The Interpretation Of Murder (48 page)

    Littlemore said, 'There's just one
thing. Why does Clara work so hard to get Nora for Banwell if Clara is so
jealous of her? That doesn't make sense.'

    'Oh, I don't know,' I replied,
getting out of the car. 'Some people feel a need to bring about the very thing
that will most torment them.'

    'They do?'

    'Yes.'

    'Why?' asked Littlemore.

    'I have no idea, Detective. It's an
unsolved mystery.'

    'That reminds me: I'm not a detective
anymore,' he said. 'The mayor's making me a lieutenant.'

    A torrential rain poured down on our
entire party - Freud, a visibly uncomfortable Jung, Brill, Ferenczi, Jones, and
myself - at the South Street harbor Saturday evening. As their luggage was
loaded onto the overnight boat from New York to Fall River, Freud pulled me to
one side.

    'You are not coming with us?' he said
to me, from the cocoon of his umbrella to the cocoon of mine.

    'No, sir. The surgeon said I
shouldn't travel for a day or two.'

    'I see,' he replied skeptically. 'And
Nora remains here in New York, of course.'

    'Yes,' I said.

    'But there is still something more,
isn't there?' Freud stroked his beard.

    I preferred to change the subject.
'How are things with Dr Jung, sir, if I may ask?' I knew - and Freud knew I
knew - of the extraordinary scene between Jung and Freud that had taken place
the other night.

    'Better,' Freud replied. 'Do you
know, I believe he was jealous of you.'

    'Of me?'

    'Yes,' said Freud. 'It finally came
to me that he took my appointing you to analyze Nora as a betrayal. When I
explained to him that I named you only because you live here, it improved
things between us immediately.' He looked out into the rain. 'It won't last,
however. Not very long.'

    'I don't understand Mrs Banwell, Dr
Freud,' I said. 'I don't understand her feelings for Miss Acton.'

    Freud reflected. 'Well, Younger, you
solved the mystery. Remarkable.'

    'You solved it, sir. You warned me
last night that they were all in Mrs Banwell's orbit and that Clara's
friendship with Miss Acton was not entirely innocent. I don't really understand
Mrs Banwell, Dr Freud. I don't understand what moved
her!

    'If I had to guess,' said Freud, 'I
would say that Nora was for Mrs Banwell a mirror in which she saw herself as
she was ten years ago - and in which she saw, therefore, by contrast, what she
had become. Certainly this would account for her desire to corrupt Nora and to
hurt her. You must bear in mind the years of punishment she endured as the
willing object of a sadist.'

    'Yet she stayed with him.' It
couldn't have been only the money that kept her with Banwell. 'She was a
masochist?'

    'There is no such thing, Younger, not
in pure form. Every masochist is also a sadist. In men, at any rate, masochism
is never primary - it is sadism turned on the self - and Mrs Banwell
unquestionably had a strong masculine side. She may have been plotting the
destruction of her husband for some time.'

    I had one other question. I was
unsure whether to voice it; it seemed so basic and ignorant. But I decided to
go ahead. 'Is homosexuality a pathology, Dr Freud?'

    'You are wondering if Nora is a
homosexual,' he said.

    'I am so transparent?'

    'No man can keep a secret,' Freud
answered. 'If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips.'

    I resisted the urge to glance at my
fingertips.

    'No need to look at your fingertips,'
he went on. 'You are not transparent. With you, my boy, I merely ask myself how
I would have felt in your place. But I will answer your question. Homosexuality
is certainly no advantage, but it cannot be classified as an illness. It is no
shame, no vice, no degradation at all. In women in particular, there may be a
primary narcissism, a self-love, that directs their desire toward others of
their sex. I would not call Nora a homosexual, though. I would say, rather, she
was seduced.

    But I should have seen her love for
Mrs Banwell at once. It was plainly the strongest unconscious current in her
mental life. You told me the first day how fondly she spoke of Mrs Banwell,
when of course she ought to have felt the fiercest jealousy toward a woman
engaged in a sexual act with her father - an act she wished to be performing on
him herself. Only the most powerful desire for Mrs Banwell could have allowed
her to repress that jealousy.'

    Naturally I could not wholly join in
this observation. I only nodded in reply.

    'You don't agree?' he asked.

    'I don't believe Nora was jealous of
Clara,' I said, 'in that way.'

    Freud raised his eyebrows. 'You can't
disbelieve that unless you reject Oedipus.'

    Again I said nothing.

    'Ah,' said Freud. And he repeated it:
'Ah.' He took a deep breath, sighed, and observed me closely. 'That is why you
are not coming to Clark with us.'

    I considered broaching with Freud my
reinterpretation of the Oedipus complex. I would have liked to; I would have
liked even more to discuss
Hamlet
with him. But I found I couldn't. I
knew how much he had suffered from Jung's seeming defection. There would be
other occasions. I would be in Worcester by Tuesday morning, in time for his
first lecture.

    'In that case,' Freud resumed, 'let
me raise one possibility with you before I go. You are not the first to reject
the

    Oedipus complex. You will not be the
last. But you may have a special reason for doing so, associated with my
person. You have admired me from afar, my boy. There is always a kind of father
love in such relationships. Now, having met me in the flesh, and having the
opportunity to complete this cathexis, you fear doing so. You fear I will take
myself away from you, as your real father did. Thus you forestall my
anticipated withdrawal by denying the Oedipus complex.'

    The rain beat down. Freud looked at
me with kindly eyes. 'Someone has told you,' I said, 'that my father committed
suicide.'

    'Yes.'

    'But he didn't.'

    'Oh?' asked Freud.

    ' 'I killed him.'

    'What?'

    'It was the only way,' I said, 'to
overcome my Oedipus complex.'

    Freud looked at me. For a moment I
was afraid he might actually take me seriously. Then he laughed aloud and shook
my hand. He thanked me for helping him through his week in New York, and
especially for rescuing his lectures at Clark. I accompanied him onto the boat.
His face seemed much more deeply furrowed than it had been a week ago, his back
slightly bent, his eyes a decade older. As I began to disembark, he called out
my name. He was at the railing; I had taken a step or two down the gangway.
'Let me be honest with you, my boy,' he said, from under his umbrella, as the
rain poured down. 'This country of yours: I am suspicious of it. Be careful. It
brings out the worst in people - crudeness, ambition, savagery. There is too
much money. I see the prudery for which your country is famous, but it is
brittle. It will shatter in the whirlwind of gratification being called forth.
America, I fear, is a mistake. A gigantic mistake, to be sure, but still a
mistake.'

    That was the last time I saw Freud in
America. The same night, I took Nora to the top of the Gillender Building at
the corner of Nassau and Wall, a place where vast fortunes were made and lost
every day. On a Saturday night, Wall Street was deserted.

    I had gone to the Actons' directly
after seeing Freud off. Mrs Biggs greeted me like an old friend. Harcourt and
Mildred Acton were nowhere to be seen; they were evidently not receiving. I
asked after Nora's condition. Mrs Biggs noisily withdrew, and Nora came down
presently.

    Neither of us could find a word to
say. Finally, I asked if she would care for a walk; I opined that it would be
medically advisable. Suddenly I was sure she would decline and I would never
see her again.

    'All right,' she said.

    The rain had stopped. The smell of
wet pavement, which in the city passes for freshness, rose pleasantly in the
air. Downtown, the pavement turned to cobblestone, and the clip-clop of distant
horses, with no motorcar or omnibus in sight, reminded me of the New York I
knew as a boy. We spoke little.

    The doorman at the Gillender heard we
wished to see the famous view and let us in. In the dome room, nineteen stories
up, four great pointed windows overlooked the city, one facing each direction
of the compass. Uptown, we could see mile after mile of the ever-expanding
northward march of electric Manhattan; to the south was the tip of the island,
the water, and the burning torch of the Statue of Liberty.

    'They are going to demolish the
building any day now,' I said. The Gillender, when erected in 1897, was one of
the tallest skyscrapers in Manhattan. With its slender silhouette and classical
proportions, it was also one of the most widely admired. 'It will be the
tallest building in the history of the world to be torn down.'

    'Have you ever been happy?' Nora
asked abruptly.

    I considered. 'Dr Freud says that
unhappiness is caused when we cannot let go of our memories.'

    'Does he say how one is supposed to
let go of one's memories?'

    'By remembering them.'

    Neither of us spoke.

    'That does not sound quite logical,
Doctor,' said Nora.

    'No.'

    Nora pointed to a rooftop about a
block to the north. 'Look. That's the Hanover Building, where Mr Banwell forced
himself on me three years ago.'

    I said nothing.

    'You knew?' she asked. 'You knew I
would see it from here?'

    Again I made no answer.

    'You are still treating me,' said
Nora.

    'I never treated you.'

    She gazed out. 'I was so very
stupid.'

    'Not nearly so stupid as I.'

    'What will you do now?' Nora asked.

    'Return to Worcester,' I said.
'Practice medicine. The students will be coming back in a few weeks.'

    'My classes start the twenty-fourth,'
Nora replied.

    'Then you are going to Barnard after
all?'

    'Yes. I have bought my books already.
I'm leaving my parents' house. I'll be living uptown, in a dormitory called
Brooks Hall.'

    'And what will you be studying at
Barnard, Miss Acton?' I asked. 'Shakespeare's women?'

    'As a matter of fact,' she replied
airily, 'I am thinking of a concentration in Elizabethan drama and psychology.
Oh - and also detection.'

    'An absurd combination of interests.
No one will take it seriously.'

    There was another pause.

    'I guess,' I said, 'we ought to say
good-bye then.'

    'I've been happy once,' she answered.

    'Once?'

    'Last night,' she said. 'Good-bye,
Doctor. Thank you.'

    I didn't answer. It was a good thing.
Had I not given her the extra instant, she might not have said the words I
longed to hear:

    'Are you going to kiss me good-bye at
least?' she asked.

    'Kiss you?' I replied. 'You are
underage, Miss Acton. I wouldn't dream of it.'

    'I'm like Cinderella,' she said,
'only in reverse. At midnight I turn eighteen.'

    Midnight came. And so it fell out
that I could not bring myself to leave New York City even once all the rest of
that young month.