Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [115]
“How did you know that?”
“Would you say she is self-destructive?” asked Freud.
“Not at all.”
“Really? My impression was that you had a taste for such women.”
“I make exceptions,” said Younger.
“She’s not attracted to abusive men?”
“If you mean me, her attraction to abusive men is regrettably weak.”
“I don’t mean you,” said Freud.
“Her fiancé—Gruber?”
“The man is a convicted criminal.”
Younger looked out the window. “She only remembers a sweet, injured, devout soldier she knew in a hospital.”
“A maternal affection? Not likely.” Freud stirred his coffee. A scowl came to his already deeply furrowed brow. “Was I too severe with her last night?”
“She can take it. Why were you severe?”
Freud removed his glasses and wiped them clean with a handkerchief, lingering on each lens. “She reminds me of my Sophie, my second-to-youngest,” he said. “Beautiful, headstrong. Sophie became engaged at the age of nineteen. To a thirty-year-old photographer. It was as if she couldn’t get out of the house fast enough. I believe I was taking out on Miss Rousseau an anger I harbor against Sophie for leaving us so soon.”
“Sophie—she’s the one who lives in Germany?”
“She’s the one who is dead.”
Freud’s spoon tapped the rim of his glass, repeatedly, unevenly.
“I didn’t know,” said Younger.
“It happened last January. The flu. She was living in Berlin, she and her two little boys and her husband, whom I never treated as well as I should have. When we received word she was ill, there were no trains running—not even for an emergency. The next we heard, she was gone.” He took a deep breath. “After that, fundamentally everything lost its meaning for me. To an unbeliever like myself, there can be no rationalizations in such circumstances. No justifications. Only mute submission. Blunt necessity. For several months, my own children—my other children—and their children—” Freud stopped, gathering himself—“I could no longer bear the sight of them.”
Outside, the Ring was in its full daytime bloom. Cars and streetcars rolled by. A charming carriage trotted past. A governess strolled with a perambulator.
“Well, the intention that man be happy was never part of his creation,” said Freud. “You will say it’s superstition, but I have a foreboding about Miss Rousseau. What is her goal in coming to Vienna?”
“You guessed it last night. This Gruber fellow was just released from prison.”
“Come—you can’t have forgotten all your psychology. What is her object?”
“To see if he still loves her, I suppose. Or perhaps if she still loves him. She made a promise. She feels she has to keep it.”
“Nonsense. I don’t trust her motivation. Neither should you. Do you know what specifically her soldier was imprisoned for?”
“No.”
“I do. She told me herself—in tears, the day after you left Vienna last year. He beat up an old man. So at least the police say. I advised her that a ruffian who marches with the Anti-Semitic League was not a fit husband for her. I counseled her not to see him again. I thought she took my advice.”
“Evidently she reconsidered,” said Younger.
“There is a condition into which many young women fall. They attach themselves to violent men. They forgive any mistreatment. They think it love; it isn’t. What they really want is to be punished for their sins, real and imagined—or for someone else’s. There’s something wrong with Miss Rousseau’s attachment to this Gruber. I sense it. My advice to you is not to let her out of your sight. She’s throwing herself into the arms of a criminal.”
“Maybe he’ll beat her, and she’ll come to her senses.”
Freud raised an eyebrow. Younger wondered if his own habit of doing so—raising a single brow—was copied from Freud. “You feel,” said Freud, “she’s made her bed with this man, and you’re inclined to let her sleep in it?”
“I don’t control where Miss Rousseau sleeps.”
“You wish to see her punished—for choosing another man. You retaliate by letting her go.”
“Letting her go? I