Dreaming for Freud Read Online Free Page B

windows, going past Reitmayer and Ettlinger and the jeweler to the court, Schafransky. Since his father’s death, his own position is less precarious financially as he is no longer obliged to support him as well. Since his death he has even been able to begin his collection of antiquities. He looks with some satisfaction at the Florentine copy of Michelangelo’s
Dying Slave
, in his swooning stance.
    He feels quite isolated within the world of medicine, even ridiculed. He remains unrecognized, passed over again and again for the professorship that would bring prestige and, above all, financial security, a position that has been accorded to people, usually Gentiles, much younger and much less accomplished than he, a position that surely he deserves. He has such a thirst for knowledge, such determination to find it, such clarity of mind, such ability to seize upon the essential and to render it understandable in crystalline prose. How his brain teems! He has missed so many opportunities for fame and advancement.
    Above all he needs to document his theories with facts drawn from the lives of his patients. His critics have accused him of not giving verifiable examples to back up his theories. Perhaps this patient, if she ever arrives, will provide some.
    He has left the door to his consulting room open and has become so engrossed in his thoughts that at first he does not notice the real girl standing in the doorway, trembling in her white dress like the sail of a boat in the wind. She looks younger than her age, this slip of a girl, dark haired, dewy eyed, and blooming with youth: her pale cheeks and forehead touched with a faint tinge of pink. She has a luminosity about her and despite her reluctance to enter, an unusual assurance in her stance and mien. She hesitates in his doorway in her delicate organdy dress with the green silk sash that accentuates her slender waist, an expensive dress, he thinks with a little pang of envy, the sort he cannot buy for his own three girls.
    The girl stands there before him, ravishing in all her youthful splendor, her dark thick hair long on her shoulders, her broad gold bracelets glinting on her wrist.
    Increasingly, his patients are from the small circle of wealthy Jewish bourgeoisie. He thinks of Anna von L., whom he saw sometimes twice a day, his
prima donna, as he called her,
from the wealthy Ephrussi family, who was brought to him because no one knew what to do with her, a woman of sophistication who taught him a lot in the end. This one’s dress he is certain his wife would covet, though after six children in almost as many years, she no longer has as fine a waist to show it off.
    The tall, handsome father stands behind the daughter like a dark shadow cast on the bright waters, his hand possessively on her white shoulder. “I leave you in very good hands, my dear,” the father says in a mellifluous tone, smiling down at his daughter, and across the room at him with complicity. He does not smile back, just bows his head briefly in acknowledgment and waits for the father to leave, but the man lingers, leaning elegantly against the lintel. He wonders why he does not have the good grace to go and leave the daughter with him. Instead, he stands there smiling with all the assurance of the successful businessman he is, in his fine gray gloves, his dark suit, silk hat in hand.
    He is glad he is wearing his best pinstriped trousers, a little bow tie, a new corduroy jacket with the hand stitching that he feels gives him a certain presence. Even decent clothes were a problem for him for many years. He had not known how to acquire all the necessary absurd accoutrements for his examinations: the top hat, etc., when he was obliged to present himself in formal dress.
    He remembers how he kept an account, recording all his expenses, the money he spent on the two meals a day he felt he could afford—his books, and his cigars, his only extravagance for years. Sometimes, he could not afford to take a