Espresso Tales - Alexander Hanchett Smith [101]
“I take it from your silence that it’s true,” said Miss Harmony, rising to her feet. “Now, Bertie, I’m very, very disappointed in you. It’s a terrible thing to say to somebody that you hope they get lockjaw. You know that, don’t you?”
“What if you got lockjaw while you were kissing somebody?”
interjected Tofu. “Would you get stuck to their lips?”
Everybody laughed at this, and Tofu smirked with pleasure.
“That’s not at all funny, Tofu, Liebling,” said Miss Harmony.
“Then why did everybody laugh?” asked Tofu.
64. Bertie’s Invitation Is Considered
Irene Pollock was late in collecting Bertie from school that afternoon. She had been preparing for her Melanie Klein Reading Group, which would be meeting that evening, and she had become absorbed in a particularly fascinating account of the Kleinian attitude to the survival of the primitive. Irene was clear where she stood on this point: there was no doubt in her mind but that our primitive impulses remain with us throughout our life and that their influence cannot be overestimated. This view of human nature, as being envious and tormented, was in Irene’s view obviously borne out by the inner psychic drama which we Bertie’s Invitation Is Considered
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all experience if only we stop to think about it. Irene thought that it was quite clear that we are all confronted by primitive urges – even in Edinburgh – and these primitive urges and fears make for a turbulent inner life, marked by all sorts of destructive phantasies). The topic for discussion at the reading group that evening was a problematic choice, suggested by one of the more reticent members of the group. Indeed, this member was probably a borderline-Kleinian, given her sympathy for the approach of Anna Freud, and Irene wondered whether this person might not be happier out of the reading group altogether. Her ambivalence, she felt, was eloquently demonstrated by the topic she had suggested for discussion: Was Melanie Klein a nice person?
When Irene had first seen this topic she had expressed immediate doubt. What a naive question! Did she expect a genius of Melanie Klein’s stamp to be a simpering optimist? Did she expect benignity rather than creative turbulence?
Of course she knew what sort of things would be said. She knew that somebody was bound to point to the facts of Melanie Klein’s life, which were hardly edifying (to the bourgeois optimist). Somebody would point out that Melanie Klein started out life in a dysfunctional family and that from this inauspicious start everything went in a fairly negative direction. Indeed, she suffered that most serious of setbacks for those who took their inspiration from Vienna: her own analyst died. And then, when it came time for Melanie herself to die, her daughter, Melitta, unreconciled to her mother because of differences of psychoanalytical interpretation between them, gave a lecture on the day of her mother’s funeral and chose to wear a flamboyant pair of red boots for the occasion!
All of this would come out, of course, but Irene thought this was not the point. The real point was this: Melanie Klein was not a nice person because nobody’s nice. That was the very essence of the Kleinian view. Whatever exterior was presented to the world, underneath that we are all profoundly unpleasant, precisely because we are tormented by Kleinian urges. It was these complex thoughts that were in the forefront of 212 Bertie’s Invitation Is Considered
Irene’s mind when she collected Bertie that afternoon and brought him back to Scotland Street. Bertie seemed silent on the 23 bus as they made their way home, and this silence continued as they walked back along Cumberland Street and round the corner into Drummond Place. Irene, however, still busy thinking about Kleinian matters, did not notice this and only became aware of the fact that something was on Bertie’s mind when he came to her in her study and presented her with the crumpled piece of card that he had extracted from the pocket of his dungarees.
“What’s this, Bertie?