Dreaming for Freud by Sheila Kohler

Author:Sheila Kohler
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-05-26T16:00:00+00:00

X

* * *

PROTEST

“WHAT WAS GOING ON WAS perfectly obvious to anyone who had eyes to see, as the fräulein herself said,” the girl says, going on with her story without any prompting from him this afternoon.

“Did you say anything to anyone?” the doctor asks.

“Indeed, I did!” she says. “My brother wasn’t there, so I couldn’t confer with him, and I’m not sure he would have done anything anyway, but I decided to speak to Mother myself. The fräulein encouraged me to speak up, too, for her own reasons, reasons that became obvious to me.

“Walking with Mother by the lake the next day, I pointed this all out to her. ‘It’s not right! Can’t you see that? It’s embarrassing and humiliating! How can you just remain silent! The whole hotel knows what they are doing together in the night. You have to say something to Father!’ I told her. I was so angry.”

But her mother had explained that life was not always as simple as her daughter seemed to think. Men, she said, had to be allowed a certain latitude, at times, and women were obliged to look the other way. Marriage, if it was to go on smoothly, sometimes required certain compromises. She had reason to be grateful to Frau Z., very grateful. Indeed, they all did. She herself should be grateful to Frau Z.

“Why should I be grateful to her!” she had asked.

“For saving your father’s life,” her mother had said dramatically.

When she asked for further details, her mother explained that on an impulse one evening after dinner, Frau Z. had followed her father into the pine forest. She was worried because of certain remarks he had made during dinner that he might take his life. Not far from where she and her mother were walking and talking now, her mother told her, in the dark woods on one side of the hotel, Frau Z. had found her father distraught, walking in the shadows of the tall trees with a gun in his hands, which she had managed to convince him to relinquish. It was thanks to Frau Z. that her father was still alive today and with them, continuing to make their lives so comfortable after all, her mother added, gesturing to the lake and the gardens. What would they all have done without him?

“Obviously, it was all a lot of rubbish, something Frau Z. must have made up. Why did Mother just put up with it? Who would believe such a fairy tale, told to cover up a rendezvous? I certainly didn’t. Undoubtedly, they were wandering around in the woods together, holding hands or having sexual intercourse, or doing heaven knows what, and I don’t see how my mother could be so blind and foolish! Sometimes I think she doesn’t care about Father at all, that it is just an economic arrangement. It’s more convenient for her to hand over Father, who is sick anyway, to another woman. Besides, I saw how Father visited Frau Z. whenever her husband was away.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.