The Interpretation of Murder - Страница 2

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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.

'You must make a different sound.'

The girl shook her head again. She wanted to speak but couldn't.

'Yes. You must. I know you can. I told you how. Don't you remember?' The razor was now replaced on the bed. On the far wall, in the wavering candlelight, the girl saw the shadow of the leather crop rising up instead. 'You want it. Sound as if you want it. You must make that kind of sound.' Gently but implacably, the silk tie around the girl's throat drew tighter. 'Make it.'

She tried to do as she was bid, moaning softly – a woman's moan, a supplicating moan, which she had never made before.

'Good. Like that.'

Holding the end of the white tie in one hand and the leather crop in the other, the assailant brought the latter down upon the girl's back. She made the sound again. Another lash, harder. The sting caused the girl to cry out, but she caught herself and made the other sound instead.

'Better.' The next blow landed not on her back but just below it. She opened her mouth, but at the same moment the tie was drawn still tighter, choking her. Her choking, in turn, made her moan seem more genuine, more broken, an effect her tormentor evidently liked. Another blow, and another and another, louder and faster, fell on all the softest parts of her body, rending her garments, leaving glowing marks on her white skin. With every lash, despite the searing pain, the girl moaned as she had been told to do, her cries coming louder and faster too.

The rain of blows stopped. She would have collapsed long before, but the rope from the ceiling, tied to her wrists, kept her upright. Her body was now scored with lacerations. Blood ran down in one or two places. For a moment all went dark for her; then the flickering light returned. A shiver passed through her.

Her eyes opened. Her lips moved. 'Tell me my name,' she tried to whisper, but no one heard.

The assailant, studying the girl's lovely neck, loosened the silk binding around it. For one instant she breathed freely, her head still flung back, the waves of black hair flowing to her waist. Then the tie around her throat went taut again.

The girl could no longer see distinctly. She felt a hand on her mouth, its fingers running lightly over her lips. Then those fingers drew the silk tie yet tighter, so that even her choking stopped. The candlelight went out for her again. This time it did not return.

'There is train below river?' asked Sandor Ferenczi incredulously.

Not only did such a train exist, Brill and I assured him, but we were going to ride it. In addition to the new tunnel across the Hudson River, the Hoboken tube boasted another innovation: full baggage service. All a voyager arriving in the United States had to do was mark his luggage with the name of his hotel in Manhattan. Porters stowed the trunks in the train's baggage car, and handlers on the other end did the rest. Taking advantage of this amenity, we walked out onto the platform, which overlooked the river. With the setting of the sun, the fog had lifted, revealing the jagged Manhattan skyline, studded with electric lights. Our guests stared in wonder: at the sheer expanse of it, and at the spires piercing the clouds.