Freud's Sister Page 15

  DORA’S CHILDREN WERE CONSTANTLY with her at the Nest. She told them stories, fed them, took them on walks, lulled them to sleep. Dora’s children were constantly with her, even though no one but she could see them. At mealtimes, at her table in the dining hall, she asked us not to sit at the places next to her because she needed to seat her children there, and she fed them piling up invisible food with invisible spoons that she then placed in their invisible mouths, scolding those who refused to eat. When we went outdoors, she taught her children to play children’s games, and she played with them. She played with the invisible around her; with the invisible she tossed a ball, threw pebbles into a circle; she jumped and hopped together with the invisible. In the Nest’s library, she opened books in front of the invisible and taught her children to read. Before tucking them into bed, she told them stories, and as soon as she awoke she awakened them, too. Some said that Dora had never had children. Nonetheless, her children were always with her.

  WHEN MY SISTER ROSA came to visit me for the first time, we sat on my bed. She kept rubbing her large belly, caressing it.

  “Two more months,” she said when I asked when she would become a mother.

  AT THE NEST THERE were rooms from which the mad inhabitants never left. Those were rooms in which tens of bodies lay lifeless, or fought like animals against the straps and chains that bound them. This second group we termed “dangerous.” Dr. Goethe sometimes allowed us to go into these rooms, where the residents lay motionless or thrashed about. We looked at their pensive heads, frantic heads, dreadful heads, terror-stricken heads. They looked at us with their tired eyes, empty eyes, eyes filled with fear, rapture, insane joy, unfounded hate and unfounded love, eyes filled with disgust and delight; they pursed their lips in silence, thrust them out in wonder, letting escape some barely audible word; they blessed or cursed; they shouted in pain and in joy.

  WE CALLED THE ROOM where they brought the inhabitants of the Nest who were expected to die soon the dying room. One day Klara brought me to that long room that smelled of death. A smell of raw, disintegrating flesh, of excrement, of sweat, and, in the middle of that stench, of bodies tossing on the eve of death, and bodies stiffly awaiting it. Several of the dying, laid out on mattresses on the floor, agonized with yet one more breath. It was cold, but it seemed that something was vaporizing in that dark room. Looking at those whom death was approaching, I thought that in death, everyone was different and everyone was the same. Everyone let go of his spirit by exhaling, but each one exhaled in his own way.

  KLARA SAID TO ME, “I will never forget the first death I saw here. During lunch in the dining hall, Regina’s head dropped down beside a bowl of soup, as though she were dropping off to sleep.”

  WHEN SOMEONE at the Nest died, the news spread from one end of the hospital to the other; everyone passed it along in his normal voice, mumbling or speaking loudly, quietly or screaming, quickly as though trying to keep up with his thoughts or slowly as though wanting to let his thoughts disperse.

  OFTEN, DURING THE TIME reserved for rest outside on the hospital grounds, Heinrich’s mother would come to the Nest. At that time, Heinrich was almost motionless, because his mind could not tell his body to move. He spent days in bed, except during the rest hour outside, when the orderlies would set him upright and push him, and he would move like some kind of machine, making choppy steps as long as someone pushed him. So they pushed him along the corridors to the exit, brought him to one of the benches, then pressed down on his shoulders, and he sat down. Everything in his movements was somehow mechanical. While he sat, he stared at a single point, and continued staring at it even when his mother came. His mother would sit beside him, place her hand on his hand, and speak to him with such warmth and composure that one could not imagine she knew her son’s condition. In those moments she spent with her son, there was wonderful life in the old woman’s eyes, and in her lips as she spoke, and in the movements of the hand that did not rest on her son’s hand but tenderly and freely waved through the air, in time with the lilt of her words. She looked at her son, and it was as if she were looking into a face as animated as her own. But Heinrich stared without moving his pupils, as if there were nothing around him, as if he, too, were not there. Later, when it came time for us to return to our rooms, the orderlies grasped Heinrich under his arms, and he raised himself up, and then, with their hands prodding his back, he stepped with choppy, mechanical movements. When he disappeared into the building, his mother stood; already her face had completely transformed (as if some misfortune had suddenly descended on her—not some new misfortune she has just learned of but a long-standing one that no longer arouses horror but is carried with an anguished resignation), and with tired eyes, and equally tired movements, she made her way to the Nest’s exit.

  SOMETIMES MY BROTHER VISITED ME at the Nest. Dr. Goethe was always happy when his colleague Dr. Freud appeared; they would converse a long time, and their conversations often turned into minor disagreements. I did not take part in their discussions. I heard only the tone and inflection of their voices, watched their facial expressions, noted the gestures they made with their hands.

  Once, Dr. Goethe came up with the idea that we should hold a grand carnival at the Nest. The carnival was going to brighten us up, and visitors would contribute money to the hospital. We spent weeks preparing for the great event. The only ones excluded were the violent, the manic, the nymphomaniacs, and those lying motionless in their beds.

  “But why can’t I take part in the carnival?” Augustina protested, licking her lips.

  “Because we have decided that nymphomaniacs will remain locked in their rooms during the carnival,” said Dr. Goethe.

  “That is not fair,” Augustina grumbled. “Not fair.”

  We lived those weeks for the carnival; we waited for it, not the way you do an event lasting a single evening, but as though for each of us it would begin a new existence. The doctors allowed us to decide for ourselves what kinds of costumes we would wear, and we sewed them together. We spoke about the costumes, and we sewed them as if we were making ourselves new bodies.

  “There,” said Karl, stroking the large hat he had just completed. “I will regain my kingdom once again.” Karl, who believed he was Napoléon.

  Everyone selected clothing according to his imagined, or desired, existence. For those who believed they were someone or something the external world did not recognize—such as Thomas, who, in addition to scant clothing, had requested that he be allowed to carry a large cross on his back; or Ulrike, who requested real diamonds for her diadem; or Joachim, who insisted on Werther’s yellow trousers and blue overcoat—their clothes were the beginning of full acknowledgment of an existence that, in some fashion, they had already attained in their unreality. Others, who wanted not to be something else in this world but to be what they were in some other world, constructed clothing to protect themselves here in this world. They made armor, or fashioned wire into chain mail that resembled cages. They prepared costumes that they needed in order to help them defeat this world, costumes that transformed them into dangerous animals or creatures from some bestiary. They made clothes that would enable them to escape this world, they made wings so that they could fly away, or they sewed clothing that was not clothing but a fabric that covered a moving wall, a box, a stone.

  Every day I went to the room where the costumes were being readied. One day, while I was watching the others measuring, cutting, sewing, Dr. Goethe asked me, “Why haven’t you begun to get ready for the carnival?”

  “I simply don’t know what to dress up as,” I told him.

  “Ah,” said Dr. Goethe. “The carnival is not about dressing up but about transformation. The question is not ‘What do I want to dress up as?’ but ‘What do I want to be transformed into? What do I want to become, so as to be not what I do not want to be but what I am?’ That is the question.”

  “What do I want to become,” I said, not as if asking a question but as if saying I do not wa
nt to become anything. “I do not want to become anything,” I said.

  “But at one time, surely, you wanted to become something, something that you were not at that moment,” said Dr. Goethe.

  Then I saw a long piece of fabric that had been tossed aside. I rolled it up and placed it by my left breast, cradling it in my arms the way one holds a nursing baby.

  “All right,” I said. “I will be a mother. At the carnival.”

  THE WHOLE CITY had been invited to the carnival at the Nest, and the spacious grounds were too small to accommodate all who wanted to come.

  “All the tickets have been sold,” said Dr. Goethe, rubbing his hands in satisfaction a week before the event. “Your brothers are also coming,” he added, turning first to Klara then to me.

  “Let them come,” said Klara. “I will stay in my room that night.”

  On the night of the carnival, the grounds of the Nest were overflowing. The crowd had gathered in a circle around the central area and was pushing to see the people in feathered costumes, people with clown hats and large fish tails, people with clothes steeped in color, red as blood, people with the wings of angels and butterflies and birds, people hidden in large eggs with openings for their eyes, people under long blue sheets representing a river, people with trumpets announcing the apocalypse, people who rolled around on a red sheet and burned in the eternal fire, people who lay on a blue sheet and enjoyed heavenly peace, and one man with a cross on his back, who looked up toward the darkness and called out, “Lord, Lord, why hast thou forsaken me?” Everywhere there were lanterns, torches, and several large fires whose flames rose up toward the dark sky. My eyes searched for my brother but could not find him. Someone tugged my sleeve. I turned. It was Gustav.

  “Klara is in the room,” I told him.

  “I will visit her later,” said Gustav. “Right now I need to finish some very important business,” and he winked at me, then set off toward the bushes at the edge of the park with a young woman he surely had met in the crowd.

  I continued to search the crowd for my brother. When I had given up and headed toward the tables placed by the entrance to the hospital building, where several nurses sold drinks and food, I saw Sigmund setting down an empty glass, handing over money, and taking a full glass. I went over to him.

  “I see you are enjoying yourself,” I said.

  He smiled.

  “Would you like some schnapps?” he asked, pointing to his glass.

  “Alcohol is permitted to the guests, not to us.”

  “I can get some for myself, but you can drink it.”

  “You know I don’t drink.”

  “I don’t drink, either,” he said. “I do not know why now…”

  We climbed the stairs at the entrance to the hospital building, and from there we had a good look at what was happening in the central area of the grounds. Scores of people were riding atop an enormous fish made from pillows sewn together and calling out, “We are flying! Flyyyyiinnnng!” In one spot, an old woman held up a small glass slipper and asked, “Now where is the prince to see that this slipper fits as if cast for my little foot?” In another spot, entranced, an old woman and an old man with enormous butterfly wings were stamping now on one leg, now on the other.

  “This is like the theater,” said my brother.

  “Or the circus,” I said.

  “Yes. Like in the Middle Ages. When the municipal leaders gathered the city’s mad people together in the square, and the crowd turned them into something like a circus performance. And then they were driven out of the city, the fortified gates closing behind them.”

  “I think the majority of people here would have nothing against being driven from the Nest after the carnival. The only ones left would be me, Klara, and a few others.”

  “Which proves this is not the place for you.”

  “Or that it is the only place for us,” I said. “But why did you come like this?”

  “Like what?”

  “Without a mask. You see that even the visitors have come in costumes.”

  “Only some of them.”

  “But you need to change your clothes.”

  “You know I do not like such things,” he said.

  “You do not like alcohol, either, but still you are drinking this evening.”

  He went down the stairs and over to the tables, paid, and handed the empty glass to one of the nurses, who filled it up again.

  “Come,” I said, “come and change.” And I led him right up to the entrance to the hospital building. I told the guards that my brother had to change, and they let us inside.

  We went to the Great Hall, where costumes we had borrowed from the Burgtheater were scattered about, unused, because everyone had wanted to devise his own.

  “Here,” I said. “This is for you.”

  “You know I never like to appear foolish,” said my brother, holding the costume in his hands.

  “I know,” I said. “That is exactly why I am changing you into a fool. For one night at least you can give up your mask of seriousness.”

  “It’s too late. It has long since fused with my face.”

  “Come,” I said. “Get dressed.” And I turned to the wall so that I would not see Dr. Freud in his underwear.

  After a short time, he said, “I’m ready.”

  I turned around and had to laugh. The rose-colored pants fit his legs tightly, the shirt was a wild array of colors, and above that serious face with a beard and glasses rose a cap with two orange-colored points topped with green pompons.

  “I really am a fool, aren’t I?”

  I did not answer; I only laughed.

  “What about you? You haven’t changed either!”

  “For me it’s easy,” I said. I took a shirt from the scattered clothes, rolled it up, and tucked it under my dress and over my stomach. I placed my hands on my dress, supporting the rumpled shirt, and said, “So now we are both what we need to be.”

  My brother looked at my hands and how they held my belly.

  “And now,” I told him, “I will show you the common rooms. This room here, which today is serving as our changing room, is the Great Hall, where Dr. Goethe sometimes lectures. He explains madness to us. He thinks this will help us understand ourselves.”

  “Does he continue to use the word madness?”

  “Yes. He says it is better, and he is right.”

  “But medical ethics has been searching a long time for different terminology.”

  “Dr. Goethe says that if he calls madness psychosis, if we mad people are called patients, if a madhouse is called a psychiatric clinic, if he terms our madness and foolishness symptoms, then a distance is created between us and him. I do not know why he must not have distance, but it is nice for us. When one of us is angry at Dr. Goethe, he can even shout at him, insult him, and Dr. Goethe does not punish us for that. We are like his friends.”

  “You do not need to be friends. There has to be distance. That is one of the foundations of the doctor–patient relationship; it is a precondition for healing.”