The Letter in the Bottle by Karen Liebreich

Author:Karen Liebreich [Liebreich, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857890511
Publisher: Atlantic Books

The graphologist shuddered and blew out her cheeks in an effort to relax. The small noise released the tension in the room that had gripped us both. She seemed to clear her thoughts, and picked up the letter. ‘It’s very compact, very well-organized,’ she said immediately, trying to sound businesslike after the emotional silence. ‘There is a great respect for the norms: the margins are very crisp, especially the one on the left. It shows a great desire for clarity, there is nothing casual about it. It shows little imagination. Lots of control, a great desire for mastery. It is very organized,’ she repeated. ‘Precise, rigorous, it shows continuity, perseverance . . . She is tenacious, she follows through on what she has decided to do. It reveals cohesion, definition. It is very compact, very dense.’

She thought for a while. ‘There is something obsessive, depressive, monotonous in the writing. It is almost suffocating in its own space.’ She indicated the blue inked spaces and the contrasting white empty ones. ‘The white is what is not spoken,’ she explained. ‘It is linked to listening, to the subconscious. The subconscious is very – perhaps too – controlled.’

She pointed out that the letter had been written with a line guide, a page with thick black lines placed behind the writing paper, to steer the pen into parallel correctness. The French expression was ‘un guide âne’, a donkey guide. The writer had used either an ink pen or a high-quality rollerball, though the graphologist thought it was more likely to be the former. She had whited out a mistake. This was not a letter written on a cliff-top in a howling gale of emotion. This was a letter probably drafted beforehand and certainly written on the correct stationery at a table.

‘The writer has a relatively high level of education,’ continued the graphologist, ‘although she does make some elementary spelling mistakes, some grammatical errors. The occasional verb did not agree, perhaps because she was writing with such emotion, perhaps simply because she was an erratic speller.

‘She is quite introverted, a woman who keeps things back. The graphologist pointed to the tiny upward-shooting ends of many of the words. These, she said, are among the least modifiable elements of handwriting. ‘She seems very controlled, it appears to be all very disciplined, but then there is a reactive, almost a violent dimension. She presents a very calm façade but underneath it all she is bubbling with emotion. It is almost as though she is not authorized to be spontaneous but even so there are these little explosive episodes. It is as though she is trying very hard to master her emotions. Her pleasure principle is very restrained, very bridled. I’m not convinced that she achieved an inner freedom.

‘There is a touch of guilt here, maybe an element of masochism. An obsessional neurosis perhaps. She has had a very organized life, without much scope for imagination. She gives the impression of calm, but within her there is a tempest.

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