Dreaming for Freud Read Online Free

along now, will you. We are already late.” But she takes her time on the stairs, beating out a rhythm on the shiny banister with her slim wrist:
one-two-three, one-two-three
. She drags her right leg. She is not certain whether she is exaggerating the limp or whether she really cannot walk properly. She feels like the little mermaid in Grimm’s fairy story who lost her tail and whose every step is agony. Her stomach hurts. Her legs ache, particularly the right one. Her body is full of pain. She would do almost anything to be rid of the constant pain. Is it possible this doctor could help her? She watches the tips of her black lace-up boots peeping out from beneath the hem of her white dress. She clutches her reticule.
    She has taken the trouble to dress up for this doctor, though she has no desire to see him again. When she saw him briefly the first time, it was just before the dreadful visit to the lake (
she will not think about that!
) when she was fifteen. She has a vague memory of a rather small man, not as tall as her father and quite thin, with intense, dark eyes, blue-black hair, a beard, and a mustache. She remembers him saying something about calling
un
chat un chat
,
which he said in French, which she has learned with her French fräulein but which she had considered, even at fifteen, to belie the message.
    It has just stopped raining, and the street is wet. She hangs back, dragging her right leg, taking her time, then getting into the carriage, where she sits as far as possible from her father, her gaze averted, looking out the window, in sullen silence.
    The sky is dark and the cobblestones wet and slippery as the carriage moves forward, going downhill toward the Danube Canal. The doctor’s office is just around the corner and only a few minutes from their house on Lichtensteinstrasse, but she cannot walk even that far without terrible pain. She has lost her voice again, too, and in the damp air, she is afraid she may have an attack of coughing, which makes her lose her breath and terrifies her. There is nothing more terrifying than not being able to breathe. She is afraid she will die asphyxiated, gasping for breath on the street where she was born. If she has consented to see this doctor, it is because she does not want to die in that way. She concentrates on her breathing. When she swallows her throat feels tight and sore. The whole world looks dark to her, seen through a fog of pain. After a while nothing else matters much except for the pain. She wonders if life is worth living like this.
    Her father is sitting next to her in the shadows and watching her with his soft, deep blue, caressing gaze. He still cannot see out of his left eye, which has a slightly milky appearance. The miraculous thing is that, on the point of losing his sight in his good eye, he regained his sight in the eye that was blind. She thinks of the expression “
in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king
.” He has clotted, dark lashes. There is something innocent about his gaze, though she knows he is not innocent at all.
Not at all.
    He goes on talking about the doctor. “You’ll find out, if you give him a chance, that he is a most unusual man. It takes some time to get used to him. He’s a little shy and stiff. Not one of those superficial charmers who seduce you with a glance,” he says, raising his eyebrows and glancing at her laughingly. “But I’m sure you will come to appreciate his brilliance, my dear. He has written many learned books and recently one about dreams, which you may read one day, perhaps, when you are a little older. He sees things so clearly and speaks so well, so persuasively. You must try to listen to what he has to say and follow his advice.” He reaches across the carriage for her hand, squeezes her fingers. She disengages her gloved hand and gives him as sullen a look as she dares. She would like to say, “fat lot of good talking does!
”
She can imagine the lies he must already have