His eyes were another matter. Brill had warned me about them. As Freud descended the ship's ramp, his eyes were fearsome, as if he were in a towering temper. Perhaps the calumny he had long endured in Europe had worked a permanent scowl into his brow. Or perhaps he was unhappy to be in America. Six months ago, when President Hall of Clark University — my employer — first invited Freud to the United States, he turned us down. We were not sure why. Hall persisted, explaining that Clark wished to confer on Freud the university's highest academic honor, to make him the centerpiece of our twentieth-anniversary celebrations, and to have him deliver a series of lectures on psychoanalysis, the first ever to be given in America. In the end Freud accepted. Was he now regretting his decision?
All these speculations, I soon saw, were unfounded. As he stepped off the gangway, Freud lit a cigar — his first act on American soil — and the moment he did so the scowl vanished, a smile came to his face, and all the seeming choler drained away He inhaled deeply and looked about him, taking in the harbor's size and chaos with what looked like amusement.
Brill greeted Freud warmly. They knew each other from
Europe; Brill had even been to Freud's home in Vienna. He had described that evening to me — the charming Viennese house filled with antiquities, the doting and doted- on children, the hours of electrifying conversation — so often I knew his stories by heart.
From nowhere a knot of reporters appeared; they gathered around Freud and yelled out questions, mostly in German. He answered with good humor but seemed baffled that an interview should be conducted in so haphazard a fashion. At last Brill shooed them away and pulled me forward.
'Allow me,' Brill said to Freud, 'to present Dr Stratham Younger, a recent graduate of Harvard University, now teaching at Clark, and sent down by Hall specially to take care of you during your week in New York. Younger is without question the most talented American psychoanalyst. Of course, he is also the only American psychoanalyst.'
'What,' said Freud to Brill, 'you don't call yourself an analyst, Abraham?'
'I don't call myself American,' Brill replied. 'I am one of Mr Roosevelt's "hyphenated Americans," for which, as he says, there is no room in this country.'
Freud addressed me. 'I am always delighted,' he said in excellent English, 'to meet a new member of our little movement, but especially here in America, for which I have such hopes.' He begged me to thank President Hall for the honor Clark had bestowed on him.
'The honor is ours, sir,' I replied, 'but I'm afraid I hardly qualify as a psychoanalyst.'
'Don't be a fool,' said Brill, 'of course you do.' He then introduced me to Freud's two traveling companions. 'Younger, meet the eminent Sandor Ferenczi of Budapest, whose name is synonymous throughout Europe with mental disorder. And here is the still more eminent Carl Jung of Zurich, whose Dementia will one day be known all over the civilized world.'
'Most happy,' said Ferenczi in a strong Hungarian accent, 'most happy. But please to ignore Brill; everyone does, I assure you.' Ferenczi was an affable sandy-haired fellow in his late thirties, brightly attired in a white suit. You could see that he and Brill were genuine friends. Physically, they made a nice contrast. Brill was among the shortest men I knew, with close-set eyes and a wide flat-topped head. Ferenczi, although not tall, had long arms, long fingers, and a receding hairline that elongated his face as well.
I liked Ferenczi at once, but I had never before shaken a hand that offered no resistance whatsoever, less than a joint of meat at the butcher's. It was embarrassing: he let out a yelp and yanked his fingers away as if they had been crushed. I apologized profusely, but he insisted he was glad to 'start learning right away American walls,' a remark at which I could only nod in polite agreement.
Jung, who was about thirty-five, made a markedly different impression. He was better than six feet tall, unsmiling, blue- eyed, dark-haired, with an aquiline nose, a pencil-thin mustache, and a great expanse of forehead — quite attractive to women, I should have thought, although he lacked Freud's ease. His hand was firm and cold as steel. Standing ramrod straight, he might have been a lieutenant in the Swiss Guard, except for his little round scholarly spectacles. The affection Brill clearly felt for Freud and Ferenczi was nowhere in evidence when he shook Jung's hand.
'How was your passage, gentlemen?' asked Brill. We could not go anywhere; our guests' trunks had to be collected. 'Not too wearisome?'
'Capital,' said Freud. 'You won't believe it: I found a steward reading my Psychopathology of Everyday Life!
'No!' Brill replied. 'Ferenczi must have put him up to it.'
'Put him up?' Ferenczi cried out. 'I did no such
Freud took no notice of Brill's comment. 'It may have been the most gratifying moment of my professional life, which does not perhaps reflect too well on my professional life. Recognition is coming to us, my friends: recognition, slowly but surely.'
'Did the crossing take long, sir?' I inquired idiotically.
'A week,' Freud answered, 'and we spent it in the most productive way possible: we analyzed each other's dreams.'
'Good God,' said Brill. 'I wish I had been there. What were the results, in the name of heaven?'
'Well, you know,' Ferenczi returned, 'analysis is rather like being undressed in public. After you overcome initial humiliation, it's quite refreshing.'
'That's what I tell all my patients,' said Brill, 'especially the women. And what about you, Jung? Did you also find the humiliation refreshing?'
Jung, almost a foot taller than Brill, looked down on him as if at a laboratory specimen. 'It is not quite accurate,' he replied, 'to say the three of us analyzed each other.'. 'True,' Ferenczi confirmed. 'Freud rather analyzed us, while Jung and I crossed interpretative swords with each other.'
'What?' Brill exclaimed. 'You mean no one dared to analyze the Master?'
'No one was permitted to,' said Jung, betraying no affect.
'Yes, yes,' said Freud, with a knowing smile, 'but you all analyze me to death as soon as my back is turned, don't you, Abraham?'
'We do indeed,' Brill replied, 'because we are all good sons, and we know our Oedipal duty.'
In the apartment high above the city, a set of instruments lay on the bed behind the bound girl. From left to right, there were: a man's right-angled razor, with a bone handle; a black leather riding crop about two feet in length; three surgical knives, in ascending order of size; and a small vial half full of a clear fluid. The assailant considered and picked up one of these instruments.
Seeing the shadow of the man's razor flickering on the far wall, the girl shook her head. Again she tried to cry out, but the. constriction of her throat reduced her plea to a whisper.
From behind her came a low voice: 'You want me to wait?'
She nodded.
'I can't.' The victim's wrists, crossed and suspended together over her head, were so slight, her fingers so graceful, her long legs so demure. 'I can't wait.' The girl winced as the gentlest possible stroke was administered to one of her bare thighs. A stroke, that is, of the razor, which left a vivid scarlet wake as it traced her skin. She cried out, her back curved in exactly the same arch as the great windows, her raven hair flowing down her back. A second stroke, to the other thigh, and the girl cried out again, more sharply.
'No,' the voice admonished calmly. 'No screaming.'
The girl could only shake her head, uncomprehending.