A Curable Romantic

by Joseph Skibell

  “Good! Marvelous!” Dr. Freud said, clapping his hands. “Let us begin immediately!”

  Exhibiting considerably less enthusiasm for the examination than he, I coughed into my fist and cleared my throat. “Well,” I said, “if I recall correctly, I said something along the lines of ‘It’s difficult to feel born for higher things and still be uncertain of earning one’s daily bread,’ or rather ‘bride,’ as you maintain.”

  “And what springs to mind?” Dr. Freud said. “Quick! Quick! Don’t give it too much thought.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. The Lord’s Prayer, I suppose.”

  “Ah, very good, the Lord’s Prayer. ‘Give us our bride, our daily bride,’ eh?” Dr. Freud said this in English, and as he did, I began to feel the first stirrings of an inexplicable shame. “Yes, you see,” he continued, “one might make a similar mistake in English, as well as in several other languages. In Hebrew, for instance, kallah is ‘bride’ and challah a sort of bread. Why, even an aristocratic Pole might confuse pain, ‘bread’ in French, with panna, the Polish word for ‘miss.’ ”

  I ducked my head. “Well, I suppose I’m not as cunning a linguist as you,” I said, or rather tried to say. I’d attempted this riposte in English as well, but I’d tripped over the difficult locution and now blushed, hearing my own words.

  Dr. Freud raised a well-barbered eyebrow. “A Latinist?” he chortled.

  “Forgive me, Herr Doktor,” I stammered, “if I’ve consulted you in any way!”

  “Ah!” he crowed. “If only my patients were as honest as you!”

  “Insulted, I meant!”

  “There! You see? That’s another aspect of these faulty speech acts. They’re highly contagious, and quite so!”

  “Yes, but what have you learned so far?” I said, hoping to master the situation. I could feel my cheeks burning.

  “Not much.” Catching the barman’s eye, he waved two fingers over our empty glasses. I cringed: I could barely afford the first. “But let us continue. Now, if I asked you what thoughts the Lord’s Prayer produces in your mind, you would say what?”

  “Right off the top of my head?”

  “Certainly right off the top of your head.”

  Feeling unfree to consider the matter for more than an instant, I answered him with the first thing that sprang to mind: “Why, Reni’s Gathering of the Manna, I suppose.”

  “Ah.”

  “I saw it not too long ago in a cathedral in Ravenna.” The painting still hung in my mental gallery, and I could see it clearly: Moses in his red cloak and sandals, two goat horns emerging from his head; winged babies tossing an invisible something from their nursery blanket of clouds; the crowds’ arms raised to receive; a muscular man bending, lifting something from the ground, the thumb of his hand inside the handle of a clay jar, and not a crust of bread in sight.

  “Why the Reni?” Dr. Freud asked.

  “Bread from the sky, I suppose?”

  “And of Moses, what thoughts?”

  “The lawgiver?”

  Dr. Freud stroked his beard. “Stern, harsh?”

  “Implacable,” I agreed.

  “Ah … ah …” Dr. Freud raised a finger to his lips before pointing it at my face. His eyes narrowed. “And what crossed your mind just then?” He’d apparently seen me smiling at some private thought.

  I touched my own finger to my lips and waved my hand before my face dismissively. I demurred. “It’s hardly germane to our subject, I would think.”

  “However, you’ve agreed to tell me everything.”

  “Well, no.” I sighed. “It’s just … something just … crossed my mind …”

  “Just now?”

  “Yes … but it’s really too intimate to pass on, and besides, I see no connection to our discussion and therefore no necessity in speaking the thought aloud.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that.”

  “However …” I folded my arm.

  “Of course,” Dr. Freud snorted, “I can’t force you to talk about something you find distasteful; but then you mustn’t insist upon learning from me how you came to substitute the word bride for bread.”

  “Oh, very well.” I capitulated before his greater will. “No, it’s just” — I cast my eyes down at the carpet — “this idea of a daily bride, you see.” I smiled at him imploringly. “The notion occurred to me that one might … possess, well, I suppose … six women then. One for each day of the week.”

  “Which would mean?”

  I shot an embarrassed look at Dr. Freud. “A double portion on the Sabbath?”

  He smirked and lowered his voice. “You’ve been married, I take it?”

  “Indeed, I have.”

  “More than once?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Twice, in fact.”

  “But how could you have guessed that?”

  “Both marriages imposed upon you by your father?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “The first one a marriage of great love.”

  “Yes!”

  “The second, less so.”

  I fell half a step back and took a hard look at the man standing before me. “Have we met before and I’ve forgotten it?”

  “Your father forced you into these betrothals quite against your will.”

  “And now you’re tweaking me for my absentmindedness, is that it?” I shook my finger at him, pretending to scold. “We’ve obviously discussed this matter previously.”

  “No, I assure you, we’ve never met; neither have I had the pleasure of making your father’s acquaintance. Besides, he doesn’t live in Vienna.”

  “He doesn’t. That’s correct.”

  “But in the East somewhere.”

  “Astounding!”

  “In Galicia, I would imagine. In — ?”

  By reflex, I started to pronounce the name of my hometown.

  “In Szibotya, yes.” Dr. Freud finished the word for me. “I thought as much.”

  “But-but-but — how — ?” I stammered.

  “‘But-but-but — how?’ That is indeed the question!”

  “Are you a mind reader or a conjurer that you’ve seen so deeply and so completely into the private recesses of my heart?”

  “Not so deeply, neither so completely, and certainly not as private as you imagine.” He downed his drink and pulled back the wings of his evening jacket, placing his fists in the small of his back. “A mind reader? A conjurer? No!” He laughed. “A humble man of science is all. In any case, you did most of the work yourself, preparing the way, as it were: a harsh father figure; give us our daily bride; ‘a double portion on the Sabbath’; the invisible manna of the Reni symbolizing a kind of communal delusion. That you’re from Galicia, anyone could discern from your accent. With Szibotya, granted, I cheated. You began to pronounce the name, and I’m familiar enough with the region, as many of my wife’s cousins reside there, to have guessed the rest of the word.”

  Eying me pensively, he grew silent. Not a large man, he was nevertheless taller than I, and, for a moment, I had the impression that he was preparing to strike me. Instead, he reached out and lightly fingered the lapel of Otto Meissenblichler’s jacket, a gesture against which, as I’d prepared myself for a blow, I couldn’t help flinching. Noting this, he frowned.

  “And now, despite the wretched history of your sentimental life and this absurd habiliment in which you comport yourself, you would have me introduce you to the young woman you saw me speaking to earlier in the evening.” He released Otto’s lapels and rubbed his thumb against his fingers, as though something disagreeable had adhered to them. “Unless I’m incorrect, and that is not the reason you have approached me after all.” His glower proved to be beneficent. “No need to verify my surmisings, and, I assure you, denying them will do you no good. Her name is Emma Eckstein, and I would be delighted to facilitate your making her acquaintance.”

  “Emma Eckstein?” I repeated the words, frightened I might forget them if I didn’t.
“Forgive my amazement if I — ”

  “Oh God, no!” Dr. Freud roared. “There’s nothing to forgive! Indeed, let the world gape in amazement. I’m prepared to accept its tribute!”

  The bell for the second act rang out, summoning us to our seats. I reached into my breast pocket, but Dr. Freud touched my arm. “I’ll see to this,” said he. “You were gracious enough to indulge me in my little game.”

  We swallowed the last of our drinks, and he looked me up and down again, simultaneously appraising and dismissing me, I thought.

  “Well then,” he said, fussing with his matches, his coins, and his cigars.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Enjoy the rest of your evening, young man.”

  “And you yours.”

  “I will, but not as much as I have this interval with you.”

  Feeling the moment called for some grand statement, and also fearing that he might too easily forget the promise he had made me, I cleared my throat and said, “My dear sir, I am a doctor as well.”

  “Yes, as the prescription pad in your left pocket testifies, although I suppose it might belong to the owner of the jacket.”

  “And so, let me assure you,” I continued, blushing, “that despite the tenor of our conversation, my intentions towards the young lady in question are entirely dishonorable.”

  Dr. Freud smiled unhappily as I strove to correct myself. “Honorable, I meant.”

  “By the way,” he said, escorting me to the staircases, “speaking of parlor games, you don’t by any chance play Tarock, do you?”

  “Tarock?”

  “We’re short a fourth for this Saturday’s game.”

  “I never miss an opportunity,” I said, although I had no idea what Tarock was nor how one played it.

  Dr. Freud purred, “In any case, it’s easy enough to learn.”

  “And Fräulein Eckstein?” I asked. “Will she be there?”

  Dr. Freud stopped and placed both of his hands upon my shoulders. “The rules of the heart, as I think you’ll discover, are somewhat more complex than those of Tarock.” He handed me his card. “You do own your own clothing, don’t you … Dr. Sammelsohn?” he said, reading mine.

  “I have a suit, yes.”

  “Then I shall see you in it on Saturday night at eight o’clock sharp!”

  He took his leave of me with a slight bow and descended the stairs, pushing through the turnstiles of men’s canes and women’s fans, while I climbed back to my place in the fourth gallery. When the final curtain rang down, I hurried out, thinking that if I could leave the theater before them and appear to have inadvertently crossed their paths, I might not have to wait until Saturday for — I glanced again at his card to remind myself of his odd-sounding name — Dr. Freud to introduce me to Frau Eckstein and her magnificent daughter. The crowds swarming through the theater doors were too dense, however, and I saw neither Dr. Freud nor the Ecksteins again that night. Still, I lingered beneath a streetlamp as couples and groups hailed cabs or drove off in private fiacres, in the hopes that I might.

  Eventually, even the actors emerged in their ordinary clothing. Their faces still partially rouged, they bid each other good night in their large voices, their gestures not as bold as before, although still somewhat affected. Finally a workman in shirtsleeves fastened a velvet rope across each of the theater’s doors, and I made my way home, my hands thrust into the pockets of Otto Meissenblichler’s coat.

  Though much about myself at that time embarrasses me still — the little mustache and goatee I wore in an effort to appear not more masculine, but less feminine; my unruly hair, worn in the Bohemian style; the little trinkets and fobs dangling from my vest, which, with the rest of Otto’s ensemble, made up my apparel for the evening — there’s but one thing I continue to scold my younger self for, and that is the alacrity with which he once again surrendered to his cravings for love.

  Ah, just look at him! The poor fool! At last, he knows the beloved’s name: “Fräulein Eckstein … Fräulein Eckstein!” It sweetens his tongue like a lemon drop when, in an ecstasy, he whispers it to himself: “Emma … Emma … Emma …” Why, he’s practically dancing on the benches in the Stadtpark, swooning against the gas lamps, gibbering at the gibbous moon! No one is abroad at this late hour, and so he feels himself the only man awake in Vienna, the only man alive in the empire, or perhaps in the entire world, the lone vertical figure crossing the planet’s horizons as it spins in its ethers, aroused by the perfumed caresses of Beauty herself.

  (Oh, what an idiot I was!)

  I knocked softly upon Otto Meissenblichler’s door and, receiving no answer, let myself in. Crossing the rug in the half-light, I removed my suit and exchanged it for the one I’d left hanging there. Self-dramatically running my hand through my hair, I slipped back into the passageway and entered my own rooms. Tossing my hat onto the table, I flung myself, fully clothed, across the bed.

  “O Noble Room!” I cried out softly. (How I cringe to report this!) “Witness for so long of my bitterest solitude! May you now serve as a sanctuary to my new and tender love for Fräulein Emma Eckstein!”

  The evening restages itself, a delightful comedy this time, in the theater of my mind, and I watch it over again. With its sparkling lamps and its incandescent chandeliers, the Carl is an empire of light. The murals on the ceiling are neckbreakingly beautiful, adorned with harps and trumpets and a whirling zodiacal wheel. There are depictions of Nestroy in costume and of the Muses in none; and beneath it all, there he is, young Dr. Sammelsohn, his heart and eye aroused to a frenzied pitch, delighting in the brilliance of it all.

  (Who could have known then that, only a few months later, the fool would learn to his peril that the heart, like the eye, is drawn not only to light but to the soothing ambiguities of darkness as well?)

  CHAPTER 2

  I tended, in the meanwhile, to my chores at the Allgemeines Krankenhaus, fiddling, for instance, with the Helmholtz ophthalmoscope and the Graefe knife, instruments whose uses I’d yet to perfect. Not that I needed to. The majority of my patients were simple malingerers feigning nearsightedness in the hopes of obtaining a government dispensation or a military deferment, and my most frequent prescription was a sternly worded lecture: “Let me assure you, Herr Whomever,” I might say, “that I have no time for these sorts of duplicities and neither does the emperor or his generals!”

  However, nothing could have been further from the truth. I was an unmarried man, living by himself in a city full of strangers: I had nothing but time. My hours were indeed so empty, I could hardly fill them. As a consequence, I was incapable of arriving anywhere late, a source of continual social embarrassment for me. Invited to dinner by my aunt Fania and uncle Moritz, for example, I arrived never less than punctually, which was always too early. Caught out like actors behind a curtain that has risen before its cue, Fania and Moritz made off-seeming conversation while seeing to the last of their preparations.

  Naturally, I had no wish to repeat this error at the Freuds’, certainly not on the evening I was to meet the Fräulein, and so when the great stone wheel of the week finally turned and Saturday finally dropped into place, I sat at the window, self-imprisoned in my armchair, waiting for the sky to fully darken. Then I dallied as I’d never dallied before. I dallied in choosing my clothing, in dressing, in bolting the door. I set the hands of my watch back ten minutes and then, intentionally forgetting I’d done so, I did so again. Descending the stairs to the street, I set out as tentatively as a blind man without his switch and crossed the city, stopping continually to ascertain whether I’d remembered my wallet. Halfway there, I began to run, fearing I was late. Arriving at Dr. Freud’s landing, I stood frozen, listening to the sounds of my own breathing, until my self-consciousness grew too acute and I forced myself to ring the bell.

  As I did, carillons bellowed eight chimes from a nearby church tower. In the half-light of the landing, I clicked open my watch. Factoring in the twenty minutes or so I’d set the timepiece
back, I saw that it was precisely eight o’clock.

  “Oh, but you’re early,” the maid said as she opened the door. She pointed to a bench stationed against the wall. “Sit in the foyer, and I’ll interrupt Dr. Freud’s meal with his family to inform him that you’re here.”

  “I could come back later, if that would be more convenient,” I said.

  She pirouetted on the toe of her shoe. “Tell me, sir, what would be more convenient about receiving you twice.”

  I pointed to the wooden bench. “I’ll just wait here then.”

  “As you wish.” Curtsying, she abandoned me to the foyer.

  My spectacles had fogged, and I’d taken them off to polish, and when Dr. Freud appeared before me, it was as a column of white-and-brown splotches. “Oh, no! She didn’t leave you sitting out here by yourself, did she? You’re not the bootblack, after all.”

  “There was a chair,” I said.

  “A bench,” he said. “It’s hardly a chair.”

  A large white napkin was pinned around his neck, and he seemed to be chewing the last of his meal. Turning from me, he gripped the knobs of the twin doors behind him and rolled them into their wings. He beckoned me into a sitting room and gestured me towards a red Turkish divan. “You’ll be more comfortable in here, I should think.” With a yank, he unpinned the napkin and spat something into it. Gristle, I thought. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m running late and must prepare for the others. I don’t know what could be keeping them.” Glancing at his watch, he bowed and retreated from the room.