City Of Fire Trilogy 1 - Dreamland (47 page)

Lost in his thoughts, he realized that he had become physically lost as well. Each street seemed to go on forever, and even though they were wide and straight and numbered he could no longer remember which way was downtown, and which was up. There was little shade on the raw new blocks, the white cement sidewalk hurting his eyes. He was very tired, and he needed a toilet, and something to drink, but there didn’t seem to be anyplace, any public place at all in this baffling, impenetrable city—

He stopped to rest, leaning heavily on his walking stick, mopping at his face with a handkerchief. The black faces swept by him—staring through him with the same studied disinterest with which that Jewish bundle carrier had looked through him in the car downtown. The perfect, impervious stare, neither unfriendly nor engaged.

Him, too—that Jew downtown. Dress him up right, put a few polite phrases in his head, he could pass for any of Vienna
maskilim—

A sudden shameful memory bobbed up—of the nationalist German student societies he had joined briefly, back in his college days. All that marching and shouting, everyone wearing a cornflower or a white carnation in their lapel. Drunken evenings in the beer gardens, reading endless excited screeds about the true German character, the German soul. The blood of Goethe and Schiller and Beethoven, fairly bubbling with genius!

What foolishness; what utter infantile dreck! All to make ourselves feel like geniuses, too. Now the whole world revolves around such nonsense—

He was beginning to feel faint. If he could only get some quick transportation back to their hotel—but there were no cabs around, none of the hired cars or hansoms that were ubiquitous downtown. The only train he saw was a demonic, elevated railway in the distance, with a breakneck curve around which the engines roared at full speed, spewing black smoke and whistling madly.

His hands trembled a little on his walking stick. This was ridiculous, he thought, lost as if he were himself in the middle of Peary and Cook’s Arctic wastes. But if he couldn’t find some way out soon he was sure he would urinate in his pants and faint right here on the sidewalk, perhaps worse—

“May I be of assistance?”

An elderly gentleman peered down at him. He wore a clerical collar and a neat, black, tailored suit, and an air of quiet, implacable dignity. He had a high mane of white hair under his bowler, and very fine skin, burnished nearly red along his tight cheekbones.

“May I be of assistance?” he said again, bowing courteously and tipping his bowler, introducing himself as a Dr. Betancourt. His eyes were grave but concerned, and Freud, finally realizing what he was saying, gripped at the man’s arm.

“
Ja, Ja,
if you could, I am trying to get back to the hotel . . .”

“I can help you get anywhere you want to go,” the man replied in perfect German, with a Berlin accent. “Unfortunately, the cabs do not come to this part of the city. May I prevail upon you to come to my home first—until you recover yourself?”

“That would be very kind,” Freud stammered, letting the older man lead him along the sidewalk by the arm as naturally as if he were his aged father.

The minister helped him up the low stoop of another immense new apartment house, white as a sarcophagus, and filling an entire block. Inside, though, his study was cool and dark, restful as a nap after the hot, white street. The curtains were drawn, letting in only a thin crack of light. It was a cluttered, active room, piled high with books and papers—a couch, a couple of patent leather chairs, the minister’s writing desk and chair.

Freud sat in one of his leather chairs, sipping a cold glass of lemonade. It was brought in to him by a handsome young boy who then disappeared into another room, off a long, dark hallway. Like everything else in America, the apartment was huge and mysterious.

“My sister’s boy,” Dr. Betancourt informed him gravely. “We are all living doubled up these days, but he’s a good boy, very respectful. I’ve sent him to rent a carriage for you.”

Freud looked around the room in a new light. He noticed now a small plate and service set in a corner, some bedding hidden back behind the couch. This one room was obviously where the man not only worked, but ate and slept as well.

“Tell me, are you with one of those fine new churches I noticed going up?” Freud asked politely.

“Ah, no,” the minister said, looking down at the floor, a faint smile flickering across his face. “We meet in a storefront just now—though we hope to have the money for a church of our own someday.”

“Oh, I see!”

Freud looked away, embarrassed—and noticed a little bookcase, where he was surprised to see copies of his own work, in the original German, part of a small but excellent library in sociology, philosophy, the physical sciences.

“You have my books—” he blurted out, immediately ashamed at his own immodesty.

“Oh, yes, I’ve read all your work. It is a great honor to meet you in the flesh—Dr.
Freund,”
the minister chuckled, and Freud smiled bleakly.

“Let me say, I think your work is brilliant, very brilliant indeed—if a little narrow,” he said more seriously

“Really? In what way do you find it narrow?” Freud asked, sighing a little to himself. “Is it the sex?”

“No, no, that was all right”—another smile wrinkling cherubically across the minister’s face. “No, that was fine. Only—I think you don’t give enough credit to other influences, outside the family.”

“Such as?” Freud asked, unable to keep the instant combativeness out of his voice.

Dr. Betancourt wheeled around in his chair to the wall, where a small shaving mirror was hanging. He leapt up spryly, and took it off the wall, bringing it over to Freud.

“Have you ever been in a fun house, Doctor?”

“I don’t believe so, no—”

“Oh, you really should someday, Doctor. They have all kinds of mirrors there, you know: big mirrors, little mirrors. Squat mirrors, short mirrors, skinnifying mirrors. All
kinds
of different reflections, staring back at you.
That’s
how we see ourselves, Doctor—through
all
those mirrors.”

Freud peered down into the shaving mirror the cleric offered him, the face of a stern but sympathetic grandfather peering back—neat white beard, precisely combed hair, the deep, symmetrical grooves along his cheeks and under his eyes.

How old I am getting How old

“But that implies
culture
then, eh?” Freud objected. “A
national
psychology, in which Germans must be analyzed as Germans, Americans as Americans—whatever that means—”

Dr. Betancourt shook his head.

“No, no. I mean the mirrors are
all
kinds. There’s the mirror a man looks in when he wants to think of himself as a lover, and another when he wants to think of himself as a husband, or a father, or a great man. And there’s the mirror a man looks into when he wants to think of himself as a white man.”

“Then what you are saying is that alienation is
inherent
,” Freud said slowly. Betancourt smiled again.

“How could it not be?” he said softly. “Look around you—at what we have built. How could we not be alienated, in this modern world? How could we
not
be?”

“All right. Suppose what you say is true. But what about trying to show the patient—the person—a
true
image of himself? Hmm? What about getting him to face an objective reality?”

“Is that what you do, Doctor? Is it? Do you describe a quantifiable, scientific reality? Or are you really telling stories?”

“Stories?”

“Oh, good stories, likely stories, stories that make sense,” Dr. Betancourt said with a booming laugh, leaning forward and tapping Freud’s knee to make sure he was not offended.

“Stories that make people think their world makes sense—but
stories
nonetheless.”

“Maybe. For now,” Freud answered, forcing himself as always to consider another truth. “We don’t know enough yet. But eventually, yes: there is no reason we can’t measure everything about the mind, right down to neurosis, and paranoia—in scientific, biological quantities.”

“Isn’t there? What is the true image in a fun house, Doctor? How do you pick it out? You’ve seen something of our city—what is the true American? What am
I
? A black man, a minister of Christ? Some kind of New Negro? A
nigger
?”

The grin was still there, hard as stone on the minister’s face now.

“Yes, yes, I see what you mean,” Freud said hastily. “But if it’s true, how do we keep any grip on reality? What is to keep men from being taken over completely by some idiotic mysticism?”

Dr. Betancourt put down his mirror and held his hands out, as if he were coming to the punch line of a good joke.

“That’s why the only answer is Divine Love, Doctor. Eternal, unreasoning love.”

“Do you really think man is a divine creature, sir?” Freud asked, as politely as he could.

“No. I think he is an animal—just as you do, Doctor. If he
were
divine, reason would suffice. But because he is, at heart, an animal, reason will never be enough.”

“That’s a very fatalistic belief.”

Betancourt gave him a curious look.

“That is the test of a man, as you must know, sir. To look at the world without illusions—and still live with honor and decency.”

The handsome, quiet young boy returned; the carriage was waiting downstairs. The minister pumped his hand and sent him on his way, refusing any of the ugly, green-and-black money Freud tried to press on him.

“Oh no, oh no,” he protested, gesturing around the small, darkened room. “Our talk has been reward enough. How I envy you—going back to a place like Vienna, where men talk about such things every day!”

“Yes, well,” Freud hemmed, thinking of the strutting officers in their comic-opera uniforms, the fat burghers and their ladies, the bully-boy students with their chants and badges.

“How I wish I could see it!”

After some more, effusive good-byes, the minister’s young nephew drove him down into town, the streets slowly, steadily narrowing, the ghastly towers and skyscrapers rising on each side, as if all of America were flowing into this single, vast clot of humanity.

How many mirrors could there be in such a place?

Freud shook his head. The courage to live with the truth—yes, he could face that. But to live without
any
truth—to rely on man’s love, or God’s?

No, that was too much. He shook his head, watching the silent black boy maneuver the carriage expertly through the raucous, roiling city streets. There was
only
truth, he decided, and he would stay faithful to it even if he never got to the promised land.

Their gondolier poled them sullenly along the twisting canals of the Doge’s Palace. From the balconies of plaster villas, string quartets serenaded them with the latest Broadway show tunes.

Esther sat in the stern, holding a copy of the
Forward
and his straw hat in her lap, while he stretched out in the bow, watching her other hand drifting through the dark, greenish water.

“Whattaya read that stuff for?” he teased her.

“To stay informed,” she said, smiling back at him.

“
Eh.
How much do you need to know, anyway?”

“It’s important to know if you’re going to change things.”

“Things change all the time,” he shrugged. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

Their boat stopped at a small restaurant, nestled under a romantic plywood castle and the romantic Venetian night sky, a few feet above their heads. It was lit by a large electric ball, beneath yards and yards of blue gauze. They stepped carefully up onto the piazza while the gondolier stood by indifferently, smoking a cigarette. They got a table and ate spaghetti, and
tiramisu
, while another of the ubiquitous violinists strolled around, playing favorites for a few coins.

“You know, you can trust me,” she told him abruptly, looking very seriously at him across the table with her big brown eyes.

“What?” he asked, startled, trying to sound as innocent as possible.

“You can trust me, is all. I know you’re out here for a reason—”

“What? How d’ya know that? Why—”

“C’mon,” she said impatiently. “I see you out here, marking time. Living in that place. Even I can figure that one out.”

He started to protest again, and she held up her hand.

“Sometimes I think you are my own
dybbuk
, and I just dream you up when I want to,” she smiled. “It’s all right—I don’ need to know what it is. It’s just you can trust me.”

“
Eh,
well, it’s nothing—” he fumfered.

“I think you’re hiding out from something, that’s what I think.”

“You shouldn’t get involved,” he told her. “It’s nothing for you, little dove. I told you I was a very bad man.”

“But what is it?”

She reached an arm out across the table, but he looked away.

“It’s just things. It’s just something that happened in the dark,” he muttered.

Nobody can see what happens in the dark

“You can trust me, is all—no matter what it is.”

He looked at her, across the little table—so earnest, her eyes big, and moist with emotion—and he thought that he probably could tell her. He could probably tell her anything, now that she had promised. She would even admire him for this, most likely.

So why was he ashamed of it?

It wasn’t that, exactly—it was more that he still couldn’t figure it out. He didn’t care to have her idolizing him over something he still didn’t know about himself.

Nobody can see what happens in the dark

“Where to now, Big Tim?” Photo Dave was asking him.