7

‘NOT only that,’ Paul went on, ‘but I once met an analyst who didn’t believe in the unconscious at all. Truly. He said there was no such thing; it simply didn’t exist. – So you are in good company.’

‘Did I say I didn’t believe in it?’ Robert asked, rather peevishly. ‘I said – that it is difficult for me to believe a dichotomy exists in myself, separating consciousness from my so-called “unconscious” self.’

‘I’m not sure the unconscious can be described as a “self”,’ Paul returned. ‘It has no discoverable “centre”, so to speak. At least . . .’

‘Well – “contents” then,’ Robert interrupted. ‘Obviously it is composed of something: drives, impulses, wishes, fears, desires – all of them so antithetic to the conscious “image” of oneself – isn’t that it?-that all kinds of ruses and disguises are employed to express them. I don’t quarrel with that; one has to be blind not to observe it with merciless regularity, but I maintain that the ruses, the disguises, are increasingly outmoded – obsolete.’

Paul smiled and inclined his head. He enjoyed talking with Robert, but talking with Robert usually meant arguing with him – and while arguing with him, trying to decide at what point the man was serious and at what point he was not. ‘– Do you dream?’ he asked.

‘Constantly,’ Robert returned. ‘And my dreams support my contention. Every symbol is so transparent to me that I wonder why my unconscious doesn’t tire of its mumbo-jumbo. Since it can deceive no one of the slightest intelligence and sensitivity, least of all myself, why does it persist in its idiotic assumption that its language is esoteric? If anything, in our day and age, the unconscious is vestigial; it is like a woman who insists on dressing herself up in mysterious veils when we have already seen her lying naked before us a thousand times.’

Paul’s smile deepened. He shook his head briefly. ‘The unconscious is – by its very definition’ – he threw up his hands – ‘unconscious. What you are saying . . .’

Again Robert interrupted.

‘I dream of a shoe,’ he said; ‘an uncomfortable shoe; a shoe with a nail in it. What could be more insulting? I die of shame that my unconscious should express itself quite so na?vely. A child would know the meaning of a nail in a shoe.’

‘The child in you dreamed the dream,’ Paul said.

Robert was visibly piqued. ‘­ I–’m simply illustrating. I’m not reporting an actual dream.’

‘ – Merely a fantasy.’

‘I would hardly distinguish it to that extent.’ – God, the man could be irritating! And he looked so cool, so damnably cool in this infernal heat, relaxing comfortably in his chair, sipping his drink, his legs crossed on the balustrade. – I chose arbitrarily – at random.’

‘– Like putting your hand in a grab bag,’ Paul returned. ‘One never knows what will happen.’ Did he imagine it, or was Robert actually angry? He went on rapidly, almost without a pause: –You see how generous I am. The grab bag was my fantasy. – Because I am your friend, not your analyst.’

Robert was disarmed, and silent. He stared toward the sea, adding presently: ‘I find it increasingly difficult to talk and make sense.’ He sighed, his voice softened and slow, devoid of its usual brisk quality. ‘Sometimes I think that Freud has ruined everything.’

Paul uncrossed his legs promptly; his spine straightened itself of its own accord. But the writer went on: ‘­ He has added another dimension to language and thought, so complex that we are all staggering like drunkards in an unmanageable space. Do you know – I occasionally write a paper, even give a semester of lectures as if he never existed – for the sheer luxury of simplicity, and despite its dishonesty. Last year, I gave an entire survey course in English literature and barely mentioned his name.’ He laughed suddenly. ‘One of my students, I recall, was very upset about the “Ancient Mariner”. What did the Albatross represent psychoanalytically; why had Coleridge chosen a dead bird? And wasn’t there, possibly, some oedipal significance to Coleridge’s preoccupation with water and snakes? –I couldn’t shut him up; every time I turned from the blackboard his hand was flying. I found it convenient to lose my temper finally, and remind him that I was teaching English Literature, not Abnormal Psyche. His reply – listen to this – was that the real value and pleasure of literature consisted of the author’s revelations of himself in and through his work. A college freshman! That wasn’t all! The most significant thing about Kafka, I was informed, was his father – and the fascination of Shakespeare’s sonnets the fact that they were written for and to a man! And what, he inquired, was interesting about Paradise Lost, one of the dreariest poems in the English language? Before I could reply, he answered his own question with one word. “Milton,” he said – and dropped my course.’

Paul nodded. ‘Literature isn’t like maths,’ he said, ‘or the languages, or any of the sciences. Even psychology gets on beautifully without Freud. Abnormal Psychology teaches him, of course – either well or badly. . . .’

‘That is the point there,’ Robert agreed. ‘His principles are the subject of the inquiry, not the object to which his principles might be applied.’

‘So the English Department suffers!’ Paul concluded.

‘But pretends not to,’ Robert replied. ‘Most of my colleagues admit no problems at all. They drag in Freud by the hair, and throw him out quite as rudely. Nor will they admit that the great task of literature, if it is to survive as literature, is to absorb Freud. – Of necessity, our contemporary writers have had to meet the man head on, but what has happened? – with pathetically few exceptions – Joyce was one – they have nodded sagely – presumably in agreement – and gone on writing as if he never existed. Others who were shattered by the collision are turning out books that are little more than clinical case histories.’ He paused. ‘In the end, art has always ingested science; it has been a boa constrictor, slowly squeezing the life from it and swallowing it whole. But today, literature has not even begun to unhinge its jaws; it has been too staggered by its prey. . . .’

The analogy was inaccurate and extravagant, but there it was. And Paul seemed impressed. Or perhaps merely kind. Robert rose, pacing as he always paced at a lecture’s end, searching for a final light touch, the unrelated bon mot that was like the snap of his fingers, un-hypnotising his students, returning them to a world of mundane sense and sensibility in a cheerful frame of mind. He dug his hands deep into his pockets, lifting his eyes to the sea. And there it was: his light touch; his unrelated bon mot. Nicky was playing by the water’s edge, his faded red polo shirt a violet blur in Corbodéra’s intense blue twilight.

‘Ah, Nicky!’ he said with a tremulous sigh. ‘Ah, that boy!’ – and Paul, following his gaze, began to laugh.