Ed McBain - Long Time No See

“Yes,” Carella said, and related the dream to him:

It is shortly before Christmas.

Jimmys mother and father are decorating a Christmas tree. Jimmy and four other boys are sitting on the living-room floor, watching. Jimmy's father tells the boys they must help him decorate the tree. The boys refuse. Jimmy's mother says they don’t have to help if theyre tired. Christmas ornaments begin falling from the tree, crashing to the floor, making loud noises that startle Jimmys father. He loses his balance on the ladder and falls to the floor, landing on the shards of the broken Christmas tree ornaments and accidentally cutting himself. The carpet is green, his blood seeps into it. He bleeds to death on the carpet. Jimmys mother is crying. She lifts her skirt to reveal a penis.

“Mm,” Leider said.

“That’s the dream,” Carella said.

“Mm,” Leider said again.

“The dream was analyzed by a Major Ralph Lemarre...”

“An Army doctor?” Leider asked.

“Yes, a psychiatrist.”

“A psychiatrist, mm,” Leider said.

“And he seemed to think it was related to a gang rape that had taken place some years back?”

“Some years back from when?”

“From when he was treating the patient.”

“When was he treating the patient?”

“Ten years ago.”

“Ten years ago, mm. And the rape took place how many years before that?”

“Well, that’s just it,” Carella said. “The rape didn't take place. We talked to the girl who was supposed to have been the victim, and it never happened.”

“Perhaps she was lying. Many rape victims—”

“No, she was telling the truth.”

“How do you know?”

“Because she told us what did happen, and it was a sex experience, but not a rape.”

“What is it that happened?” Leider asked.

Carella told him all about Roxanne and Jimmy being alone down there in the basement on a rainy day. The intercourse against the basement post. Thunder and lightning outside. The fear of discovery and punishment.

“What I’m asking,” Carella said, “is whether it’s possible— Look, I don’t know much about how this works. I’m trying to find out whether their making love in the basement that day could’ve become something different in Jimmy’s mind, could’ve become a whole big rape scene in his mind, and could’ve eventually caused nightmares. That’s what I want to know.”

“You say there was fear of punishment involved?”

“Yes. If the leader of the gang had found out, they both would’ve been punished.”

“Mm,” Leider said.

“What do you think?” Carella said.

“Well, there’s certainly a great deal of sexual symbolism in the dream, no question about that,” Leider said. “A tree is a dream symbol for male genitalia, and any sharp weapon is a dream symbol for the penis. The broken Christmas tree ornaments — commonly called Christmas balls — would seem another reference to male genitalia. And the dream figure cutting himself would seem to symbolize penetration of the body — sexual intercourse.”

“Then the dream could have—”

“And the memory,” Leider continued, “which is in itself a sort of dream, since you tell me it never really happened, substantiates the dream material by utilizing different sexual symbolism to restate essentially the same thing. Freud used as symbols of sexual intercourse such rhythmical activities as dancing, riding and climbing. In the false memory, the gang leader is first depicted as dancing with his girl friend, isn’t that what you said?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“And you said the girl is carried later to a weed-covered lot...”

“Yes...”

“Well, in dreams of both sexes, pubic hair is represented as woods or bushes, so I guess by extension we can include weeds. In the dream, as I recall, the weeds have become a green carpet. The father figure bleeds to death on a green carpet, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Again we can refer back to the broken Christmas tree ornaments. A vase, or a flowerpot, or any such vessel — which a round Christmas tree ornament somewhat resembles — is a symbol for the female genitals, and the breaking might symbolize virginity and the bleeding normally associated with first intercourse. Was the girl a virgin, would you know?”

“I don’t know. I would doubt it,” Carella said.

“Mm,” Leider said, and took off his glasses and wiped at the lenses. His eyes were a pale blue behind them; he looked suddenly weary, and much, much older. He put the glasses on again. His magnified eyes leaped into the room. “And of course we’ve got the violence — violent experiences in dreams can usually be interpreted as representations of sexual intercourse.”

“But I thought dreams were designed to mask something,” Carella said. “To disguise it.”

“To hide it from the censor of the conscious mind, yes,” Leider said. “If your outlook is strictly Freudian, you’re bound to believe, quote, that what instigates dreams are actively evil and extravagantly sexual wishes, which have made the censorship and distortion of dreams necessary, unquote.”

“Mm,” Carella said.

“Mm,” Leider said. “But of course, that’s very early Freud, and we’ve come a long way in the interpretation of dreams since then. In this case, where the patient was having recurring nightmares, I would guess he was trying to master the original trauma... to desensitize it, if you will, by exploring it again and again. That’s what the dream-work would seem to indicate to me.”

“ What trauma?” Carella asked.

“I don’t know what trauma,” Leider said. “You know his history, you tell me.”

“He was blinded in the war,” Carella said. “I guess that could...”

“That would most certainly be traumatic,” Leider said.

“But... no,” Carella said, “because... Now, wait a minute. When Jimmy was telling Lemarre about the rape, he said God had punished him instead of the other boys. He told Lemarre the rape had everything to do with his getting blinded.”

“But there was no rape,” Leider said. “There was the trauma instead.”

“Right, and the trauma couldn't have been him getting blinded, because he later blamed the blindness on whatever it was happened.”

“So what was it that happened?” Leider asked.

“I don’t know,” Carella said.

“When was he wounded?”

“December the fourteenth.”

“Had he been in any action before then?”

“Yes, they’d been fighting since the beginning of the month...”

You'd been fighting with another gang all that month —

Heavy fighting, man.

And now you were resting.

Yeah, and Lloyd told us to go on up.

“What is it?” Leider asked.

“Is it possible that...?”

“Is what possible?”

“I don’t know,” Carella said. “Let me... let me just put this together, okay?”

“Take your time.”

His mouth was suddenly dry. He wet his lips with his tongue, and nodded, and tried to remember everything he’d read in Lemarre’s report up there at the hospital while he himself was repressing all sorts of sexual desire for Janet, tried to remember the report in detail, and tried to remember everything Danny Cortez had told him on the phone yesterday.

We'd all been through heavy fighting that whole month. Alpha was down where the lieutenant had set up a command post near some bamboo at the bottom of the hill... Bravo was going up the hill where the enemy was dug in. The lieutenant went back down to see where the hell Alpha was... That's when the mortar attack started. Bastards had zeroed in on the bamboo and were pounding the shit out of it.