Jed Rubenfeld - The Interpretation of Murder

'Good Lord, Younger,' said Brill when I greeted them. 'You look terrible. What have you been doing all night?'

'Just trying to keep my head above water, really,' I said.

'Abraham,' Rose chided her husband, 'he is simply wearing another man's suit.'

'Rose is here,' Brill said to me, 'to tell everyone what a coward I am.'

'No,' replied Rose firmly, 'I am here to tell Dr Freud that he and Abraham must go forward with the publication of Dr Freud's book. The cowards are the ones leaving you those dreadful messages. Abraham has told me all about it, Dr Younger, and we are not going to be intimidated. Imagine burning a book in this country. Don't they know we have freedom of the press?'

'They got into our apartment, Rosie,' said Brill. 'They buried it in ash.'

'And you want to go hide in a mouse hole?' she answered.

'I told you,' Brill said to me, raising his eyebrows helplessly.

'Well, I don't. And I won't have you hiding behind my skirts either, as if I'm the one you're protecting. Dr Younger, you must help me. Tell Dr Freud it will be an insult to me if concern over my safety should in any way delay his book. This is America. What did those young men die for at Gettysburg?'

'To ensure that all slavery would be wage slavery?' asked Brill.

'Be quiet' was Rose's reply. 'Abraham has poured his heart into that book. It has given meaning to his life. We are not rich, but we have two things in this country that are worth more than anything else: dignity and freedom. What is left if we give in to such people?'

'Now she is running for office,' commented Brill, causing Rose to mount an assault on his shoulder with her handbag. 'But you see why I married her.'

'I am serious,' Rose continued, rearranging her hat. 'Freud's book must be published. I am not leaving this hotel until I tell him so myself.'

I commended Rose's bravery, whereupon Brill rebuked me, declaring that the greatest risk I had ever taken with my own safety was dancing all night with overeager debutantes. I said he was probably right and asked after Freud. Apparently he had not come down at all this morning. According to Ferenczi, who had knocked at his door, he was 'undigested.' Moreover, Ferenczi added in a whisper, there had been a tremendous row between Freud and Jung last night.

'There's going to be a worse one when Freud sees what Hall sent Younger this morning,' said Brill, handing me the letter he had procured from the clerk.

'You have not actually opened my correspondence, Brill?' I asked.

'Isn't he awful?' said Rose, referring to her husband. 'He did it without telling us. I would never have let him.'

'It was from Hall, for God's sake,' Brill protested. 'Younger had vanished. If Hall intends to cancel Freud's lectures, don't you think we ought to know?'

'Impossible,' I declared.

'Virtually certain,' Brill replied. 'See for yourself.'

The envelope was oversized. Inside was a folded-up piece of vellum. When I straightened it out, I was looking at a foil-page, seven-column article in newspaper type under the banner headline, 'AMERICA FACING ITS MOST TRAGIC MOMENT ' — DR CARL JUNG. Below was a full-length photograph of a dignified, bespectacled Jung, referred to as 'the famous Swiss psychiatrist.' The odd thing was that the paper was too thick and of too high a quality for newsprint. More puzzlingly, the date shown at the top was Sunday, September 5, two days hence.

'It is the galley proof of an article that will appear in this Sunday's Times,' said Brill. 'Read Hall's note.'

Suppressing my irritation, I followed this instruction. Hall's letter read as follows:

My Dear Younger,

I received the enclosed today from the family that has offered the University so handsome a donation. I am told it is a page from the New York Times, forthcoming Sunday. You will see what it says. The family was kind enough to give me advance notice so that I might take action now, rather than after the taint of scandal has become inevitable. Please assure Dr Freud I have no wish to cancel his lectures, to which I have looked forward so keenly, but surely it would not serve his interests, or ours, if his presence here drew a certain kind of attention. Naturally I myself give no credence to innuendo, but I am obliged to consider what others may think. It is my fervent hope that this supposed newspaper article is not genuine and that our vigentennial will proceed unclouded and undisrupted.

Yours, etc. etc.

The letter, to my dismay, confirmed Brill's view: Hall was on the verge of canceling Freud's lectures. Who was orchestrating this campaign against him? And what did Jung have to do with it?

'Frankly,' said Brill, snatching the newspaper article out of my hands, 'I don't know who comes off worse from this idiotic story, Freud or Jung. Listen to this. Where is it? Ah, yes: "American girls like the way European men make love. "That's our Jung speaking. Can you believe it? "They prefer us because they sense we are a little dangerous." All he can talk about is how much American girls want him. "It is natural for women to want to be afraid when they love. The American woman wants to be mastered and possessed in the archaic European way. Your American man only wants to be the obedient son of his mother-wife." This is "America's tragedy." He's gone completely off his chain.'

'But that isn't an attack on Freud,' I said.

'They have someone else pronouncing on Freud.'

'Who?' I asked.

'An anonymous source,' said Brill, 'identified only as a doctor who speaks for the "reputable" American medical community. Listen to what he says:

'I knew Dr Sigmund Freud of Vienna very well some years ago. Vienna is not a moral city. Quite the contrary. Homosexuality, for example, is there considered the sign of an ingenious temperament. Working side by side with Freud in the laboratory all through one winter, I learned that he enjoyed Viennese life — enjoyed it thoroughly. He felt no compunction about cohabitation, or even about fathering children out of wedlock. He was not a man who lived on a particularly high plane. His scientific theory, if that is what it should be called, is the result of this saturnalian environment and the peculiar life he led there.'

'My God,' I said.

'It is purely personal attack,' Ferenczi commented. 'Will American paper publish such things?'

'There's your freedom of the press,' said Brill, who received a withering glance from his wife. 'They've won. Hall will cancel. What can we do?' 'Does Freud know?' I asked. 'Yes. Ferenczi told him,' said Brill. 'I gave highlights of newspaper article,' explained Ferenczi, 'through door. He is not so upset. He says he has heard worse.'

'But Hall hasn't,' I observed. Freud had endured calumny a long time. He expected it; he was to a degree inured to it. Hall, however, had as perfect a horror of scandal as any other New Englander of old Puritan stock. To have Freud proclaimed a libertine in the New York Times the day before the inauguration of Clark's celebrations would be too much for him. Aloud, I said, 'Does Freud have any idea who in New York knew him in Vienna?'

'There is no one,' Brill cried. 'He says he never worked with any Americans.'

'What?' I said. 'Why, that's our chance. Maybe the whole article is a fake. Brill, call your friend at the Times. If they are really planning to publish this, tell them it's libel. They can't publish an outright lie.'

'And they are going to take my word for it?' he answered.

Before I could reply, I noticed that Ferenczi and Rose had fixed their glance slightly behind me. I turned around to find a pair of blue eyes looking up at me. It was Nora Acton.

I think my heart actually stopped for several seconds.

Every feature of Nora Acton's person — the loose strands of hair dancing about her cheek, the imploring blue eyes, her slender arms, the white-gloved hands, the diminishing shape from her chest to her waist — all conspired against me.