The White Hotel (26 page)

In your dream you were present yourself, as a “misty” figure, comforting the fainting woman yet also aware that the bridegroom needed your comfort more than was quite proper. And it is a fact that my colleague had had a very ambivalent relationship with one of the daughters of the lady he married. The young woman was in fact a patient of mine at one time
.

I should add that no one in Vienna except myself and one or two of my closest colleagues knew of the tragedy touching our friend’s wedding, and it was certain you could not have obtained the information from anywhere. I should have liked to include your dream in my study, but its evident application to my Budapest colleague’s experience made that impossible, the more particularly as he is not in good health, and believes in the existence of telepathic powers
.

I have only told you this to demonstrate to you that your gift is entirely unconscious. There is nothing you can do about it. You can no more alter it than you can make your beautiful voice turn into a raven’s croak. So do not try
.

I send you my good wishes
.

Yours very sincerely
,

Sigmund Freud

Observing how much happier and livelier she looked, Lisa’s aunt wondered if there was a man friend in the offing. Whatever the reason might be, it was a relief to her, for she had been afraid her niece might be heading for another nervous breakdown.

Actually, Lisa had the feeling of being extraordinarily close to Freud: closer, in fact, than when she had been seeing him nearly every day. It was the tone of his latest letter which made her feel this: so unexpectedly warm; paying her compliments on her voice and psychic gift, and the even greater compliment of sharing a confidence with her, the story about his colleague. There was something strange about that. Not that she thought it wasn’t true; Freud was incapable of deceit. She remembered the dream—all except that part of it which Freud had separated from the rest, as though to underline it for her. She didn’t at all remember being present herself at the wedding tragedy, a “misty” figure giving comfort.

Wasn’t this Freud’s way of asking for her help and support, in his old age and infirmity? She recalled almost the only personal remark he had ever let fall to her: a hint—no more—that his own marriage, on the physical level, had come to an end when he was forty. Wasn’t that in his dream? Freud was the middle-aged husband, whose younger self had already died. He therefore needed comforting “more than was quite proper” from the young woman tending the fainting bride…. Well, that would ostensibly be Anna Freud, with her mother. But Lisa was “Anna” in the case study…. “A very ambivalent relationship”…“The young woman was in fact a patient of mine at one time.”…

He was appealing to her for friendship; but feared she would find it improper if he expressed it openly. Perhaps for more than friendship. If so, she ought not to shrink from trying to console him. Lisa worked herself up into a state of great tension, wondering
how to answer his appeal. She decided that the best way was simply to reply in a relaxed and friendly spirit, referring genuinely to matters of the case history—and just see what happened.

16 June 1931

Dear Professor Freud
,

I have been touched to the heart by your kind and generous letter. Your compliment on my voice also touched me—till I remembered you have never yet heard me sing! Otherwise you would not call it beautiful. In fact, it has more of the crow in it each day
.

I have done little else recently but go over and over that evening when my “hysteria” began. I remember a few more details, which may be useful to you in writing your Appendix. First of all, I was
(
as I have said
)
happy in the thought that I might not be Jewish. Even “might not” was enough to justify my giving myself to my husband completely, with a clear conscience, and with God’s grace to bear him a child. Till then, I had been troubled by the approach of his leave
(
you were right
).
It was less than a month away. In his letters he had been putting pressure on me to “go the whole way.” I couldn’t blame him, it was only natural. But I hated the very thought. Now, though, thanks to my uncertain parentage, I felt I could agree, and I wrote him a passionate letter on returning home from my aunt’s
.

But when I fell asleep I had dreadful nightmares. You see, there were other things I had started to feel bad about. One of Willi’s tasks was to prosecute deserters, and he’d just won a case, which meant that the poor soldier would be shot. He had written to me all about his brilliant speech which had convinced the tribunal—he was obviously delighted with himself. I felt sick. I couldn’t “fit” this person in the letter with my memory of his gentleness. So weren’t my pains, which came on that same night, the result of my chaotic emotions, and nothing to do with suppressing knowledge?
(
I’m very good at suppressing uncomfortable knowledge—I once “forgot,” an hour after I’d read it, that my leading man was married to the leading lady—whom I was replacing because she had fallen sick. Just because I’d built up a day-dream that I’d have a beautiful affair with him!
)
But my convenient lapses of memory don’t make me ill
.

And didn’t I feel better when you’d helped me “dig out” my mother’s affair simply because I felt excited at the way it cleared up mysteries? Clarification! Anagnorisis! I’ve just sung in a new oratorio called
Oedipus Rex—
can you tell?! I like the idea of clarification. “More light! More light!” More light—and more love
.

What do you think? These are just misty ideas, and I’m not at all sure of them
.

The tragic business connected with your colleague I shall treat with complete confidence, of course. In spite of that, your letter sounded livelier, and I hope it means your health is better. I am well. Aunt Magda is excited because my brother is coming on vacation from the United States. She has not much of a life any more. We are not quite on our own—we have a mischievous fluffy kitten. Unfortunately it has brought my aunt up in a rash, and I shall have to find her another home
. (
The cat, I mean!
)
Sometimes I crave more stimulating company. I would give much for one of our discussions of the old days. Now my aunt is waiting to play two-handed patience. It will stop me from giving way to my weakness for writing long rambling letters
.

With cordial greetings
,

Lisa

Having posted her letter she had the cruel, but not unfamiliar, experience of remembering, or fearing that she remembered, the questionable part of her dream. The only saving grace was that she had not been more outspoken. But she did not expect a reply, and none came.

Lisa and her aunt found themselves entertaining two grey-haired American tourists, George and Natalie Morris. George held a responsible position with a motor-company in Detroit and had done very well for himself. Natalie even had a mink coat.

“I don’t know what they’re doing here,” she wrote to Victor. “I keep expecting them to take out little American flags and wave them about as they walk along the streets. I’ve a friend from New York who met them, and who was repelled by their thick American accents. They miss the milkshakes at their corner drugstore. They don’t know how we manage in such a tiny, dingy apartment (it’s shrunk since they were here with their children after the war!). They’re terrified of catching dysentery.
N
atalie can’t find anywhere to get her hair permed and tinted. George scans the foreign news, in vain, for baseball results. He and I have nothing in common, not even memories. We seemed to occupy different landscapes. How did we come from the same womb? I couldn’t bring myself to kiss his morning-shadowed cheek at the station, so we shook hands.
Mein Bruder!
I’m reading the
Inferno
to cheer me up. Of course it’s nice for Aunt Magda. To her he’s still her little nephew Yury, and it’s someone else to talk to.”

After two weeks of the infernal visit, it became clear to Lisa why they had come. His children gone from the nest, George was
feeling barren; high-and-dry on his menopause. He wanted Lisa and his aunt to come back to the United States with them. He already had their entry permits. Lisa could teach music: there were plenty of opportunities. George brought up the proposition over dinner one night, and Natalie added her persuasions. She would have loved to bring her parents over from Moscow, but that was not possible.

Lisa turned the idea down flat. But Aunt Magda was touched by the invitation, and promised to consider it. In the end, after many tearful discussions with her niece, she agreed. It would be a terrible wrench to leave Lisa and Vienna. But then, she hardly saw any of the latter any more; just the view from the window, for the stairs were beyond her. Of her circle of friends, most of them widows or spinsters, “some were no more, and others had gone further…”—including her dearest friend, Lisa’s singing teacher, who had actually emigrated with her children to America. She wrote warmly of the kindliness of the people.

George and Natalie could offer her a pleasant room on the ground floor, and a car to take her out for drives. They had the money to pay for the best medical care, and home nursing if and when she needed it. If she went, it would be best for Lisa too, she said. She was an increasing burden on her (it was true, though she denied it). Lisa could not expect to go on earning good fees for many more years, so what would happen to them? On her own, Lisa would be able to support herself by teaching at the Conservatorium, perhaps.

There was really no decision to be made, though there were tears to be wept, by both Aunt Magda and her niece. “It was amusing to watch my brother’s face,” Lisa wrote again to Victor. “I’m sure that’s what they were hoping for. They don’t like me any more than I like them, but they can see Aunt Magda as a
pet in the house, a quaint old European lady they can bring out to show their friends. They’ve even promised to buy her a grand piano, so they can have cultural Viennese evenings. Also, dear George is looking for his mama.”

Lisa watched her aunt being eased aboard the train, like an expensive
objet d’art
the Morrises had acquired on their vacation. Lisa and her aunt dared not look into each other’s faces, for they knew they would never see each other again. Another layer of skin peeled away, and the apartment was suddenly very big and hollow. Lisa spent more time in it too, as her bookings continued to fall away. She made inquiries at the Conservatorium about pupils. Ever since her afternoons with Lucia in Milan, she had thought she would enjoy teaching, and might even have a talent for it. But the vain, empty years stretched ahead.

Then, in the spring of 1934, Victor wrote from Kiev to say how much better things were. The bad harvests were over. People had enough to eat. He had been asked to produce
Boris Godunov
, and was making it a condition of his acceptance that she be invited to sing the role of Marina. He was longing to see her again. In fact, now that he could invite her in good conscience, he wished to propose marriage. It was not an impulsive gesture; he had thought deeply about it. He had felt more at home with her, those weeks in Milan, than he had with any other woman, except Vera and his first wife. He felt sure it would be Vera’s wish. Hadn’t she asked Lisa to look after him for her? Little Kolya was running wild, and badly needed a proper mother. Victor’s mother had done her best, but she was old, and wanted to spend her last years at home in the village where she had been born and lived her whole life. She was homesick, as only the very young and the very old can be. But he did not want Lisa to think he was asking her just from practical considerations. He felt they
had drawn very close to each other through the years of correspondence; but he, too, was ageing, and life was too short to depend on letters…. If she could see her way to marrying a man approaching senility, he would be overjoyed.

Lisa compressed into a single day all the neurotic, hallucinatory experiences she had once suffered from. She walked around in a dream—found herself wandering into the bedroom with a jug she intended for the kitchen, poured milk into a sieve she thought was a pan. She didn’t know what to do; and there was no one who could help her make her decision, no one she felt close enough to talk to. There was every reason to say yes. She was fond of Victor, and admired him. Her heart was drawn in love and compassion to the motherless little boy. Her own life, in spite of having many acquaintances and a few, not particularly close, friends, was increasingly lonely.

Also there was violence in the city. For several days she heard the rumble of gunfire, and imagined she was back in Odessa at the turn of the century. The political news everywhere was terrible, and it looked as if worse was to come.

For three nights on end she dreamt of children, and saw this as a sign she should go and be a mother to Vera’s little boy. But would she know how to? And did she love Victor enough? Certainly she didn’t love him as she had loved Alexei or even her husband. And yet, as she read the letter over and over, she began to love him a little more, her heart started to tremble.

From day to day and from week to week she delayed replying. She made herself ill with indecision, every moment of the day—and most of the night. Then her mind locked, and was incapable even of thought. One whole afternoon she sat in a church, but came out no closer to an answer. Her pains were back in full force; she could hardly breathe. She was not eating. She had the wild
idea of going to the Berggasse, knocking on Freud’s door, and flinging herself at his feet. She would ask him some irrelevant question, and according to whether he answered “yes” or “no” she would frame her answer to Victor.