I meet Eva Foigel in the lobby of her midtown Manhattan hotel. In person she looks older than in her website photos – a stocky woman with age-appropriate facial lines and short silver swept-back hair. I figure her for around fifty-five. She sports small silver earrings, wears elegant flats, and is simply yet expensively dressed in a dark gray Jil Sander pants suit over a light gray silk blouse. She strikes me as serenely self-assured. Despite a friendly smile, she projects the allure of a woman used to getting her way.
‘They have a little bar here,’ she says, guiding me toward an alcove off the lobby. ‘Let’s get ourselves a table, order drinks, and chat.’
She speaks, I note, like an American. ‘I expected you’d have a German accent,’ I tell her.
‘I was born in Cleveland, brought up in the States until I was twelve. After my father died, my mother took me to her parents’ hometown, Vienna. Been there ever since.’
After we order beers she gazes at me. I’m struck by the intensity of her blue-flecked eyes. ‘You have many questions. First off you want to know how I met Chantal.’
‘I do,’ I tell her, surprised by the speed at which she’s moving the conversation.
‘It’s not a long story. We met by chance. It was in Vienna at a public lecture about the early days of psychoanalysis, the so-called heroic period … a special interest of mine. Chantal wandered in, sat down a few seats away. I was impressed by the way she carried herself and I liked the way she looked. Later, she confessed, she liked my looks too. Our eyes met, we exchanged smiles. After the lecture I asked if she’d join me at a coffee house. She agreed, we went to one nearby, sat and talked until two a.m.’
Eva sips from her beer. She smiles as she recalls that first encounter.
‘She told me she’d come to Vienna on leave from college to improve her German and because of her interest in Freud. As we talked we discovered we shared a Jewish heritage. When she asked me about myself, I told her exactly what I did – that I was a professional dominatrix catering to male fantasies of female power, a role I regarded as akin to that of a psychotherapist … and often a lot more effective. She was immediately intrigued. When I described the kinds of scenes I created, she said I sounded like a director of an intimate form of theater … which, of course, I am. She asked if she could observe me at work. I told her she could, but by the very act of observing she would also become a participant. She understood. “I will be The Voyeur,” she said. “My presence as witness will intensify the effect.”’
Eva shakes her head. ‘She was amazing … so smart, intuitive. Turned out she had a natural gift for erotic domination. A born actress, she thrived in my theatrical dungeon. I’d had apprentices before, but never one so talented or astute.’
‘So she became your apprentice?’
‘The next day. She stayed with me for three years. I taught her everything I knew. We worked together. We also fell in love. You know that, of course.’
‘Yes, from the letters. A friend translated them for me. When I realized how intimate they were I was surprised she stored them inside a book.’
‘Which one, do you remember?’
‘A book of old photographs of traditional Viennese coffee houses.’
‘Of course!’ Eva’s delighted. ‘An excellent hiding place since we spent so much time in them. Kaffehauskultur is among the great joys of Viennese life.’
‘Still I wonder why, when she sold her books, she didn’t pull your letters out.’
‘Perhaps she was so busy getting rid of stuff she forgot they were there.’
‘Why do you think she was in such a rush?’
‘She was scared.’
‘Do you know why?’ I ask holding my breath, hoping I’ll finally learn the reason.
‘She called me on Skype a few days after she abandoned the loft, told me she was staying in a hotel. I could tell she was upset. She muttered something about not wanting to sound paranoid.’
Eva exhales. ‘It takes courage to do our kind of work, dealing with the eccentric fantasies of strangers. Occasionally our kind of treatment will release something in a client and he’ll explode. I taught her how to handle these situations, and she took the usual precautions. My guess is she must have felt severely threatened by something she didn’t think she could handle. When I asked her again what was going on, she said it had to do with the photograph. “The Luzern?” I asked. “In a way,” she said. She promised she’d tell me the details when she saw me. She mentioned she had a few things to settle before she came to Vienna to cool off. She asked if she could stay with me. I told her she knew she didn’t have to ask. She was grateful. “I want to spend a few weeks with you,” she told me, “walking the streets as we used to do. I need some time to figure out the rest of my life.”
‘She said she was thinking of returning to school, getting her degree, then finding a new career. She loved black-and-white photography and had always admired the work of Helmut Newton. “I’d like to apprentice to a good art photographer,” she told me, “learn how it’s done and see how I might fit in.”’
Eva lowers her eyes. When she speaks again it’s with sorrow. ‘After that I didn’t hear from her. She didn’t answer my emails or calls. Worried, I phoned Lynx. She didn’t know anything more than that Chantal had seemed upset then disappeared. I was frantic. Then two weeks later Lynx emailed me that Chantal had been killed. At first I refused to believe it. I thought maybe she’d faked her death and was walking around someplace free of whatever had frightened her. Then her brother confirmed it. When he told me he had her ashes I was devastated. I knew my dear Chantal was truly gone.’
She turns to me, brightens. ‘It’s a lovely evening. Let’s stretch our legs. I love New York this time of year.’
We exit the hotel. A cool breeze has replaced the summer humidity that hung over the city when I arrived. The rush hour has passed, the sidewalks aren’t crowded. It’s possible to speak in normal tones as we make our way toward Fifth Avenue.
‘I love the tempo here,’ Eva tells me, ‘so different from the measured pace of old Vienna. It’s good to come for a few days and drink up the energy. But I could never live here.’
Reaching Fifth, we turn and start uptown, passing store windows, banks, office towers. Feeling strangely comfortable walking beside Eva, I ask her about Chantal’s interests as reflected in her library: Lou Andreas-Salomé; Freud and psychoanalysis; Hitler and the Third Reich.
‘Those are all my interests,’ she tells me. ‘Dear Chantal, madly in love with me, soon took them up as her own. You know they call Vienna “City of Dreams”. I think it’s impossible to take up residence there and not become interested in Freud. She was already interested in him, which was why she happened to attend the lecture. As for Hitler and Salomé, those have long been special interests of mine. Once I told Chantal about Lou, she fixated on her. Most people concentrate on the relationship with Nietzsche or the years with Rilke, but for personal reasons I’m more interested in her time with Freud. After I shared my reasons, Chantal took them up with even more fervor than myself.’
Eager as I am to hear about these personal reasons, I’m relieved when she asks me about myself. She perks up when I mention I’m in therapy with a neo-Freudian analyst whom I see weekly for sessions that revolve around unresolved issues with my father.
‘Interesting … I also have daddy issues.’ She pronounces ‘issues’ as if the word can barely describe them. But when I recount Dad’s criminal history, his stint in prison, and the destruction he wreaked on our family by his toxic combination of charm and lies, I can tell by her reaction she understands that for me the word ‘issues’ is also an understatement.
When she asks about my performance work, I describe Recital, Black Mirrors, and my Weimar piece. She seems especially impressed when I recount my recent femme-fatale gig in Rex’s Vertigo.
‘I sense you enjoyed doing that one,’ she says. ‘Perhaps more than you like to admit.’
Surprised by her insight, I ask how I betrayed myself.
‘There was no betrayal. I heard it in your voice, saw it in your eyes.’
Meeting her gaze, I feel that I can safely confide in her, that like Dr Maude she won’t judge or disparage me no matter what I say.
She suggests we have dinner at a nearby restaurant. Then she stops to gaze at me again. ‘I think now I understand, without you telling me, why you’re so intrigued by Chantal. You have much in common – beauty, brains, a love of performance, and a fascination with decadence. But have no fear … I won’t come on to you. You’ve signaled many things, but not that.’ She chuckles. ‘Unless … well, that would be up to you. Personally I prefer to court rather than be courted. But if you’re so inclined, I’d happily make an exception.’
Amused, I shake my head. I also decide not to disclose my erotic dreams about Chantal. Settling the matter with a quick clasp of hands, we turn east on 62nd Street.
En route to the restaurant, I ask if she made the same exception in regard to Chantal.
She laughs. ‘In her case I was definitely the seducer. I could tell she was ripe for it, but shy and inexperienced. It took me about a week to bed her. Then there was no turning back. It was, as the Viennese say – Wunderbar! Really, the best time in my life. I think of Chantal as my greatest love. Even after we parted I held her close in my heart.’
To hear such an admission from such a powerful woman brings home how closely bound they’d been.
Waiting for the light to change, I turn to her. ‘May I ask a personal question?’
‘You want to know what caused the break-up? It was a gentle drifting apart, not a dramatic rupture. Certainly the age difference was a factor. Also the intensity of our relationship and of our joint practice as dominatrices. A passion as powerful as ours could not but burn out after a time. I think in the end the cause was mutual exhaustion. We both realized quite sadly the time had come to separate.’
She leads me to a small Italian restaurant she’s fond of on account of the food and because the proprietor allows diners to linger on after coffee and dessert. Over dinner she explains the source of the fascinations later adopted by Chantal.
‘Earlier you mentioned having daddy issues. I had major ones. My father was an extraordinary man. I don’t necessarily say that in praise. I’ve yet to come to grips with who he was and many of the things he did. To this day I’m haunted by him.’
Her dad, she tells me, was sixty when she was born, so she only knew him in his final years. He had an amazing life story, or rather two life stories, although she only learned about the first after her mother died and she inherited three things: a book, a drawing, and a manuscript.
The book was a signed first edition copy of Freud’s Die Traumdeutung, ‘The Interpretation of Dreams,’ warmly inscribed by Freud to Lou Salomé. Eva tells me she recently put it up for auction in Vienna, where it fetched over a hundred thousand euros. She donated the entire sum to the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.
When I gasp and interrupt to ask how on earth her father acquired such a treasure, she politely suggests I hold my questions until she’s finished.
The second item, an erotic drawing, was alleged to have been made by Adolf Hitler when, prior to World War I, he was trying to eke out a living as a young artist in Vienna. Supposedly, Eva tells me, he presented it as a gift to Lou Salomé, which, if true, occurred under circumstances that remain obscure. What’s interesting about this drawing, she says, is that it reprises the famous Luzern photograph of Lou, Nietzsche, and Paul Rée that enraptured Chantal.
Eva pulls out her cell phone, shows me the drawing on the screen. I stare at it dumbfounded.
‘No Hitler scholar will authenticate it,’ she says. ‘Though it bears his initials on the back and a short dedication to Lou in what looks to be his handwriting, experts claim it’s psychologically impossible for Hitler to have drawn it and that it bears no resemblance to any other drawing he ever made. Everyone I’ve consulted assures me it’s a worthless forgery.’
The third item, she tells me, the manuscript, was a memoir written by her father in his final years. In it he described his strange double life: first, as a man named Ernst Fleckstein, a private investigator in Munich specializing in matrimonial work; later a ‘fixer’ for the Nazi leader, Martin Bormann; and, finally, a major in the German intelligence service. And then a totally different second identity acquired in the early nineteen-forties when he decided to flee Germany: a Jewish doctor/psychoanalyst named Samuel Foigel, which was the name by which Eva’s mother knew him and the name Eva continues to use as her own.
She summarizes her father’s memoir in broad strokes. Listening I’m most intrigued by his description of his encounter with Lou Salomé on a mission, assigned to him by Bormann, to reclaim the scandalous erotic drawing.
‘I think now,’ she says, ‘you may understand why I’m so fascinated by Frau Lou, as much as or perhaps even more than my father was. If I’m to believe what he wrote, it was the few minutes he spent trying to persuade her to hand over the drawing that later made him decide to become an analyst. I’m not sure what really motivated him. There’re hints in the memoir and many things left unstated. To hear my mother tell it, he helped a great many people. She herself had been one of his patients. Dad was what they call a natural, gifted in the art if not the science of psychotherapy. It gave him great pleasure to interpret his patients’ dreams, help them work through the origins of their erotic fantasies, unravel the truth and underlying meanings of their childhood traumas. Yes, he took advantage of some of his female patients. By his own account he bedded a few … including my mom. In those days such misbehavior was not all that uncommon. In the end, despite his many ethical shortcomings, I believe my father did his patients much good. Yet it’s still hard for me to believe that this man, so ruthless in his early life, would later become so empathetic. It’s as if the very act of taking on Foigel’s identity totally changed his character.’
‘Was he a Nazi?’ I ask, fascinated by what she’s telling me.
‘He was a party member, but not a believer. In those days many played that game. He played it well to further his ambitions. He was by his own admission an opportunist. Some might describe him as a psychopath … which, I gather, is how you view your dad.’
‘Compared to yours mine was an amateur. Isn’t it strange your father took on the identity of a Jew?’
‘He was never, far as I can tell, anti-Semitic. I believe the only reason he made that choice was because he thought it would make for a great disguise.’
‘And this all goes back to a single brief meeting with Lou Salomé?’
‘So he claims. According to his memoir their meeting was a turning point.’
‘Chantal knew this?’
‘All of it! She helped me work it through. In a way it became the focus of our lives together – trying to solve the mystery of my father’s past.’
I mention the map folded inside Chantal’s Baedeker Guide bearing highlighted markings defining buildings and routes.
Eva smiles. ‘I remember that map. Chantal liked to mark the places we visited and the routes we walked. We loved retracing the footsteps of the writers, artists, and thinkers who lived there before World War I. We also traveled beyond Vienna. We went to Göttingen, where Lou lived and conducted her analytic practice, saw the very house where my father confronted her. We found the place outside Munich where the blackmailing Father Stempfle was murdered, an act for which my father claims he felt remorse. We visited his old office suite in Berlin, where he practiced as a fake analyst, and the suburban villa where he played an unwitting role in the suicide of a movie star who’d been traumatized by a bizarre encounter with Hitler. The point wasn’t just to retrace his footsteps, but to get a feeling for the various places where he lived and worked. I’m not sure all these walks and visits helped. What did help was making them with Chantal. I’m still haunted by my father’s double life, but, thanks to her, with less anguish than before.’
So many things I’ve puzzled over are now coming clear: Chantal calling her loft ‘The Eagle’s Nest’; the many notes in books about Hitler regarding his sexuality; the speculative notes in the margins of all the biographies of Lou Salomé … and more.
After dinner, we linger over coffee. It’s then that I broach the subject of Chantal’s fixation on the Luzern photograph.
Eva nods. ‘It looks almost innocent today, doesn’t it? Chantal and I spent hours mulling over it. She saw things in it I hadn’t seen, and when she saw how it connected to the Hitler drawing she became obsessed with it. What did it mean? What was the backstory? And what was the backstory behind the backstory, the unconscious forces at work within the three protagonists revealed by their odd mismatched postures and expressions? It’s a fascinating picture, and perhaps indecipherable. Also great fun to speculate about.’
Eva listens closely as I share Dr Maude’s interpretation.
‘I think you have an excellent shrink,’ she says when I’m finished. ‘That’s as good a take on it as I’ve heard. We must remember that this photo was taken long before Freud revealed the role of the unconscious. When they posed in Luzern I doubt any of them fully grasped the undercurrents.’
‘Did you know Chantal set up her own version of it?’
‘She sent it to me. She wrote that she loved making it. When I saw it I took it as an act of homage. By placing herself in Lou’s position in the chariot, I believe she was declaring something important about who she was.’ Eva’s eyes turn moist. ‘I thought she looked exceptionally glamorous. I viewed it as a superb modern-day reinterpretation of the original. I also thought it showed great talent. I believe if she’d lived she’d have been successful as a fine art photographer. Her take on the Luzern picture suggests a direction she could have taken – reinterpreting famous photographs from the past. It hurts me to think of all the wonderful things she might have accomplished.’
As we walk back toward the hotel, I tell her I keep a reproduction of the Luzern photo beside my computer as I write.
At this she stops walking, turns and peers at me intently. ‘In your email you mentioned doing a piece about Chantal. Do I understand you’ve already started?’
I nod. ‘Writing it in the place where Chantal used to live … maybe this’ll strike you as crazy but sometimes I feel her spirit with me when I work. My shrink thinks I may be overly obsessed with Chantal and overly committed to this project. I’ve told her becoming obsessed is the only way I’m able to create.’
‘I don’t think you’re crazy, Tess. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being obsessed.’
As we walk on I tell her honestly I feel I must understand Chantal better than I do. ‘You’ve clarified many things,’ I tell her, ‘but still I find her mysterious. I don’t mean her everyday life, but her feelings, her mind. When I try to get a fix on her I feel like I’m peering into a kaleidoscope. Every time I rotate the shaft I see a different pattern. I have so many questions. What did she really feel when she sessioned with clients? Besides her love relationship with you and her friendships with Lynx and Josh, what other people played significant roles in her life? Who were her other lovers? Were they men, women, or both? Was her reenactment of the Luzern photograph intended solely as a work of art, or did she make it in order to revel in some sort of personal psychodrama? And finally, of course, who killed her and why?’
I pause. ‘There’s something else I’ll be putting into this piece – my obsession with her and with her obsessions. I even imagine a possible opening line: “Let me tell you how I took up residence in a loft previously occupied by a professional dominatrix …”’
‘Oh, I like that!’ Eva says. ‘I’d definitely pay to see that performance!’
I decide then to confide what I know about Scarpaci’s investigation, but without mentioning he and I are now involved.
‘He’s a good detective,’ I assure her, ‘absolutely committed to finding out who killed Chantal. He thinks her killer was probably one of her clients. He has a couple suspects.’
‘I hope he finds out who it was.’ She speaks solemnly. ‘I hate the notion that her killer might get away with it.’
We continue walking in silence back to her hotel. In the lobby Eva turns to me.
‘How long will you be in New York?’
‘Through tomorrow night.’
‘So you’re free in the morning?’ I nod. ‘I have an early appointment. I think it would be interesting for you to tag along. The person I’m going to see is notoriously difficult. Please wait in the bar while I give him a call. I’ll join you in a few minutes and let you know if he agrees.’
The bar’s deserted. I take a seat, order a cognac, sit back, and review the extraordinary hours I’ve spent with Eva and her many startling revelations. She revealed many things I didn’t know, keys to Chantal’s character and obsessions, more than enough, I think, to enhance my play.
A thought hits me then, a possible theme: that the more I find out about Chantal the less I understand her. And that my real subject is the story of my quest.
The play could be staged, I decide, as a labyrinthine quest, through which I, the seeker, would lead the audience. It could start and finish with the Luzern photograph. In between secrets would be revealed and questions would be posed. At the end there would still be mystery, the mystery of a woman’s life. The dramatic conflict would not end with a revelation, but would reside in the experience of the quest.
Eva returns to the bar. She’s smiling.
‘We’re on! Meet me here at nine. I’ve ordered a car. I’ll tell you more tomorrow.’
We’re in a rented limo, heading, Eva informs me, for a house in Woodside, Queens.
‘We’re going to meet a man named Quentin Soames, a person I’d normally avoid. He’s the reason I came to New York. Heard of him?’
I shake my head.
‘He’s a self-styled Freud-debunker. There’re a number of them. He’s the most prominent. Basically they think Freud was a fraud and they’re obsessive about proving it. They scour old hotel registers, look up people whose family members were in treatment with him, pride themselves on digging up little bits of dirt that everyone already knows … such as proof he was having an affair with his sister-in-law or was involved in a youthful homosexual liaison with Wilhelm Fleiss. But Soames, who publishes a blog, is after bigger fish. Lately he’s become obsessed with the notion that there was some sort of contact between Freud and Hitler. He’s not the only one. There’s an absurd story going around that Freud had one of Hitler’s cheesy watercolors hanging in his house. I saw a documentary at a psychoanalytic conference that raised the possibility they may have regularly exchanged greetings when Hitler walked daily down a particular street and Freud walked to an intersecting street to purchase his morning paper.’
‘Sounds like the intersecting routes Chantal drew on the map.’
She nods. ‘We tried to track their walks. We had good reason. If we were to believe my father’s memoir, Hitler somehow met Salomé during the year she was in Vienna studying with Freud and came to know her well enough that he felt comfortable giving her that erotic drawing. It’s hard to think of a more unlikely pair – the famous, elegant fifty-one-year-old intellectual and the scruffy twenty-three-year-old failed watercolorist! Assuming they did meet, where did the young still-unformed Hitler find the nerve to present such a formidable lady with such a drawing? It seems so implausible, and yet years later, according to the memoir, my father is sent to Lou by Bormann to try and buy the drawing back.’
She tells me some of her father’s story: how when Lou refused to admit she knew what he was talking about, he concluded she was lying. And then how after her death he found the drawing hidden beneath the cushions of her analytic couch.
Eva reminds me of what we do know: Lou never spoke publically about the Nazi regime, never uttered a word of disapproval. Even more tantalizing, the day after she died a contingent of elite Gestapo assault troops went to her house, took away all the books and documents, then sealed the place up.
‘What were they looking for? You’ve read the biographies, you know the theories – books by Jewish authors, letters from Nietzsche … or, as my father writes, a certain drawing.’
It starts to rain when we emerge from the Midtown Tunnel, then cut through Long Island City to Northern Boulevard. Our driver maneuvers through a series of drab rain-slick streets into Woodside, a multi-ethnic neighborhood of mosques, synagogues, churches, Irish sports pubs, and Thai, Filipino, and Latin-American restaurants.
Eva shakes her head. ‘I told you all the Hitler scholars scoffed when I showed them the drawing. One of them must have mentioned it to Soames. He contacted me, wrote that there’d long been rumors about such a drawing … rumors he’d traced back to Marie Bonaparte, one of the few women beside Lou admitted to Freud’s inner circle. According to Soames, Bonaparte told several people about what she took to be a throwaway comment by Freud, that years before Lou had shown him a highly charged erotic drawing Hitler had presented to her.’
I’ve read about Marie Bonaparte in several of Chantal’s books. Immensely wealthy, she’d been one of Freud’s patients then became an analyst herself. She helped Freud get to Britain with his family, books, and collections by paying the huge taxes demanded by the Nazis in return for an exit permit.
Eva continues: ‘When Soames contacted me I blew him off. I didn’t like his debunking game. But then a month ago he wrote me again saying he’d acquired copies of letters that confirmed a connection between Hitler, Salomé, and Freud. He said he’d share them with me only if I came to New York and showed him my drawing. That’s why I’m seeing him. Today is show-and-tell.’
We wind our way through residential side streets lined with three-story brick apartment buildings, finally stopping in front of a narrow two-story wooden house fronted by a minuscule fenced-in dog run. The color of the siding is a drab pea-soup green. The interior, I note, is concealed by drawn shades.
As we step out of the limo and open our umbrellas, I hear a dog growling inside. The front door opens just as we reach it. A short balding middle-aged man with a lined face and poorly groomed goatee greets us with a frozen smile.
‘Frau Eva Foigel I presume,’ he says, bowing old-world style as if in respect. ‘Or should I properly address you as “Gräfin”?’ Before Eva can answer, he turns to me. ‘And you, my dear, must be Performance Artist Berenson.’ He bows again, informs us we have nothing to fear from his dog, a large black Doberman watching us intently from the bottom of the stairs. ‘Charley can be quite the menace if he believes an unwelcome stranger has entered the premises. But seeing how warmly I’ve welcomed you, he’ll be sweet as a pussy cat … won’t you, Charley Boy?’
The dog lets out with a grunt, slobbers saliva onto the floor, then turns and retires up the stairs. The house interior, I note, is uncommonly gloomy due to the drawn shades and a bare low-wattage bulb hanging from the front hall ceiling.
My first impression of Soames, after his arch welcome, is that there may be more to fear from him than from his dog. Something about him reeks of single-minded intensity, a harsh narrow world-view.
Glancing at Eva, I observe the withering manner with which she peers at him. Turning to him I find him peering back at her the same way.
‘Not to be rude,’ Soames says, ‘but there are house rules. No photography and no recording devices. Kindly leave your phones on the hall table, then follow me to the study.’
Eva and I exchange a glance, then shrug and place our phones on the table. We follow Soames into a small room off the hall crammed with filing cabinets secured with combination locks. A desk beneath the shaded windows supports two large computer screens. Soames motions us to a triangular arrangement of chairs set up in the center of the room. He waits for us to sit then takes the chair opposite.
‘I know what they say about me,’ he begins. ‘That I’m a crazed old man set upon an obsessive mission. And yet,’ he adds with a tight little grin, ‘there are some who would do most anything to stop me. The Freud Cult People, of course, the true-blue acolytes, who take every word their master wrote as scripture and denounce anyone who holds a contrary view. They mock my research and heap ridicule upon me … for which I care not a damn. Just as Samson brought down the Temple of Dagon, so I shall topple the Myth of Freud.’
He grins at us again. ‘Do you find me grandiose? Such passion over such small stakes! But, dear ladies, make no mistake, the stakes are huge. If a man of Freud’s undeniable intellectual gifts is allowed to perpetrate a fraud under the guise of science then “science” has no meaning.’
Eva peers at him. ‘I read all this on your blog. Seems the Freudians aren’t the only ones attacking you.’
‘Oh, there are others! Mossad has tapped my phone and tried to crack my encryption codes. Why do they bother, you ask? Because they fear that if I can show that Freud did know Hitler, was aware of him years before he came to power and did nothing to stop him, then, in a metaphysical sense, that great Jewish intellectual must bear some guilt for the Shoah. Such a proposition from a “goy scholar” cannot be tolerated.’
Soames laughs. It’s clear he relishes being regarded as crazed.
‘And then,’ he continues, ‘we have the Hitlerians …’
Just as Eva warned me, he raves on for a while about them, ending with: ‘… so, you see, I am under attack from three sides. It is good to have enemies. Keeps one on one’s toes. So … now that we’ve dispensed with all that, shall we proceed to the matter at hand? You brought the drawing, Gräfin?’
Eva meets his eyes. ‘You have the letters?’
‘Ah ha! It’s “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours”. I like you, Gräfin! I operate the same way.’
Again he pronounces ‘Gräfin’ with mock-awe. Glancing at Eva I see she’s seething.
Soames, ignoring her glare, informs us that although many boxes of material in the Freud Archive, housed in the Library of Congress, are embargoed (‘in many cases until the 2030s, and, in one case, 2102 – can you imagine! Whatever can they be so worried about!’) he has, he whispers, gained access to this restricted material. (‘Let’s just say I have a mole. Librarians don’t earn much. I found one in need.’) As a result, he tells us, he’s been able to obtain photocopies of a revealing exchange between Salomé and Freud.
‘Allow me,’ he says, ‘to read aloud in English translation the following pertinent passage: “In regard to the young man whose drawing we analyzed my last day in Vienna, I marvel daily at the mystery of fate, this great reversal of fortune. Twenty years ago he groveled before me. Now all of Germany grovels before him!”’
Eva stares at him. ‘May I see these letters?’
Soames meets her stare. ‘Of course! And may I simultaneously see the drawing?’
I watch closely as Eva hesitates. It’s clear she’s making a decision. If she shows Soames the drawing she’ll have nothing more to bargain with. On the other hand, if she can read the letters she may learn how Lou Salomé viewed her father.
‘You may see the drawing,’ she tells Soames. ‘But you may not copy it. Clear?’
‘I set the same condition regarding the letters. You may read them, but you may not take notes.’
She nods, reaches into her purse, extracts two pages.
‘These are copies front and back. I did not bring the original.’
‘Understood,’ Soames says reaching for her pages with one hand while handing over his photocopies with the other.
He’s the first to react, or perhaps, I should say, to make sounds, joyful murmurings to which he adds a succession of ‘Oh my God!’s followed by a loud ‘Is this not the Holy Grail!’ and an even louder ‘Oh, Lord, I think I’m going to faint!’
But Eva isn’t listening. Her face is transfixed. She turns to me. ‘It fits perfectly,’ she whispers. ‘It confirms Dad was sent to retrieve the drawing. This letter corroborates his memoir.’
Soames doesn’t hear her. He’s too wrapped up in his ecstasy. He’s still muttering greedy little exclamations (‘This is dynamite. It’ll blow the Freud myth sky-high! Freud knew, he’d seen the pathology with his own eyes, and yet never said a word!’), when Eva rises from her chair.
‘This has been interesting,’ she says. ‘Time now for us to leave.’
‘Oh, please, not yet!’ Soames pleads. ‘We must negotiate!’
‘There’s nothing to negotiate,’ she tells him. ‘I always believed my drawing was authentic. Now that that’s confirmed, my business with you is finished.’
He stares at her uncertain how to react. Suddenly she reaches down and grasps the drawing out of his hand.
‘Give it back!’ he cries. ‘I know people who’ll pay you a fortune for it!’
Eva tosses the photocopied letters at him, then regards him with contempt. ‘Lou Salomé wouldn’t sell the drawing to this Fleckstein character she mentions, and I won’t sell it to you.’ She turns to me. ‘Come, Tess. Our driver’s waiting.’
Soames rises too. For the first time since we entered his house he looks rattled.
‘Really, Gräfin,’ he pleads. ‘This is not the time to leave. We’ve only just begun.’
‘Perhaps you’ve only begun, but I’m finished.’
‘You can’t sit on this, Gräfin! It changes everything we know about Hitler and shows up Freud as a hypocrite. It’s a double bombshell. It’s what a scholar lives for!’
‘But you’re not a scholar,’ she tells him calmly. ‘You’re a zealot.’
In the car, driving back to Manhattan, Eva shows me she kept back a page from Soames’s photocopied Salomé–Freud letters. She translates the passage that set her off:
‘Lou wrote: “… do you remember my describing the visit of a rather oily young man named Fleckstein who claimed he was prepared to offer me an enormous sum in return for the drawing just mentioned? Now I learn that Fleckstein has been making regular inquiries about my health. They are, you see, eagerly awaiting my death, after which I believe they intend to descend upon my little fortress here to retrieve that precious item! I do not believe that they will find it as I have secreted it well.”’
She looks at me. ‘Do you understand what this means to me, Tess? It totally validates Dad’s account, that in the end, miraculously, he did find the drawing hidden inside her couch!’
She shakes her head. ‘Soames is a scary little man, unbalanced and also foolish. He raves about a double bombshell but he misses the significance of what he saw. He has no idea that Hitler’s drawing was based on the Luzern photograph. That explains why Hitler gave it to Lou and why she kept it. Soames is so blinded by his delusions he couldn’t see that, and even if he could, he wouldn’t comprehend it.’
Back at the hotel, saying goodbye, Eva embraces me, then stands back and fixes me with her blue-flecked eyes.
‘I can see how strongly you feel about your project, Tess. For that reason alone I encourage you. And if you complete it and mount a production, I’d certainly love to see it. But in the end it’s your project, your idea, your theme. You must do it your own way.’
Before I can respond, she presents me with the photocopy of Hitler’s drawing, the one she snatched out of Soames’s hand. ‘A parting gift,’ she says softly. ‘Something to think about, maybe even use in your play. As for understanding Chantal, I suggest you think of her as a healer. There was something she’d often say, something that may strike you as self-serving or even corny, but which she meant with all her heart. “In everything I do,” she’d say, “in my small way I want to help make the world a better place.” That, I think, makes her an exceptional person worthy of your best effort.’
On the red-eye back to San Francisco, I think over the extraordinary hours I spent with Eva and our bizarre visit to see Quentin Soames. I learned many things from her, but one in particular stands out – that the reason Chantal panicked and suddenly left the Buckley had something to do with the Luzern photograph.
In the middle of the flight, somewhere over the Great Plains, I stare out the airplane window. It’s night. I can make out occasional lights on the prairie far below. I’m filled with excitement for I now see a way to fit the many puzzle pieces together. The Luzern photograph is what binds them. And now I also know my theme: that in the end we are all unknowable.