Secret Dreams (57 page)

He awoke late in the morning, Emma was up and about, whistling like a mockingbird as she picked up strewn clothes scattered around their bed. She smiled as if she knew his secrets, a knowing female smile. “I bit your neck,” she warned him. “Wear a high collar today.”

He didn't care. All he could think of was Fräulein coming for their early afternoon appointment.

The girl failed to appear. In the few moments of waiting he completely lost hope, dreading the imminent ring of the telephone with the message she could not come. Ever again … At last she arrived, after ten minutes, bedraggled from a sudden shower,- she had forgotten her umbrella and been obliged to take shelter in a doorway in the street.

Now at his office she stood on the threshold, reluctant to enter. What was there to say? They let the aria of their eyes run together like a song. Did you dream my dream last night?

“It was raining,” Fräulein said.

Ah yes, the answer …

“We were both wet,” he sighed.

At once she moved boldly into the room. They met on the couch. He searched the soft valleys of her palm, the fertile plains, and traced the river lines, how they wound around the smoothness of her wrist — all in the quiet of his office, with Emma and the maid downstairs and the birds in the yard chirping bravely in the dappled, damp leaves.

Since the beginning she had been ready to burn, purring under his hands as he petted, unbuttoned, undid her. So ready now, open and waiting. For all along she had wanted him to search her out with tongues of flame and burn her into ashes — taking her completely in that low place in the deep dark. She melted, warm and supple, across his limbs, soon helping his trembling hands under her blouse, laying herself open for him throughout the soft silence of the hour, while the business of the house went on below … and the time for the next patient's appointed hour drew steadily closer.

Could it even be explained? No.

Not the unbuttoning, not the entwining. Not those hours in his office with the girl — or the nights when he came home to Emma in his heart. For Emma was still in his heart — more, it seemed, than ever before. He took her every night and saw her wonder at the change.

He rutted Emma as she came from the bath.

Rutted her on the dining room table among the rumpled linen and dirty china. He had her standing up in the yard on a moonless night while a tomcat yowled for Geschrei to come out and play. And down in the cellar among the cobwebs and old casks as the inky darkness devoured her moans.

Morning and night.

Office above and home below.

He would bring Fräulein to quivers and trembles, her dress hiked up, his hands wet, but he himself still contained — until she peeled off her white gloves and did him to the end. Yet when Fräulein had gone quietly home, he craved a deeper release. À gnawing hunger at the total impossibility of having the girl completely, as she so needed to be done. And a strange, consenting satisfaction in Emma's passivity as she allowed him her body whenever, however he wanted, The ravenous hunger for Fräulein was gorged on Emma's open flower. Feeding the insatiable delusion that he could go on like this forever, for the rest of his life.

So he ran to Emma. Catching her on the stairs, or straddling her over the balustrade while the servants were busy in the kitchen. Many evenings they laughed and got drunk at dinner. Woke up with headaches. And told no one, like children with their private games.

In the middle of July a letter came from Freud, inviting him for a special Wednesday Society meeting. So Herr Doktor prepared to go to the man, like a son to a father. Going on his knees, if you could believe it: supplicant now, begging to be saved. For he was indeed drowning. The women were pulling him down like Loreleis, Rhine sirens of the Nibelung, luring him into the rushing waters of love to be swept away forever. As though they both had him in one mind — two cats playing over the same mousie, playing him to death. He was blind to everything but the women, seeing only the tangle of twining limbs and hands, breasts and behinds yielding to him as he plumbed his lust. And in the abysmal, impossible task of choosing one of them forever — he was torn apart. But he confessed none of this to the man in Vienna. Replying merely:

“Subject's treatment has progressed remarkably. Speak of this and other things upon our Wednesday.”

It had been the driest summer Vienna had ever known. The lilies in the public flower beds had shriveled in the gray dirt, and the fountains run dry. Even the watering of private gardens had been forbidden by order of His Imperial Majesty's Public Works. Still, a daring handful of uncivic souls watered their flowers by night, and so here and there a spray of color blossomed against the drab stone ledges: the blue of a morning glory, the lavender of iris, a yellow rose …

Herr Professor of 19 Berggasse tried to ignore the summer's standstill, but with no sign of green, no dark rain clouds, the blinding whiteness seemed to get inside him, only to be squeezed into the damp of his undershirts. When he slept he dreamt of rooms filled with hissing steam pipes, bubbling boilers, and ticking gauges —- only to wake in the middle of the heat-soaked night with nausea and belly cramps. Then later, drifting off again, he saw a flock of sparrows, like those that thronged the ornate cornices of Vienna's buildings, swoop down all at once, splashing into rain as they struck the pavement. Yet every morning he stared at the flat white sky, and all the joy of life's purpose seemed wholly evaporated.

On yet another numberless white-sky day, Fritzi the postman brought young Herr Doktors letter, tapping it to his forehead in that foolish psychic manner, predicting piously, “Ah, Herr Professor, a young visitor. He is earnest. He seeks help. Your wisdom. And counsel. He is coming one day soon —-”

“Give me that!” Herr Professor growled, in no mood for jokes. Upstairs, a patient waited. Damn! He would just have a peek at the letter, just a little glance to satisfy his curiosity. He poked his head in the waiting room.

“Just a minute, Frau —”

Frau who? A complete blank. A stout young woman with a dimpled chin and a deep bosom. Yes, he knew her. Three years in treatment. Frau Blank smiled sweetly No name came.

“Just give me half a minute/' he told her.

“Take your time/' Frau Blank answered congenially. And that annoyed him too.

The letter took only a moment to read. The words “progressed remarkably” seared into his brain. The business with the girl unfolded for him like the final acts of a play. They had brought her to the root of it, so she could pursue the paths of a normal life. Her own apartment. Therapy. An education at the university. Perhaps even a job as a waitress in a café. And now the son was coming to the father….

The sky beyond his window had turned a shade darker, with the filmy outlines of yellow clouds. Rain? Well, who cared; he wasn't going out. He was going to spend a dreary five hours from ten to four-thirty with several well-paying patients — all with various troublesome complaints. A part of his mind heard the faraway rumble of thunder. Heat lightning flickered over the walls. All afternoon he felt the gathering storm. Gray clouds streaked with purple came out of nowhere and laced the air with knives. When the last patient had gone for the day, an ominous stillness hung over the consultation room.

Herr Professor toyed with his young friend's letter. A trickle of sweat ran down the inside of his shirt. Once upon a time there was a junior nobody crouching like a toad in the shadows of a great castle. Now, miracle of miracles, the Princess had laid an enchanted kiss upon him. And behold! there arose a great Prince, who raised a mute mummy like Lazarus from the dead. Curing the incurable. Unraveling the mysteries of the soul! He struck Jung's letter with his open palm. Then sprang from the chair with
Hurrah!
on his lips, but his own huge voice was drowned in a crack of thunder. A blast of wind toppled the totems off his desk. The ancient statues lay on his rug like so many dead gods.

The rain had come to Vienna at last.

Torrents exploded on the windowsill. He knelt to rescue his ruins, picking up one fallen god and dropping it, picking up another and dropping that one. All the while muttering, “Ja! My Method cured her. My Method. Mine!”

And when the rain squall finally passed, the soot of the city's streets washed down the drains,- the wilted flowers in His Imperial Majesty's gardens drank their fill. And Herr Professor rose from his knees, content at last to set his own gods in order. For each new Believer leaped to his hand like a flaming blade, a brand with which to slay the infidels. And Jung was to be his holiest sword.

Fräulein Schanderein desperately wanted to see him off at Zurich's Central Station. So she planned to find a departure schedule and lie in wait for him on the platform. Ready to melt back into the crowds if Frau Emma came along to say farewell …

She lost her temper with an officious clerk in the ticket office. The bureaucratic gnat had flatly refused to give her a printed schedule unless she bought a ticket. Yet she wanted to avoid the public board, as too exposed in the midst of the milling station. During her argument with the unhelpful clerk an irritable line of ticket buyers had backed up behind her, they made noises of protest and consternation. But she snarled them to dumbfounded silence. Then bought a third-class ticket to Holz, a near suburb on the line. “My schedule, please,” she insisted. The clerk reluctantly slid it across with her ticket. She snatched the timetable and marched off. Voices called after her, she had left her third-class ticket in the change well of the booth. “Use it yourselves,” she cursed the crowd. “You can all go to Holz!”

She chose a spot at the base of a support girder, hidden behind a red- and white-striped cart selling roasted sugar peanuts. She bought a small bag to hold in front of her face as she ate. But her mind was in two places. Also in Herr Doktors office. Alone with him, the sounds of the house a dull murmur. Near the open window, a huge furry bumblebee buzzed sleepily against the drawn curtains. Their exchanges of petting and touching and release had gone from soft to hard, sinking gently through the green currents of the deeps, emerging at last, flailing and gasping for air. Fierce in the end, they tore each other's clothes, roughly grabbing breast or thigh. And when it was done, they lay back languidly on the couch, disheveled creatures of the flesh, sunken eyes in flushed faces, hardly stirring — and waited for the sweat to dry so they could arrange themselves again.

More and more she opened herself to him. Their clutching arms, his hurried lips, the dark place down below … Fräulein sagged weakly against the towering steel pillar, feeling the strength of it along her warm flank. She kept eating the sugared peanuts, crunching and swallowing them half chewed. Her lips were dusted with sweet crystals. While the longer she waited, welded sideways to the steel beam, the surer she was he would come alone.

“I'm glad you're here.”

He stood beside the red-and-white peanut cart, a small suitcase in one hand, his own bag of peanuts in the other, He shoved the bag of peanuts in his coat pocket for later and took her hand. They walked down the concrete platform, passing the empty train. The blue sky beyond the arched glass enclosure showed wisps of floating clouds. Soon they were close enough to the locomotive to feel the huge swelling of the steam in the engine, The humidity suffocating … She saw the edge of his shirt collar, dark with sweat. She rubbed the drops from her forehead as they ran into her eyes. He offered his handkerchief and she took it, but didn't mop her face.

She started to laugh, because they both looked so much like when they touched in the dark of his office, smiling damply into each other's feverish eyes. And he laughed too, reading her thoughts.

“Yes, just like that, isn't it? Except we're in public now.”

“With nowhere to go!” she cried, clinging to him.

“No, nowhere,” he whispered tenderly.

The train whistle blew. He hoisted himself into a vacant compartment and leaned out the open window. She reached for him. Their fingers touched, hers sticky with peanut sugar. The train jolted forward. She kept mouthing their last words as the lumbering cars rolled past. The coaches swayed as they gained speed. The steel wheels sang over the iron rails:
nowhere to go, nowhere to of
. Until suddenly the train flew away and Fräulein stood on the platform, alone.

The two men sat in the empty consultation room, the older explaining a totem from his collection. It was a homely lump of coal with slits for eyes, a hole for a mouth, the barest hint of breasts and belly. The younger man's face took on the strangest cast, first doubt, then cold recognition; Mother of Stone.

The goddess frowned in Herr Professor's hand, polished smooth with years of loving finger-worship. Young Herr Doktor looked trapped in his chair. His eyes darted from the black thing to the face of his friend. My God! Where had the clever shaman found it? But Herr Professor did not seem to notice the younger man's anxiety.

“She's the oldest of the old. From the Péloponnèse.”

“Sparta,” the young man said thickly, “Arcadia …”

“Here now, you're pale as a ghost. Let me get you a glass of water—

But before Herr Professor rose, the younger man seized the black goddess from his fingers. Amazed to be holding her in his own two hands. Stroking her, peering intently over her every facet. But still a deep current of rejection flowed through him, a refusal to see the evidence in his grasp: part of him wanted nothing to do with her, or Herr Professor's crazy sex quack theories, stories read God knows where! He shook his head in denial, grappling with the stone as if trying to crush the very token of his lust and treachery. Rambling: “No, no, no! I refuse to believe it. They never did it that way: beating an old man … sleeping with each other … women going with women … They never did those things! I've read Frazer. Pausanias. Hesiod. Ovid! They're all just sensationalists. Pornographers. Writing to shock like those cheap magazines with pictures of Siamese twins joined at the hip, with their wives and children. Just lying writers!