Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [155]
FREUD
“Mon dieu,” said Colette excitedly. “Open the next one.”
Younger did so:
13 NOV. 1920
BOY HAS RECURRENT DREAM. HE IS BACK IN BEDROOM OF HOUSE WHERE BORN.
IT IS MIDDLE OF NIGHT. GOES TO A WINDOW. SEES WOLVES LURKING IN TREE
WATCHING HIM. DREAM IS REVERSAL OF LATENT CONTENT. BOY DREAMS OF
BEING LOOKED AT BECAUSE HE SAW SOMETHING HE WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO SEE.
UNDOUBTEDLY FATHER INVOLVED, BUT ALMOST CERTAINLY ALSO SISTER.
FREUD
Colette was perplexed. “Why am I involved?” she asked. “There’s one more,” said Younger. He read it:
17 NOV. 1920
SETBACK. LUC HAS STOPPED SPEAKING. WILL NOT COMMUNICATE WITH ANYONE NOT IN WHISPER NOT IN WRITING NOT EVEN BY GESTURE. PLEASE URGE MISS ROUSSEAU NOT TO BE ALARMED. TEMPORARY REGRESSION NOT UNCOMMON IN ANALYSIS. POSSIBLY POSITIVE SIGN.
FREUD
“How could it be a positive sign?” asked Colette.
“If it was brought on by their getting close to the source of the problem.”
“What does that mean?”
Younger ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t believe in psychoanalysis. I told you.”
“But if you did believe, what would it mean?”
“The way Freud would see it is this,” he said. “Luc has a memory from early childhood—from a time when he saw something forbidden or wished for something so wrong he had to suppress all consciousness of it. This memory doesn’t like to stay hidden; it tries to escape the repression, to force its way into consciousness. That’s what produces a patient’s symptoms.”
“What don’t you believe?” she asked.
“I don’t believe in the wishes that Freud attributes to children. And I don’t believe in repressed childhood memories coming to light years later. It’s like a—like a too-neatly-tied-up ending in a novel.”
Colette considered for a moment—and announced that she trusted Dr. Freud.
Newspapermen so crowded the office of Senator Albert Fall that Littlemore was barely able to squeeze in. The reporters’ primary question was whether the Senator could confirm that United States troops were deploying to the Mexican border.
“That’s right, gentlemen,” said Fall. “The Second Division is on its way.”
“What are their orders, Mr. Senator?”
“Can’t say,” answered Fall. “But let’s not get all out of joint. I’m heading to Mexico myself. Going to attend Señor Obregón’s inauguration. I’m sure all parties would like to see our disputes resolved peacefully.”
“What will you tell General Obregón, Mr. Senator?”
“I’ll tell him to keep his hands off our oil. And that having America as your friend is a whole lot smarter than having us as your enemy.”
After the conference, Littlemore voiced surprise at Senator Fall’s planned visit to Mexico City. “Don’t you think it might be dangerous, Mr. Fall?”
“I’d imagine so,” replied the Senator. “For somebody.”
On the express to New York, Littlemore read a stack of afternoon newspapers, which, since he knew more than the journalists did, filled him with a sense of unreality but also of foreboding, as if he had a clairvoyant’s foreknowledge of an impending catastrophe that could not be averted. In Washington, the papers reported, Roberto Pesqueira, confidential agent of the Mexican Embassy, had to be forcibly restrained at a meeting of American businessmen after insisting on his country’s right to its own natural resources. In Los Angeles, Mexicans were purchasing munitions in dangerously large quantities. In Mexico itself, American citizens had begun fleeing the country.
Littlemore next removed from his briefcase the architectural plans for the Assay Office in lower Manhattan. The new vaults of the Assay Building were closer to impregnable than any bank he’d ever seen. They were eighty-five feet belowground, reinforced with three separate layers of steel and concrete, accessible only by a single door through a four-foot-wide tunnel, and surrounded by alarm systems, weapons caches, even food and water supplies in case of siege. The plans had been approved in 1917 by then-Secretary of the Treasury William G.