and Death of Beethoven
performed each December in commemoration of the composer’s birth, and it was here that I witnessed, over the course of a single night from dusk to dawn, Goethe’s
Faust
, performed in its entirety.)