The Empire of the Senses by Alexis Landau

Author:Alexis Landau [Landau, Alexis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-101-87008-2
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2015-03-17T04:00:00+00:00

19

Berlin, Friday, June 10, 1927

On Friday mornings, Josephine went to Dr. Dührkoop, a psychoanalyst with a private practice on the top floor of an imposing stone town house on the southern border of the Tiergarten. She had been seeing him for the last four months at Lev’s insistence. At first, she resisted, arguing there wasn’t anything wrong with her, until Lev started chronicling her migraines, which had grown more severe after the death of her mother last fall, and her night terrors, which had also increased. Now, she looked forward to the sessions, where, for a full fifty minutes, once a week, she lay down on a soft chaise lounge and talked about herself—behavior that, in any other setting, she would deem utterly indulgent.

Today, having arrived early, she stood in the waiting room, staring at the framed photographs arranged in a line along the far wall. She had glanced at them in the past, but never before had she actually taken the time to study them, and as she did this, she felt somewhat disturbed. The first photograph, in faded sepia, featured two little boys dressed as court jesters in wide ruffled collars, black ballet slippers, and knit bodysuits patterned with interlocking diamonds in a diagonal arrangement. One boy faced the camera, his hands on his hips, while the other boy hid behind him, one naughty eye peering out, the rest of his face obscured. The boy facing the camera wore a leather belt with a small knife attached to it, covered by a leather sheath. The other boy held a knife, without its sheath, behind his back, as if to stab his more confident brother. Underneath the photograph, a caption in cursive script read: The Children of the Suppancics Family. The next photograph pictured the back of a woman’s head, her bare neck, her wide back clothed in some kind of woolen jacket. She glanced slightly to the side, the beginnings of a double chin detectable. The bare blatant neck instantly reminded Josephine of Vicki’s short hair and how upset she’d felt when Vicki had strode into the sitting room yesterday, ready to challenge her when all Josephine felt was sadness, remembering Vicki’s fine dark curls, the way she used to run her fingers unencumbered through Vicki’s hair when she was a child. Dark curls with hints of copper and gold, a mercurial color that changed with the light. In the morning sun, a reddish brown, and by nightfall, a blackberry hue. Lev had tried to console her, saying it was only hair and it would grow back, while at the same time he took Vicki’s side, playing the diplomat, tap dancing between them, or at least this was the image Josephine evoked when she thought about it.

The next photograph: a close-up of an eye—the pupil, the cornea, the white eyelashes, the delicate eyebrow arched over the upper eyelid. Underneath, the same cursive script stated: The Right Eye of My Daughter Sigrid. She wondered if Sigrid was Dr. Dührkoop’s niece, or the photographer’s daughter, whoever he was.

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.