The topless fencing episode: That could be viewed in a sexual context, although Dr. Archer saw it somewhat differently. Jessica had brought it up at their first session. It was her "presenting symptom."
She was disturbed about it. She felt that by staging the scene with the other girl, a British fencer she had befriended at the Ruspoli School in Italy, she had done something forbidden, possibly even evil.
"The imagery of the Bayard painting embedded itself in Jessica's mind,"
Archer explained. "She was fascinated by the seminudity of it, the notion of women exposing their bared flesh to a steel sword. She equated it with the stripped-down costuming of male boxers. to fight bare meant to duel seriously, even to the death. We spent several sessions working through her troubled feelings about it, especially her guilt over having talked the English girl into trying it.
In my analysis I tried to focus on the underlying meaning of the scene.
What we came up with (and I emphasize we did this together) was that Jessica's strong attraction to fencing and to martial arts was based on her romantic notion of heroism. I called it the gladiator's syndrome, the idea that the highest, most noble way of life is the way of the warrior who regularly offers his body to injury or death for the delectation of the public. The gladiator's sacrifice is for the benefit of those who watch him. By engaging in dangerous fights, he fulfills the innermost needs of his audience, channeling its bloodlust into sport, stylizing its collective aggression into art. At the same time he, or she, in the case of Jessica, surrounds herself with an aura of glamour. It's close to the Japanese samurai ideal, but with the added component of exhibitionism. It's a hard, short life of intense experience-perilous, painful, and, ultimately, self-sacrificial."
It was a brilliant analysis, and Janek was dazzled by it. He was also impressed at the way Archer seemed to come alive. But the change in her demeanor made him uneasy. The voice she used to explain the fencing episode was different from her voice when answering his other queries. It was more vital, authoritative, indicative of an inner power and confidence that didn't fit with her earlier pettiness. Now he felt he was listening to another person altogether, a strong, dynamic temperament hiding behind a bland, nondescript fagade. But even before, he realized, Archer's eyes had betrayed her. Her relentless gaze should have warned him he was dealing with an extraordinary individual, far more passionate, forceful, and intelligent than her insipid professional manner and constricted body language would suggest.
But then another transformation, which Janek found equally surprising, took place. When he mentioned the Polaroids he'd found in Jess's closet, he saw an immediate pinching up of the eyes, followed by a grimace of anger. The reaction was fleeting, covered up almost instantly by a patient nodding of the head. But Janek was certain about what he'd seen: Jess had not told Archer about the pictures, and for that the therapist now felt betrayed.
"I take it you didn't know about them," he asked.
Archer shrugged the omission off. "A patient will almost always hold something back." Her tone connoted superior wisdom. "A little shield against the therapist, a small corner of privacy to be preserved.":,Do the photographs surprise you?" 'Not the photographs so much as the way Jessica hid them. I have to admit that surprises me a bit."
"Why?" Archer raised an eyebrow. "You found them, didn't ou?" Janek squinted. "You're not suggesting she expected me to search her room?"
"Of course not, Lieutenant. But she didn't hide them all that well.
A good hiding place is an irrevocable hiding place, one that stays secret even after the hider's death."
"So what does that tell you?"
When Archer began to speak, Janek recognized the same authoritative voice she'd used while analyzing the fencing incident.
"It tells me Jessica wasn't all that ashamed about partaking in the scene. I know from what she told me how difficult it was for her to set it up. I know she proposed the idea to a teammate here in New York and, to her embarrassment, was rebuffed. Still, she needed a confederate, in this case the English girl, and so she took a chance. By merely broaching such a bizarre idea, she risked exposing herself to the other girl's ridicule."
But this time the other girl went along." 'She did. And I think that that, ultimately, is what got Jessica so upset. Not that the English girl went along, but the way she went along, as if she took it as a seduction on Jessica's part and regarded it as a forbidden act."
"But there's still something I don't understand, Doctor. You say Jess was troubled by the incident. If she was, why didn't she destroy the photographs?"
Archer paused to reflect. "Difficult to say. Perhaps for the same reason people often hesitate to destroy documentation even when it contains material that's painful for them to see or read. Jessica staged the duel. She had a large emotional investment in it. to destroy the photographs of the scene she'd worked so hard to set up would be to deny herself any chance to contemplate it in the future and perhaps even to revel in what she'd done."
Janek smiled. "You're a fascinating woman, Doctor. It's very interesting to talk to you."
The therapist smiled demurely, then glanced at her watch. "Which brings us," she said, "to the end of the session. Your fifty minutes are nearly up."
A final question." Archer motioned for Janek to ask it. "I have it from one of Jess's closest friends, who spoke to her just days before she died, that she was thinking about quitting therapy."
"And you want to know what I think about that?" Archer looked past him toward the opposite wall. "In this business we're used to sudden changes in a patient's feelings. In the therapeutic relationship the therapist often comes to represent important figures in the patient's life-parent, sibling, lover-toward whom the patient then acts out. So, you see, when a patient contemplates leaving her therapist, it's only a natural by-product of the process."
"So I shouldn't make too much of it?"
"You may make of it whatever you like," the psychologist replied, rising. On their way to the door she turned to him again. "Have you given any thought to what I said last time?" Janek nodded. "I thought about it.'-' "And dismissed it out of hand?"
"Not at all. But after I thought about it awhile, I decided you were wrong."
Archer grinned. "You work in a most dangerous and stressful field, Lieutenant. There's bound to be some distortion in your view of things."
Janek smiled. "Think I could use some therapy, Doctor?"
Her grin widened. "We can all use therapy, Lieutenant. In your case I'd say it certainly wouldn't hurt." they both chuckled over that. Then at the door Janek thanked her for her time. "I hope we can talk again."
The therapist nodded. "Anytime, Lieutenant. Just give me a call. I shall always try to fit you in."
That evening Janek took a long walk. Leaving his apartment at six o'clock, when the rush-hour traffic was just at its crest, he headed up Broadway to merge with the throngs still surging out of the subways. On his route he passed stores offering high- and low-fashion gar ments; markets offering sturgeon and pastrami; Chinese, Turkish, Lebanese, and Ethiopian restaurants; bars catering to gays and transvestites; panhandlers; dope dealers; homeless people living in cardboard boxes; old people sitting on benches; and aggressive young people on the make.
By the time he reached the Columbia University campus, he felt he had confronted a cross section of the human condition.
At 114th Street he turned into Riverside Park. Although it was a chilly November night, the joggers were out in force. He didn't see many lone runners; press and TV coverage about Jess was still in the public mind. But as he walked farther uptown, the number dwindled off, until, north of the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, there were none at all.