IN SPITE OF MY REASONS FOR DOUBT, I convinced myself I had struck gold. Now that I knew about the hotel registry and Freud’s falsification of Minna’s identity, I understood the memory loss.
The finding of the German scholar in Maloja was no secret. It was the subject of a major article in the International Herald Tribune, and was known to have persuaded certain skeptics about the affair with Minna. Peter Gay, it was reported, was now among the scholars to have altered his view and decided that the in-laws had really screwed. Articles sprang up all over the place, reiterating what was considered conclusive evidence. But the deceit in the hotel registry was still not so well known that it had ever been connected with the forgetting of Signorelli’s name some three weeks later. I felt like Perry Mason at the moment of triumph, when he leaves no question as to the verdict. I managed to dispel my own scepticism; the explanation was too tidy to resist.
THEN I STARTED TO READ A BOOK OF FREUD’S TRAVEL LETTERS given to me by Sophie de Closets, my editor at the French publishing house Fayard, a sage and enthusiastic reader who understands my idiosyncratic obsessions and is a true ally in supporting my pursuits. Here is what I found:
On August 12, 1898, Freud wrote Martha from Pontresina. “My dear treasure,” he begins. He explains his plan for the upcoming days. “We” would be going to Maloja, and would stay in a hotel. Minna added three paragraphs to the same letter, addressing her sister as “My dearheart!” She, too, told Martha their plans, adding that it was raining hard and then suddenly had begun to snow.
The following day, Freud wrote his wife from Maloja. He extolled the wonders of the glacier, lake, and mountains, and told Martha she would be pleasantly surprised “when you hear us” describe them. He explained that “we are staying in a modest Swiss hotel . . . and will stay here tomorrow.”
If a man were cheating on his wife, would he have written this? Why did all the people who flipped out in 2007 about the hotel registry in Maloja not read these letters.
How had I been duped? Why do I get so excited by things that evaporate? Was everything with Susie a case of my self-deception? Does longing makes us blind?
WE LOOK INTO SOMEONE ELSE’S LIFE; we look into our own. We think we have answers and understanding, and then it all goes up in smoke.
The reasoning that seemed crystalline ends up being specious. It is all a game of cat and mouse, with the mouse always winning.
When Lucy was about three months old, Katharine and I, at 3:00 A.M., heard a mouse running around in the bathroom between her room and ours. I tried to catch the lively rodent, but it was too fast for me. I was irrational. I kept shouting at the little creature that it could not get near my daughter, while every time I tried to grab it, it scrambled out of reach up the tiled bathroom wall, along the tub, behind the sink. For half an hour, I swung and missed, Katharine laughed, and our baby slept soundly.
At last I managed to grab the small brown animal by the body, with its nasty tail hanging out. Victorious, I marched downstairs and out the front door of our house, then across the country road where we live. Stark naked, facing the woods, I shouted, “Don’t you get near my baby! No one can ever intrude into her life!” and I heaved it. The next day, when our furnace broke down, the repairman found a rat’s nest inside it; I had been holding a young rat.
Is there a moral here? Did the ridiculous scenario mean that if you do truly grasp what eludes you, it will be a rat?
Do I understand any of it? The reason Freud forgot a name of such importance? Why the image of Susie in my mind could be like a drug that made me a happy lunatic?
One thing I know for certain, though. What we take in through our eyes transforms us. The visual has inestimable force.