Ah yes. I am reminded that this is something that interests you.
You will appreciate that my task was fraught with logistical difficulties: guns are noisy, stab wounds bleed, and the time a poison takes to act impossible to calculate. By contrast, the method I chose was silent, clean, and allowed me to determine precisely the moment of communion. Did I think of it myself? No, I didn’t. I learned about it during a chance conversation with a gentleman by the name of Doctor Buchleitner. He was called upon to embalm the body of a twelve-year-old baron who had been accidentally killed by his older brother — a cretin — while writing a letter to his absent father. The cretin had come up behind him, picked up a freshly sharpened pencil, and had then thrust it into his brother’s neck. Unfortunately, the pencil was not stopped by the floor of the skull but went through the foramen magnum and into the brain. Of course, the boy died instantly.
Fraulein Zeiler.
We met in Honniger s, a little coffee house in Spittelberg. I gave her the hatpin and promised her more baubles in due course. Our conversation was frivolous, but we both knew that a contract had been made and that she would honour her obligation. Therefore I was not surprised when she suggested that we go for an evening stroll in the Volksgarten. By the time we arrived there it was almost dark.
I will assume that you are not interested in our preliminary embraces and kisses. Such things, I dare say, you can imagine. You will be interested in what followed: communion.
43
Professor Freud took a panatella from the cigar box on his desk. He had already told Liebermann two jokes that he had heard while playing tarock on Saturday night with Professor Konigstein, and was about to tell a third.
‘The villagers went to the cattle market and there were two cows for sale. One from Moscow for two thousand roubles and one from Minsk for a thousand roubles. They bought the cow from Minsk. It produced lots of milk and the people were delighted with their purchase. So much so that they decided to get a bull to mate with the cow. If the calves born of this union were anything like their mother, the shtetl would never be short of milk again. They scraped together just enough money to buy a strong, handsome bull and they put it in the pasture with their prize cow. But things did not go to plan. Whenever the bull approached the cow she did not respond to his bovine ardour. The villagers were very upset and decided to consult their wise rabbi.’ The Professor lit his cigar before continuing. ‘Rabbi, they said. Whenever the bull approaches our cow, she moves away. If he approaches from the back, she moves forward. When he approaches her from the front, she moves backwards. An approach from the side, she edges off in the other direction. The rabbi thought about this for a minute or so and then and asked: Is this cow — by any chance — from Minsk? The villagers were dumbfounded, as they had never mentioned the provenance of their cow. You are truly a wise rabbi, they said. How did you know the cow is from Minsk? The rabbi looked at them all with a sorrowful expression, shrugged his shoulders and answered: My wife is from Minsk.’
Freud allowed himself a sly chuckle, and looked to his guest for approval. Liebermann had anticipated the punchline and was only mildly amused. Undeterred, Freud continued: ‘Jokes frequently contain a fundamental truth concerning human behaviour. Why is libido distributed unequally between the sexes? I have no ready answer. In the subject matter of jokes, we find a very worthy agenda for psychoanalytic inquiry.’
Ever since Erstweiler had told Liebermann about his beanstalk dream the young doctor had been reflecting on a particular passage in The Interpretation of Dreams. The passage, perhaps only four or five pages long, was concerned with the origin of the psychoneuroses and made many references to Sophocles’ great tragedy Oedipus Rex. Liebermann succeeded in steering the conversation away from jokes and towards theories of aetiology. Freud did not resist the transition. He seemed to welcome the opportunity to talk about this aspect of his work.
‘I had been thinking about this possibility many years before the publication of my dream book.’ He counted off the fingers of his left hand with the thumb of his right. ‘Since ’eighty-seven, to be precise. I can remember sharing my thoughts with Fliess and recounting an incident from my early years. I was two — or perhaps two and half — and travelling on a train with my mother from Leipzig to Vienna. An opportunity arose to see her,’ he paused, embarrassed, and ended his sentence in Latin, ‘nudam.’ Freud’s eyes glazed over with memories. He puffed on his cigar and the action seemed to pull him back into the present. ‘In the intervening years, since writing to Fliess, I have become increasingly confident that love of the mother and jealousy of the father are a general phenomenon of early childhood.’
‘General?’
‘Yes. That is why I introduced the notion in my chapter on “Typical Dreams”. It is remarkable how frequently the same themes emerge: for example, death of the parent who is of the same sex as the dreamer. Such dreams are very common among children aged approximately three years and over. They reveal — I believe — a wish to eliminate a rival. In Sophocles’ drama, King Oedipus kills his father and marries his mother. The Greek myth seizes on a compulsion which everyone recognises because he has felt traces of it in himself. Every member of the audience was once a budding Oedipus in phantasy, and this dream-fulfilment played out in reality causes everyone to recoil in horror, with the full measure of repression which separates his infantile from his current state. Oedipus’ destiny moves us only because it might very easily have been ours — the oracle has laid the same curse upon us before our birth as it has upon him.’
‘Are you suggesting that, ultimately, there is no escape from neurotic illness?’
‘Allow me to clarify.’ Freud drew on his cigar again and stared through the dissipating cloud with penetrating eyes. ‘I am not suggesting that this general phenomenon of childhood is the cause of the neuroses. But rather it is the failure to resolve these issues of love and hate which can be pathogenic: if prohibited desire and rage linger in the adult unconscious, then mental equilibrium will be disturbed.’
Freud caressed one of the statuettes on his desk: a little bronze Venus admiring herself in a mirror. A diadem circled her head and her legs were covered by a hanging garment. Her shoulders were narrow, her torso long, and her breasts pert.
‘Most mothers would be horrified,’ Freud continued, ‘if they were made aware that their affectionate gestures were rousing a child’s sexual instinct and preparing it for its later intensity. A mother will regard what she does as innocent — carefully avoiding excitation of the child’s genitals; however, we now know that sexual instinct is not only aroused by direct excitation. What we call affection will unfailingly show its effects one day on the genital zones as well. Be that as it may, an enlightened mother — conversant with psychoanalysis — should never reproach herself. She is only fulfilling her task in teaching the child to love. After all, he is meant to grow up into a strong and capable person with vigorous sexual needs and to accomplish during his life all the things that human beings are urged to do by their instincts.’