A Curable Romantic Read Online Free Page B

but with actual volts of electricity, electrotherapy being in those days very much in medical vogue. What no one knew, indeed what no one could possibly have known, was that having dispensed with galvanism and faradism in favor of hypnosis, free association, and a rudimentary form of the now-famous talking cure, Dr. Freud was preparing to shock an even more nervous clientele: the world at large!
    (Or so the Freudians would have us believe.)
    I HEARD VOICES from the foyer: the hearty, booming voices of men who share an affectionate regard for one another. Answering the door himself, Dr. Freud had taken their scarves and their winter cloaks and was carrying them bundled in his arms. With his cigar clenched between his teeth, he was urging the men into the sitting room.
    “Ah, mais oui, notre docteur Königstein a disparu!” the first fellow said upon seeing me there. “Yes, he mentioned something about that, didn’t he?” the second murmured before noticing me as well. I felt as though I were a riddle that suddenly needed solving. The two men stood frozen before me, one slightly ahead of the other, my unexpected presence forcing them to reconsider the informality of their poses. Though their backs stiffened, their faces retained their original gay expressions, and they resembled two schoolboys caught out in a prank.
    “Oskar Rie,” the first one finally said, his expression becoming more formal, his posture less so.
    “Jakob Sammelsohn,” I answered with a bow.
    “And this, I’m afraid, is my brother-in-law.”
    “Rosenberg,” Dr. Rosenberg said, reaching around Dr. Rie. Leaning his barreled chest forward, he awkwardly extended his hand.
    “Dr. Sammelsohn and I met the other evening at the theater,” Dr. Freud said, adjusting the green ceramic stove that stood in a corner of the room.
    “Ah, the theater!” Dr. Rosenberg boomed.
    “And he graciously allowed me to coerce him into sitting in for Königstein.”
    “Good man.”
    “A dreary play, wasn’t it?” asked Dr. Rie.
    Dr. Freud stood, wiping soot from his hands. “Did you think so?”
    “I didn’t see you there,” Dr. Rosenberg said.
    “Nor I you,” Dr. Freud said.
    “That’s because I wasn’t ,” Dr. Rosenberg barked.
    (I shall let this remark stand as an example of Dr. Rosenberg’s notorious wit.)
    “Hennessy?” Dr. Freud said.
    “Make it two.”
    “And little Königstein?”
    “Ludwig, please!” Dr. Rie clucked his tongue.
    “Whatever everyone else is drinking,” I said.
    “Good, very good,” Dr. Freud said. “I’ll bring the bottle down.”
    THEY WERE BROTHERS-IN-LAW , Rosenberg and Rie, although whose sister had married whom, I can no longer recall. Perhaps they’d married women who were themselves sisters. There was nothing remarkable in that. Dr. Freud’s sister had married his wife’s brother, which made Dr. Freud’s wife his sister-in-law, and Dr. Freud his own brother-in-law, I suppose. As for Rosenberg and Rie, their close family ties and the fact that both men were pediatricians — Rie cared for Freud’s own growing brood — had turned them into affectionate rivals whom Dr. Freud compared to Inspector Bräsig and his friend Karl, the one quick-witted, the other deliberate and thorough.
    Dr. Freud’s consulting rooms were in the downstairs apartment, and he led us there now, carrying the bottle of brandy on a silver tray. Inside,we lifted our glasses and drank, without irony, to the emperor, and then to Frau Freud and her children.
    By the time we sank into the red velvet cushions of our chairs, I was pleasantly drunk.
    Dr. Freud reached behind him for a letter box, which he placed in the center of the table. Wrapping his knuckles against its lid, he intoned the word “Ispaklaria!” When the box was opened, I half-expected to see a djinn rising from its velvety interior. Instead, Dr. Freud removed a well-creased deck of Tarot cards. “Don’t worry, Dr. Sammelsohn,” he murmured, shuffling, “I shan’t be