Love and Treasure (34 page)

“I wouldn’t expect anything else,” Amitai had replied.

The moment he put the ring on Natalie’s finger, his family in New York would be lost to him. The red hair she had inherited from her grandmother had its origins, some generations back, in a tiny village along the River Barrow in County Kilkenny and the edict decreed that once Amitai married this granddaughter of a convert, no Syrian-American Jew could see him again. Though he cared little about his uncle’s, Amitai had been concerned about his parents’ reaction, and when he had brought Natalie to meet them in Israel, he had taken his father aside to ask not permission,
but rather his blessing, no matter that the woman Amitai intended to marry was not, by the standards of the Shasho family patriarch, a Jew.

His father had voiced no objection, and Amitai had left it at that, though he would, over the years, sometimes wonder what his parents’ answer would have been had they not been put as children in the care of Youth Aliyah and sent to a kibbutz in Israel but had instead ended up in Brooklyn like so many of their cousins.

By now Elek had enjoyed more than a few glasses of champagne, and he was uncharacteristically giddy as he raised his glass. “Another toast,” Elek said. “To Amitai Shasho, for standing up to the formidable Dror Tamid and insisting that the painting be returned to Hungary.”

Tamid had done his furious, spitting best to convince Amitai, with threats and vilification, with pleading and guilt-trippery, that the painting of Komlós belonged, by right, to Israel, and in Israel. “Komlós was a Jew, tortured by Nazis and murdered by Hungarians,” Tamid had said. “Only in Israel can his work be seen in the proper moral context.”

Amitai had been tempted to retort by asking Tamid who would put Israel in its proper moral context, but in fact he had found himself unable to completely dismiss Tamid. After all, everything the man said was true. If Hungary had viewed Komlós as a true citizen, equal to any other, then he would not have ended his life in the misery of the Jewish labor brigades. But had Komlós been a Gentile, or had the anti-Semitism of Hungary and its German ally not prevailed, Komlós might have been drafted into the Hungarian army and died on the Russian front. He might have met any number of other fates no better than the death that had found him. In the end, Amitai opted to attempt the impossible. Though it was a presumption of terrible magnitude, he had allowed himself to imagine what Komlós would have wanted.

And that, Amitai decided, was what every artist wants: for his work to be recognized as important and influential, as historically relevant. To that end, Elek had convinced the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest to loan the painting both to the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and to the Neue Galerie in New York, for exhibits on the influences of the surrealists.

But in choosing a permanent home for the painting, Amitai felt less confident. There was no record of what Komlós felt about his native land, whether he considered himself a Hungarian or, as an artist, a citizen of the world. In the end, this donation, inspired in no small part by the
defense of his friend Elek for Hungary’s right to maintain control of its artistic patrimony, had been the clearest way Amitai could find to honor Komlós. The presence of his painting in Hungary, and the international excitement that Amitai hoped would result as its story was told and the painting admired, would serve as a reminder that this great Hungarian artist, this elemental part of Hungary’s cultural legacy, was a Jew.

To that end, he had made it a condition of the donation that the museum include in the painting’s description card specific reference both to Komlós’s religion and to his death in the Jewish Labor Service. Elek had expressed to Amitai the hope that this notation would inspire the museum to revise the description of the Herzog El Grecos to include a similarly honest discussion of their provenance. About this possibility, Amitai was less optimistic than his friend.

When Elek moved off, veering tipsily to the left, Natalie took Amitai’s arm and kissed his cheek.

“I think this was the right thing to do,” she said.

“You ‘think’?” He laughed. “Given how much it cost to silence Attila Varga, I would hope for a little more certainty.” Amitai had all but emptied his bank account, the savings of a decade and a half poured into the pocket of the Romanian, to keep him from going to the press or the police with his story of the two lying and thieving Jews. It had been worth the expense, however, when the international newspapers, following up on Tamid’s denunciation, had sought out Varga for comment and received a tale of a careful custodian, a fair offer by an honest broker, and a painting returned to its rightful place.

Natalie said, “If you need me to be certain, I can do that for you. I’m certain that you found the right home for the painting.”

“Home,” he said.

“Yes.”

Such a small word, with such a complex web of meanings. She was right. The painting was finally at home. And so, he thought, was he.

“I have something to ask you,” he said, reaching into his pocket.

•
32
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IN THE SPRING OF
1913, nearly a decade ago, I was asked by a colleague to undertake the analysis of his niece, a young lady of nineteen years, whom he described as suffering from neurasthenia complicated by chronically recurrent dyspepsia of a hysterical origin. My acquaintanceship with my referring colleague, a prominent Pest physician specializing in disorders of the kidney and urethra, was of long standing and fair intimacy. He was a fellow member of the board of governors of the Magyar Israelite Medical Association and also a fellow alumnus of the Medical Faculty of the University of Vienna. My final year at that august institution was Herr Dr. S.’s first, and we both lodged at the Pension Wettendorfer, which had the distinction of being one of the few pensions serving Jewish medical students to be furnished with an indoor commode. I was less well acquainted with Herr Dr. S.’s brother, though we traveled in similar social circles. Prior to assuming her treatment, I had on a few occasions the privilege of meeting the charming young Nina S. She had impressed me as a psychically normal girl, though perhaps inclined by virtue of her high intelligence to neurotic excitability when in stimulating company. The S. family is of fine reputation, possessing among its members a number of wealthy financiers, attorneys, and at least one court councillor. It was thus with great interest, even pleasure, that I anticipated Nina S.’s arrival in my surgery on the morning of May 5, 1913.

I wish I could say that Miss S. greeted our appointment with similar optimism and good cheer. On the contrary, when she entered the room, she was irritable, even angry. Her dress, of the reform style, uncorseted and loose flowing, was of winter wool, gray and gloomy in color, matching her demeanor. The day itself was fine, a harbinger of what I hoped would be an especially pleasant spring, and I could not help but notice that her attire stood in marked contrast to the sprightly floral muslins that my own daughters wore that day. Though Miss S. denied being warm, I nonetheless opened a window to give her the benefit of the pleasant lilac-scented breeze.

Miss S. refused to take her place on the analysand’s couch, despite the cheerful nosegay of the season’s last violets that my wife had thoughtfully placed on the small table by the head. Instead she perched stiffly on a chair, her mouth drawn into a thin line, quite a feat considering the generosity of her plump lower lip.

“How can I help you, my dear?” I said, my tone far more avuncular than forensic. Over the previous few years, as I had progressed in my own analysis with the brilliant Sándor Ferenczi and learned from him the utility of empathic reciprocity in the analyst/analysand relationship, I had begun to treat my patients with the love and affection they often lacked and craved. Though I know the S.’s to be devoted, even overindulgent, parents of their three children, I was confident that Miss S., like all my patients, would respond better to affection than to formality. However, my concern aggravated rather than consoled her, and she bristled.

“I am afraid, Dr. Zobel,” she said, “that you have been misled by my father and my uncle. I am not, in fact, in need of your assistance, at least not medical.”

“Ah!” I said. “But you are in need of another kind of assistance?”

“The only thing I need is for you to convince my father that I am not in the early stages of dementia praecox.”

“Surely your father has no fear of such a drastic diagnosis. Your uncle certainly expressed nothing of the kind to me.”

Miss S. was fair, with yellow hair and a porcelain complexion uncommon in people of our race. Her delicate skin showed her every mood, and her cheeks and throat now blushed pink. “Do you know what inspired my father to insist on this appointment?” she asked.

“Your uncle raised the possibility of neurasthenia.”

“Do I seem neurasthenic to you?”

She was hardly enervated; she radiated energy. This alone did not, however, disprove her uncle’s diagnosis. Fatigue, though a primary symptom of the disorder, is not always present. Depression and anxiety can be and often are expressed as precisely the kind of agitation and irritability that Miss S. was now exhibiting.

In a soothing voice, I said, “Your uncle also told me that you suffer from a pain in your stomach.”

“He told you that this pain was dyspeptic and recurrent?”

“You are well versed in the terminology, I see.” I was not surprised
at Nina’s facility. Familiarity with medical jargon is characteristic of a certain kind of hypochondriacal patient.

“I should hope so,” Miss S. said. “I am preparing to enter medical college next year.”

“Are you? I was not aware.”

“Yes, I am, despite the fact that neither my father nor my uncle approves of women physicians.”

Since the ministerial statute of 1895 allowed for women to enter the Faculty of Medicine here in Budapest, there had been a great influx of female students, though I myself had not yet been forced to confront them in my neurology and psychiatry lectures. Though I did not confess as much to my patient, I am obliged to admit to having possessed an ambivalence about the presence of young lady students in my chosen profession. There are areas, such as the fields of hygiene, pediatrics, and even obstetrics, that are in many ways suited to the female mind and sensibility. Women are naturally predisposed to care for the family, children, and the means of reproduction, and there are certain classes of women who can perform these functions competently and perhaps even more sensitively than men. However, I had concerns about exposing young ladies of class and discernment both to the rigors and to the harsh physical realities of modern medicine. Many of the common and necessary parts of a student physician’s training would be offensive and disturbing to such young ladies. I think I can be forgiven for rebelling against the image of girls like Miss S. or my own daughters, girls from conservative and proper Jewish homes, examining the pustulating papules of a patient suffering from secondary-stage syphilis.

I could not help but sympathize with Mr. S.’s antipathy to his daughter’s choice of profession and was relieved that my own daughters had shown no such inclinations. In fact, on that very morning, my wife and I had determined to accept on behalf of our eldest daughter, Erzsébet, the marriage suggested by an elderly relative who made her living facilitating such arrangements. The young man in question was himself a student of medicine, and while considering Miss S.’s ambitions, I for a moment entertained the ludicrous notion of Erzsébet meeting her intended for the first time not in her mother’s parlor but in the autopsy theater, their hands mutually immersed in the viscera of a diseased corpse.

I determined, however, not to alienate my young patient by allowing her to see my doubts about the suitability of her ambitions. I said, “Do
you, as a fledgling physician, agree with your uncle’s diagnosis of your symptoms?”

“No. The pain, while recurrent, is not dyspeptic. Nor do I suffer from abdominal ulcers. I suffer from”—here she hesitated and flushed but continued—“I suffer from nothing more than severe menstrual cramping.” I could see that she was doubly embarrassed, both by the topic and by her own shame in discussing it, and this affirmed my feelings about elegant and cultured women and the medical profession. A young girl’s pretty flush when referring to such matters is understandable, even desirable, but a doctor can feel no such compunctions.

Miss S. rushed on, “It’s only that my father does not understand that most women experience these symptoms. It’s not a disease. It’s normal.”

Maintaining a matter-of-fact tone of voice in order to assure her that I found our conversation to be utterly decorous—an analyst, after all, must speak without indignation or revulsion on all topics, even the most bizarre of sexual perversions, and certainly something as commonplace as menstruation—I said, “Some cramping is normal, I agree. However, it is not uncommon for intense pain during the menstrual period to be hysterical in nature, not physical, and thus resolvable with treatment and analysis.” I refrained at this moment from addressing the most likely source of her pain, excessive masturbation and a consequent shame response. There would be time, once she grew trusting of me, to lead her toward this logical conclusion. I continued, “How intense is your pain?”