Read Online A Curable Romantic by Joseph Skibell - Free Book Online
Authors: Joseph Skibell
Tags: Literary, Historical fiction, Historical, Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction, Jewish, Literary Fiction, World Literature
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cherried veal tasted like wood pulp in my mouth, and I’m afraid I availed myself too eagerly of the wine. It was bad enough that everyone appeared to be wearing a pornographic postcard glued to the middle of his forehead; worse was the disillusionment I felt upon finally meeting the great and brilliant Dr. Fliess. The dashing young genius from Berlin, about whom I’d heard so much, struck me as little better than a Bedlamite. I was aghast to watch him, seated at Dr. Freud’s right, soliciting from those who’d been honored with chairs near his the dates of all the significant events of their lives, from which, like a fortuneteller, he was busy calculating the hour of their demise.
“Fifty-one months from your birthday,” he said, adding up his figures, “fifty-one being twenty-three plus twenty-eight, minus the difference between them, which is five, multiplied by twenty-three squared, divided by the square root of twenty-eight … ah, yes, here it is. According to my calculations, you can expect to expire at precisely thirty-six minutes past two on the morning of March 14, 1938.”
His dining companions appeared eager for this information and, once it had been revealed to them, delighted to possess it. Indeed, I watched with my mouth agape as Amalia Eckstein inscribed the date of her death into a booklet she withdrew from her purse, penciling it in as though it were a dental appointment!
(Proof of the prophet’s worthlessness, I told myself, was the fact that according to his calculations, a majority of the people at the table were to perish in March of 1938.)
I could only shake my head. Dr. Freud had a weakness for gypsy-like parlor games, it’s true; but Dr. Fliess had gone him one better. If, like an Hasidic rebbe, Dr. Freud could read a man’s sins in the lines of his face, Dr. Fliess, like God Himself, knew the hour of his demise.
What did it say about Sigmund Freud, I wondered, that he revered a man of such low caliber?
STILL, ALL THIS was nothing compared to the heartbreak I had experienced upon seeing Fräulein Eckstein again. Never for a moment had I imagined that the woman whose picture I’d carried in my heart for over a month might feel only indifference towards me! It was madness to have come here, I told myself. I regretted pressuring Dr. Freud into inviting me to this odd Christmas soirée (in attendance at which there seemed to be only Jews; at a quick glance, I estimated that none of the guests had ever been within ten feet of a baptismal font!). Still, I couldn’t help watching Fräulein Eckstein. The way she laughed at Dr. Fliess’s calculations, hanging on to his every word, made me blind with rage. It pained me to see her eyes glistening with admiration for him while she sat with her fingers braided before her mouth and her nose laid out like a dainty for him upon the platter of her hands.
(Her interest in Dr. Fliess, it turned out, was completely counterfeit. As I would learn the next day, she was merely flattering him as a way of pleasing Dr. Freud.)
“Dr. Sammelsohn!” I heard my name called as though from a great distance. “Are you still with us, then?” I refocused my eyes, and the white and blue blotches before them unblurred into the person of Fräulein Rosa Freud, sitting beside me in a shimmering blue dress.
“Ah, Fräulein Freud,” I said, “pardon me. I must have been daydreaming.”
“I was only asking you whether you agreed that what Herr Graf just said was wickedly funny.”
I looked at her fiancé, Graf. He smiled at me ludicrously, his watery eyes brimming behind his pince-nez. “Oh, well, no,” he said with modest good humor, “it’s nothing really.” He smiled tenderly at Fräulein Rosa. “I was just saying that it’s apparently not enough for Dr. Fliess to cure gynecological concerns, but he must stick his nose into Dr. Freud’s neurosis as well.”
Although this was the second time in as many minutes that she had heard the witticism,
“Fifty-one months from your birthday,” he said, adding up his figures, “fifty-one being twenty-three plus twenty-eight, minus the difference between them, which is five, multiplied by twenty-three squared, divided by the square root of twenty-eight … ah, yes, here it is. According to my calculations, you can expect to expire at precisely thirty-six minutes past two on the morning of March 14, 1938.”
His dining companions appeared eager for this information and, once it had been revealed to them, delighted to possess it. Indeed, I watched with my mouth agape as Amalia Eckstein inscribed the date of her death into a booklet she withdrew from her purse, penciling it in as though it were a dental appointment!
(Proof of the prophet’s worthlessness, I told myself, was the fact that according to his calculations, a majority of the people at the table were to perish in March of 1938.)
I could only shake my head. Dr. Freud had a weakness for gypsy-like parlor games, it’s true; but Dr. Fliess had gone him one better. If, like an Hasidic rebbe, Dr. Freud could read a man’s sins in the lines of his face, Dr. Fliess, like God Himself, knew the hour of his demise.
What did it say about Sigmund Freud, I wondered, that he revered a man of such low caliber?
STILL, ALL THIS was nothing compared to the heartbreak I had experienced upon seeing Fräulein Eckstein again. Never for a moment had I imagined that the woman whose picture I’d carried in my heart for over a month might feel only indifference towards me! It was madness to have come here, I told myself. I regretted pressuring Dr. Freud into inviting me to this odd Christmas soirée (in attendance at which there seemed to be only Jews; at a quick glance, I estimated that none of the guests had ever been within ten feet of a baptismal font!). Still, I couldn’t help watching Fräulein Eckstein. The way she laughed at Dr. Fliess’s calculations, hanging on to his every word, made me blind with rage. It pained me to see her eyes glistening with admiration for him while she sat with her fingers braided before her mouth and her nose laid out like a dainty for him upon the platter of her hands.
(Her interest in Dr. Fliess, it turned out, was completely counterfeit. As I would learn the next day, she was merely flattering him as a way of pleasing Dr. Freud.)
“Dr. Sammelsohn!” I heard my name called as though from a great distance. “Are you still with us, then?” I refocused my eyes, and the white and blue blotches before them unblurred into the person of Fräulein Rosa Freud, sitting beside me in a shimmering blue dress.
“Ah, Fräulein Freud,” I said, “pardon me. I must have been daydreaming.”
“I was only asking you whether you agreed that what Herr Graf just said was wickedly funny.”
I looked at her fiancé, Graf. He smiled at me ludicrously, his watery eyes brimming behind his pince-nez. “Oh, well, no,” he said with modest good humor, “it’s nothing really.” He smiled tenderly at Fräulein Rosa. “I was just saying that it’s apparently not enough for Dr. Fliess to cure gynecological concerns, but he must stick his nose into Dr. Freud’s neurosis as well.”
Although this was the second time in as many minutes that she had heard the witticism,
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