A Curable Romantic (32 page)

“Perhaps you’d like to tell me,” Dr. Freud said.

The Fräulein was silent for a long moment.

“Of course, I knew the wedding was all wrong,” she said at last. “I bleated my refusals after Reb Alter Nosn had left our house, until Grandfather finally had to beat me.”

Fräulein Eckstein’s eyes were fully closed, and Dr. Freud gave me a significant look: the patient had succumbed again to her condition seconde.

“But I thought you loved our Yankl,” he whispered.

Fräulein Eckstein opened her eyes, and both she and Dr. Freud looked at me as they spoke to each other. Ita had fully emerged.

“I did, but I knew they were forcing him, you see.”

“Ah,” Dr. Freud said.

“Still …”

“Yes, madam?”

“I hoped I could make him a good wife.”

“Of course,” he said.

“That somehow he might come to love me, if he could see me as you see me now. Because you love me, don’t you, Dr. Freud?”

With both hands, Dr. Freud grasped her hand. “Yes, madam. Very much so. I do.”

She pressed his hand against her cheek and, quite suddenly, grew bitter. “But thanks to the hideous body in which God had confined me, I knew he would hate me, that he would blame me, when all I wanted was for him to love me.” She dropped Dr. Freud’s hand and turned on her side in the bed in order to address me directly. “I wanted you to love me, Yankl!”

“Must I really be involved in this, Dr. Freud?” I said from my distant perch.

“Patience, Dr. Sammelsohn,” he cautioned me.

Fräulein Eckstein again took Dr. Freud’s hand and held it to her breast. “I prayed for it all night and all day in my bleating sheep’s tongue. I stood among the women in the synagogue, so that when they called out ‘Amen,’ I could repeat the word and have the merit of their prayers. Oh God, what a joke we were, Dr. Freud!”

“A joke, madam?”

“What a poisonous little tale Mendele could have made of us!”

“Ah, excellent.” Dr. Freud nodded.

“An intelligent boy caught reading worldly books is punished by a forced marriage to the village idiot! Oh, but then even the great Mendele Moykher-Sforim wouldn’t have seen what an idiot that idiot truly was. He would have painted me in tragic tones, Dr. Freud, but …”

“Yes, madam?”

“You have to understand: I wasn’t a victim.”

“No?”

“Because I conspired in my own humiliation, you see? Oh, I schemed along with the rest of them, placing myself in the center of their storm, fussing like a bride over every detail of her wedding, of her dress, of her bouquet. Do you remember the lilies, Yankl?”

Fräulein Eckstein turned to me. I nodded my head.

“His father spared no expense, Dr. Freud. My God, it was the most beautiful wedding Szibotya had ever seen! The synagogue lit by a thousand candles, the chupah made of Chinese silk.”

“The chupah was
not
made of Chinese silk,” I told Dr. Freud.

“The mayor, members of the Jewish council, the richest women and their husbands watched from the upper-story windows of their houses as our wedding procession marched down Szibotya’s muddy little streets. Yankl’s sisters, no doubt forced into it by their father, carried my train!”

“That much, I admit, is true.”

“The evening before, Dr. Freud, my grandmother even took me to the mikve. Oh my God, I almost died! My soul nearly left my body! I never
dreamt
I’d come as a bride to the mikve, never dreamt a man would take me as his lover. What am I saying? It’s all I dreamt about! But then” — her
shoulders fell and she addressed me with an ugly sneer — “then I saw you beneath the chupah, Yankl, and I knew what a charade it all had been.”

“A charade, madam?”

She lay again on her back, and gripping Dr. Freud’s hand again, she placed it on her heart.

“I died in that moment, Dr. Freud.”

With his other hand, he stroked her forehead.

“Died, madam?”

“I knew I was being murdered. And who was murdering me? You, Yankl? Or your father? Or perhaps my grandfather? Was he finally succeeding, twelve years after tying the shoestring around my neck? Or were my murderers the townspeople, the mayor, the men of the Jewish council and their obscene wives, or the rebbe, for that matter, none of whom dared to confront your father!”

Crossing her arms, she eyed me critically. Dr. Freud had retreated behind the head of her bed and, in the silence that followed, all I could hear was his pen scratching across the pages of his notebook.

“Are you listening to this, Dr. Freud?” Ita called over Fräulein Eckstein’s shoulder, although she kept her eyes fixed on me.

“I’m listening, madam.”

“Because there he was, biting his lip beneath the chupah. He could barely look at me, and when he did, Dr. Freud, all I saw was that same scheming I’d seen on his father’s face the day he entered Grandfather’s shop to negotiate with him for the bride. I tried to smile at him, but of course, what did I know from smiling? I must have looked like a gargoyle, my mouth pulled into a horrible grin. Jewish weddings are short, thank God, and it was over before I knew it, and we were being escorted by the assembly into a private room for our moment of seclusion. The table was set with the finest meats and wines, fruits all the way from Africa! I told myself: Though I’m repulsive, though I’ve nothing to compare with his beautiful Hindele, still, a boy is a boy, isn’t that right? He’ll consummate the marriage, I thought, if only out of spite: ruin the bride and throw her back into their faces — eh, Dr. Freud? And so I leaned against the sofa, with my rump raised towards him, the way I’d seen dogs do in the street. But of course, it was all horribly wrong.”

“Ita,” I said quietly, “I was thirteen. I knew nothing of such things. My marriage to Hindele had been completely chaste.”

She wiped a tear from her eye. “Oh, this Eckstein!” She regarded her damp hand with an air of irritation. “She’s so
sentimental!
She’s been crying over me ever since I entered her.” She dried her hands on the bed quilt. “Is this what a woman’s heart is like? Or is it just the Viennese?”

A MOMENT PASSED,
and a sly look crept across Fräulein Eckstein’s face. “Do you know how I managed it, Yankl?”

“Managed what?” I asked with no small amount of exasperation.

“Getting inside of her. Do you have any idea?”

“Of course not.”

“Shall I tell you then?”

I sighed. “If you wish.”

“Unfortunately, as you’ll one day discover, everything they told us is true.”

“What do you mean, Ita? Everything they told us?”

“Oh, all those horrible old tales. You thought they just meant to scare us, but that’s because you’re clever. Just like your precious friend here, Dr. Freud, you know nothing except how clever you are! But in the true world, Yankl, in the world of truth, it’s well known that a sinner like me can only enter a vessel that’s already been cracked. Eckstein’s vessel was cracked.” She smirked. “And do you want to know why?”

“I think that’s quite enough!” Dr. Freud roared. He stood and threw down his papers. “This is nothing but gossip and petty slander, madam, and I beg you to desist from saying anything further!”

“But it’s all part of my case history, isn’t it, Herr Doktor?”

“You and I know what you’re referring to. That is sufficient.”

“Yankl,” Ita whispered to me, “Eckstein abuses herself.”

“Oh, cruelest of harpies!” Dr. Freud nearly screamed.

“Ah,” Ita laughed, “he speaks to me as though I existed! I’m flattered!”

“You’re nothing but a wretched incubus! You know that, don’t you?”

Without going into vulgar detail, I will only report that Ita was not shy in using Fräulein Eckstein, along with a pillow, a hand mirror, a hairbrush, and a candle, in a graphic demonstration of her claims.

“Help me get her back into bed, Dr. Sammelsohn!” Dr. Freud exclaimed when Ita, having made her point, left the Fräulein in an exhausted, exhilarated heap upon the floor.

“It’s nothing that she and I haven’t gone over a thousand and one times during her analytic hours,” Dr. Freud confessed to me as he took her under the arms and I lifted her legs, and together we carried her back into bed. “Though I’m sorry you had to witness it. I think our work is over for the night.”

“No!” Ita shouted. “
I
will decide when our session is over!” She kicked off the covers we had so carefully tucked in for her and stood on her knees on the bed, clearly not the same woman who had just spent her vital energies so frivolously.

“Fine, madam,” Dr. Freud said, hectored, exasperated. “Continue. As you wish. Certainly. Please.”

“However, Ita.” I could hold my tongue no longer, and I stood at the foot of her bed in order to challenge her. “You said Fräulein Eckstein’s deviance was a sufficient opening to allow a wretched sinner in. But how is it that you’re a sinner at all? What sins can a village idiot perform?”

“Not many, it’s true,” she said, as though charmed by this challenge. “Sinning takes imagination and concentration, two traits the faulty machinery of my brain couldn’t quite manufacture, isn’t that right? And yet, somehow, I managed to perform the blackest sin of all.”

“No, Ita, you didn’t!”

“I couldn’t have done it without your help, Yankele — thank you very much — or without the help of the entire town, for that matter. But surely one of your sisters wrote to you about it?”

“My father forbade all such communication.”

“Then you truly didn’t know?”

“There were things I felt it best to leave in the past.”

“Things, Yankl?”

“Forgive my rudeness, Ita. Not things, but people, events.”

She gave out a small, harsh laugh. Leaning forward on her knees, she placed her hands on her thighs and gave me a bitter look. “Then let me fill you in, my darling husband. Let me fill you in.”

• • •

ALERT TO THIS
summons, Dr. Freud returned to his paper and his pen behind the bed; I returned to my chair.

“You remember the wedding feast they laid out to mock you?”

I started to answer her, but found that my voice had fled.

“Oh, I’d never seen such food in all my life, Dr. Freud! I didn’t understand the insult Reb Alter Nosn had intended with it, you see. The wheels and cogs of my brain couldn’t decipher irony. I saw only a delightful wedding feast, paid for by the man whose secret companion I’d been on his lonely sojourns in the forests. This is how he repays me for my faithfulness, I thought. But then you didn’t know that man, did you, Yankl?”

“I knew only the abrasive pietist, concerned lest one yod or tittle of the law should pass away.”

“Mm.” She nodded. “I watched in amazement as you stuffed as much food as you could into that little sack of yours. And when you taught me those awful slogans, you were no better, really, than your father. I was a stick you two used to pummel each other. If there’s anything I’ve learned in these dark realms, Dr. Freud, meeting other souls who lived in opposition to the will of Heaven and who, in death, oppose it still, it’s this: evil is committed by people who, having been harmed themselves, feel justified in harming others. On our wedding night — ha! despite everything, I still think of it as that! So let me be more accurate: on the day your father rubbed your nose in your sins, using me as a piece of filth, you saw me as no better, and why should you have? Oh, if only you could have seen me playing my part, Yankl! Sitting alone, nibbling the few figs you’d seen fit to leave me. Didn’t they fit into your sack or did you actually for a moment consider my hunger? I’d been fasting all day, in the manner of a good, pious bride, fasting to atone for my sins and for those of my husband, so that I could come to you with all the innocence of a baby, enter the marriage newly born like a baby entering the world. On the other side of the door, I could hear the klezmorim playing one tuneless tune after another. How many guests remained in the great hall, waiting to see the joke through to its end? Did anyone suspect the denouement you’d contrived? I’d exhausted myself in tears long before I heard a commotion stirring up on the other side of the door. I could hear question
marks gathering there, as though in a printer’s bin. Preparing to meet the wedding horde, I dried my eyes on the hem of my gown and finally, after much knocking and pounding, the door flew open.

“With your father and my grandfather at its head, a quorum of men entered the room. Perhaps they’d expected to find me with my throat slashed or the two of us self-poisoned, although I doubt it: we were Jews, and though a legalistic cruelty isn’t beyond us, murder and suicide are quite beyond our Pale. No doubt such were their pious fantasies that they expected to find us reconciled to our new state, you happily chastened and no longer playing the rebellious son.

“ ‘Where’s Ya’akov?’ your father demanded, and it was with all the concentration and intention I could muster that I didn’t repeat what he had just said, but instead, I squinted my eyes and summoned forth to my lips what you had told me to say: ‘Unkull guh lee-ber-ate de mah-sez, et cetera, et cetera. Sh-sh-shay-mmm uhn ye-e-u pi-yus … frowds!’ For some reason, this phrase was quite easy on the tongue, and I couldn’t stop repeating it. I must have been shrieking it still when Grandfather stepped forward and slapped me in the face. Your father rebuked him, then left me in his care. ‘But I don’t want her!’ he shouted at your father’s back. ‘She’s your daughter-in-law now! You take care of her!’ Your father was already at the window like a police inspector surveying the scene of the crime.

“ ‘Where is Yankl?’ your mother said, entering the room. ‘Gone,’ one of your sisters said. ‘He’s gone?’ ‘The boy’s gone,’ your father told her.

“It was as though you had done something completely outside the realm of the possible, as though you’d become a Moor or turned yourself into a bird. After all, Jewish sons do not run away, just as Jewish fathers do not force their children to do anything that is not ultimately for their own good.

your father cried,
Woe is me that I have destroyed my house and exiled my children
(BT Berachos 3a).