Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [137]
That night, after Freud had retired and Colette and Luc were installed in one of the children’s old bedrooms and the apartment fell silent, Younger smoked a cigarette on the veranda. He had felt claustrophobic inside; on the little balcony overlooking the courtyard, he felt claustrophobic outside as well. A door opened within; Younger imagined it might be Colette, coming to join him.
“No—it’s only me,” said Freud’s voice behind him. The older man stepped out onto the veranda. “So what do you think of my death instinct?”
“I’m for it,” said Younger.
Freud smiled. “You’re still at war, my boy. You never demobilized. Ten years ago, I wouldn’t have foreseen you as the instinctual kind. You were more—repressed.”
“I read somewhere that repression is unhealthy. A world-famous psychologist has proven it.”
“Whose ideas you don’t accept.”
“Ten years ago,” said Younger, reflecting, “I saw your ideas as moral anarchy. Exploding all propriety. But you were right. I guess I don’t believe in morality anymore.”
“Ah yes, that’s what my critics say: Freud the libertine, Freud the amoral.” He inhaled the night air—a deep breath of age and judgment. “It’s true, I’m no believer in Sunday school morality. Love thy neighbor as thyself is an absurd principle: quite impossible, unless one has a very unusual neighbor. But when it comes to a sense of justice, I believe I can measure myself with the best men I’ve known. All my life I’ve tried to be honorable—not to harm, not to take advantage—even though I know perfectly well that by doing so I’ve made myself an anvil for others’ brutality, their disloyalty, their ambition.”
“Why then?” asked Younger. “Why do you do it?”
“I could give you a plausible psychological explanation,” said Freud. “But the truth is I have no idea. Why I—and for that matter my children—have to be thoroughly decent human beings is beyond my comprehension. It is merely a fact. An anchor.”
There was a slight pause before Younger said: “You think I need an anchor?”
“No. You have one already.”
“You mean a sense of justice?”
“I meant love,” said Freud. “Which is why this bombing of yours worries me.”
“The Wall Street bombing?”
“Yes. It may be a harbinger of something new. Not its violence—that’s to be expected. I was reading the other day a description of one of those happy quarters of the earth where primitive societies flourish in peace and contentment, knowing no aggression. I didn’t believe a word of it. Where there are men, there will be violence. Fortunately, the death instinct almost never operates alone. Our two instincts are nearly always obliged to work together—which gives sexuality its violent character, but also tempers the death drive. That’s what makes your bombing so troubling.”
“Because it was unalloyed?”
“Exactly,” said Freud. “The death instinct unbound. Freed from the life instincts, freed from the ideals by which the ego assesses its actions—conscience. Perhaps the war has unleashed it, or perhaps an ideology. Men have always worshipped death. There are death gods in every ancient religion. Goddesses as well, some of them quite beautiful, like Atropos with her shears, cutting life’s threads—which is further evidence, by the way, of man’s attraction to death. They haven’t caught the perpetrators, have they?”
“Of the bombing?” asked Younger. “Not yet.”
“Perhaps because they’re dead.”
It took Younger a moment before he understood: “You think they killed themselves in the blast—deliberately.”
“Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t,” said Freud. “Maybe they’ll give others the idea. But yes, that’s what worries me.”
Early the next morning, while Freud was out for his daily constitutional, Oktavian Kinsky called. “I’ve come to offer you my services, Mademoiselle,” he said to Colette in the Freuds’ sitting room. “I heard what happened outside the Hotel Bristol last night. I thought I might find you here, and I also thought you might want discreet transportation to the railway station.”
“You’re